Matt Crocker:  how regular ‘reconnection’ and ‘review’ meetings helped England youth players thrive within a specialist coaching model

Player | Learning | Peter Glynn | 28.05.22

Regular ‘reconnection’ and ‘review’ meetings helped England youth players fully engage with the specialist coaching model adopted by the English governing body between 2013-20, says Matt Crocker, former FA Head of Development Team Coaching and former Director of Football Operations at Southampton Football club (pictured above). Image courtesy of Southampton FC

Learning: 

-       How to provide individual attention and development within a team environment

-       The influence of other sports on the development of a specialist coaching model

-       Utilising regular ‘reconnection’ and ‘review’ meetings to engage with individual players

Regular ‘reconnection’ and ‘review’ meetings helped England youth players fully engage with the specialist coaching model adopted by the English governing body between 2013-20, says Matt Crocker, former FA Head of Development Team Coaching and former Director of Football Operations at Southampton Football club.

“With the England youth teams we would send out questionnaires to the young players after a camp and ask them: what do you think of the camps? They were anonymous questionnaires, with the aim that the players would give us some real, honest and clean feedback,” says Crocker, who helped implement the specialist coaching model that saw England’s youth teams achieve unprecedented success with World Cup wins at U17 and U20 level in 2017.