NZ Football National Curriculum

Based on extensive research and world trends, the National Curriculum serves as a guide for player, coach and team development. Alongside the award-winning Whole of Football and Beyond Football plans, it provides a unified vision for the future direction of the world game in New Zealand.

“The National Curriculum will be a reference point for how we play football and develop our young players,” New Zealand Football Technical Director Rob Sherman says. “It’s an important addition to our footballing fabric and will hopefully act as a blueprint for those who coach and play the game.”

The aim of the curriculum is to provide a tool that can assist both the novice and experienced coach in improving themselves, their players and ultimately their teams’ performance. It follows the release of the Beyond Football high performance plan in 2014 which articulated New Zealand Football’s goal of ‘Winning at World Cups’.

The curriculum outlines the key factors to assist New Zealand on its journey to successfully compete on the world stage. It focuses on the implementation of an aligned playing style, the development of coaches and producing players that can compete at the highest level. Sherman feels such an approach is especially advantageous for a country of New Zealand’s size and standing in world football.

“For a small nation, it’s necessary to have an alignment in terms of a common playing style, including an understanding of the key player capabilities and strengths required to play that style. In our context, because of the limitations of the player pool, we have to be very tactically astute,” he says.

“We need to be in a position where we’re developing young people who can transition into the international fold and into the modern game professionally because, ultimately, our success is going to depend on how many top players we can produce and sustain.”

To download the National Curriculum please follow this link:

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