A ready-made age-specific training program for everyone in the club

#THIS ARTICLE IN DUTCH is written by Emilie Maclaine Pont | translated by Liesbeth Wallien

Trainers at amateur clubs do their work with great dedication and good intentions. At the same time they lack knowhow and a structured approach. That was the conclusion of former football professional Richard Elsinga after years of training young people in the Netherlands and abroad. It is why together with some partners he developed feeton: an online platform plus apps that offer extensive training programs for children of all ages that tie in with learning objectives for the respective age groups.

‘When at age 16 I joined sc Heerenveen, Foppe de Haan was my trainer/coach’, Richard Elsinga remembers. ‘At the time you had to do a study besides playing football. During that period I obtained my trainer diplomas.’ After sc Heerenveen Elsinga played a while for Detroit Dynamite, Heracles Almelo and FC Emmen. The next 25 years he spent every summer giving football training during summer camps. It is where he met Erik de Jonge, at the time district coach for KNVB and today one of his business partners. ‘Meanwhile I had started training amateurs in the Netherlands, including my own children, and was working as an educator. That job taught me you had to achieve specific goals for each age group. If you taught certain classes, you could be sure that the kids were learning the right things. I found it remarkable that football clubs lacked that structure. “It’s the same everywhere”, Erik then told me.’

It was what led Elsinga and De Jonge twelve years ago to develop ‘feeton’ (short for feet and online). ‘KNVB has defined objectives for each age group. We used those to draw up a list of the skills you should learn when playing football. We spoke with Foppe de Haan and René Meulensteen, trainers at professional football clubs and five thousand amateur trainers who had tested feeton. Together we checked whether we had the right idea, which exercises and methods worked, and which did not.’

Two training sessions a week
The result was an annual plan per age group (five up to eighteen years), with two training sessions per week. All trainers of a club just have to click one button and they can get access to the plan. ‘We in fact created equal opportunities for every player, regardless of their level. But our main goal is to support trainers and their clubs and to make sure that kids get a chance to play and have fun, no matter their position on the field. The learning pathways are preprogrammed and the app features animations and videos to make things as easy as possible for trainers. That makes us unique. True, there are apps for trainers, but none of them are so complete, preprogrammed and in tune with the learning pathways for each age group.’

feeton has worked with several professional clubs, including FC Twente, Heracles, FC Groningen, Vitesse and sc Heerenveen. ‘Amateur clubs need practice material and the views of professional clubs. But the problem is that professional clubs lack the time to develop those views. That is why we give them the input to make it easier for them.’

Conquer the Netherlands
Over 350 football clubs now use feeton, in the form of a subscription (‘about the same as the remuneration for volunteers that trainers get’). Most clubs are Dutch, but trainers in the USA, Germany, Lebanon, Jamaica, Qatar, Aruba and Norway to name a few countries use the tool as well. ‘So far all our customers are members of our own network. We see that network grow organically by some fifty clubs a year. Cold acquisition is not our thing. Ultimately our ambition extends beyond the Netherlands, but first we want to strengthen our foothold here. There are 2,800 football clubs in the Netherlands, so we still have some ground to cover. Especially in the provinces of South and North Holland and North Brabant there is still a lot to be gained.’

A new feature is the coaching academy. An extra initiative for coaches who have been using feeton for years and want to get more out of it. ‘Currently, our field managers visit every club once a year, to answer any questions. The coaching academy can be used by clubs to periodically develop technical knowledge of coaches. It’s still early days but from our conversations with many clubs we know there is definitely a demand for it.’

A vision different from that of KNVB
Although De Jong worked for KNVB for twenty years, and still maintains a close relationship, this is not a collaboration. ‘We spoke seven years ago, but without any results. KNVB has its own free tool, Rinus, but it comes from a different angle, and has different functionalities. KNVB strongly focuses on individual trainers while our focus lies more on the club as a whole. The club knows what players have learned when trainers follow our program closely. That way feeton not only supports trainers with a tailor-made program but creates structure throughout the entire club.’

For more information: www.feeton.eu