By Gary Bailey, Club Solutions Growth Lead, Coachbetter
Gary Bailey is Club Solutions Growth Lead at Coachbetter. He has worked as a coach and Technical Director across academy and community football.
No two young players develop at the same speed, in the same way, or for the same reasons.
A player going through a growth spurt may have completely different physical, technical and psychological needs from a teammate of exactly the same age. Their experiences are different. Their strengths are different. Their challenges are different.
Yet across youth football/soccer golbally, we still predominantly coach the team collectively and expect individual development to happen somewhere within that process. That's the gap an individual development plan (IDP) is meant to close.
Having worked as both a coach and Technical Director across academy and community football, one of the biggest gaps I have consistently seen isn't a lack of good coaches or good intentions.
It's the gap between what we say a player needs to develop and what actually happens on the grass every week.
That's where an IDP can become incredibly valuable.
But only if we understand what an IDP really is.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned from implementing IDP processes is that creating the document is the easy part.
An IDP shouldn't simply be something a coach completes twice a year, discusses with a player or parent and then files away until the next review.
If that's all we're doing, we've created paperwork, not a development process.
For me, an IDP is an ongoing process between the player and coach, supported by observation, evidence, reflection, feedback and clear goals.
The document simply records that journey.
At its simplest, an IDP should help answer three questions:
Where is the player now?
Where are they trying to get to?
What are we going to do to help them get there?
That final question is important because player development isn't solely the responsibility of the player.
It's also the responsibility of the coach.
Research on goal setting by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham has consistently shown the value of specific, challenging goals over vague instructions such as "work harder" or "do your best."
An IDP gives us an opportunity to turn something like:"Improve your first touch" into something much clearer and more meaningful for the player.
But the goal itself isn't enough.
Feedback matters too.
A research project published by The Coaching Manual worked with foundation-phase players aged 5–12 over seven weeks and reported improvement of 24% for players without an IDP, 36.11% with an IDP, and 53.33% when an IDP was combined with coach feedback.
It's a small study and shouldn't be treated as definitive proof, but the direction is interesting and aligns with wider research around goal setting and feedback.
The plan matters.
The conversation around the plan matters even more.
One mistake we can make as coaches is sitting down with a player and immediately telling them everything we think they need to improve.
Instead, I prefer to start with the player's perspective.
What do you think you're doing well?
Where do you think you can improve?
What kind of player do you want to become?
The depth of that conversation obviously changes depending on age.
With younger players, it might be one or two simple, positive questions. With older players, the player should increasingly take ownership of the process.
The FA's Four Corner Model, Technical/Tactical, Physical, Psychological and Social, can provide coaches with a useful framework for looking beyond purely technical development.
But we shouldn't overwhelm players with ten things they need to improve.
Development requires focus.
Identify strengths that can become super-strengths alongside a small number of areas that will have the greatest impact on that player's development.
This, for me, is one of the most important parts of the entire process.
Imagine I identify that one of my midfielders needs to improve receiving under pressure.
I put it into their IDP.
We agree on a target.
Then for the next six weeks, none of my training sessions deliberately create opportunities for that player to receive under pressure.
At the next review, can I really tell the player they haven't achieved their target?
Or do I need to question the environment I've created for them?
An IDP should influence coaching.
Once we've identified a development need, we should be asking:
Where will this player get opportunities to work on this in training?
How can our session design support it?
What will I observe?
What feedback will I provide?
What will improvement look like in a game?
Individual development and session planning shouldn't exist independently of each other.
The IDP should help connect them.
Another lesson I've learned from implementing IDPs across a club is that timing matters.
A player shouldn't receive some targets at the beginning of the season and then rediscover them six months later during a review meeting.
Development should be cyclical.
Start with player reflection and goal setting.
Build those goals into the coaching program.
Observe the player in training and games.
Use coach observations, assessments and, where available, video or other evidence to support the conversation.
Provide feedback.
Then review the goals together and decide what comes next.
That's when an IDP becomes part of player development rather than another administrative requirement.
Youth development involves more than one person.
I've found it useful to think about the IDP from three perspectives.
The player:
Where am I? What am I good at? What do I want to improve?
The coach:
What am I seeing? What does this player need next, and how am I going to support it?
The parent:
What is the development focus, and how can I positively support the journey?
That shared understanding can also make parent conversations significantly more productive.
Instead of conversations being dominated by selection, playing time, positions or results, we have something tangible to bring the discussion back to:
development.
An IDP for an U9 shouldn't look like one for an U17.
For younger players, goals should be simple, positive and engaging. The coach will naturally lead more of the process.
As players progress through youth football, they should take increasing ownership.
By the later youth-development years, players should be capable of reflecting on their own performance, identifying development needs and contributing significantly to their own goals.
Ultimately, that's part of development too.
We aren't just trying to create better footballers.
We're trying to develop players who understand their own game and can take responsibility for their development.
In my experience, the problem is rarely that clubs don't believe in individual development.
The challenge is delivering it consistently.
A club might have hundreds of players and dozens of coaches, many of whom are volunteers balancing coaching with work and family.
That's where problems begin.
One coach has their player notes in a spreadsheet.
Another uses a notebook.
Someone else keeps everything in their head.
A new coach takes over the team and much of that knowledge disappears.
Players move between age groups and the development conversation effectively starts again.
Even when clubs have an IDP process, consistency can become difficult.
And that's an important distinction:
Having an IDP template doesn't mean you have an IDP process.
Technology should support the conversation, not replace it.
This is where I've seen technology make a genuine difference.
Working with Coachbetter, I've seen how having assessments, development goals, feedback and player information within one environment can help clubs create greater consistency.
Instead of individual development disappearing when a coach or player changes teams, clubs can begin creating a development journey that follows the player.
Coaches can understand previous assessments and goals.
Players can see their development areas.
Parents can have greater clarity around the process.
Technical Directors can see whether individual development is actually happening consistently across the club.
But there's an important point here.
Technology isn't the development process.
The coach-player relationship still is.
Technology should remove unnecessary administration, retain information and create consistency so coaches can spend more time having meaningful conversations and coaching players.
For me, this is where IDPs become really powerful.
An IDP shouldn't sit separately from everything else a club is trying to achieve.
There should be a connection between:
Player focus → Coaching delivery → Evidence → Feedback → Review → Progression
And above that should sit the club's overall playing and development philosophy.
If a club says it wants to develop intelligent, technically capable players who can make decisions under pressure, those principles should be visible within its coaching program and ultimately within individual player development.
That's when an IDP stops being an isolated form and becomes part of a genuine player-development system.
Individual development should begin from the moment a player enters a structured coaching environment. However, the process needs to be appropriate for their age and stage of development.
For younger players, an IDP doesn't need to be a formal document. It could simply be one or two positive development goals, supported by regular conversations and encouragement from their coach.
As players progress through the age groups, the process should become more structured, with players taking increasing ownership of their development.
The important thing isn't the age at which we introduce an IDP. It's whether the process is meaningful, age-appropriate and supports the individual player.
Every IDP should answer three fundamental questions:
An effective IDP should identify the player's strengths, a small number of development priorities, clear goals and how progress will be supported and reviewed.
I encourage coaches to use the FA's Four Corner Model, technical/tactical, physical, psychological and social to understand the whole player rather than focusing purely on technical ability.
But the most important element is connecting those development goals to what actually happens in training and matches.
An IDP should influence coaching delivery, not simply record areas for improvement.
There needs to be a distinction between ongoing feedback and formal IDP reviews.
Development should be discussed regularly, not just when a review meeting is scheduled.
In my experience, having two or three structured review points across a season provides an opportunity to reflect on progress, involve parents where appropriate and agree on the next development priorities.
However, coaches should be referring to individual goals throughout the training week, providing feedback and adjusting their approach as players develop.
An IDP should be a living process. If a player receives their goals at the beginning of the season and doesn't revisit them until several months later, we're missing the purpose of individual development.
In youth football, the terms Individual Development Plan (IDP) and Individual Learning Plan (ILP) are often used interchangeably.
An ILP can place greater emphasis on the player's learning process, while an IDP may take a broader approach to their technical, tactical, physical, psychological and social development.
However, in practice, both should achieve the same outcome: helping a player understand their strengths, identify development priorities and take ownership of their progress.
Whether a club calls it an ILP, an IDP or, as is common in the United States, an IDP for soccer players, the terminology is less important than the quality of the process.
It's not what we call the plan that matters. It's what we do with it.
The research around goal setting and feedback is strong, and my own experience working with players and coaches has reinforced the same principle:
Players need clarity.
They should understand what they're doing well.
They should understand what they're working toward.
And most importantly, they should know that their coach is invested in helping them get there.
We sometimes make player development more complicated than it needs to be.
A good IDP doesn't need to contain dozens of metrics or pages of information.
It needs to create a meaningful conversation and then influence what happens next.
Because ultimately, an IDP isn't about completing a form.
It's about making development visible, intentional and individual.
Book a demo below to see how Coachbetter helps clubs run IDPs across every team.
Sign up for the best resources in football. You can expect exercises, news, feature updates and announcements. The newsletter is sent out once a week.
Many clubs confuse "methodology" (tactics and systems) with "DNA" (identity and values). While methodology provides a curriculum that changes with staff, DNA is the enduring standard that defines a club's culture. Clubs that define their DNA can scale their identity and survive coaching changes, while those that don't remain dependent on individual hires.
How the 2026 World Cup proves that great coaching—not just star players—drives success, with practical lessons on organisation, culture, and preparation for every level of the game.
Rondo as a key element of training session planning
Sign up for the best resources in football. You can expect exercises, news, feature updates and announcements. The newsletter is sent out once a week.