Sports Funding

It’s a big year for sport this year with the Olympics this summer as well as other big events like the football European Championships. Sports are making big headlines at the moment with the Formula 1 season kicking off the last weekend and the upcoming climax of the premiership football season.

This week there was some great news for young up and coming football players (or soccer players as otherwise known) in England as the FA announced plans to pump two hundred million pounds in to grassroots football. Many organisations and government parties have promised ideas like this for many years but now finally the FA are making a heavy financial investment.

After much time spent working and playing in the football community I am all too aware of the problems that exist. Young people need safe and proper facilities and staff in order to help their development. However in my time spent in youth football I have seen a huge range of standards of facilities with any clubs not having any facilities at all and just a pitch to play on.

Money needs to be invested in facilities and the education of coaches, staff and volunteers associated with football clubs. So many clubs are run by parents or adults who have had no access to training. If we can raise the quality of coaching staff we will raise the quality of players being produced. However the cost of courses are putting many people off as individuals and clubs can’t justify paying for the courses with so many other outgoings.

As well as training players to be the best they can be the FA need to encourage young people in to other career routes which can get you in to football. We need more young coaches, more young referees, more young groundsmen and more young first aiders. Not every young football player is going to go and play football for a living but if you can teach them more skills and show them different experiences it may help them make a career out of football.

This year with all the sport going on there is a great opportunity to us these sporting events to help tackle obesity and to help create a fitter and healthier nation and football is one of the many sports we can use to do that. As shown by Sports Relief on BBC last week you can do great things through sport and sport has a great power to change lives we just need to use it right.

To have your say on sports funding join in our topic of the week on the forums by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=389

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com