Twelve approaches, one honest index

Find the ideas that fit your coaching context.

Search by name or narrow the catalogue by age, time demand and session structure. No approach is presented as universally best.

Compare approaches head to head

How the matching works

The quiz uses fixed, deterministic rules to compare your selected age group, contact time, experience, equipment and preferred structure with the same dimensions on every approach. No AI writes or changes your result at runtime.

What the evidence means

Every entry now links to a checked primary source: who developed it and where it is officially taught today. That does not mean each rating or Kevin's view is independently cited; those remain honest working judgement. Read the full sourcing method.

Catalogue

12 approaches

Open a row for the full entry

Tactical PeriodizationPrimary source checkedOrganises every training week around a fixed "game model" so tactical, technical, physical and psychological work are trained together rather than in separate blocks.

Developed by Vítor Frade at the University of Porto from the 1980s onward; the training framework behind José Mourinho's coaching lineage.

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Structure: Mostly prescriptive
Time demand: high
Coach education: high
Age fit: 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: Powerful once you have a settled squad and enough contact time to build a real game model. Overkill for a once-a-week grassroots side with a rotating group of parent helpers.

Ecological DynamicsPrimary source checkedTreats skill as something that emerges from the interaction between a player, the task and the environment, rather than something taught as an isolated technique.

A movement-science framework applied to sport by researchers including Keith Davids and Duarte Araújo; the theory behind the Constraints-Led Approach below.

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Structure: Mostly exploratory
Time demand: moderate
Coach education: high
Age fit: 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s, 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: The theory behind a lot of modern "shape the practice, let them play" coaching. Worth understanding even if you never call it by this name.

Constraints-Led ApproachPrimary source checkedShapes learning by changing the rules, space, numbers or equipment of a practice, rather than by stopping play to give instructions.

The practical coaching application of ecological dynamics, set out by Ian Renshaw, Keith Davids and colleagues in their book The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design (Routledge, 2019).

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Structure: Mostly exploratory
Time demand: moderate
Coach education: moderate
Age fit: 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s, 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: Genuinely accessible once you've seen a few worked examples. The barrier is usually confidence, not equipment or time.

Teaching Games for UnderstandingPrimary source checkedStarts with a modified small-sided game and tactical questions, and only isolates a technique once players understand the problem it solves.

Introduced by Bunker and Thorpe in 1982 as a games-based alternative to technique-first teaching, carried forward today by the TGfU Special Interest Group, an international network of games-teaching researchers.

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Structure: Mostly exploratory
Time demand: low
Coach education: low
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: A good starting point for a new coach with one evening a week and a bag of bibs. Low equipment, low preparation, real learning.

TOVOPrimary source checkedA structured, positional-play curriculum with its own coach-licensing pathway and session library.

A coach-education and curriculum brand founded by Todd Beane, built on positional-play principles.

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Structure: A mix
Time demand: moderate
Coach education: moderate
Age fit: 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: A commercial competitor in the same space as 360TFT's own coach education. Judge it on the same axes as everything else here, not on the brand.

Coerver CoachingPrimary source checkedBreaks ball mastery into drilled individual moves, practised in isolation before they are applied in a game.

An individual technical-skill curriculum founded by Dutch coach Wiel Coerver.

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Structure: Mostly prescriptive
Time demand: moderate
Coach education: low
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: Excellent for raw individual technique with younger players. It answers "how do I get better on the ball", not "what do I do with it in a game".

Positional PlayPrimary source checkedOrganises the team around zones of the pitch and player rotations, so possession creates space rather than simply retaining the ball.

Structured spacing and rotation principles popularised by Johan Cruyff and developed further by Pep Guardiola, now taught as its own certified course by Cruyff Football, the coach-education organisation built on his methodology.

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Structure: A mix
Time demand: high
Coach education: high
Age fit: 12 to 15s, 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: Needs players who can already receive and pass under some pressure. Introduce it too early and it becomes standing in zones, not football.

Kevin's own approachPrimary source checkedStarts from the position that no single methodology fits every context, and asks a coach to judge which tools and ideas fit their players, time and environment rather than following one system by default.

Kevin Middleton's own coaching practice since 2010, set out in his book The Rise of the Dogmatic Football Coach and the Agentic Pathway.

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Structure: Mostly exploratory
Time demand: low
Coach education: low
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s, 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: This is deliberately the least prescriptive profile here. It will not tell you what to run on Tuesday night. It will help you judge whether any of the other seven, or none of them, is worth trying.

Kevin Middleton owns FootballGPT and Football Frameworks. This profile is scored on the same axes as every methodology above, not given a different standard.

Long-Term Player Development (LTAD)Primary source checkedA staged framework that times what a player should train, movement, skill, then physical capacity, against their biological development and growth, rather than against their birth-year age group alone.

Developed by Istvan Balyi with Canada's National Coaching Institute from the 1990s and popularised through Canadian Sport for Life; adapted since by many national sport bodies, including UK Athletics and elements of the FA's own player-development work.

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Structure: A mix
Time demand: moderate
Coach education: high
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s, 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: This is a periodisation lens more than a Tuesday-night coaching style. It tells you what to prioritise at each stage of growth, not how to run a session. Most useful sitting alongside one of the practical approaches above, not instead of one.

The FA Youth Development Curriculum (England DNA)Primary source checkedA national federation curriculum built around intelligent possession, game-realistic practice with a stated target of high ball-rolling time, and a plan-do-review coaching cycle across technical, tactical, physical and psychological development.

Published by the Football Association, launched publicly in December 2014 at St George's Park, built on the FA's own four-corner model for player development.

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Structure: Mostly prescriptive
Time demand: high
Coach education: high
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s, 12 to 15s, 16 and up

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: Built for England's own pathway and the academy clubs feeding it, so it assumes a level of coach education and session-planning time most volunteer grassroots coaches do not have. The plan-do-review habit and the ball-rolling-time target both travel well even where the full curriculum does not.

Horst Wein's Youth Development Model (FUNiño)Primary source checkedAge-graded small-sided game formats, most recognisably FUNiño (3v3 on four mini-goals, no goalkeeper, for the youngest age groups), designed to force width, options and decision-making before players are introduced to full-sided football.

Developed by German coach Horst Wein over three decades working with the Spanish Football Federation's research centre (CEDIF); his 'Fútbol a la Medida del Niño' has been Spain's official youth coaching textbook since 1993.

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Structure: A mix
Time demand: low
Coach education: low
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: The specific formats are genuinely simple to set up on a normal Tuesday, no coaching badge required. Where it goes wrong is treating FUNiño as a warm-up rather than the main event for the youngest ages it was actually designed for.

Ballschule Heidelberg (the German Ball School model)Primary source checkedTeaches a broad, sport-general 'ABC' of ball-game skills before specialising in one sport, on the theory that children need transferable game understanding and movement experience first, built through play rather than direct instruction.

Founded in 1998 by Professor Klaus Roth at the Institute of Sport and Sport Science, Heidelberg University; now used with several thousand children a year across German clubs, kindergartens and schools.

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Structure: Mostly exploratory
Time demand: low
Coach education: moderate
Age fit: 5 to 8s, 9 to 11s

These four ratings are our own working characterisation, not independently measured or individually cited.

Kevin's take: A useful mindset check for anyone coaching under-8s: are you building a footballer, or a games player who happens to be playing football today? Less directly applicable once a squad has already specialised into one sport.

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