How to recruit players for a grassroots football team

Settle these before you advertise

An advert that works produces a conversation with a family, and you want to be ready for it.

• The age group and format you are recruiting for. Our England age group rules page sets out which children are in which age group and what they play.
• Where the team will play. For a new team, league entry and affiliation run through the league and your County FA, and their deadlines decide what you can promise.
• Who is running the sessions, and whether those adults hold the safeguarding checks and training required for the roles they are doing.
• Who answers replies, from which account, and where those replies arrive.
• How places will be offered if more players come forward than you can take. Decide in advance.

Advertising for children: the part with consequences

An advert for a youth team is an advert about children, published in public, by volunteers. This section comes before the advert itself because it is the part where a well-meant advert can do real harm. Nearly all of what follows comes from FA guidance for clubs and leagues (opens in a new tab). Where it is our recommendation rather than a requirement, the page says so.

Photographs. The FA supports appropriate photography of children in football and sets conditions on it (opens in a new tab). Four of those bear directly on a recruitment advert.

• Written parental consent is needed before a player's photograph or film is used in the public domain, including the club website, club social media and the press.
• Do not publish photographs or film with the name or names of the individuals featured unless you have written consent and have told the parents or carers how the image will be used.
• Do not use player profiles that combine a picture with detailed personal information.
• Do not use an image or film for something other than what was initially agreed. The FA gives the example of a picture produced for a clubhouse being published in the local press. A recruitment advert is a new use and needs its own permission.

There is also a category of child whose image must not go into the public domain at all, for reasons such as legal restrictions on contact. The club will not know who they are unless it has asked.

Two ways round the whole question: use a designed graphic with no identifiable children, or use editing to blur or remove anyone who has not consented. The FA guidance points to both.

What to keep out of the advert. The FA guidance permits some of this where written parental consent has been given. A public recruitment advert is aimed at people who do not know the club, so we recommend a stricter standard than the minimum the guidance allows. These four are our recommendation rather than a rule.

Separately, FA guidance (opens in a new tab) advises clubs and leagues not to publish personal details that could make a young person easier to approach outside football, naming school, class and year information as the examples, and not to host pictures of individuals without the permission of their parent or carer.

How much to say about when and where. The club name can be treated as public. Training venues and times are a judgement, because the same guidance warns against publishing detail that makes children easier to find or approach.

Give a parent enough to work out whether the opportunity is practical for them. If the exact youth training venue or time is not already public for that team, agree with your welfare officer what goes in the advert and what is shared once a parent or carer has been in touch.

Where replies go. FA guidance asks clubs and leagues to appoint an adult to monitor website and social media content, to make sure everybody knows who that is, and to set club pages up for club business rather than for personal details or private conversations. It also says under-16s should not be included in the message or chat groups that officials, coaches and parents use to run a team, and that a 16 or 17-year-old invited into one needs written permission from a parent or carer, ideally with the parent or carer in the chat and able to see it.

A club-controlled route means a club email address, a club enquiry form or your directory listing, monitored by a named adult. Two things follow from that.

• Keep personal mobile numbers out of the advert text.
• Post from the club account rather than a volunteer's personal profile, so replies arrive where the club can see them.

What you ask for at first contact. Ask for what you need in order to answer the enquiry: the parent or carer's name and contact details, the child's age group, and whether they already play for a club. Registration details, medical information and photographs belong in the club's registration process, not in a reply to an advert.

Tell your welfare officer. The club welfare officer should know what is being advertised, where it has been posted and who is answering it. If a response raises a concern about a child, reports can go to the club or league welfare officer, the County FA Designated Safeguarding Officer or the FA safeguarding team. Our safeguarding guide sets out each route. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.

What to put in the advert

The job of the advert is to let a parent rule themselves in or out without having to contact you.

Our guide to football trials explains the difference between a taster and a trial from the parent's side, which is the side that will be reading your advert.

Where to advertise

These are the routes available to a club. Which of them is worth your time depends on your area, your club and who you are trying to reach, and that is a judgement for you rather than for us.

• The club website and the club's own social accounts.
• Local community groups and noticeboards, posting from the club account and within whatever rules the group sets.
• Your club's listing in a directory. If your club is listed on FindMeFootball, claiming the listing lets you keep the age groups and the contact route accurate.
• Schools, through the school office and on the school's terms rather than around them.
• Your league and your County FA, both of which have their own channels.
• The families already at the club, other age groups, and siblings.
• Any beginner, holiday or open sessions the club already runs.

Keep a record of where you have posted. When the place is filled or the details change, you need to be able to take it down, and a volunteer who has left may be the only person who knows where it went.

Approaching a non-contract player who is already registered at another club

An open advert is not the same as approaching a particular player. Once your club wants to approach a named player who is registered with another club, the relevant FA process for the ordinary grassroots youth recruitment covered here is the Notice of Approach rule for registered non-contract players (opens in a new tab). If the player is registered under a different status, check the applicable FA rules before approaching. The Notice of Approach rules are written around the National League System and the top tiers of the women's pyramid, but the obligations on the approaching club apply at any level of the game, so a grassroots club is not outside them.

Give the club secretary of every club the player is registered with seven days' written notice of your intention to approach, before you approach. Notice runs between clubs that play on the same day: a Saturday club to other Saturday clubs, a Sunday club to other Sunday clubs, a midweek club to other midweek clubs. Send it by first-class post to the registered address, or by email to the club secretary or chairperson. A club that receives a notice has to make sure the player knows about it.

The day you send the notice counts as day zero. You can register the player no earlier than the eighth day, and the registration has to be completed no later than 28 days after the notice was sent.

There are limits on doing this repeatedly to the same club. You cannot approach the same player at the same club more than once in a season. Having sent a notice to a club, you cannot approach another player at that club until 28 days have passed. And you cannot approach more than one player at a club at the same time.

If the player or their family approaches you first, you still have to give the club they are registered with written notice before you register them.

You may come across older guidance saying the current club can waive the notice period. The current rules set the eighth day as the earliest possible registration and do not provide for a waiver, so plan on the full seven days. A club found to have breached these rules can have the registration cancelled and face other penalties.

Your league will also have its own transfer process and deadlines on top of this, so check there as well.

Either way, the conversation is with the adults.

If you cannot fill the team

Ask your league two things early: what its minimum squad requirement is, and what its deadline is for changing or withdrawing an entry.

Options such as merging with another age group, entering a different format, or a player playing outside their own age group are not decisions a club can take on its own. Ask the league and the County FA what is permitted before you offer any of them to a family.

If the team may not run, tell families as soon as you reasonably can so they have time to consider alternatives.

Elsewhere in the UK

Registration, approaches to registered players and safeguarding checks are set separately in each nation. For anything that affects a registration, check with the association that covers you.

• England: the Football Association (opens in a new tab).
• Scotland: the Scottish Football Association (opens in a new tab).
• Wales: the Football Association of Wales (opens in a new tab).
• Northern Ireland: the Irish Football Association (opens in a new tab).

Claim your club listing

If your club is listed on FindMeFootball, claiming the listing lets you keep your age groups and contact route accurate, so a parent who finds you can reach the right person. There is no charge to claim a listing.

Find your club in the directory to start.