U-11 two-touch football FAI Take Note! - Eddie Darcy

I am a firm believer in passing football and try to instill that in all of my players from an early age. I am passionate about my sport and look to other countries and coaches for inspiration in how to improve my coaching ability and also more importantly how to improve my players. It has been discussed for years and finally the FA in England are doing something about it with their investment in St. Georges centre of excellence. England are pushing to close the gap at youth level with Spain and Germany. Doing that should boost the future England team…(food for thought FAI)

Well England may be finally putting things in place to do it but I was surprised by how advanced some teams are across the pond in America. They sure are building for the future. Please take a look at this in the FAI!

An U11 team in California has created its own little area of Spain taking their inspiration from the masters of tiki taka,Barcelona. They’ve called their team Barcelona-USA, and play in the same strips as the Catalan giants.

The video that got everyone purring was Barcelona-USA’s U11 Cal South State Cup semi-final against Arsenal FC – no slouches themselves at this level.

But in an epic 13 minutes of football, these young players executed some of the greatest one-touch, two-touch passing moves that you’ll see anywhere, anytime.

According to their coach: “These performances are no accident. It takes meticulous training, studying, and artistry — a craftsman. You can not just throw 11 players on the field and ‘talk’ about possession. That’s just talking. And anybody can do that… you should be asking yourself: ‘Do I really care, or am I just a talker?’”
Are you watching Trappatoni and John Delaney?

See the video everyone’s talking about below:

Hope you enjoy the quality of football as much as I did - Eddie