England U19s man says new regulations can only benefit young players.

England U19s defender Eric Dier has given his backing to The FA's new Youth Development proposals, which were voted in by Shareholders last week.

The 18-year-old Sporting Lisbon player grew up in Portugal from the age of six, before he was picked up by Sporting at the age of 12 and developed from there.

And Dier revealed that the way young players were brought up to play the game in Portugal almost mirrors the new player pathway set out for English youngsters.

The decision, taken at The FA's AGM on Monday 28 May will see a mandatory 5v5 format of football for U7s and U8s and then a 9v9 format for U11 and U12s to be phased in by the start of the 2014-15 campaign and that all sounds more than familiar to Dier

“It wasn’t until I was 11 or 12 that I started playing 11-a-side and that was with the Sporting Lisbon Academy," said Dier, who has spent the last season and a half on loan with Everton before returning to Sporting for pre-season later this summer.

“Up until then, it was seven-a-side and obviously in Portugal, you play a lot of Futsal too which is five-a-side with a smaller set of goals and a smaller ball. They play a lot of Futsal in Brazil too.

“Obviously, you can play on the beach as well, which you can’t really do in England!"

The key point of the new system is that English youngsters won't be playing on full-sized pitches as early as they currently do and for Dier, that is a good thing given the physical and technical aspects of the sport.

“It’s a different style of football in Portugal, but I only started playing 11-a-side when I was 11 or 12," he revealed. "I didn’t know the rules in any other country apart from that, because that’s the way I did it.

“When you’re that young, physically, I’m not sure if you have the capacity physically to play on such a big pitch.

“It means people get less touches of the ball and it means that there are bigger spaces on the pitch. With smaller spaces, the emphasis is much more on your technical ability than your physical ability.

“And at a younger age, it’s much more important to work on someone’s technical ability than their physical ability.

“People grow at different times and some kids grow later than others, so you have to be patient and remember than some may be better technically than they are physically, but it doesn’t mean that they won’t reach the standard of the others, they just take longer to grow."

 

It's a great idea but nowt new. My Dad and I were involved in junior football about 10 or so years ago. Howard Wilkinson sent a letter to all FA affiliated clubs saying games should be played on smaller pitches with smaller nets. Put club did this, at great expense, but the first time we played away and hey presto full size pitch full size nets. We got fined for refusing to play!

Unless the FA invest money at grassroots then these plans will be just that, plans.