By Clare McEwen
Youth football is not all about winning.
At the higher levels of competitive football, sure, football is about winning and losing, but for children, the result is only a very small part of the story. Here are some of the physical, mental, and social skills that children can gain through football.
Physical Skills
Fundamental movement skills are the basic movements that children need to physically function on a day-to-day basis. They’re learned through play and begin to build when your child is a toddler. Primary school PE lessons focus on building these skills and it generally takes children until the age of 9-10 before they’re considered competent.
These fundamental movements are:
- Locomotor skills — movements like running, jumping, skipping, hopping
- Ball (object) control skills — catching, throwing, bouncing, kicking or hitting a ball
- Balance skills — balancing, twisting, landing after a jump
Most primary schools allocate two hours a week to physical education (PE). Within this time they focus on improving these skills through a variety of games and sports. But two hours isn’t very much and with the demands of the curriculum, most schools find it hard to fit any more PE in.
According to a 2023 study, 6 out of 10 children in the UK don’t meet the guideline of one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. Football is an inexpensive and easy way to increase the amount of exercise children do and level up these basic movement skills. This is why at younger ages, football training focuses on building these core skills through a range of fun games, both with and without a ball.
The keyword is fun. Including fun foundations of movement and giving children a chance to develop their motor skills builds a base to gain enjoyment, fitness, and confidence from sport. Hopefully for life.
As well as improving gross motor skills — the bigger body movements like running and jumping — football works on agility, balance, and spatial awareness. Through quick changes of direction, dodging other players, and dribbling the ball, players start building other physical skills. Fine motor skills too — the smaller, more controlled movements — develop as your child becomes more practised at football.
Ball control skills improve with practice, as basic kicking gradually develops into the trickier skill of dribbling. Dribbling requires smaller ball touches, which shows fine motor skills are developing and improves them further. As you watch your child play, you can see the “swing a leg and hope for the best” toddler football gradually become more refined. Soon their kicks are more accurate, and they can pass the ball to you or hit an object with them.
Before you know it, their fine motor skills have improved so much they’re dribbling around you with ease (whilst laughing — I speak from experience).
Mental skills
Although it may not seem obvious at first, football has a big impact on mental skills, too. At a basic level, it helps children focus on doing something specific, like kicking a ball. It can encourage concentration as they try to master a new skill (all whilst having fun and not realising they’re learning). As they start to play matches — whether that’s in a formal setting or in the park with their mates — they are building in other key life skills.
When choosing to pass, dribble, or shoot, players are improving their decision-making skills; when trying to work out a way to get around a defender, they’re problem-solving; and as they get older, they’re using strategic thinking to understand positions and tactics.
The Lionesses winning the Euros beautifully demonstrated other key life skills developed through sport. Resilience, adaptability, and confidence. England were resilient from the start, using their first match loss to fuel their determination (oh, there’s another one!) to win every game after.
They had to be resilient in many of their games too, coming back from being behind and still coming out on top. They adapted to the opponent and their situation and they always believed in themselves to win the trophy.
The benefits of football: Social skills
Team sports also build social skills. Maybe these are the most important life skills football can bring to your child. Children learn to listen and communicate. Not just to coaches but to each other, developing friendships, some of which last a lifetime. Football provides an environment to socialise outside the confines of school. It gives children a chance to bond over a common interest and to chat in a more sociable setting. Casual communication between games and drills, but also purposeful communication when calling for the ball or listening to what their teammate is telling them.
Learning to work together is essential in any team, and what better way to learn it than kicking a ball around with your mates? It teaches co-operation, leadership, and empathy (if you’ve ever seen how children react when another player misses a shot, you’ll see how powerful these moments can be as they reassure their mate). Respect and sporting behaviour is also learned on a football pitch. Players learn responsibility too as they each have a role to play in a team and must accept that their actions (or inactions) affect other people.
Once you start looking, football is an amazing way for children to learn so many skills. The more obvious physical ones, where they can build a love of exercise, feel strength in their bodies, and keep themselves healthy. The mental skills that improve concentration, problem solving, and resilience — all of which improve learning in school too, by the way. And social skills that teach them how to work with others, resolve conflicts, communicate, and make new friends.
It really is the beautiful game.
If you want to find football, the England Football, Scottish Football, and Welsh Football websites are all good places to start.
Clare McEwen is the author of She Can Kick It.* The history of women’s football across the world via a girl in love with the beautiful game. She is also a FA-qualified football coach and the founder of the She Can Kick It subscription box (coming soon). If you have a primary school-aged girl who loves football, you can sign up for Clare’s free football activity pack.
Head to the parenting section to read Claire’s article about girls’ football, which includes tips to help them get started.
*This is an affiliate link, which means if you click it and buy the book, I get paid a fee.
