SFA making money from youth football

[Ozyhibby]

This is worth a read. In most countries, money flows down from the top to help produce the players of the future. In Scotland the money flows up the way towards the pro game. And we wonder why we no longer go to major championships.



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[sauzee6_2]

Not sure what paper this is from but have no doubt it’s a red top!

Whilst this may be factually correct, the context is a million miles away and an incredibly one sided article.

Club Academy Scotland (CAS) has not been discredited and is starting to bear fruits across the country. Of course the fact that the SFA run CAS, not the Scottish Youth Football Association (SYFA) means the money goes to the clubs - not the SYFA. But why let the truth get in the way of a poor journalist.

The costs to clubs re coach education is not unreasonable. I believe it’s right clubs have qualified coaches, but also that they are registered (for a whole host of reasons).

Project Brave is working but needs time - hacks like this do nothing to support the game and in fact have a negative affect by creating sensationalist stories such as this.

Rant over 🤪

[Deansy]

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Not sure what paper this is from but have no doubt it’s a red top!

Whilst this may be factually correct, the context is a million miles away and an incredibly one sided article.

Club Academy Scotland (CAS) has not been discredited and is starting to bear fruits across the country. Of course the fact that the SFA run CAS, not the Scottish Youth Football Association (SYFA) means the money goes to the clubs - not the SYFA. But why let the truth get in the way of a poor journalist.

The costs to clubs re coach education is not unreasonable. I believe it’s right clubs have qualified coaches, but also that they are registered (for a whole host of reasons).

Project Brave is working but needs time - hacks like this do nothing to support the game and in fact have a negative affect by creating sensationalist stories such as this.

Rant over 🤪

Googled him and he 'writes' for the record (Damn - wish admin would allow me to call that rag by the name it's more widely known as !) so it could also just be yet another 'SFA-bash' targeted at it's main readership - the peepil !

[Ozyhibby]

The cost of getting a coach to ‘A’ license level in Scotland is about 4/5 times what it costs in Germany or Spain. That’s why we have a fraction of the qualified coaches they have.
The SFA should be providing coaching courses for free to all volunteers working at grassroots level. The cost of coach eduction is helping to keep football expensive for parents.


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[Hibernian32]

I remember being 4/5 year old joining a boys club at £15 a month. Now until there at least 7 you have to pay for holiday camps or sfa run sessions. Very rare you'll find a boys clubs playing under 7s 6s 5s on a saturday/Sunday morning.

[JimBHibees]

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The cost of getting a coach to ‘A’ license level in Scotland is about 4/5 times what it costs in Germany or Spain. That’s why we have a fraction of the qualified coaches they have.
The SFA should be providing coaching courses for free to all volunteers working at grassroots level. The cost of coach eduction is helping to keep football expensive for parents.


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Couldn't agree more way too expensive and out of reach for most clubs and coaches to afford the higher level courses. As usual sfa bit of a closed shop.

[Brightside]

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I remember being 4/5 year old joining a boys club at £15 a month. Now until there at least 7 you have to pay for holiday camps or sfa run sessions. Very rare you'll find a boys clubs playing under 7s 6s 5s on a saturday/Sunday morning.

Plenty clubs take under 5s

[Purple & Green]

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Not sure what paper this is from but have no doubt it’s a red top!

Whilst this may be factually correct, the context is a million miles away and an incredibly one sided article.

Club Academy Scotland (CAS) has not been discredited and is starting to bear fruits across the country. Of course the fact that the SFA run CAS, not the Scottish Youth Football Association (SYFA) means the money goes to the clubs - not the SYFA. But why let the truth get in the way of a poor journalist.

The costs to clubs re coach education is not unreasonable. I believe it’s right clubs have qualified coaches, but also that they are registered (for a whole host of reasons).

Project Brave is working but needs time - hacks like this do nothing to support the game and in fact have a negative affect by creating sensationalist stories such as this.

Rant over 🤪

Do CAS source players from SYFA?

[sauzee6_2]

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Do CAS source players from SYFA?

In some cases yes, however realistically most players are already in the academy system and as such developed by the pro clubs.

By no means is this perfect, but the mentioned article is way off the mark.

[sauzee6_2]

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The cost of getting a coach to ‘A’ license level in Scotland is about 4/5 times what it costs in Germany or Spain. That’s why we have a fraction of the qualified coaches they have.
The SFA should be providing coaching courses for free to all volunteers working at grassroots level. The cost of coach eduction is helping to keep football expensive for parents.

So how many boys clubs have A level coaches? A licence is for full time, professional coaches. I would guess at least a third of premier / championship coaches only have their A licence.

If they are coaching at youth level they should take the youth coach education pathway.

Most coaches will be level 1 / 2, these cost around £70, of which the SFA subsidise.

[Loopz]

Coach education and the level of coaching delivered at grassroots Scottish football is in my experience poor (My eldest son played from 6 to 16 until he had to give up because they could not find a head coach and another son currently playing for 2005’s that I coach). Making coach education a lot cheaper or free and more readily available would improve the standard of our game.

[sauzee6_2]

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Coach education and the level of coaching delivered at grassroots Scottish football is in my experience poor (My eldest son played from 6 to 16 until he had to give up because they could not find a head coach and another son currently playing for 2005’s that I coach). Making coach education a lot cheaper or free and more readily available would improve the standard of our game.

Not sure I agree, with the greatest respect for many people coaching is a profession. Making it free, for me demeans the profession and contributes to the notion that anyone can do it.

Coaching is a profession and should be regarded as such.

Part of the problem is that the development of young players is largely delivered by unqualified volunteers. Terrific they are volunteering, but would you allow an unqualified volunteer to teach your child maths?

Not trying to take away from volunteers, but for us to develop quality players, they need quality coaches.

[Loopz]

S6_2,

Not sure I agree, with the greatest respect for many people coaching is a profession. Making it free, for me demeans the profession and contributes to the notion that anyone can do it.

It’s not free and not demeaned but paid for by the football authorities. We would still have professional coaches but we can also train our volunteers to as high a level as they are capable. I could not agree more that not everyone can be a qualified coach.

Coaching is a profession and should be regarded as such.


It still would be although I have met many SFA employed coaches who do not conduct themselves professionally.

Part of the problem is that the development of young players is largely delivered by unqualified volunteers. Terrific they are volunteering, but would you allow an unqualified volunteer to teach your child maths?


Without the army of mainly unrecognised volunteers we would not have a base for our system of football development in Scotland. Your maths point is just being silly, I’m suggesting higher levels of qualified coaches, not less.

Not trying to take away from volunteers, but for us to develop quality players, they need quality coaches.


On this we agree but I also believe that our volunteers are capable of becoming quality coaches given the right conditions. Would working alongside professionals maybe help them to become better coaches?


A quick search led me to this article about coaching in England,

The Icelandic model also thrives on a unified approach, with the football authorities all prioritising three core aspects: coaching, facilities and strong links with schools.

However, the biggest difference between the UK and Iceland is probably in the provision of coaching for young players. Even some of the youngest age groups are instructed by highly qualified coaches in Iceland. From the age of four every child has a Uefa-accredited coach. From the under-10s age group upwards the coach has to hold a Uefa B qualification, a level that allows coaches in England to manage right up to professional clubs. Also, all coaches are paid in Iceland, which is in sharp contrast to the majority of English coaches, who tend to be volunteers and very few of them will be Uefa B qualified.

L.

[Ozyhibby]

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Not sure I agree, with the greatest respect for many people coaching is a profession. Making it free, for me demeans the profession and contributes to the notion that anyone can do it.

Coaching is a profession and should be regarded as such.

Part of the problem is that the development of young players is largely delivered by unqualified volunteers. Terrific they are volunteering, but would you allow an unqualified volunteer to teach your child maths?

Not trying to take away from volunteers, but for us to develop quality players, they need quality coaches.

Maybe if we weren’t spending so much money on coaching courses we could afford to pay a pro coach? Making the courses free will encourage more coaches to enter the game and make it easier for clubs to find coaches that are right for them.
In our league we need at least a level 3 SFA qualification although we have a head coach with an ‘A’ license anyway (not funded by us luckily).
The way the SFA run things just now, the courses are a cash cow for them.


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[Onceinawhile]

Think the first course I did was £45 and the second was £60.

There was roughly 30 people on both courses, so you're talking £1,350 and £1,800 total revenue.

Booking a pitch for 7 hours at say £50 is only £350 so unless the people taking it were getting £500 for the day each, there's a big profit in there somewhere.

The second course tbf was over two days, but even then that's only about £700 on pitch hire (and that's Imo, a high estimate).

To be taught to coach at a level that is pretty basic Imo. They could half or third the cost of the courses and would probably get more people doing them, or going further into them thus giving better coaches.

[Purple & Green]

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In some cases yes, however realistically most players are already in the academy system and as such developed by the pro clubs.

By no means is this perfect, but the mentioned article is way off the mark.

It’s a glib article agreed, but it does highlight that SYFA is effectively subsidizing CAS.

I’d suspect every CAS prospect has been in a SYFA set up - certainly the ones I know have - although I don’t really know an awful lot about how CAS works at the younger levels.

[Wee Effen Bee]

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Googled him and he 'writes' for the record (Damn - wish admin would allow me to call that rag by the name it's more widely known as !) so it could also just be yet another 'SFA-bash' targeted at it's main readership - the peepil !

His ignorance of Egyptian history is pants as his analogy is flawed: the pyramids were built anywhere between 2-3000 years before Tut Ankh Amun was born and he wasn’t buried in the Giza plateau, he was buried in a big hole in the ground in the Valley of the Kings - 500 miles away!
Yours,
Mr Pedant