Grassroots
Coach retention is the pathway problem
Player development plans assume a stable coaching base. In most regions we reviewed, that base turns over every two seasons.
Athagora Research · 9 May 2026 · 6 min read
Every national development strategy we have read describes a coaching philosophy delivered consistently from grassroots upward. Almost none of them account for how long the people delivering it actually stay.
Regional turnover among volunteer and part-time coaches is high and lumpy. It concentrates at the point where a coach's own child ages out of the age group, an entirely predictable event that few associations plan around.
Qualification subsidies improve entry, not retention. Coaches leave over administrative load, facility access and the absence of anyone senior noticing they exist, in roughly that order.
The interventions that correlated with longer tenure were unremarkable: a named regional contact, fixture administration handled centrally, and guaranteed pitch allocation for the season rather than month to month.
Development strategy is usually written as a curriculum problem. In most of the regions we reviewed, it is a workforce problem wearing a curriculum's clothes.
“You cannot run a ten-year development plan on a two-year coaching population.”