Growing grassroots football in Luxembourg

The Luxembourg Football Federation (FLF) has been working very hard to develop grassroots football and has launched an ambitious new programme at the initiative of its new grassroots director, Claude Campos.

The primary aim of the programme is to enable all girls and boys to play football, under the supervision of qualified coaches if possible.

The FLF ran 17 coaching courses in 2017, as a result of which 162 candidates received 'grassroots basics' training (12 hours of training) to permit them to coach children aged between 6 and 9. A further 73 candidates qualified as 'grassroots 1' coaches for Under-13s (32 hours), while 48 obtained the FLF C2 diploma (103 hours) to coach players under the age of 19.

The number of coaches trained in Luxembourg was much higher in 2017 than in previous years. Alongside its coach education activities, the FLF frequently organises special grassroots events, including regular competitions for children aged 5 and over, national football days for boys (with more than 3,000 participants) and girls, a regional young footballer competition with various football skills workshops, and fair play competitions for adults and children.

FLF staff also support and stage a variety of projects to promote school football, disabled football, health and refugee integration.

We should never forget that, if football is to thrive at elite level, we need to take the grassroots game seriously, which is something the FLF is determined to do.

This arrticle originally appeared in UEFA Direct 177