Coaching Journey

Gérard Jones is an FA UEFA A Licensed Coach and FA Advanced Youth Award holder with around two decades experience, having worked in high performing environments in the UK, USA and Morocco.

Former Elite Coach Educator with the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, he currently serves as a Director of Coaching, Sporting City - North Region at MLS Sporting Kansas City whilst studying a PhD in Skill Acquisition.

A former U19 Youth Team Player at then Conference National Halifax Town AFC, where he also volunteered coaching in the club's Center of Excellence working with U12 and U14 ages. Leaving the Club in 2008, he went on to coach for local FA Skills working with U5-U8s, as well as coaching in primary schools delivering after-school clubs and breakfast club sessions. These experiences led to creating his first coaching business Gérard School of Football in 2009 based out of the University of Hull, running development centers, coaching in primary and secondary schools and offering private one-to-one training throughout Hull & East Yorkshire. He grew the company into becoming listed among the Top 100 Best Business Start-ups in the UK in 2010 (Startups 100 Awards), gaining national exposure, securing sponsorship from multi-billion pound British Land PLC through St Stephen's Shopping Center and later became a Director of Coaching of Premier League Arsenal FC Soccer Schools, operating one of the largest soccer school franchises in the world at the time.

Following on from this, he established a Coach Education & Player Development company (called Premier Skills Yorkshire), delivering mentoring support to grassroots clubs throughout West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire, whilst also running Advanced Skills Centers for players aged from 5-12 years old with locations in Hull, Bradford, Leeds and York. With Premier Skills, Gérard also travelled to New Zealand delivering a player-development course linked with Premier League EPPP Category 1 West Brom Albion Academy. 

Whilst studying the UEFA B Licence course, he volunteered coaching with various semi-professional and professional club youth teams and academies, and eventually became an U11 Academy Coach at then EFL Rochdale AFC's famed EPPP Category 3 Academy. Whilst with Rochdale, Gérard coached across all ages from U8-U16, was responsible for the 12-16 Day-Release program and later became the U12 and U14 Lead Academy Coach. During his time with Rochdale, the Academy became recognised as the #1 Academy for Productivity in England across all Cat 3 Academy Clubs (2nd year succession), #3 all 92 pro clubs and the 2nd highest in the English Football League (Source: Premier League)
During his time with Rochdale, the Academy produced more home grown players to play 1st team football than any other club at Cat 3 in England. 

Whilst as a part-time Academy Coach at Rochdale from 2010-2015, he worked as Academy Coach with Richmond International Academic & Soccer Academy (RIASA), a world-leading private foreign collegiate academy based in Leeds and London. Joining RIASA in 2013 to coach U19 Youth Team and Reserve teams, alongside first-team players with semi-professional Eccleshill United FC, he left Rochdale to join RIASA full-time as the Head Academy Coach in 2015, which saw him coach student-athletes aged 18-24 across a range of roles, as U19 Head Coach and Reserve Head Coach in the Youth Alliance and East Lancashire League, as a Head Coach/Manager with Eccleshill United FC in the North-East Counties League, as well as Head Coach / Head of Coaching at Bradford College Football Academy (ECFA Cat 2) and U21 Assistant/Development Squad Coach with Bradford City AFC.

In early 2016 he joined Eastside FC, a 501(c3) youth soccer club in South-East Michigan as the Club's Director of Coaching, helping to grow the Club significantly for nearly two years with back-to-back State Championships, creating and implementing the club curriculum and philosophy and achieving Director's Academy Status.

Upon returning back to England in the summer of 2017, Gérard became the Head of Academy Coaching at EFL League One professional Bristol Rovers FC (EPPP Cat 3 Academy), responsible for player and primarily coach development for U7-U18s, sitting on the Club's Technical Board alongside the First-team Manager, Assistant Manager and Academy Manager.  

He quickly returned to the U.S. as a Director of Coaching of a 501(c3) youth club in New York in 2018 and joined U.S. Soccer as a Grassroots Coach Educator teaching coaches on 4v4, 7v7, 9v9 and 11v11 Grassroots and National D Licence courses.

In 2020, Gérard was recruited by Osian Roberts, the former National Technical Director and Assistant Manager of the Wales National Team, to become an Elite Coach Educator for the Fédération Royale Marocaine de Football (Royal Moroccan Football Federation). As an Elite Coach Educator, he was responsible for all coach education, designing the national coaching courses, Game Model and Methodology where he taught and mentored all Moroccan Youth National coaches across the DTN from U15-U23s in the National Philosophy, Game Model, Principles and Methodology. He also assisted on the CAF Pro Licence, taught on the CAF A Licence, Instructors Licence, was the Course Director of the FRMF A Youth Licence, Botola Pro Technical Directors and Leaders courses and other training. He also assisted coaching U15-U20 Youth National teams and supported programs to grow the game nationally across the country, including supporting Women in Football education with the US Embassy in Rabat.

As a leader in coaching and coach education, Gérard has mentored coaches across all levels on behalf of four out of the six continental bodies of football governance (eg. CAF, CONCACAF, AFC and UEFA). This includes being a guest-speaker at various prestigious conferences globally, teaching High Performance Leadership on the AFC Pro Licence (Bangladesh Federation), CAF Pro Licence (working with likes of Aliou Cissé, Regrarui, Pitso et al.), CAF A Licence, UEFA B Licence (SFA, Malta FA, FA), UEFA C Licence (FA and FAW) and US Soccer courses (B Licence, C Licence, D Licence and grassroots). Additionally, he has delivered various CPD and Webinars for The Football Association, U.S. Soccer and in various English Premier League and Football League Academies on Practice Design and the use of augmented information to guide athlete search.

He is also the Founder and Director of online coaching education platform The CoachesClubhouse

Gérard is currently studying a PhD in Skill Adaptation, investigating how coaches can use feedback to guide the attentional search of athletes, to help players become better at searching for information from the environment in order to solve problems.

Gérard has previously graduated with a Master's degree in Performance Coaching from the University of Stirling in 2014, and holds a Teaching degree (PGCE) from the University of Huddersfield in 2015 where in the same year, he became a Published Author in Communication Psychology with his book titled "Let's Talk Soccer". He has also been published in several best-selling football coaching and business books, including research articles on coaching.

Since 2022, Gérard has served as a Director of Coaching, Sporting City - North Region at MLS Sporting Kansas City where he helped create and establish a brand new Youth Academy Affiliate club, recruit coaches & players and implement a club-wide curriculum, coach education, player development philosophy and business strategy that impacts 700 U8-U19 boys & girls and 1500 recreational players. With his role, he has mentored coaches that manage teams in national MLS Next and Girls Academy platforms, as well as regional and local competitions across the U.S. Soccer B Licence, C Licence, D Licence and grassroots courses.