How Much Football Is Too Much Football?

Parents often ask us how much football their child should be playing.

If they enjoy the game, should they be training twice a week? Three times? Should they be doing extra sessions somewhere else? And if they’re only playing once a week, are they somehow falling behind?

At ICFA, we’ve always looked at that question in a straight-forward way. We think children should be active, but we don’t think all of that activity needs to be football.

The World Health Organization recommends that children and adolescents aged 5–17 average at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day across the week. That can include walking, cycling, PE, games, sport, free play and other forms of movement. It doesn’t mean an hour of organised football training every day.

When we were developing ICFA, we were also influenced by an organisation called the International Alliance for Youth Sports, which published a very child-centred set of standards for youth sport. The emphasis was on age-appropriate coaching, positive participation, inclusion and making sure that youth sport served the needs of the child.

It was a very holistic way of thinking. We used their standards to set up part of our methodology and that still influences our framework today.

Being active doesn’t mean doing more football training

Children use their bodies differently in different sports and all types of movement contribute to overall wellness.

For example, swimming asks something different of the body than football does. Tennis develops different reactions and movement patterns. Gymnastics can improve balance and body control.

We are often asked which sport we recommend - and our answer is always that any one of the martial arts is one of our go-to combination with football.

The isn’t without good reason - there’s good evidence that martial-arts training can improve strength, balance, coordination, proprioception and control of the body. The Dutch KNVB has also discussed the value of children becoming competent in several sports and has used martial arts, including judo, as an example of movement skills that can contribute to football development.

For us, that makes competency in martial arts particularly useful alongside football. It’s going to add to core strength alongside strength and athleticism and increase overall mental discipline.

Cycling, running, climbing and playground games all contribute in other ways. Children can be very active without being in a lesson, by an afternoon outside, riding a bike, playing football with friends or running around a playground.

Playing more football isn’t the same as doing more training

There’s a big difference between a child playing more football and a child doing more organised football training.

If a child wants to kick a ball around after school, play in the garden, take a ball to the park or spend an afternoon playing with friends, that’s football too. So is passing a ball back and forth with a parent.

This kind of football matters, maybe more than a coached session, because children aren’t always being told what to do. They can make choices and decisions for themselves, invent games and try things out that may or may not work without pressure and often without adult involvement.

Most importantly, they’re doing it because they want to.

That’s different from adults deciding that because a child enjoys football, another formal session should automatically be added to the week.

Why we still teach technique

Of course we believe in technique training and coaching! We’d be a pretty poor football academy if we didn’t! :)

The purpose of our sessions is to give children enough skill and understanding to enjoy playing football properly.

A better first touch gives them more confidence on the ball. Passing allows them to play with other people. Understanding where to move helps them become involved in the game instead of simply following the ball like ants.

Football is a game after all, and it’s going to be more enjoyable when children feel able to join in because they’ve cultivated skills which make it easier for them to be able to participate.

The amount of football can change as children get older

What works for a four-year-old is obviously different from what works for an older child. That’s reflected in the way we structure our groups.

Our Minis sessions are 45 minutes. Junior Academy sessions are 60 minutes. Academy sessions are 75 minutes, and Academy Plus sessions are 90 minutes.

Younger children don’t need long sessions. Their concentration is different, their bodies are different and their understanding of the game is still developing.

As they get older, they can manage more time, more instruction and more game play.

The point isn’t to make every session as long as possible. It’s to make it suitable for the children who are actually in it.

What if a child decides they want more football?

Some children genuinely want football to become a much bigger part of their lives and will naturally gravitate toward playing more football. Some will choose football over other sports. They may join a club, train more often and become more competitive.

We don’t think children should be discouraged from doing something they love.

But there’s a difference between a child asking for more football and adults assuming that more organised training must always be better. Both the KNVB in The Netherlands and The FA in the UK have published guidance that pushes back against early specialisation and encourages broader movement experience, other sports and unstructured play.

The FA in the UK has also warned that specialising too early can be associated with overuse injury, burnout and poorer overall athletic development. The KNVB in The Netherlands has increasingly taken a similar line, including through its work on broader talent development, delayed selection and the value of skills learned outside football.

When football starts taking up most of the week

It’s quite easy now for children to end up doing a lot of organised football. They may train with a club, attend an academy, do another technical session and then play a match at the weekend.

For some older players who actively want that, it may be appropriate. For younger children, we think it’s worth looking at what else is disappearing from the week.

Research into youth-sport injuries has found that very high volumes of organised sport can be associated with a greater risk of overuse injury. One commonly cited study found a higher risk among children whose weekly hours of organised sport exceeded their age in years, although this is better understood as a warning sign than as a strict rule.

More recent guidance tends to look at the whole picture: how much organised training a child is doing, how specialised they are in one sport, how much recovery they have and whether organised sport has begun to replace free play and other forms of activity.

For us, the more practical question is still what else has been squeezed out. Do they still have time to swim, ride a bike, try another sport, play outside or simply decide for themselves what they want to do?

Maybe not every free afternoon needs to be a training session.

So how much football is too much?

There probably isn’t one number that works for every child.

There are a number of considerations: the age of the child, the intensity of the sessions, the other sports they’re doing and of course their individual nature. Some children have a naturally higher activity level than others.

For younger children, we as an organisation prefer football to be just one facet of a wider range of physical activity. This might mean one good coached football session, some informal football with friends or family, another sport during the week and plenty of ordinary movement in between.

Some children will eventually decide they want football to become their main sport. Others might choose a different sport.

Ultimately, as coaches and people who ourselves enjoy the sport, we want children to enjoy football, be able to take part confidently and still have room to discover all the other things they enjoy doing as well.