Junior Academy Philosophy

GaREAT offers advanced weekly training sessions for players who ultimately wish to progress to higher levels of the game. Other countries have quickly embraced new information on how best to develop and train soccer players and implemented age-appropriate programs to efficiently produce players that are better prepared to succeed within the modern game. We are very successful at attracting participants to the sport but have much progress to make in order to upgrade the quality of our programs and the quality of the elite players that we are currently developing.

At the younger ages, there remains an over-reliance on winning versus development of technique and teaching young players “a love of the game”. We continue to place young players in “structured adult environments” and are not providing enough opportunities for experimentation and self-discovery. The end result is that we are not currently developing players with sufficient technical ability to succeed at the highest level and more importantly, are turning young people away from the sport (during their early teens) by not providing enjoyable learning environments.

Top professional clubs in Europe invite players as young as U4 (with all abilities) to participate in their youth development programs. These programs provide young players with a combination of technical instruction and small-sided games (3v3 or 4v4). As much as possible, the unstructured environment of “street soccer” is duplicated so that young players can practice the new skills that they have learned away from the pressures of winning and losing.

Each training session has a specific theme and GaREAT's low player to coaching ratio enables players to receive regular and accurate feedback on how to improve their play. All players receive a detailed player evaluation. Players who participate in 1v1 sessions are challenged from their first touch on the ball. These proven technical exercises are designed to perfect a player’s first touch, to make every player equally comfortable with both feet, and ultimately increase each player’s overall skill level with the ball. At the same time the exercise will encourage tactical understanding and decision-making. Training Objectives for the GaREAT Junior Academy includes:

Program Aims:

  • Technical learning
  • Dribbling
  • Passing
  • Finishing on goal
  • Tactical Awareness
  • Scoring goals through individual and group play
  • Positional sense
  • Preventing goals and winning the ball back
  • Encourage and facilitate the enjoyment of soccer
  • Learn and experience group behavior
  • Small Group tactics
  • Wall passes
  • Overlapping runs