Competitive Practice in Foreign Children's and Youth Football

Abstract

In the 1980s, experts from different countries with developed football, realizing that "street" football is a thing of the past, came to the conclusion that it is necessary to revise the system of training young talents and give children the opportunity to train and play according to their own rules i.e. to the "nature" of children's football. When licensing football clubs, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) defined the requirements for the development of training programs for young football players based on strategic tasks, where priority is given to the individual development of the player, and the achievement of sports results is secondary (“development first, then the result ”). World experience shows that in order to create conditions for the gradual development of the diverse qualities of young players, it is necessary: firstly, to refuse to participate in official competitions up to 12 years old in order to focus on the quality and effectiveness of the training process aimed at individual development and training of a creative player; secondly, to conduct training sessions in a game form on a high emotional background with the obligatory consideration of age and individual characteristics of children. It is the application of the game method that is the key to effective learning, during which individual opportunities develop, game intelligence is formed, the foundations of the child‟s technical and tactical skills are laid, which in the future will determine the player‟s potential at a professional level.