Why we're following a man called Ruiz

Where we're going this season — and the one idea underneath all of it.

There's a book that's been on my desk this summer. It isn't new, and it isn't famous. The cover is a little worn. It was written by a Spanish coach called Laureano Ruiz — the man who quietly built the youth academy that would one day become Barcelona's La Masia.

I keep coming back to it. Not really for the drills, though the drills are good. I come back for one idea that I think can change how we coach at our Footballers School.

Ruiz didn't become influential because he ran better sessions than everyone else. He became influential because he built a system — a whole football education. And he believed something simple and, when you sit with it, a little radical: a young player should belong to the club's philosophy, not to whichever coach they happen to get that year.

Think about what usually happens in grassroots football. A child has a new coach every season. New words. New ideas. New priorities. Their development ends up depending on luck — on who was free to run the team that year. Ruiz thought that was wrong. So do I.

So this season, we do it his way

The club becomes the teacher. We — the coaches — deliver the curriculum. One football, taught the same way, from our six-year-olds all the way to our eighteens. The only thing that changes as they grow is how much of it they can hold.

We've written it down. It's called The Footballer's Way, and from the first session you'll feel the difference. Every child, in every team, will hear the same language: the words we've chosen — One Percent Better, the Zero Point, the Magic Diamond, the Three P's — and Ruiz's own words, kept exactly as he taught them: the light, give and go, shield the ball.

Every week keeps the same shape, too. Six parts, start to finish, so a parent watching from the touchline could follow the lesson as easily as the players living it. And that's the word that matters now — lesson. Not a random drill. You will never again stand in the car park wondering, "what shall I run tonight?" You'll know what this week's lesson is.

And something new

Every lesson will open with a story. Children remember a story far longer than they remember an instruction — so we're hiding the football inside one. You'll meet the Park, and a young player called Nia, and a wise old heron named Old Grey who has watched football here longer than anyone can remember. When Nia learns her first touch, so do your players.

What I'm asking of you

Here's the honest part. This only works if we all teach the same football. That's the whole point of it. Your creativity this season isn't in inventing new drills — it's in how well you bring the lesson to life for the children in front of you. That's the hard, brilliant craft, and it's the one that actually matters.

You aren't just running teams this year. You are the first teachers of something we want to outlast all of us.

Ruiz's players didn't all go on to become stars. But they all became better footballers than they otherwise would have — and they all learned the same beautiful game. That is the measure I care about. Not whether the Under-10s won on Saturday, but whether they'll be better players at eighteen than they are right now.

This is the pilot. We are the first ones to try it. Let's build something that, in twenty years, people talk about the way they still talk about Ruiz.

See you on the grass. — John