Perry Walters

Researcher. Educator. Football coach.

[Perry Walters @perrywalters10]

I’m excited to start this new venture with like-minded friends. The purpose of the Institute is to bring together understandings from mind, brain and practice, especially around the holistic development of young people. https://t.co/m6tAi3Q5k7

[Perry Walters @perrywalters10]

Especially thanks to @FIFAcom for supporting this 2nd talk on the adolescent brain and football. This one outlines a framework ‘ASPIRE’ for incorporating adolescent development into educators’ thinking and practice https://t.co/8wgeTCuxNt

[Brentford FC @BrentfordFC]

🎙️ Keith Andrews on Category One Academy status

"Really important that we were able to achieve it in such a short space of time; the work that has gone on behind the scenes has been really impressive. To get Category One status is a huge step for the club"

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

This one thing has a greater impact on a young person's life than any trophy, title or league table ever will.

We turn up on a Tuesday evening when it is raining, when the pitch is waterlogged, some parents are late and the cones are still in the boot from last week, and we think we are there only to coach football. We think the session plan in our pocket is the point of it all, the progressions, the outcomes, the carefully designed activities we pieced together the night before.

We think that is what all we are giving these children.

Somewhere in that group of players, the noisy ones, the quiet ones, the one who always forgets their shin pads, there are children for whom this hour is the best part of their week. Not purely for the session but for the simple and profound fact that an adult chose to show up for them, looked them in the eye, used their name, and made them feel like they were worth the effort.

That is not a small thing, in some cases, it is everything.

The coaches who leave a mark are rarely the ones with the most badges or the best session plans. They are the ones who stayed curious about the young people in front of them, who remembered what a player told them three weeks ago and asked about it again, who noticed when someone was quieter than usual and found a moment to check in, who created an environment where a child felt safe enough to try something difficult and fail without embarrassment.

That kind of coaching does not show up in any end of season report or manual. It shows up twenty years later in the way a person talks about their childhood, in the confidence they carried into their adult life, in the values they pass on to their own children.

We coach at every level imaginable from grassroots, community clubs, PAN-Disability, regional programmes, school teams, academies or national squads the instinct is always to measure ourselves against the level we are working at, as though the impact somehow scales with the quality of the facilities or the ability of the players.

It does not work like that, the grassroots volunteer giving up several evenings a week has exactly the same capacity to shape a young person's life as anyone working at the highest levels of the game. The relationship does not care about the postcode or the facilities, it only cares about whether someone showed up and meant it.

Most of us will never get the email, never have the conversation in the car park, never know which player carried something we gave after they stopped playing. We just keep turning up and trust that what we are doing matters, because the alternative of treating this as nothing more than a hobby or a pastime, does not sit right with what we know this role can be at its best.

The impact of a great coach on a child's life is not measured solely in trophies or league titles or development plans. It is measured in the quiet, invisible ways a young person grows in their willingness to try, their ability to handle difficulty and their sense that they are capable of more than they currently believe. We plant those seeds every single week without always knowing it, and most of them grow long after we have forgotten the session they came from.

That is the role, is what we signed up for, whether we knew it at the time or not.

[Perry Walters @perrywalters10]

Great to contribute to @FIFAcom recently around adolescent neuroscience and football https://t.co/2SYDzvQVTv

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Nobody teaches you how to stand on a touchline.

There’s no handbook for it, no course that prepares you for what it feels like to watch your child play or not play.

Mark:
“Which number’s your son?”

Sarah:
“The one on the bench, the one who never really gets a game, only when we’re up by a huge score.”

Mark:
“Ah. Well… it’s competitive, isn’t it? Best players play, that’s sport and life for you.”

Sarah:
“He trains every week, never misses and we only live five minutes away. All his friends are here, he doesn’t want to leave.”

Mark:
“If he’s good enough, he’ll force his way in.”

Sarah:
“He’s nine?”

(A goal goes in. Cheers from the touchline.)

Mark:
“That’s what I’m talking about! Movement and desire boys! That’s how we WIN games.”

Sarah:
“He laid his kit out last night, couldn’t sleep. He adores this team, being with his friends but just wants a chance?!”

Mark:
“You can’t give everyone equal minutes. That’s not real football and we need to look after our best players before they leave. This league title is in our grasp, it’s ours to lose..”

Sarah:
“At this age, what is real football? A league table?
A trophy in February?”

Mark:
“It teaches them standards, how to win, what’s sport if we don’t win? If you can’t handle it you need to find a new team.”

Sarah:
“So does taking part, making mistakes on the pitch instead of watching them from a bench and actually learning, don’t you think?”

Mark:
“Football’s tough, you need to find a B Team or find another sport maybe?”

Sarah:
“Life’s tough enough, this was meant to be the safe place.”

(Pause. Her son claps loudly as his team score again without him)

Sarah:
“Look at him, still cheering like he’s played every minute.”

Mark:
“Maybe he just needs to be patient and grab his chance when it comes.”

Sarah:
“Maybe the adults need to be more patient and he’s only played 10 minutes this season, as he’s usually not picked to attend games.”

(Final whistle. Players run off celebrating.)

Sarah:
When they’re sixteen, do you think they’ll remember today’s score? Or how they felt not being selected or just remember being sat on the bench?

[Ray Power @power_ray]

Upcoming webinar for the *Inner Circle Elite Coach Masterclasses* Programme

🔥 What A Guest AND Topic!!

A complete one-off!

Although members-only, I’m opening a SMALL NUMBER to non-members in the next 36 hours - as a one-off

Comment below if you’d want to be informed 👇

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Per Mertesacker on the reality of youth football 😳✅:

"I set the expectations right from pre-academy and speak to under-eight parents.

Your son has got less than 1% to be the next Bukayo Saka.

This is why we have the program that we have.

We got to make sure that we develop well-rounded individuals who still can find a bus station and are not waiting for the taxis when we leave them.

99% need to find a different job. Period. We cannot just prepare them to fail. No chance. I am not in for this."

✅ Original post by @ArsenalZNE

[Perry Walters @perrywalters10]

Measuring what matters! Using the lens of developmental brain science to evaluate the conditions that help adolescent learners thrive.

https://t.co/xPZdZvzjsP

[Henry Winter @henrywinter]

The Adoration of the Maga. A few thoughts. It all felt a step too far by Gianni Infantino. The award of the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize felt more to do with its president’s desire to please powerful politicians as much as Donald Trump’s love of such glitzy, expensive offerings of loyalty last seen in medieval courts.

It felt more about politics than sport, a risky game for Fifa to play whenever it wants to bring a national association into line for perceived interference by government in the future. The Trump trophy weakens Fifa statutes. It also distracted from the real trophy, the World Cup, and the group-stage draw, traditionally a celebration about bringing countries together. Infantino took his eye off the balls.

A football draw designed to work out who plays who and (eventually) where and when is not the time or place for such politics. Infantino wasn’t speaking for the world in bestowing the Peace Prize, as he claimed. So presumptuous. So out of touch. Many probably agree that Trump has been a force for good in geopolitics, some might disagree. Most would probably feel such decisions should be left to experienced experts like the Nobel Committee and, please, can we get on with a football draw.

It’s spectacularly naïve or simply arrogant for Fifa to enter such non-football areas. It feels more and more that this was as much an Infantino initiative as Fifa’s. Infantino was supposed to drain the swamp when he arrived at Fifa in 2016 in the wake of assorted corruption scandals bedevilling the governing body of world football. How fitting that the nadir of Infantino’s propensity for self-aggrandisement as leader of what’s supposed to be a team game came in Washington. It was there that Trump promised to transform politics with his “drain the swamp” rhetoric, also in 2016.

The selfie moment was particularly cringe-worthy. Infantino forgets that football is the star of the show, not a 55-year lawyer. A senior football executive, who’s been at the heart of the English and European game for more than 20 years, messaged me during the drawn-out draw with his verdict on Infantino. “I feel revulsion, anger, shame, disgust – how has our sport been taken over by a Swiss ***** and turned into a total travesty???” He also pointed out that ensuring the leaders of USA, Mexico and Canada each somehow pulled out their own country’s name was not a good look for a draw based on chance.

Great for the cameras, though. Flash, bang, wallop, what a picture of Infantino's priorities. And who gets the next FIFA Peace Prize? And wouldn't Infantino have gained more respect had he used the money for the Trump trophy to subsidise excessive ticket costs? He's lost sight of what should be the real priorities for the leader of football. The game.

It's sad, really. Many sensible people work at Fifa, passionate about the game not their own ego, but it's alarming what happens to the leadership when they take power there. Even the great football manager Arsene Wenger has changed since becoming Chief of Global Football Development at Fifa. He now campaigns for more games, backing the expanded World Cup, which he would have railed against as a widely-admired, free-thinking club manager, fiercely protective of his players' well-being. "I believe that 48 teams is the right number." Arsene, just listen to yourself.

Many fans probably won’t lose much sleep that Wenger dances to Fifa's tune or that Infantino cosies up to Trump, Aramco and co. Some probably think Fifa’s a video game. Most just can’t wait for the football. The game’s about Mbappe and Messi, Haaland and Salah, Kane and Dembele, not Infantino and Trump.

The game’s about the Tartan Army, the brilliant Mexican following, the ever-hopeful English, the mobile carnival of Brazilians and the millions of other fans flocking to venue cities next summer, only a third with tickets. The USA is prepared for the party. I covered USA 94 and you couldn’t really tell there was a tournament on, certainly where I was in Detroit, Chicago and DC. You will this time, also in Canada. Mexico's total immersion was never in doubt given their passion for the game.

Infantino should remember this. He runs a great football organisation, not a political organisation. He needs to re-focus. Fifa is undeniably a force for good in many countries. The Fifa Foundation runs a new community programme that supports 154,924 people in 54 nations. Its new Digital Education Programme works on computer literacy amongst disadvantaged groups, helping them into the workplace. It’s easy to say it’s all about Infantino (Foundation board president), soft power and ensuring he keeps countries onside, voting for him, but the Foundation undeniably changes lives.

Infantino needs to look at his Adoration of the Maga and remember what he should be doing for football: serving it, not himself. #FIFAWorldCup.

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Youth development suffers from what adults normalise.
Players adapt to the environment we create, not the one we claim to value.

➠ We tell them effort matters, then praise outcomes before behaviours.
➠ We say mistakes are part of learning, then react in ways that make them fear them.
➠ We talk about bravery, then correct every risky decision the moment it fails.

👀 Players watch everything.
🗣️ How we speak.
⏰ How we respond under pressure.
🤎 How we treat the ones who find the game hardest.

The behaviours we model become the standards they adopt.
⇢ If we celebrate obedience, they’ll stop thinking.
⇢ If we over-intervene, they’ll stop noticing.
⇢ If we rescue too quickly, they’ll stop solving.

Development collapses when adults chase shortcuts.
Real teaching requires consistent standards and the patience to hold them.

You cannot claim to value long-term development while rewarding short-term comfort. If the environment is built on clarity and consistency, players grow.
➥ If it’s built on contradiction, they cope.

The environment is always teaching.
The question is whether it’s teaching what we intend.

📸: James Peace

[Leyla Hamed @leylahamed]

Pep Guardiola is calling on fans to show up for something bigger than football.

On Tuesday, 18 Nov in Barcelona, the charity match between Palestine and the Catalan team will donate all ticket revenue to humanitarian aid and community projects in Palestine.

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Label a child ‘elite’ too early and you limit them forever

1️⃣ Early praise can become early pressure.
2️⃣ Labels become identities.
3️⃣ Freedom disappears when reputation arrives.
4️⃣ Every child deserves space to grow without the tag.
5️⃣ Development is a long race, not a fast start.

https://t.co/B6bifKLQaK

[Luke Hussey @Luke_Hussey_]

Fantastic to have three Academy players on the bench today.🧡🖤 #OneClubOneCounty

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

The great dividers want you to think the problems in society are caused by migrants and refugees.

They’re wrong.

The problems in society are caused by an unjust economic system that protects the interests of the super-rich.

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Coaching isn’t about control it’s about creating moments where players start to coach themselves.

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Growth doesn’t happen in the spotlight it happens quietly when players feel safe to fail and try again

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🇳🇴 Norway chose socialism.
🇬🇧 Britain chose Thatcherism.

Today, Norway 🇳🇴 has world-class public services, thriving farms and democratic wealth.

Britain 🇬🇧 has food banks, failing infrastructure, and billionaire capture.

That’s the legacy of the choices we made and the lies we were sold.

Norway 🇳🇴 took control of North Sea energy win, Britain 🇬🇧 gave it away - piece by piece - through Thatcherism and Brexit trade deals no one voted for, to corporations that answer to no one.

Brexit freed the state to rob you

#Thatcher100 #Brexit #SaveBritishFarming

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

Every time you shout instructions mid-game, you’re stealing a decision from a child.

Silence isn’t weakness, it’s trust.

[Mohamed Salah @MoSalah]

Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?