Football Coach CV Examples & Writing Guide

This example is a coach in semi-professional non-league football, in a paid role that combines the men's first team with running the youth section. Many paid coaching jobs below the professional game look like this. If you coach in a professional club academy, the structure is the same, and there is a section further down on exactly what to change. The person and the clubs are invented.

At a club the decision usually sits with the chair, the director of football or the committee, and for youth roles the youth secretary or welfare officer as well. They are hiring someone to run a team or a section, not just pick the side, and they are worried about the parts of the job that end up in the local paper.

• Level and role. Head coach or manager, assistant, goalkeeper coach, age-group or youth coach, grassroots or academy, club or school. Say the league or age group, the squad size and the staff you led.
• Record with context. A 71-24-25 (W-D-L) record means more with the starting point attached: where the team was when you took over and where it is now.
• Players, not just wins. Player progress, youth players promoted to the first team, county call-ups, moves to academies and how many players stayed for several seasons. Small clubs care about having enough teams more than trophies.
• Qualifications and checks. Your coaching badge with level and year, first aid with CPR and AED and, once you work with under-18s, a current Enhanced DBS check and safeguarding training.
• The work around the team. Budget, kit, travel, fixtures, pitch bookings, sponsorship, fundraising, parent meetings. A head coach or coordinator role is an admin job with training sessions attached.

“Everybody sends me a won-lost record. What tells me who the coach is comes further down: participation numbers, team GPA, how many kids stayed in the programme four years, whether the discipline problems went away. Wins follow that stuff. Nobody on this committee has ever hired a coach on record alone.”

Coaching CVs fail in the same way: they list duties any coach has. Every bullet below is available to you, and most coaches never write them down.

Three lines: years and level, squad and staff size, record with context, and one player-development number. A career objective belongs only to first-time and volunteer coaches.

Requirements are set by the FA or your national association, your league and your club, so check those before you apply. These are the ones that appear in job adverts most often.

• The coaching pathway: in England the FA runs coach education, starting with the Introduction to Coaching Football course and moving up to the UEFA C, B and A Licences, with the UEFA Pro Licence at the top. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own national associations.
• Academy football: coaching roles in professional club academies usually ask for a higher licence, often the UEFA B or A Licence, or specialist youth coaching qualifications. Give the exact name on your certificate and the year.
• Safeguarding: coaches working with under-18s at affiliated football clubs are generally required to hold an Enhanced DBS check and complete the FA's safeguarding training. List both with the year.
• Every level: first aid with CPR and AED, plus an emergency action plan for your ground. Put these on the page, because no club will leave you in charge of a youth team without them.
• Teaching: school and college roles that combine PE teaching and coaching usually ask for QTS or a further education teaching qualification. Name it and the subjects you teach.
• Professional game: head coaches in the top divisions are expected to hold the UEFA Pro Licence. If you have worked as an assistant in the professional game, name the league and your licence.
• Strength side: UKSCA accreditation, or the NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist credential, is worth a line if you run strength and conditioning.

Most of the page stays the same. These are the parts to change for a professional club academy, and the mistake to avoid is a grassroots CV with the word academy pasted over it.

• Lead with your licence level, for example the UEFA B or A Licence, and your safeguarding training. In academy football the licence does the job that the win-draw-loss record does in non-league football.
• Name age groups and formats: U10 7v7, U12 9v9, U15 and U17 11v11, U18 and U21. Also say whether it was grassroots, club, academy or school.
• Give the results a football reader recognises: league position, promotion or survival in the relevant youth league, cup runs, and goals for and against if the numbers are good.
• Show a playing model rather than a system name. Say how the team plays, how you train it, and what changed measurably: possession, chances created, set-piece goals, minutes shared across the squad.
• Player pathway matters more than wins in academy football: players moved up an age group, offered a scholarship or a professional contract, called up to representative squads, or signed by other academies.
• Say whether you do your own session planning, and name the platform if you use one for session design or video analysis.
• In Ireland and most of Europe the badges are UEFA licences issued by the national association, so name your licence and its UEFA level. If you are applying to a US school or club, the document is called a resume and the licences are US Soccer ones.

Every club and school needs assistant coaches, and most of the roles are voluntary or paid a small fee. First-time coaches are taken on all the time. The people hiring need to see that you are safe, coachable and reliable around young people.

1. 1Header with your qualifications and checks first: first aid with CPR and AED, the entry-level coaching course for your sport, and your DBS status. This removes the biggest obstacle to hiring you.
2. 2A two-line career objective naming the sport, level and role you want, not just "a coaching role".
3. 3Playing experience with the level and years, and any captaincy or leadership role.
4. 4Any coaching you have already done, paid or not: youth grassroots teams, holiday camps, clinics, refereeing, tutoring, Scout or church leadership. Give the number of players and the length of the season.
5. 5Work or study that shows you can handle a squad and paperwork: teaching, coaching courses, sports science modules, first aid training.
6. 6One line on what you would bring to the club or programme, tied to something specific such as goalkeeping, a holiday camp or strength and conditioning.

• One page for assistant and first-time roles. Two pages for a head coach application, where the panel expects programme detail, record history and references.
• Add a short record table if you have been a head coach: season, league, final position and cup result. It reads faster than sentences.
• Coaching philosophy belongs in a separate one-page document or your cover letter, not on the CV. Send it if the advert asks for it, and keep it concrete.
• List 3 to 4 referees with job titles and phone numbers, ideally a club chair or director of football, a head of sport and a fellow head coach. This field runs on phone calls.
• Reverse chronological, single column, plain. Schools, colleges and clubs run applications through standard tracking systems and online portals.
• Mirror the advert's words: programme development, player development, safeguarding, participation, budget, fundraising, feeder programme, emergency action plan, concussion protocol, staff supervision.
• UK conventions: no photo, no date of birth, and a short personal statement at the top. Keep a clean, public-facing social media presence, because the people hiring will look.