So what is 'street football'? The ever trusty Wikepedia defines 'Street Football' as;
(street football) encompasses a number of informal varieties of association football. These informal games do not necessarily utilise the requirements of a formal game of football, such as a large field, field markings, goal apparatus and corner flags, eleven players per team (with a minimum of seven per team), or match officials (referee and assistant referees).
Often the most basic of set-ups will involve just a ball with a wall or fence used as a goal, or items such as clothing being used for goalposts (hence the phrase "jumpers for goalposts"). The ease of playing these informal games explains why they are popular all over the world.
On their Premier Skills website, John Cartwright and Roger Wilkinson describe 'Street Football' as;
Street football was the name given to the chaos type informal play times, often seen in the 1960’s, in which young players could practise.
Features of street football:
- Unorganised games were played (invented) according to numbers of players available.
- Small area size meant small sided games were predominant.
- Small games meant more touches of the ball with more decisions to make.
- Lots of movement - fitness improved.
- Games were realistic in many ways similar to full games.
- High individual skill levels were produced.
So why all the talk of Street Football and its demise being to blame for lack of player development, surely with the numerous coaching programs in place now, players are much better placed to learn and develop into top class players?
Yes, good quality coaching of young players is going to help them develop and to learn about the game but 'Street Football' still has a lot to offer!
1. There are numerous mentions of the '10,000 hour rule', based on a study by Anders Ericsson, claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practising a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. To amass 10,000 hours of practice in a club environment or academy environemt working on 4 sessions of 90 minutes each would take over 30 years! Even if this started at 8 years of age, becoming an expert at 38 is far from ideal in a football sense. Now I am not claiming the 10,000 hour rule is 'gospel' but you cannot argue that more time spent 'learning' the game has to be an advantage, so if players are playing 'Street Football' in their lunchbreaks, after school and at the weekend, then time with the ball soon starts to add up.
We soon were thanking the workmen who kindly put up a new street light beside my mates house. This introduced our new flood lighting system and increased game time to a new record of 9pm (bed time).
T.Wareing (TW SPORTS)
When I was growing up, I played football in the school playground for about half an hour before school, for half an hour at morning break, 45 minutes at lunchtime and then usually for an hour or so every evening after school. At weekends we would play for at least 2 hours a day, often playing until someone's parent, usually mine as we lived closest to the field turned up to tell us it was time to go home. This equates to almost 1000 hours per year!!!
2. One of the key elements of 'Street Football' for me was the 'discovery' element of the game. Street Football was played on different sized pitches and with different numbers of players, as well as different ages of players. All of these factors taught you different aspects of the game; playing in small spaces taught you how to play under pressure, playing with huge numbers on each team taught you to respect the ball (as you may not get it back for 5 minutes if you gave it away) and playing against older and bigger players taught you how to play quickly (before you got pushed over) and how to be stronger on the ball.
Much of this adaptation and discovery style learning can be lost in the more rigid structures of coached sessions. Sue Palmer, child expert and writer puts it a little more succinctly;
‘Play-unstructured, free range, loosely supervised play – is the birthright of every child. For the next generation to grow up healthy, balanced and able to benefit from their education, we must ensure that children once again go out to play.’
3. Street Football was the perfect setting for imitation, it was the place that you copied your idols and tried to reproduce what you had seen them do previously. It was common place to hear arguments about who was going to be who at the start of the game, often decided by seniority or by whose ball it was we were playing with that day. In my case this was usually Sammy McIllroy Jnr. as his dad played for Manchester United and Northern Ireland so we were often lucky enough to be playing with an Adidas Tango or whatever the latest Professional ball was. Fortunately, Sammy was usually playing as 'his dad' so that allowed the rest of us to be whoever else we wanted to be.. (I was usually Alan Hansen or Graeme Souness..) Even the greats of the modern game grew up playing like the heroes of the day, pretending to be the star that they had seen score or perform an amazing skill the day before;A mate owned a Robson top. We were kicking about, and I asked if I could be Robbo for a while. I slipped out of my Liverpool shirt and put the Robson one on, and it felt fantastic. I wore it for an hour, charging all over, flying into tackles, scoring brave goals, pretending I was him.
Steven Gerrard
This imitation, imagination and ability to express yourself on the field is, in my opinion, the way that many of the 'special' players were produced, the ones who could do something special with the ball, the ones who could do something unexpected and turn games! I remember playing with players like John O'Donaghue and Neil Hall from my youth, both who were immensely talented and could do things with a ball that made me marvel and then as I got older, players like Darren Sheridan, Wayne Collins and Ricky Gillies. Not all of these players had glittering carrers in the professional game but their skill level and their ability matched anyone who did and they all grew up playing Street Football!
As a conclusion to this blog, I am going to provide a couple of suggestions to players and coaches of games that you can play, as I realised when I first discussed this topic with some players, they had never played any of the games that I had when I was younger and had no idea of how to play different forms of football.. So here goes;
1. Wally (Wall ee). This can be played on your own or with 2 or 3 players and simply needs a wall and a ball (tennis, football..). A space on a wall is agreed upon, between two drain pipes or between two marks on the wall, and players take it in turns to pass/strike/shoot the ball against the wall. You lose a life if you fail to return the ball against the wall between the markers. This can be played with one touch or two touch depending in the difficulty you want.
- this encourages players to swerve the ball around potential obstacles and to consider angles of passing etc. as well as requiring good first touch and passing technique.
2. Head tennis - not strictly 'head' tennis but a football version of tennis/volleyball. Ideally using a tennis court and net (but can be played over bins, fences, cones), players can use feet, thighs, chest and head to get the ball over the net into the court on the far side. Rules can vary depending on standard of players. One bounce as the ball comes over the net can be allowed, one bounce between players can be allowed or no bounces, the beauty of 'Street Football' is that you decide on the rules to suit the players..
-this develops receiving and volleying technique and can often be seen as a part of professional team trainings.
3. Wembley, Wembley pairs or Wembley 3's. This game going to one goal is basically a knockout game of singles, pairs or 3's depending on numbers of players. In the first round the nominated Goalkeeper throws the ball out and all 'teams' attack the same goal. The team that scores, is through to the next round and gets a rest until one team is knocked out (the one that doesn't score). Once one team is knocked out, all teams that scored a goal are back in for round 2. This continues until 2 teams are found for the final. To win the final, normally 2 or more goals are required. In the next game the goalkeeper is the player knocked out in the first round in singles or one of the pair if it was doubles, with the previous Goalkeeper joing the other player to create a new pair.
- this game creates a number of different types of player. You soon find the goal poacher, who hangs around the goal, waiting for the ball to be put into the box and gets the last touch to score. You find the midfield worker who chases every ball for his team tirelessly and you soon find the 'magician' who can weave his way between numerous defenders to score the solo goal.
4. Headers and Volleys or 60 seconds. This game requies a minimum of 3 players (1 Goalkeeper and 2 + outfield players.) The goalkeeper starts the game by throwing the ball out and starting to count down from 60 at roughly one second intervals. The outfield players have that time to score with either a Header or a Volley. If the time runs out or a shot goes over or wide or if a player scores with something other than a header or a volley then the last person in possession of the ball becomes the goalkeeper. If the outfield players score with a header or a volley, they win and the keeper remains in goal and restarts the countdown. Again you get to fine-tune the rules so in the next countdown, the time can be reduced or 2 goals need to be scored? We used to play that you could not 'set yourself up' so you could not flick the ball up for yourself to score a volley, it had to be crossed or lifted to you by another player.
- this game obviously develops players ability to score with headers and volleys, as well as improving their crossing and set up play. This game also promotes the development of those special skills like diving headers and bicycle kicks etc.
5. Three and you're in. A simple game when space only allows one goal, no-one really wants to play in goal or you simply don't have many numbers to play. This simple game has one goal with a goalkeeper in and 2 or more players outfield. All outfield players attack the same goal, with the winner being the first player to score 3 goals. The winner then takes their turn (or gets a rest) by going in goal for the next game.
- this game has a number of benefits; it produces 1v1 artists with the ability to beat players and score goals, it produces good 1v1 defenders with the desire to prevent attackers scoring and the ability to win the ball and quickly transition into the attacking phase of the game and it is also a great fitness activity!
These are just 5 examples of Street Football games I played as a youngster and games that I have introduced to my players since I started coaching. One thing that I can say about these games is that players love them! Players of all ages and of all abilities enjoy these games and they will play them for hours on end! Whilst I don't expect these games to become a staple part of your coaching repetoire, I do hope you will consider using some of them either as a fun activity at the end or even the beginning of a session or just introduce them to your players as a way of encouraging them to play/practise more in their own time?
