Regional Youth initiative for Football Development in Baltic’s

The project set out to promote and support awareness and practical application with regards to health and safety aspect importance in everyday training process, tournaments and out of training activities in the Baltic States region.This was to be carried out by the lead project partner Baltic Football School who liaised with three regional partners, each covering their respective country, FC Elva, Siauliai FA and Valmiera Glass VIA/Valmiera FC to achieve coherent view of the situation in the region.Following the literature review around the topics of health, trauma prophylaxis, basics of nutrition, sleep regime during intense load conditions, safety provisions and basics of international good practice with regards to training considering age of participant, assessment of current situation in the regional partner countries, and the evaluation of current knowledge levels via the designed questionnaires, the existing gaps and insufficiencies were identified which acted as key priorities for the latter stages of the project. These were the lack of awareness and understanding around injury prevention in football, nutrition, and safety at the training ground and at outside events. To provide solutions for the aforementioned problems, an research was undertaken to extract the knowledge from academic and industry approved sources which acted as a supportive material upon which a road map for player development were designed. In fact, the aim of the road map was set out to combine the most applicable and useful advice and information in order to educate youth football players, their parents, and coaches.These findings were presented to regional professionals to gather initial feedback and gain their input towards the key information necessary to be implemented. Further on, a conversation around road maps development, design and functionality were facilitated with youth players, their parents and coaches as part of the 3 day camps organised by lead partner which resulted in a more interactive and fun version of the road map to support the needs and requirements of younger audiences.Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the initially scheduled activity to ensure youth player participation in international tournament could not take place. This, however, was replaced with a more innovative competition that was organised online and where players from each of the project partner clubs competed against each other not only in football skills but also in their knowledge around health and safety topics.At the evaluation meeting of the project it was agreed that the key difficulty that partners faced was the inability to accurately predict the required timeframe to obtain a coherent and complete view of the current knowledge levels in Baltic States via the distributed surveys. Partners agreed that a more thorough evaluation of the scope of each activity should be taking place at the beginning stages of the project to prevent such situations in the future.The main objectives set out in the project application were achieved by providing project partners with the opportunity to meet and jointly develop a methodology to complement daily training practices with elements identified within the project in relation to health, safety and nutrition.Overall, 2340 people were attracted to and involved in the project`s activities. Arguably the outcomes of the project, especially the developed e-version of road map, will have a significant impact after the end of the current project. This can be supported by the fact that Latvian Football Federation are already showing interest of incorporating the methodological tool under their youth development department thus distributing it amongst all of its members.