Most players never see the paperwork behind their Sunday league season. But right now, English football is operating under a genuine national plan that shapes almost everything happening at grassroots level — from new pitches to referee support to how clubs are run. Here’s what it actually says.
What This Strategy Actually Is
In late 2024, the FA launched its overarching four-year strategy, titled “Inspiring Positive Change Through Football,” covering the whole of English football through to 2028. Sitting inside that wider plan is a dedicated grassroots strategy called “A Thriving Grassroots Game,” built specifically around the adult and youth grassroots game.
This wasn’t a strategy written in isolation. It followed the biggest consultation process the FA has ever run with the grassroots game, gathering input directly from the County FA network and the clubs, leagues, and volunteers who actually run football week to week. County FAs across England have since adopted the same strategic framework, aligning local priorities with the national plan rather than working from separate, disconnected goals.
The Numbers Behind the Ambition
The strategy sets out genuinely specific targets, not vague aspirations. By 2028, the FA is aiming for 220,000 new players across 15,000 new teams nationally. On facilities, the target is 12,000 quality grass pitches, alongside more than 300 new artificial pitches added to the network.
To put the scale of grassroots football’s value in context, the FA’s accompanying report found that grassroots football now contributes £15.9 billion a year to English society, up from £10.2 billion in 2021. That’s a genuine, measured increase in value, not just a headline figure repeated from previous years.
The Three Priorities Driving the Whole Strategy
Rather than a scattered list of initiatives, the FA built the strategy around three core drivers.
The first is supporting thriving community clubs — helping clubs grow sustainably, operate well, and genuinely serve their local community rather than just survive season to season. The second is connecting with and serving participants better, largely through improved digital services that make it easier for players, coaches, and volunteers to find opportunities and manage the admin side of the game. The third is progressing the game’s governance, aiming for the highest standards of oversight at every level of grassroots football, not just at the top of the pyramid.
Underneath those three drivers sit five specific priority areas: improving playing choice and opportunity, growing female and disability participation, tackling poor behaviour through clearer sanctions, developing thriving community clubs, and strengthening the volunteer network that keeps the entire system running.
What FA Leadership Actually Said About It
FA CEO Mark Bullingham framed the strategy around investment in facilities and culture in equal measure. He described plans to invest in new quality grass pitches to reach the 12,000 target, alongside more than 300 new artificial pitches, while also driving equal opportunities for women and girls, improving facilities, tackling unacceptable behaviour, and supporting volunteers, coaches, and referees directly.
FA director of football development James Kendall added that the strategy was built “for the game, by the game,” pointing to real progress under the previous strategy as the foundation for going further this time. He specifically named investment in pitches, growth in female and disability participation, tackling poor behaviour through robust sanctions, and growing the volunteer network as the areas where the FA intends to build on what’s already been achieved.
Why This Actually Matters for Your Club
It’s easy to treat a governing body’s strategy document as background noise that has nothing to do with a Sunday morning fixture. But several things adult grassroots clubs have already experienced this season trace directly back to this plan. The minimum 10-match ban for discriminatory misconduct, the new referee powers to pause matches when behaviour escalates, and the continued rollout of Football Foundation pitch funding are not separate, unrelated developments. They’re specific, visible outputs of the same strategy outlined here.
Understanding that connection matters because it reframes how clubs should think about engaging with their County FA. This isn’t a one-way relationship where rules simply get handed down from above. The strategy was explicitly built from consultation with the grassroots game itself, and County FAs are expected to adapt the same framework to local needs rather than applying it identically everywhere.
For a club dealing with funding pressure, volunteer shortages, or difficulty accessing decent facilities, that’s a genuine, if imperfect, avenue worth using. Feedback fed into a County FA today plausibly shapes how the next phase of a national strategy gets applied locally tomorrow.
The Honest Picture
No strategy document guarantees results, and it’s worth being clear-eyed about that. Grassroots football still faces real, ongoing difficulties — funding gaps, a referee shortage, and volunteer burnout among them, all challenges we’ve covered in detail elsewhere. This strategy is the FA’s stated plan for addressing those problems, not proof that they’re already solved.
What it does offer is a genuine, structured framework, with specific targets and named priorities, rather than football’s governing body simply reacting to problems as they arise. Whether the 2028 targets get hit will depend on execution over the coming seasons — but for the first time in a while, grassroots football’s biggest challenges are being addressed under one coordinated national plan, rather than left to individual clubs and leagues to solve entirely on their own.