Studying our BA (Hons) Football Coaching course will equip you with the knowledge, skills and experience to work in the sports industry in general, but more specifically the football industry with a focus on football coaching and performance analysis. You will gain a broad understanding of the study of football in the unit Introduction to Football Studies that will introduce many of the areas of study that you will engage with later in the course such as psychology, performance analysis, player potential and development, technical and tactical understanding, and coach development. In the unit The Football Industry, you will explore the football industry as well as its impact on contemporary society. You will look closely at the causes of fandom and question what makes people support a particular team - successful or unsuccessful – while also examining how economic factors have shaped football into a global cultural phenomenon. Furthermore, you will actively engage with a suite of units across the course focused on player development and performance by developing practical coaching skills to provide positive learning environments for performers in our Foundations for Football Coaching unit, the first of four practical football coaching units. This unit is followed by Applied Football Coaching where you will explore the relationship between understanding your role as a coach and understanding the player to apply your practical coaching knowledge.

The knowledge, experience and skills gained in these units provide the foundations to study Advanced Coaching for Football and Coaching Alternative Populations. Understanding Football Governance is an important, but understudied area of football and this unit will help you to understand how football organisations operate at all levels. You will then learn to apply this knowledge within sport organisations in our Sport in Action: Management unit while examining the role of the state, non-profit and professional sectors in sport. In areas of the mind, you will look at the Social Psychology of Sport by analysing theories, principles and concepts to understand behaviour and its effects on performance and participation in sport and physical activity. You will then use this information in a football context to inform player development in our Long-Term Player and Coach Development unit and Applied Sport Psychology units. The coaching units above tie in closely to units on Football Development, Long-Term Player and Coach Development, Performance Analysis and Performance Analysis for Football. In Football Development we assess youth development programmes in football from around the world to highlight best practice used to identify and support talented young players. We then make connections to Long-Term Player and Coach Development where we examine what player potential looks like at various ages, how to identify this and the best ways to develop this potential.

Long-term coach development is also considered as you build on the career planning that starts in week one. Career planning and personal development is a central pillar across the course and is built into numerous units. For example, in all the practical coaching units you are required to engage with your own personal development planning, including the completion of an allocated number of hours of coaching experience in a real-world setting. In our performance analysis units Performance Analysis and Performance Analysis for Football, you will use industry standard tools to analyse individual and team performance and then learn how to provide effective feedback from your findings. These units link very closely to the football coaching units by underpinning understanding of the technical and tactical aspects of football. In order to provide a broad view of the football industry, we continue the discussions that began early in the first year and address the challenges facing those who use football for social change in our Football in the Community unit. As stated above, career planning and development is central to the course and its aims. To prepare you for your career, our Working in Sport and Physical Education unit will introduce you to multiple career pathways available within the sport & physical activity industry.

Career planning and development is also built into the football coaching units (Foundations for Football Coaching, Applied Football Coaching, Advanced Coaching for Football and Coaching Alternative Populations) and the units Work Experience for Sports Science and Physical Activity and Work Placement Project provide opportunities to gain extensive industry experience towards the end of the course. You can also undertake a Professional Practice Year (Sport Science and Physical Activity) that will allow you to gain work experience while developing your professional skills. This is a one-year programme that sees you taking a year out from formal study to work in industry before returning to university to complete the final stage of your degree. Finally, you will have the opportunity to complete an independent study, where we offer two options, a Dissertation for Sport Science and Physical Activity or a Work Placement Project. To help you with this, you will study a suite of research-based units that span the course; Introduction to Research Methods, Research Methods for Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity and Dissertation Preparation. These units will prepare you to complete an independent project at the end of the course, while also enabling you to read and understand research, to complete a proposal with ethical documentation and to write a coherent independent research project.