The FA · free preview
FA Technical Directors Course
Above the head coach: the club’s football philosophy, the performance department, the academy, recruitment, hiring and firing the coach, the boardroom and the crisis.
£13,000 · An FA Level 5 · invitation only, priority to sitting technical directors · 18–24 months, about 25 contact days
Free lesson · Strategy and football philosophy
The FA Technical Directors Course: what it is and who gets in
The FA Technical Directors Course is a Level 5 award and the top of The FA’s professional-game education for technical leadership. You cannot simply book it. It is by invitation, and places go in a strict priority order. It is delivered by England Football Learning at St George's Park, with visits to elite club “hubs” and a study visit abroad.
| The real course | |
|---|---|
| Who gets in (priority order) | 1. Sitting technical directors or equivalent. 2. People their club names as a TD within 2–3 years who hold the Leadership of Talent Identification & Development (formerly Talent ID Level 4). 3. Other club-identified future TDs. 4. People The FA itself identifies |
| Length | About 18–24 months, around 25 contact days, in cohorts of 12–16 |
| Contact time | 2 days of assessment and profiling, 8 two-day modules, a 3-day study visit, at least 5 executive coaching sessions, tutor visits in your club |
| Cost | No published price: an invited, funded professional-game award |
| Assessment | At every stage: workshops, the study visit, independent projects and reflective journals |
The modules sit under four themes: leading in the boardroom, leading the future game, leading high-performance teams, and leading and developing culture. The four departments you are taught to lead are first-team performance, recruitment, the academy, and science and medicine.
Source: Management & administration reference · 8. FA Level 5
The syllabus: 8 modules, 28 lessons
- 1
Strategy and football philosophy
- The FA Technical Directors Course: what it is and who gets in free preview
- The technical director: above the coach, below the board
- Why a philosophy, and what goes in the document
- Building or refreshing the strategy without losing the room
- 2
The performance department
- Medical, sports science and analysis: the doctrines
- Psychology, nutrition, data, player care and loans
- Making the departments a system
- 3
The academy
- The audit frame and how to measure an academy
- Pathway architecture and the bridge problem
- Exits, safeguarding and coaching the coaches
- 4
Recruitment governance
- Recruitment as a governed system
- The five-box test and the signing committee
- Failure modes, controls and the signing review
- Capstone: the golden boy problem
- 5
Hiring and firing the head coach
- Hiring: the most consequential decision you make
- The contract and the forgotten 90%: support
- Firing: the disciplined last resort
- 6
The boardroom and the owners
- Governing upward: speaking the board’s language
- Budgets, board design and the manager–board triangle
- Know your owner
- The alignment charter and handling interference
- 7
Culture and high performance
- Culture is what happens when no one is watching
- High challenge, high support
- Designing high-performance teams, including your own staff
- 8
Long-term planning and the crisis
- The long-horizon fiduciary
- Crisis taxonomy and first principles
- Worked case: the week everything happens
- Capstones: the breakaway and the regulator