Luckily for us, there are many resources out there which have used child development psychology and applied it to sports. In the process of writing this article, I did a fair amount of research, as well as scouring my UEFA course notes, and found some fantastic scientific publications on the subject. I’ve created a practical PDF which organizes information by ages, their characteristics, and how best to coach each age.

For example, during the infancy stage children typically lack the ability to think hypothetically. Knowing this, we would avoid speaking to a player about what could have happened had he or she acted differently. Generally before the age of 10, children also lack the ability to think abstractly. Therefore, they struggle with concepts such as space and time. They simply don’t have the mental models about such notions to relate to their world. Taking this into account, we wouldn’t expect our players to perfectly understand the spatial relationship between themselves and their environment. We might assume that their mistakes are because they aren’t good enough or they aren’t looking around but in fact it’s because cognitively they see the space differently. Just like Emmanuelle saw the triangle differently.

During adolescence, we know that teens tend to be self-centered. Although this may seem like a negative behavior, as we can see in the chart, that egocentrism can manifest as self-motivation.

In the charts I’ve created, you’ll find a section for each stage of development called ‘Coaching Approach’. I believe for this to be the most important and practical part of the tool. It gives you some guidelines to follow to adjust your instructions, feedback, the player’s motivation and how that all relates to the activity. For example, let’s imagine that you are in charge of an under-11s boys team. When creating your training exercises you can go down the list and check whether the exercise is fun oriented, if it simulates the game, and if it has unplanned reactions to stimuli. Then you can think about the feedback and correction you give your players, and the same about how you instruct your players in training sessions.

This table is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be done with child development in sports. I have been lucky enough to work with and see firsthand clubs which have created training methodologies where there are clear guidelines for each age group in terms of what cognitive or physical abilities each player should have at every level. This type of organizational clarity would be impossible without the knowledge of child development psychology.

This is what the most successful academies in the world do so well. La Masia, F.C. Barcelona’s storied academy, have very clear, and what some would consider strict, age markers that indicate to the club whether the player is progressing within the Barcelona methodology. These kinds of training methodologies are highly systematic and are based on the Constructionist learning methods discussed earlier. Simply put, they strictly adhere to the old adage, ‘You have to learn to walk, before you can run.’ What technique is necessary to walk? What cognitive elements do you need to be capable of to begin to run? Beginning to think like this, clubs create successful academies which will produce cognitively, physically, and emotionally capable players.

Read: The Morality of Youth Football

With that said, none of this is possible without the coach believing in the system, and in my humble opinion, that is where everything falls apart. This requires forgetting about the result at the weekend, and frankly, often coaches are selfishly not willing to do that. This training approach revolves entirely around the learner. Coaches should understand that they are coaching to develop their team’s age specific cognitive abilities, and not to play like Manchester City. They are not Pep Guardiola. They do not have millions of pounds to spend in the next transfer window. Their team is never going to play City’s positional play system. And. That’s. Okay. They are 12 years old. They need to develop mental models to better their spatial awareness. They need to improve their bilateral movements. They need to become comfortable with their ever changing body.

Coaching is very simple. Teach them what they can learn, do not teach them what you want to teach them. A coach’s job is to analyse their team’s emotional, physical, and cognitive capacities and help them create new mental models which they can use to relate to the complex nature of the sport a little bit better every year. It’s about them, not you. So let me repeat that; Teach them what they can learn. With some basic knowledge of their brain development, you can adjust expectations, thus preventing frustration. Through this process, you will have more compassion and understanding with your players, ultimately giving way to your development as a coach. And perhaps that’s where we must begin the youth sports revolution. Not with the overhauls and major changes from our federations but with our own self-improvement.