Multi-sports training in English Soccer Academies: A survey exploring practices, practitioner perspectives, and barriers to use.

Despite interest in multi-sports training as a strategy to enhance long-term player development in soccer, current practice within English professional soccer academies is not well understood. This study explored the use of multi-sports training by English professional soccer academies (i.e., if multi-sports training was used, how often, session duration, activity type and age-group variations), and practitioners' perspectives with respect to player development (i.e., perceived physical/sociological benefits of; and barriers to use) using an online survey. One practitioner per club, per age-category (i.e., Foundation [<9 to <12 years], Youth [<13 to <16 years] and Professional [<18 to <23 years]) was permitted to respond. Sixty practitioners responded, of which, 48% worked with U18-U23 players; 42% with U13-14 and U15-16 players, respectively; 20% with U9-10 players and 33% with U11-12 players. Half (n = 30) of the respondents used multi-sports training for a total of 1 (IQR 1-2) session and 30 (13 to 60) minutes per week. Respondents “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that multi-sports training improved physical outcomes, reduced injury risk, helped to avoid early professionalism, and improved communication and problem-solving. Several barriers to inclusion were identified, such as limited training time, lack of equipment and attrition from other staff and players. In summary, although multi-sports training was used by only ~50% of practitioners, indicating that many clubs specialize with deliberate soccer practice, most practitioners perceived multi-sports training to be beneficial to player development.