The Freiensteinau youth football community is breaking new ground in promoting young talent and looking after the many children. A two-day, six-hour course with Marian Littel from “Advance Football” recently took place in the SG Freiensteinau sports center to present the new ideas.
20 trainers look after and train around 180 children in currently 16 teams in the syndicate with their parent clubs SG Freiensteinau, SV Bermuthshain, TSV Grebenhain, Spvgg. Hartmannshain-Herchenhain, SV Nieder-Moos and SG Ulmbach.
»Advance Football«
With “Advance Football”, those responsible Sebastian Krieg and Eric Höhn have found a partner who supports over 1,000 clubs from the district league to the Bundesliga with their concepts. The slogan: “For better promotion of young talent in Germany and worldwide.”
The SG Freiensteinau support association, under the direction of the previous first chairman Manfred Hoffman, contributed financially to the costs of the course. Krieg received the tip for “Advance Football” from the coach of the Bavarian regional soccer team Viktoria Aschaffenburg, Damir Agovic. »Eric and I started as youth leaders in order to further develop our youth. The question was, do we do it ourselves or do we get professional help? Since it takes a lot of time, we decided to help,” explains Krieg.
New concept
»We have a holistic youth concept for all age groups. But that is cut into slices, divided into different vintages. Each trainer receives a prepared folder in which the main concept is explained, but it is also individually adapted to the age-specific characteristics. In addition, sample examples are also listed,” added Höhn. He is responsible for the organizational area, Krieg took on more of the sporting part.
Making kids better
Supporting young people better is always a good idea. The background to this concept with “Advance Football” is obvious. You can’t train nine-year-olds like 15-year-olds. Help is always good. The basic work is the same and the goal is clear: you can make every player better. »We want to set priorities and ensure that they are challenged and supported more specifically in the different age groups. There is a QR code in the folder that every trainer can scan and it will then be forwarded directly to the individual exercises,” says Krieg.
The advantage is that you don’t have to think up exercises; you can offer them ready-made. Krieg sees advantages over the offer from the German Football Association. »In the app, not only these exercises are displayed, but the coaching is also shown in small short videos of one or two minutes. This is good because every coach talks about the same coaching. That’s the crux of the matter, why we’re making this effort here. If all the coaches stick to it, I’m sure the kids will get 100 percent better,” believes Krieg.
Many advantages
Höhn sees another advantage with this offer from “Advance Football”: “When new coaches join, they also get these folders in their hands and can access the exercises via scan. There is a huge catalog online with thousands of exercises from which you can put together an individual training session. Krieg points out that – should there be bottlenecks – even a father who has nothing directly to do with football can train a youth team. The exercises are described so clearly.
»There are various filter options from this huge pool of exercises: How do I play one-on-one or how do I practice speed? There are perhaps five different forms of exercise offered,” says Höhn. In principle, the offer is very easy to use.
Marian Littel from “Advance Football” explained that this project was not only successful in Germany and Austria: “We also have cooperation partners in the Netherlands.” The platform is also open to the English market. »This idea has been around since 2017. We started back then to offer better training for children. Similar to a football school. However, we quickly realized that the leverage would be better if we reached the coaches and worked with the clubs. We work with the performance center of VfB Stuttgart and VfL Wolfsburg, among others. There is also a video platform on the homepage that is free for the clubs.
