What you actually need.

The essentials

Worth having

Skip these

• Branded cones — generic ones do the same job for half the price.
• Premium tackle pads — you don't need them at grassroots youth. Skip until U16+.
• Reaction balls — gimmicky. The skills they claim to build are better trained through games.
• Speed parachutes — academy-level kit. At grassroots, lap-style fitness work is the wrong fitness work anyway.
• Coaching apps with subscription fees — most of what they offer is on free sites (this one included).
• Permanent kit bags over £100 — a £25 sports holdall does the same job and you'll replace it every 2 years anyway.

Improvise these

Some sessions you don't have full kit. Here's what works as a substitute:

• No cones? Water bottles, training tops, or shoes laid down work as boundary markers.
• No mini-goals? 2 cones spaced 2 yards apart count as a goal. Slight loss of realism, no loss of teaching value.
• No training bibs? Have one team take their tops off (warm weather) or run colour vs no-colour. Awkward but works.
• No whistle? Loud clap or shout. Less precise but kids adapt.
• No GK gloves? Bare hands fine for U7-U10 light keeping. U11+ should have them — borrow if necessary.

Total starter cost

If you're buying everything from scratch, budget £100-£150. That covers:

• 20 mixed cones — £15
• 8 size-4 footballs — £40 (or £25 second-hand)
• 10 mesh bibs (2 colours) — £15
• 2 pop-up mini-goals — £25
• First aid kit — £20
• Whistle — £3
• GK gloves — £15

Most clubs have a kit cupboard with most of this — talk to your club secretary before buying. The kit lasts years if it's looked after.

Ball & squad size by age group

FA-recommended ball size and typical squad size for each age group — see our full pitch size guide for pitch and goal dimensions.

Kit budget calculator

Enter your squad size and age group to get a scaled shopping list with a running total, based on the starter-cost figures above.

Building your kit over a season, not all at once

Most new coaches try to buy everything in the first week and end up either overspending or standing in front of 14 kids with half the kit still in an Amazon basket. It doesn't need to happen in one go, and for most grassroots teams it shouldn't — spreading the spend also spreads the load if you're asking parents or the club to chip in.

Before the first session (non-negotiable): cones, a whistle, and enough footballs that pairs aren't queuing for a ball. That's genuinely all you need to run a session that teaches something. Everything else can wait.

Within the first month: bibs (you'll want them the first time you need two even teams for a small-sided game) and a first aid kit if the club doesn't already keep one pitchside. If you're coaching a keeper, this is also when GK gloves stop being optional — kids grow into the position fast and bare-hand crosses at speed are a genuine deterrent to a nervous 8-year-old.

Before pre-season fitness work starts: mini-goals if you don't already have access to full-size ones, plus hurdles if your sessions lean into agility circuits. Neither is essential before this point because most technical work (passing, first touch, dribbling) doesn't need a goal at all.

Only once the basics are bedded in: a whiteboard, an agility ladder, anything from the "worth having" list. These make coaching easier once you know what you're actually short of — buying them on day one, before you've run a session, means guessing at what you'll need instead of knowing.

The one exception to "spread it out": if your club has a kit grant, group order, or end-of-season clearance sale, buy ahead of need while the price is good. Kit doesn't go off. Money saved on a group cone order in June is money you don't have to find again in September.

Storage, maintenance, and making kit last

The kit that costs the most over three seasons isn't the kit you buy once — it's the kit you have to keep replacing because it wasn't looked after. A few habits add years to a kit bag's life:

• Dry before you bag it. Bibs and footballs left wet in a sealed bag for a week grow mould and the bibs start to smell permanently. If a session gets rained off, hang bibs to dry before they go back in the bag, even if that means a night on a radiator.
• Deflate footballs slightly for storage. A ball left fully inflated in a hot car boot over summer loses shape faster than one stored at slightly reduced pressure. Re-inflate before the next session — it takes thirty seconds with a hand pump.
• Rotate cones, don't stack them in the sun. UV breaks down cheap plastic cones faster than use does. If they live in a car boot, keep them out of direct sun where possible; it's the single biggest driver of cones going brittle and cracking.
• Count kit in and out every session. Sounds obvious, but the most common way clubs lose bibs and cones isn't wear — it's leaving them on the pitch after training. A 60-second headcount of cones at the end of every session pays for itself within a season.
• Wash bibs on a cool cycle, not hot. Mesh bibs shrink and the fabric weakens under repeated hot washes. A cool wash every week or two keeps them wearable for years instead of one season.
• Check first aid kit contents monthly, not just at "6 months." Plasters and ice packs get used mid-season without anyone restocking. A quick check before a big fixture is worth the two minutes it takes.

Getting kit for free or heavily discounted

Grassroots football runs on hand-me-downs more than any equipment guide likes to admit. Before buying anything new, it's worth working through these first — most clubs have more spare kit sitting in a store cupboard than anyone realises:

• Ask your club secretary before buying anything. This is the single highest-value tip on this page. Clubs accumulate cones, bibs, and even mini-goals from teams that have folded, players who've moved up an age group, or previous coaches who over-bought. It costs nothing to ask.
• End-of-season clearance. Sports retailers discount training kit heavily in July and August as new-season stock arrives — cones, bibs, and footballs are routinely 30-50% off. If you know you'll need kit for September, buying in late July is the cheapest window of the year.
• Parent-shared kit bags. Some teams split kit ownership across two or three parent volunteers instead of one coach buying everything — spreads both the cost and the "who's got the bag this week" logistics.
• Facebook Marketplace and local sports forums. Clubs and individuals selling on outgrown or surplus kit is common, particularly for footballs and mini-goals, which don't wear out the way bibs do.
• Manufacturer and league sponsorship schemes. Some county FAs and league sponsors run kit grant schemes for new grassroots teams — worth a search or a question to your league secretary before assuming you're buying everything yourself.

Mistakes new coaches make with equipment

A few patterns come up again and again with first-time grassroots coaches, and all of them are avoidable:

• Buying adult-size everything. A size 5 ball for a U8 session isn't "growing into it" — it actively slows technical development because the ball is too big and heavy to control the way the drill intends. Match ball size to age group every time, not to what's cheapest in bulk.
• Not buying enough footballs. Four balls for sixteen kids means most of a session is queuing, not touching a ball. Aim for roughly one ball per 1.5 players in any passing or first-touch drill — the age-by-age table above assumes that ratio.
• Overspending on the first order. New coaches often buy the premium version of everything before running a single session. Cones and bibs don't need to be expensive — the "skip these" list above exists because a lot of higher-priced kit doesn't outperform the basics at grassroots level.
• No spare whistle or first aid kit. Both are cheap and both are the two items most likely to go missing mid-season. A spare of each costs under £25 combined and saves a session being disrupted.
• Ignoring storage until kit is already ruined. Most equipment doesn't fail from use — it fails from being left wet, in the sun, or loose in a car boot for a season. See the maintenance section above.

Session-type checklists

What you actually need to bring changes by session type. These are the practical packing lists we use as a quick pre-session check:

Standard weekly training (60-90 min): cones, footballs (1 per 1.5 players), bibs, whistle, first aid kit. Mini-goals if the session includes small-sided games; whiteboard if it's a tactical-focus session.

Pre-season fitness block: cones, hurdles if used, footballs (fewer needed if the session is running-heavy rather than ball-heavy), first aid kit, water for breaks. Agility ladder if footwork drills are planned.

Match day: match ball(s) correctly sized and inflated, first aid kit, spare bibs in the team's second colour in case of a colour clash, whistle if you're assistant-refereeing, water bottles, and any matchday paperwork your league requires (team sheets, player registration cards).

Wet-weather / indoor session: reduce cone count if space is tight, bring towels if the venue doesn't provide them, and check footballs aren't waterlogged from the previous outdoor session — a heavy ball changes technique outcomes for younger age groups in particular.

Equipment by training focus

What you actually need changes by what the session is training. Each row links through to our full drill library for that focus, so you can go straight from "what kit do I need" to "here are the drills that use it."

* Links marked (Amazon*) go to Amazon and use the SimpleDrills affiliate tag. If you buy something, SimpleDrills earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. Links are only added where the product is genuinely useful — they don't affect the editorial content of this page.

More buying guides

Complete training equipment buying guide · The coach's kit bag · Goalkeeper equipment by age

Buying guides

Detailed buying guides for every piece of grassroots kit — what to look for, which to avoid, and how many you actually need.

• Best Training Footballs (2026)
• Best Portable Goals (2026)
• Best Training Cones (2026)
• Best Training Bibs (2026)
• Best Youth GK Gloves (2026)
• Best Agility Ladders (2026)
• Best Coaching Boards (2026)
• The Complete Coaching Kit Bag (2026)