Blitzes are an important part of young players’ development

I PERSONALLY feel that the value of a good, well organised blitz is severely underestimated.  In the last three weeks I have watched my young nephew play in a couple of small blitzes hosted by various clubs on smaller pitches with the youngsters participating in a mountain of football.

On Saturday, June 4, Newry Mitchel’s will organise one of the most spectacular blitzes for u-12 footballers in the whole of Ireland, and that is not an exaggeration.

There will be 44 teams from all over Ireland, in fact 16 counties will be represented, with teams from every county in Ulster along with teams from Dublin, Louth, Westmeath, Kildare, Laois, Offaly and even Roscommon taking part. Huge respect and congratulations to the organising committee in the club.

On the day clubs taking part will be on eight condensed pitches in 11-a-side games at the Derrylecka Playing Fields in Newry.

There are no doubt scores will be flying in thick and fast, no player will be totally dominant, everyone will get their hands and feet on a ball and all the games, most importantly, will all be played in the spirit and reverence the game deserves.

The current buzz words in football now is ‘transition play’. Everyone thinks it’s a complicated process, the transition. All it simply means is the ability to change from defence to attack quickly and efficiently and vice-versa, it’s a two way process.

So, on a condensed pitch in a blitz type format with less numbers, transition play is going to happen all the time, a fantastic way for young people to play and learn the game.

Obviously outside of the obvious benefits of increased ball contact, more 2v1, 3v2 situations, multiple scoring opportunities, more decisions to make, better special awareness, young people would rather play these sort of games because they are more enjoyable and fun.

Not only though are they more fun they are so much more beneficial for their skill development and game sense development.

As I have previously mentioned in articles last year, in Spain there are no full-sided games under the age of 14. This is very interesting, especially when you consider that they probably produce some of the most technically gifted footballers in the world.

Now it may not just be down to the fact they play small-sided games and monopolise the volume of touches players get but it surely has a positive impact of some sort. In England it’s the opposite at underage level, they are playing full-sided soccer from a very, very young age and, interestingly, I recently received a tweet from a schools soccer coach in England whose school has had county and national success at soccer.

I asked him the question ‘what’s the focus at schools level in England, is it development over winning?’ His reply was focus is on winning, size is chosen over technical ability nearly all the time.

Is it any wonder England look so much technically inferior to the Spains of this world?

I feel as coaches within our clubs and schools we should strive to organise these blitzes, such as the fabulous one Newry Mitchel’s are on the verge of running, as much as possible, whether it is just among local clubs, clubs in the county, other clubs in Ulster or even an in-house blitz if numbers are large enough. They are priceless.

Do we need to be playing 15 aside at u-12 and u-14? Can we not go to 11-a-side and really focus on developing the technical aspect of our children’s game over the need for winning at all costs?

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