Mixed Messages from the FA

On a day when many have screamed hypocrisy at the FA about Wayne Rooney, this isn't really about that, this is to talk about some of the other things that the FA is saying one thing about, and doing another. Like coaching.

To start this, I need to give you some of my own background. I am 17 years old and a Level 2 football coach. Almost all of my coaching is on a voluntary basis, though I occasionally do some paid work for my local football league club's community department. I give up my Saturdays to coach at my local grassroots club, my lunchtimes to coach younger kids in my school and I give up any afternoons I have free from lessons to coach kids at my old school. I do this for nothing, yet it has cost me nearly £300 to get to the level of qualification I have. Some people will be thinking that that is a lot, which it is, but my county FA offer courses to under 19s for half price. The reality is that with a Level 2 you're not going to be coaching much more than grassroots football, but will have spent £500 or £600 to get there.

I can understand the cost of these though, the need for administration fees, the need to pay for a course venue and for a course tutor. Where it becomes ridiculous though is when you look to progress further up the ladder, to get your UEFA B Licence. That will cost you somewhere in the region of £1000. The FA talks of how it wants to increase the number of grassroots coaches there are in England, yet the UEFA B costs that much. To put things into perspective, until January 2011 the UEFA B equivalent Level 3 Certificate in Coaching Football could be completed with a county FA for less than half the cost by an adult, and for me, I would have been able to do it for £200. What justification can there possibly be for that increase? Not only is the course now far beyond what I and the vast majority of grassroots coaches can afford, but I am no longer able to go on the course, because of new age restrictions. You must now be 20 years old, rather than 17 a year ago.

The FA says that there is fewer than 10% of the number of UEFA B qualified coaches in England than countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany. I can't understand why. The cost in Spain is almost exactly the same, so it's not that. The FA must be getting something else wrong somewhere though for there to be such a significant difference.

Another cast that has gone up recently is for the re-branded FA Coaches Association. In it's new guise as The FA Licensed Coaches Club, it costs £20 more than last season for the same package, with nothing really different other than the look of the website. The website is - by the way - woeful, it looks nice, but the content leaves much to be desired. I read part one of an article on the guided discovery approach to coaching, which was informative and interesting, and promised part 2 next week. A month and a half later part 2 still hasn't materialised and my email moan 2 weeks ago hasn't even been acknowledged. That is poor.

Another issue with FALCC is the necessity for CPD. I was of the opinion that this was a really good idea, but then I saw how much it was going to cost to do the relevant CPD each year. As with everything else the FA does, it's not cheap. Last weekend it was the FALCC's annual coaching conference at Wembley, for which tickets were originally on sale for a mere £69.95 for Level 1 and 2 coaches or over £100 for UEFA B, A and Pro licence holders. Cheap. Obviously not a best seller either, as halfway through last week I received an email offering me a ticket for half price. For the FA's big grassroots coaching event, that should be the envy of everyone, the top ticket in town, to be offering the tickets at half price, six days before the event, something must be going wrong. It's not like the conference had a bad line up either, with speakers such as Sir Trevor Brooking, Gareth Southgate and Stuart Pearce. I think that the FA have gone wrong with the pricing. Again.

In the world we live in, life is more and more expensive. I've been making a loss even when I've been doing paid coaching paying for my petrol to get to work and back, yet the FA has increasing revenue streams, with their foreign TV deals being renewed for a reported £48m this week. To me it seems that they have the resources to be able to offer the likes of the FALCC conference to members for nothing, to provide free CPD opportunities - after all, it's the FA that will benefit in the long run, with better players coming through the ranks and into the England set up.

So I really do think that what the FA is saying is all posturing, sounding good for the press. I'm yet to see any evidence to back up their claims over how hard they're trying to improve grassroots football. They're all about making money. I just think that it would be nice for the press to start asking the FA what is actually happening to improve the quality of coaching at grassroots level and the number of qualified coaches at grassroots clubs. It would be interesting to see what they could come back with.