I'm sure you've often heard expressions like: "She's a natural striker" or "he's a great defender, just like his dad. It must be in his genes".
I'm not going to delve too deeply into the old and rather tired "nature v nurture" debate here, (if you want to check it out, a Google search will reveal hundreds of articles on the subject), I'm just going to say that children are NOT born with the ability to play soccer, any more than they are born with the ability to play the violin or run 100m in less than 10 seconds.
Genes can give a child red hair or blue eyes but to suggest children can be born with a "triple stepover" gene is a little silly, to say the least.
But while genetics are not the deciding factor in whether a child excels at soccer (or anything else) it is a fact that some boys and girls are born with certain advantages.
Children who are genetically predisposed to have a strong body, powerful lungs, etc., and have parents prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to regularly take their children to soccer practice have a head start in the race to be a soccer star. And you will see plenty of them at coaching sessions for pre-schoolers and kindergarten kids.
But genetic advantages and parenting style is not the end of the story. Far from it.
While good genes can help two and three year olds keep a step ahead of their peers, genetics plays a very minor role in producing talented young soccer players.
Instead, soccer talent requires three key ingredients – ignition, meaningful practice and excellent coaching. [1]
Ignition
Ignition is the spark that makes a child want to excel at soccer. It could be a film (such as Bend It Like Beckham), the desire to please a parent, an internal drive to be the best or the realisation that becoming good at soccer might lead to a desirable lifestyle. It could also be the influence of a role model. Someone like you, perhaps.
Meaningful practice
Understanding the importance of practice for young players requires an understanding of how children learn motor skills.
All motor skills – from walking to heading the ball into the back of the net – are generated by electrical impulses that originate in the neural pathways in the brain.
Over time, and with lots of meaningful practice, a substance called myelin insulates these pathways, stopping the electrical impulses from leaking and thereby allowing a young soccer player to perform the relevant skill or technique more quickly and accurately.[2]
Put simply, a child with myelin-wrapped soccer pathways plays the game "instinctively" and well. She's got broadband. On the other hand, a child without myelin-wrapped soccer pathways is still struggling to get by on dial up.
Myelin can be produced at any age but the prime age for myelin formation is between four and 12, an age range that can be properly be called The Golden Age for children who are learning to play soccer.
Technical skills learned during this period can be quickly and firmly embedded, i.e. wrapped with myelin.
The relevance of this to youth soccer coaching is clear: time spent teaching tactics to young players is not being spent wisely. At the youngest ages, all a coach's energy should be focused on proper technical training, or myelin building. [3]
Coaches should also note that it's much easier to wrap a soccer-specific pathway in myelin than unwrap it. That's why bad habits are so difficult to break and why you should teach correct technique from day one.
But it is not sufficient to simply put in lots of hours practising skills and techniques. Even 10,000 hours of practice is not enough.[4]
Rapid myelin growth occurs when children practise their soccer skills in a challenging – even uncomfortable – environment.
This is best achieved by playing a variety of small-sided games (SSGs) instead of using drills. Soccer-like games hone technique, expose faults and force children to find solutions to problems.
Futsal, 4v4 and five-a-side move young players outside their comfort zone, encourage risk taking, experimentation and are thus much better for skill acquisition than traditional drills or playing eleven-a-side on vast, uninspiring pitches.
Excellent coaching
The final – and most important prerequisite for producing talented young soccer players – is excellent coaching.
The good news is that excellent coaches are not necessarily the most qualified.
They don't even have to be particularly knowledgeable. Most talented players didn't have coaches with outstanding win/loss ratios or coaching degrees when they were five, six or even 12 years old.
But their coaches did possess a set of recognisable characteristics:
Excellent coaches are a source of ignition. They inspire their players, not just because they are kind and patient but also because they have high standards. One of the best youth coaches I ever met insisted his players turn up 10 minutes early for practice, always wore spotless boots [cleats] and they maintained eye contact with him when he was speaking. His players loved him.
Excellent coaches facilitate meaningful practice. They don't routinely give their players the answers, their players play a lot of SSGs and they know how to think for themselves.
Excellent coaches show their players how to perform a skill but they will leave it up to them to find out how to actually use it. And you will never, ever hear an excellent coach shouting "SHOOT!" or "PASS!" or anything like that during a match. They are more likely to be reading a newspaper.
Excellent coaches don't over-praise success. They know that doing that discourages young players from taking risks – in case they fail – and children who don't take risks learn very slowly, if at all.
Finally, excellent coaches understand why William Butler Yeats – an Irish poet and Nobel prize winner – said:
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
References
[1] [3] D Coyle, The Talent Code, Random House, 2009
[2] Z Jonker, Cracking the Code, q.v. CMYSA, April 15, 2011
[4] Malcolm Gladwell devotes a section of his book Outliers to the notion that to become world class at anything requires 10,000 hours of practice.