Gareth Southgate visited Valley Parade as coaches and league administrators from Yorkshire’s grass-roots football community debated radical FA proposals for the youth game.

Former England defender and Middlesbrough manager Southgate is now Head of Elite Development at The FA and helping lead the Your Kids Your Say Roadshow as it tours 16 towns and cities between May and September.

The proposals, which are part of the FA’s Youth Development Review, entail scrapping league tables for children below secondary-school age, the introduction of five-a-side and nine-a-side football, summer football and a change in the date that determines which age-group children play in.

The changes are seen as the long-term answer to improving technique, preventing kids dropping out of the game and ultimately raising the standard of English football.

Southgate told The T&A: “When I was growing up, the Cup final was the only match that was on. We now see European football every weekend. I think people are rightly raising the question now, why aren’t we technically playing the same way as the Spanish, Portuguese or Italians?

“I think there’s a generation of fathers saying that this is what they want for their kids.”

Southgate was accompanied by Nick Levett, the FA’s National Development Manager for Youth and Mini-Soccer, who has masterminded the proposals.

He has consulted over 300 youth clubs, hundreds of grass-roots coaches, over 150 youth leagues and 42 different groups of young footballers aged eight to 12 from both professional and grass-roots clubs.

Southgate added: “I think one of the fair criticisms of the FA in the past is that people have not been consulted enough about what’s going on.

“I don’t think it would be right for us to sit down at Wembley, make a load of decisions, implement them, and not explain them to people.

“I think the more we do that, the fewer misconceptions there will be. I think when we talk about not having league tables, for example, everybody thinks ‘non-competitive sport – that’s disastrous’. But we’re not just talking about throwing beanbags into a hoop here, and no winners and losers. There is a difference, kids want to win – put a ball down and kids want to win that game. Where it puts them in the league, they don’t know. We do, as parents, because we are trained to think that way.

* You can read a summary of the proposals at: http://www.clubnewsletter.co.uk/2011/feb/faproposals.html * Involved in grassroots football? Send your feedback on the proposals to yourkidsyoursay@thefa.com