English Schools' Football Association

Andy Blight

I am delighted to manage the International England schoolboy U18 football team. It is the realisation of a dream and something I have worked very hard for. I started my teaching career in 1999 and have managed many schoolboy teams, progressing to managing County teams in Northumberland. I am eternally grateful to ESFA for helping to part-fund my UEFA 'A' licence which I successfully passed at Lilleshall in 2003. I continued my coaching journey by working with young players at Middlesbrough FC and later Newcastle United FC academy. This was a great learning curve and enabled me to work alongside some excellent coaches and players. There are many people I would like to thank for their support in helping me to get to this position and Northumberland CE academy where I work as Director of Sport.

I aim to get the ESFA U18 international team to follow a shared vision:

"I have a pragmatic philosophy, I look at the group I’ve got, then I decide what strengths and weaknesses they have and then I formulate what I think is a suitable way the players can work in order to be successful to win football matches. The first thing will be to align the new group with what we can offer them. We will put things in place to enhance their individual potential and collective potential."

I have based so much of my coaching philosophy around treating players with respect and facilitating development. In my experience, players need to feel cared for and nurtured, whatever their talent, experience or age. Hopefully, more coaches’ are sharing the responsibility for learning and development with the player. This shift views good coaching/teaching, as being centred on the facilitation of player learning.

We can also share learning goals with the team and engage players from the outset with a problem.

E.g. ‘How can we deny the opposition space’

Prior to this we can make the purpose clear- ‘the objective for this was that in our last game when we attacked using width, we were successful in creating and exploiting space by getting in-behind the defence. We now need to improve our knowledge on how to prevent this. In order for players to be focused the denying space example needs expected outcomes. If the team is able to deny the opposition space what will it look like if successful?

If outcomes are shared and discussed and then put into practice by the players in peer assessment, then understanding and commitment to learning will follow. When players are reaching a level where they are reflecting on performance, personalised learning is occurring. This is the advanced stage you should be aiming for when your players are taking control of their own learning.

Providing responsibility for learning to the players will enhance their self-development and confidence.

Thank you to Andy Buckingham (ESFA U18 Manager 2012-14) who I have learned so much from and I will uphold his key values. My management team of Ben Lavelle, Steve Wilderspin and Andy Norwood will do our very best to educate the players and provide them with 'magic moments' during the course of the season.

The England schoolboy U18 trials will commence this half-term. Please contact your County manager or secretary for further details. The trial dates can be found here.

Andy Blight
Engalnd U18 Scholboy Team Manager