Taking grassroots football to the next level

Football pathways for young athletes 

How can schools bridge the gap between grassroots and elite development centres for aspiring footballers? Loughborough Schools Foundation’s Head of Football, Perry Wild, delves into this topic through discussion with Habtamu (Habs) Ayele – a coach from Burnley FC who specialises in developing players at the foundation stage. 

With expertise as a UEFA A licensed coach, Perry brings extensive elite-level experience to the Foundation, having worked in international academies and senior performance roles. Under Perry’s leadership, the start of the 2025 academic year saw the introduction of football as a full Games option for Year 7 pupils, joining rugby and hockey on the curriculum and enabling pupils to progress their skills alongside their school journey – a change that has been transformational for football at the Foundation. 

This interview explores the first-hand perspectives of two professional football coaches about how to help players reach their full potential and looks at the role school settings can play in nurturing the skills, technique and mindset required to reach elite levels.

Perry: Could you just start by telling us a little bit about your background 

Habs: My name’s Habs and I’m based up in Manchester, mainly around the Berry Bolton area. So I’ve been coaching for say the last 9-10 years. Initially, I started coaching with grassroot clubs around my local area and then that led on to working in academies. I got my first gig at Oldham Academy and then when they folded because of the first team going down to National League, I moved on to Bolton. I was there for three and a half years and now I’ve moved on to Burnley. So I’ve mainly worked with foundation phase players, and I think that’s where I see myself working for for the foreseeable.  

Perry: Through having those experiences, those different levels of category of academies, what differences do you see in the levels of provision for kids across those academies? For example, between a category three and a category one.  

Habs: Yeah, so I’ve not started at Burnley yet but from what I’ve seen and from what I understand in terms of the categories, with a category three, you’re sort of working with players that you ‘just get’ because obviously they’ve gone to a category one or a category two. When you’re a category two or a category one, you’ll see you’ve got a higher caliber of players where you’ve got to try and develop and you’ve got a little bit more pressure. 

You need to create players that are ready to go into the first team, whereas at a category three it’s a little bit more relaxed because you’re working with players that may have some disadvantages in one of the four corners. So you’re sort of trying to make them as holistic as possible and try and push them on. 

Perry: What qualities are you looking for at that foundation phase age when you see a player playing against you or if you get someone coming for a trial? 

Habs: One of the biggest things that stands out is the physical attributes – whether they’re big, tall, strong or whether they’re quick. You pick up on that without seeing them play.  

When they’re playing, you look at how they deal with certain situations or if they’re good in tight spaces or if they’re good at one vs ones, both attacking and defending. And beyond that you sort of look at how they deal with mistakes; do they brush it off or does it sort of linger on them? What are they like with their teammates? How do they deal with referee decisions?  

With the foundation phase, for under 9s and 10s, you’re only judging based off what you see there but when they reach under 11s and 12s, they’ve grown up a little bit, the hormones have kicked in a little bit there as well, so you look at them a little bit more holistically there. 

Perry: And do you think that there are certain things that are harder to coach or that almost can’t be coached? 

Habs: So I’ve come across a few players where I’ve thought ‘I’ve not coached you that but obviously you know it’ and that is usually the mentality side of it and how they deal with things. I think you can influence it to a certain extent, but in terms of trying to develop in them a top mentality, that’s difficult because you’re only seeing them for a few hours a week. 

I like to have some core values that I try and embed into them and at the early stages when I meet them, I’ll say to them that these are not just for football but also for at school, when you’re away from football settings as well. 

Hopefully you’re able to see that progress over a longer period of time. What I mean by that is just in terms of having the desire to compete and win, but having the desire to compete is the biggest one for me. Depending on what situation you’re in, obviously being up North, it rains and it’s cold for the majority of the year, so how do they deal with things like that? 

In terms of dealing with teammates, you’re looking at whether they are good teammates or not and thinking, ‘have they got that mentality to want to learn?’ So, yeah, you can influence it in a way in the sessions by the way you design things, and also away from that, you sort of check up on school and how they’re doing there as well. 

Perry: That’s the interesting point, actually, in terms of designing training around getting out not just the technical side but the social, emotional and psychological aspect of it too. You can design the training sessions around making it so that they have to show some kind of resilience or mental toughness.

In terms of the technical side, what are the sort of things that you notice straight away that the players can do? 

Habs: I think it’s more around the one vs ones because the foundation phase tends to focus on the one vs ones and the basics around that. If they’re doing that really well, then you sort of look at them and go ‘right, can we look at other parts of your game that we can improve?’ 

I’ve got five core themes that I look at the foundation phase; one vs one attacking, one vs one defending, ball striking, passing and receiving and decision making. 

I think the one vs one, both the attack and the defending, is a massive tick for me. If players are at a high level at that, then the rest of the stuff can sort of catch up as they grow up. With the ball striking, they may not be developed enough to be able to strike over a longer distance. With the decision making, you need to put them in a game situation a lot more often, and you’ll see progress over a longer period of time. And again with the passing and receiving, I think it’s an easier fix compared to the one vs one. 

Perry: That’s really evident especially when you’re in those smaller size of games at those age groups as it is just a series of one vs ones. And at that age as well, perhaps they’re not cemented in a position either but if they can do well at those one vs one attack and defence essentially they could play anywhere on the pitch – that’s the crux of it. 

Like you say, passing and combination play and understanding relationships within the team, they come a little bit later maybe and that’s over time. And with the new FA rules as well, going down to three vs three for the younger ones, I think that’s to encourage that as well. 

Habs: I went to the recent FAW conference which looked at the modern trends and this year it was looing at man-to-man marking and they looked at the first leg of the PSG buying game and in the clip they showed us, they were just going man-to-man all the time. The theme was that if you couldn’t get better at marking your man, then you were more successful. I think for coaches it’s just about understanding that the one vs ones do carry on into the 11 vs 11 game as well. 

Perry: Yeah, absolutely. If you can’t evade and prepare the space properly and make the movements to receive, you’re going to be out there with a man tied to you the whole time. You can’t go forward and you’re up against it. 

So yeah, right from that early point of foundation phase, it’s important to have that basic skill in order to then be able to progress the other aspects of the game. 

In terms of the players that you work with and their development, what separates those who go on to continually improve and play to a high level versus those who maybe started strong but don’t necessarily go on with that rate of improvement? 

Habs: It’s those who are able to apply feedback right away that tend to improve a lot quicker. Those who have got bad habits which you’re trying to coach out of them and those who take a longer period of time to embed that feedback, those players tend to stay stagnated for a bit. 

There are a few players who I’ve kept in touch with, and they’re at category one clubs now and when I remember coaching them at nines, they were the ones that we’re applying the feedback right away – you were stretching and challenging them and then, you know, they were doing those things and those are the ones that are at the highest clubs. 

Perry: I guess with that coachability aspect, sometimes if you get to success early, it’s almost like they have this internal sense of value that ‘actually I’m already the best player’, whereas maybe there are those that level underneath who are applying the feedback and you see that their rate of improvement overtakes that player who had that natural talent initially. 

Nobody knows what rate of development any kids are going to have, so trying to predict that is impossible, but if you have a player who’s willing to learn and take on feedback, you give yourself the best chance. 

Habs: I think you could tie this in with parents. The players who are excelling right now, are the ones whose parents were just in the background and didn’t really interfere with what you had to say. Obviously, they’d ask questions about the rationales behind it and obviously you’d explain it, you’d tell them this is where you see them and this is why you’ve done certain things. But those parents who sort of push back and go, ‘no, you know, my child needs to play at a certain position, this is what he’s good at’, then parents can sort of be a barrier in that sense. 

Perry: Talking of parents, what do you think are the biggest sort of myths around what parents believe about player development? I think there’s an idea that sole one-to-one coaching can make him into the best player in the team. 

I’m all for one-to-one coaching. I’ve done it previously and I probably will continue to do it, but I think there’s a time and place for it. If it’s done properly and thought out to give players action plans for what they need to work on, then it may be effective. 

But for me, I’m big for small group coaching where you’ve got groups of 6-12 players, but then you’re working on your one vs one defending and you’re polishing those skills. I think you’ll see a lot more improvement there. 

That whole context of age and stage is so important. You might not get that player understanding of where they are and the type of player they are in a one-to-one. In those small groups, you can get those kind of game-related practices which are specific to the area of the pitch that they mainly operate in and the stage of their development for example. So yeah, I completely agree, I’m a massive advocate of that small group work where you can really go down into detail as well. 

Habs: So now what we’re seeing up North, I don’t know about down South, is that there are athletic coaches now doing one-to-one sessions and I’m a big advocate for that because I think the football-specific athleticism work they’re doing with players will benefit them massively.  

In the foundation phase, you don’t really do sessions based on football-specific movements. You will tie them in with your sessions, but you don’t solely focus on them because obviously you want to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. 

Perry: In our context, that’s really interesting because you’ve got your academies who have those resources around that, who have those strength and conditioning coaches and sports scientists who are experts in long-term athletic development. And then you have a huge gap to grassroots where it’s typically a well-meaning dad and untrained professionals, particularly on that physical element, which is what they really, really need. 

For somewhere like the Loughborough Schools Foundation, we’re trying to kind of bridge that gap a little bit and to guide them on their long-term development that they perhaps don’t get in their grassroots. 

It’s really interesting to talk about the physical aspect as well, because many people, parents, coaches think that the physical development only comes later when players are ready to put on size and muscle and strength, but actually the quality of movement earlier in your running mechanics and how to change direction is so important but is often undervalued and overlooked in many environments. 

In terms of environment, how important is environment compared to natural talent? 

Habs: I think they go hand in hand. For example, when coaching under-fives under-sixes, obviously, I was not expecting them to get everything right. 

They were making mistakes left, right and center and even if they missed the goal, they were celebrating. I was completely encouraging these celebrations because, for me, if you’ve got an environment where making mistakes is normal, that’s brilliant, especially at the foundation phase, because you just want them to have loads of repetition. But if the environment is not right and they’re being scrutinised for making mistakes, they won’t be as confident. 

I remember reading years ago a piece where they looked at the wingers and the Premier League and who made the most mistakes and they were saying Salah has had the most unsuccessful dribbles, but you looked at him and you go, well, he’s the top scorer in the league. The only thing it came down to was that he made the mistakes, but he learned from them and then corrected them. Getting that across to players in that context was really good just so that they can just be relentless in having a go. 

Perry: I think I’ve seen it this year with Bruno Fernandez, and in previous years with Kevin de Bruyne, that they had given the most balls away, but as a midfielder, they’re also entrusted with making that last pass to make the assists for the goal. And they dare to make a difficult pass rather than take an easy option and going to a supporting player and moving the ball to a different area. 

So yeah, I completely agree. That environment where kids can feel that it’s safe to make mistakes and just go again and again and generate that repetition is where those minor adjustments are made within those repetitions to get it better next time. And then that success then grows with them on their journey by doing that. 

So we’re a Foundation of schools and we’re looking at football in school. We’re not necessarily trying to recreate an elite environment, but to take certain things from elite environments that can be utilised within this space, in this area. We’re very fortunate that we’ve got resources and high-level coaching staff and movement within our curriculum and we have lots of contact time with the players and students. 

Thinking about this, if you were to design a school specifically for developing footballers, what do you think you would include in that? What would you do different from what you’ve seen in education previously? 

Habs: In the foundation phase, for instance, I’d look at the core themes of what they’d need. So, like I mentioned before, one vs one attacking and defending, ball striking, passing, receiving, decision making and small sided games. I’d make them the curriculum and then just focus on them as much as you can. 

And then when you go into the into the Youth Development Phase (YDP), you might make it a little bit more game related in terms of thinking tactically. And then all of a sudden, you’re going to have a group of players who are capable of playing the game to a decent standard. 

In a school setting, then you could include the analysis work and tie it in with the education. That can be massive in terms of them actually seeing themselves play and visualising what they can go and do on the training pitch. You could have a look at the psychological side of things as well in terms of where they see themselves going and them actually understanding their own performance. So yeah, I’d focus on the five topics there, mainly for the foundation phase and just work around them. 

Perry: Those things are very much things that we’ve spoken about within our Foundation and actually we probably get to know the pupils better than any club could do because we see them all day, every day. And we have multiple inputs from multiple people from different environments, from their class teachers to the senior leadership to inclusion and support and then the coaches themselves. Is it possible that schools could genuinely become development centres rather than just places where they attend and deliver the football? Are there any limiting factors behind that? 

Habs: 100% I think the only limitation there would be is financially. I think if you’re going to run it as a as a development centre and you want the kids to go play at a decent standard, you’d want to have good coaches. You’d want to have obviously the strength and conditioning and physiotherapy side of things too. So I think it’d just be financially, but 100% it can be done. 

I’ve not heard of a programme out there that starts right from a young age and this could mean you could see some players coming through. It’ll appeal a lot to their parents because they’ll know that they’re having that development for 12 months of the year rather than for 2-3 days of the week. 

Perry: That’s music to our ears because that’s what we’re here looking to move towards. 

In terms of overall player development, do you think that there’s anything we’re missing out on? If you had one wish for player development, what would it be? What are we not doing here in England that you think we should be? 

Habs: So the common trend now that’s come in more in the foundation phase and it’s creeping into the YDP as well is the multi-sports. So, encouraging kids to do other sports as well, other than just football. 

So this is touching on the physical side where you’re only using certain parts of your body in football, whereas if you’re going and doing rock climbing, you know, you’re using a lot more, a lot more of your body there. If you’re doing boxing or dancing, it’s more fun for the kids and brings them back down to earth a little bit as well. The biggest benefit is that hopefully over a long period of time, they’ll be injury-free and we won’t see the injuries that we’re seeing now with, with players that that are established. 

Perry: That’s one of the massive positives to the school that we have specialists in all those different sports. So, if you’re looking at something like embracing contact and utilising your levers, we do rugby here. If you’re looking at quality of movement, we’ve got gymnastics. If we’re looking at something like lateral movements, we play tennis. 

So you’re right, especially in the foundation phase in the younger ages, they can’t have enough of different sports and different movement patterns rather than being stuck in just those football movements which is where those kind of longer-term chronic injuries start to develop from those repeated movement patterns that you never get a rest from. 

Habs: I think you’ll see clubs investing more time and more money into it as well. So you’d like to see that players coming through in the next 5-10 years will see the benefit of that. 

Perry: I appreciate your time massively, thank you for chatting to us.