The organization of youth football in iceland: Impact on players and role of the coaches

• Halldór Ragnar Emilsson ^[1]
  1. [1] Stjarnan FC
• Localización: Actividad física y deporte: ciencia y profesión, ISSN 1578-2484, ISSN-e 2659-8930, Nº. 31, 2019, págs. 36-36
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • The youth department of Stjarnan FC is well established and one of the largest in Iceland, with 900 boys and girls practitioners at 5-19 age levels. Its structure and ideology is exemplary for the unique organization in youth football in Iceland which is very distinct from youth set-ups elsewhere in Europe. A structure where every player pays moderate participation fee for each season (generally subsidized partly by local governments) enables Icelandic clubs to offer well paid and organized coaching at every age level for boys and girls. This structure results in attracting qualified, educated and experienced coaches at all age levels with no parents or volunteers taking any part in the coaching. With only few exemptions, every kid plays and practices with its local neighbourhood club and is not under any pressure of having to be picked to a “larger” club or an academy (which actually don’t exist in Iceland). Experience in Iceland shows that training with your friends has positive impact on the duration kids play football generating e.g. good prevention, increased chances that late bloomers will not be “missed out” but most importantly boosting every player’s fun and enjoyment of the game which is kind of a trademark of Icelandic youth football set-up. Most communities in Iceland are very compact and local governments have invested heavily in artificial pitches or/and indoor football halls. Almost every kid is therefore located in a walking distance from home to an open access artificial pitch to free-play football. The most enthusiastic kids spend several hours every day at the open access fields, playing by themselves or with their friends where their own rules are created for their own World Cup. This undoubtedly results in great football progress and development for the kids and is a very interesting interaction with the scheduled and organized training at the local club. A vital factor in Icelandic youth structure is therefore to create a positive, joyful and encouraging environment for the kids so they hopefully free-play football when not doing scheduled trainings.

    Stjarnan FC’s ideology is also to win titles, develop players for the senior team, national team and hopefully professional football - creating a very “thin line” balancing it with the structure of allowing all kids to participate, getting equal training and wanting to keep them as long as possible in football at each local club. This generates extremely demanding environment for youth coaches. The DNA of the Icelandic youth coach has to involve people skills, character reading, inspiration and ambition to develop and encourage players at all levels. This interaction of players and characters of all levels training together creates interesting dynamic where it can be argued that it boosts players’ understanding of values such as respect, leadership and teamwork. Growing up in Icelandic youth football structure and ideology has positive impact on number of strong values benefitting kids in the long-term in football, school, business and life in general. This organization is at the same time unique and formative for youth coaches developing some players for professional football and inspiring other players to play football for as long as possible.