Amer­i­can foot­ball is very pop­u­lar in Ger­many. This is certainly due, at least in part, to the numerous US military personnel that have been stationed in Germany for more than 70 years and the general Americanisation that has come with that. Ger­many cur­rent­ly has 450 Amer­i­can foot­ball clubs with over 60,000 reg­is­tered mem­bers. This means that al­most half of the Amer­i­can foot­ball play­ers in Eu­rope are from Ger­many. Be­tween 1991 and 2007, we also had NFL Eu­rope, an off­shoot of the NFL. It in­clud­ed up to five Ger­man teams and reg­u­lar­ly at­tract­ed up to 30,000 spec­ta­tors per game. It was during this pe­ri­od, in 1992, that I got foot­ball fever. Ul­ti­mate­ly, Amer­i­can foot­ball is a true team sport, which is why I stuck with it af­ter try­ing out many oth­er sports.

Two of us are cur­rent­ly train­ing the U13 and U16 Win­terthur War­riors teams. The great­est chal­lenges are re­cruit­ing new play­ers and introducing them to this high­ly tac­ti­cal sport. The kids have to un­der­stand the game (rules, penal­ties, etc.) and learn the re­hearsed plays by heart. Each play is an­nounced with a nu­mer­i­cal code and every play­er has to know ex­act­ly what to do for each play. The more pre­cise­ly the moves are implemented, the greater the chance of suc­cess. Ul­ti­mate­ly, however, we’re train­ing kids sev­en and up, so the fo­cus re­al­ly needs to be having fun.

Flag football is a non-contact or minimal-contact variation on American football. In contrast to tackle football, it is played without padding. Instead, each player has two flags which are attached to a belt on their right- and left-hand sides. Instead of tackling your opponent, you have to pull a flag off the player who is in possession of the ball to finish the play. In flag football, you play five against five on a half-sized field. This variant is particularly good for introducing children to the strategy of the sport. And in this growth phase, up to about 13 years, tackle football is really not appropriate.