Introduction | A Worry That Never Quite Goes Away
I often hear this kind of question from parents:
“My child always gets put in defence, but I honestly think they could be a great goal-scorer.”
“They want to play forward, but honestly, it doesn’t look like they have the right instincts for it…”
In a team sport, every player has to be somewhere on the pitch. And it’s completely natural — for the child, and for the parents watching — to sometimes feel that a position “just doesn’t seem to fit.”
Today I want to explore this idea of “positional fit” — through my own experience and opinion, and also through a slightly different perspective.
1. Every Position Except Centre-Back and Goalkeeper
Growing up, I never really had a fixed position. Full-back, defensive midfielder, attacking midfielder, winger, forward — I played almost everything except centre-back and goalkeeper.
Honestly, at the time, I often found myself thinking, “Why am I playing here?” There were stretches where I struggled to produce results as a forward, and stretches where I couldn’t find my rhythm as a full-back. In the moment, it often felt like one long string of “this doesn’t suit me.”
But now, playing mostly as a midfielder, I can see how all of that experience feeds into what I do today. Having played forward, I understand the timing a striker wants on a pass. Having played full-back, I understand what kind of support a wide player actually needs. Understanding “how a position feels” is something you can only really get by playing there yourself — not by being told about it.
2. My Opinion: Experiencing Different Positions Is Worth It
This is the main point I want to make.
In the youth years — especially around U-11 and U-14 — I don’t think positions should be fixed too early. The reason is simple: even if a position feels wrong at the time, that experience will very likely come back to serve you when you move to a different position later on.
Football isn’t a sport where understanding your own role is enough. You only really become a “good player” once you understand what the players around you are thinking and what they need from you. That’s easy to explain in words, but it doesn’t truly sink in unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
That’s why I believe letting children experience a variety of positions during their youth years has value that goes well beyond short-term results.
This isn’t just my own story, either. Japan international Yuto Nagatomo famously played as a defensive midfielder in high school. After turning professional, he was converted to full-back — and it was there that his talent truly blossomed, going on to become one of Japan’s most iconic players. If he had never had that experience as a defensive midfielder, he might never have developed into such an attack-minded, sharp-decision-making full-back. It’s a great example of how the position you play today isn’t necessarily the position you’ll play in the future.
3. That Said, There’s Another Way to Look at It
From here, I want to offer a perspective that’s a little different from my own opinion. While there’s real value in broadening a player’s positional experience, there’s also value — not to be overlooked — in going deep on one position from an early stage.
Goalkeeping is the clearest example. Catching, positioning, decisions about when to come off the line — these require a completely different set of technical skills from any outfield position. A player who has done dedicated goalkeeper-specific training from a young age will build up technique in a fundamentally different way than one who bounces between positions and occasionally plays in goal.
There’s also a psychological side to this that shouldn’t be ignored. Some children play with more confidence when they have a clear sense of “this is my spot.” If a child’s position keeps changing, some kids can end up feeling unsure of “what kind of player they even are.” Especially at an age when self-confidence isn’t yet fully settled, having a place that feels like “mine” can be exactly what allows a child to play assertively in the first place.
In other words, “broad experience” and “deepening expertise” aren’t a case of one being simply right and the other wrong — it’s a balance that should shift depending on a child’s personality and stage of development.
4. How We Think About It at Glocal Football
Stepping back from the “should positions be fixed or not” question, our thinking at Glocal Football actually starts one step earlier than that. In our training, the concept of “position” doesn’t really exist in the first place.
What we mean is this: regardless of what position a child happens to be playing, what we’re actually training is the set of fundamental skills every player needs to play football — receiving, passing, dribbling, observing the game, and making decisions. We believe these are skills every player needs, whether they’re a forward, a defender, or anyone other than the goalkeeper, and that the priority placed on them shouldn’t change depending on position.
In something like Rondo, for example, both the attacking and defending players are working on the exact same challenge — receiving the ball in tight space, reading the situation, and using their body to beat an opponent. It’s not training designed for a specific position; it’s time spent building the shared foundation of football itself.
That’s why you won’t hear “today we’re training forwards” or “today we’re training defenders” at our sessions. The children naturally end up experiencing a wide range of roles — not because we’re deliberately rotating them through positions, but because our training simply isn’t built around dividing players by position in the first place. As a result, both the value of broad experience discussed in Section 3 and the value of deep, skill-based expertise end up being naturally included as part of this same underlying approach.
Conclusion
If you’re a parent currently wondering, “Is this position really right for my child?” — I’d encourage you not to judge that purely by short-term results. In my own experience, it’s far from rare for a position that doesn’t feel like a fit today to blossom into something completely different, in a completely different role, years down the line.
At the same time, if your child does find a position where they feel “this is where I belong,” please value that feeling too. I hope we can keep watching over that balance — between breadth and depth — together.
