Paul Vennard

I am a proud father of a football-playing daughter and also the Chairperson for London City Lionesses Girls Academy.

I had the idea for She Plays Football while standing on the sidelines watching my daughter train at London City Lionesses.

It struck me that every player in her team had lots of really strong qualities as a footballer but also had weaker parts of their game. At training, as good as the coaches are, the training is focused on the team rather than the individual most of the time. I decided that in the time away from team training I needed to help my daughter develop her individual ability so I took myself off and completed the FA level 1 in football coaching. I thought if I knew how to help her develop in the right way she would become a better player and that in turn would help the team.

The course was really interesting and I would encourage everyone involved in football to go on the course as a way of understanding how coaching works. However, it didn’t give me the easy knowledge I was looking for, there was no manual I could follow. What it gave me was the thought process behind becoming an effective coach and how to put drills together. All of which required time and effort.

I simply didn’t have the time or ability to help and I suspect that many parents will find themselves in that dilemma. So I started searching for online content that I could copy and complete with my daughter or that she could do herself. There is loads of content out there but most of it is focused on helping coaches with team drills. To make it worse there was almost no content that was created for girls, and if you wanted a female coach teaching girls it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

I started talking to the academy’s Technical Director, Cori Daniels, about the seed of the idea and from that conversation ideas started to fly. What if we created a platform for girls to develop their footballing ability. Providing content for the player to develop in their own time and at their own pace. That was created by UEFA ‘A’ and ‘B’ female coaches for girls. That followed a structured professionally created curriculum that followed the national FA 4 quadrant model. That provided content from professional footballers about their journey from youth football to the professional ranks to inspire girls. That provided content on the nutrition, and psychology of the game and that created a community of like-minded girls to create a social aspect.

We were so excited that we created She Plays Football. We hope you like the platform and it can help you become the footballer you want to be.