One of the more criticised aspects of the new, smaller format is the lack of goalkeepers, with some concerns over how that might impact their development.<\/p>\n
The 3v3 format only lasts for 12 months, so goalkeepers do return from under-8 level when the game progresses to 5v5.<\/p>\n
“When you make decisions like this, there are obvious trade-offs but we don’t believe it is going to be detrimental to the development of future goalkeepers,” Folwell added.<\/p>\n
“Obviously playing 3v3, players can’t use their hands but they are still going to be developing skills of blocking, sliding across, needing to get between the ball and the goal.<\/p>\n
“They will also improve their ability on the ball, which we know for goalkeepers now is an increasing technique they need to have.<\/p>\n
“We don’t believe that goalkeeping is an early specialisation position. There are lots of examples of players who have come through and ended up being goalkeepers at a later age – England goalkeeper Hannah Hampton, for example, first played outfield for a long time.”<\/p>\n
Whether the new format improves the development of English footballers will not be clear for a few years yet.<\/p>\n
But England are far from alone in opting for 3v3 at under-7 level, with the format already part of the youth structure in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and other countries.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it is a format that is growing in popularity across the world.<\/p>\n
“It is the first year of adoption and obviously these things can take time to implement and for people to accept change,” Folwell said.<\/p>\n
“What we have seen is that once people have experienced it they tend to be a convert and understand why we are doing it, because the children really love it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the more criticised aspects of the new, smaller format is the lack of goalkeepers, with some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-933453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}