How to make matchday player centred

Former FA regional coach mentor, Ceri Bowley, looks at how coaches can ensure that players, and not adults, are the centre of the matchday experience.

Matchday is a significant learning opportunity for players and should be treated as such.

As a coach, you need to focus on helping each player to maximise this opportunity and embrace the matchday experience. A good start point is to be clear about what players will try to learn on matchday. Too often, coaches try and fix everything which can lead to a lack of focus and confusion for players.

When planning for matchday, you need to consider:What is success?
What success means, and looks like, generally differs from player to player. To enhance your understanding of the individual and their motivation, you should develop an appreciation of each player’s perspective. Remember that a coach's role is to help their team, and both training and matchday are about the players – not you. Consequently, when it comes to determining 'success', this shouldn't be down to you (alone) or dependent on the outcome of the match.

Consistency with training objectives and focusBy continuing your training themes into matchday, you'll allow your players to demonstrate and extend their learning. This can also help you to be specific in your observation and feedback – meaning that the messages you communicate to players have purpose and support learning.


Top tips for selecting a team1. Provide equal opportunity to learnAs a coach, you have a duty of care to ensure that each player is given equal opportunity to learn. It's important to make sure that individuals have the same amount of time on the field and are provided with personal, relevant challenges. 

2. Select teams on rotationGive all players the chance to start matches and, if they don't start one week, make sure they start the following week.

3. Encourage and provide opportunities for all players to experience different positionsRarely will a young player play in one position throughout their footballing experience. Exposing your players to different positions presents players with a variety of pictures of the game – helping them to learn a variety of roles and responsibilities, and enabling them to make the link between different positions.

4. Don’t rotate positions too frequentlyBe careful not to rotate positions too frequently as this can hinder motivation, confidence and learning – particularly as players get older. Consider the player who finally gets an opportunity to play as the striker, but doesn’t see much of the ball because the opposition are stronger and dominate the game.

Three games in any given position presents opportunities for a player to familiarise themselves with the role, as well as face different opponents and challenges – allowing learning to take place.

5. Player OwnershipAllow the players to pick the team. Young people select teams, players and formations on computer games such as Football Manager and FIFA, and are adept at doing so. Allowing them to select the matchday team engages players in peer learning – a powerful form of cooperative learning.

To maximise the learning opportunity, affinity groups of 4-6 players are recommended. This encourages all players to share their views and reduces the dominance of individual players.