Hi,

Three weeks ago I wrote to you about technology in youth football, and I said I'd come back to VR specifically. This is that email.

I thought it would take me a weekend. It took three weeks, because there is a lot more published on this than I expected (and yes, I probably went further down the rabbit hole than I needed to). One part of it also turned out to be more convincing than I thought it would be, which I wasn't expecting at all.

I'll go deeper below. But if you don't want every detail, here's the TL;DR:

Now for the details.

Scanning. This is the claim in nearly every ad, and it's the one that holds up. The best study I found ran youth players through eight weeks of either immersive VR match scenarios, or the same scenarios on a flat video screen. Both groups got better. But the VR group scanned more often, held each look longer, and passed measurably better once they were back out on grass.

That last bit is rare, and it's why I've kept this one. Plenty of studies show a child improving at the thing you trained them on. Very few show it turning up in a match.

So why did this one work? Look at the two conditions again. On the flat screen, the information came to the player. In the headset, the player had to go and get it. Turn the head, turn the body, look over the shoulder — the way you do when someone is closing you down and you need to know what's behind you before the ball arrives.

Which is really the same thing I keep writing to you about. The headset just happened to be the thing forcing it.

Dot-tracking and reaction lights. Now watch what happens when that resemblance goes away. Most cognitive-training products aren't football at all. Follow four spheres among eight as they float around, faster and faster. Hit the light when it flashes. The pitch is that you're training the attention underneath football, so everything above it gets better.

It doesn't work. A follow-up study in elite teenagers and college players found no improvement in passing accuracy, none in decision-making, and no relationship to how those careers went afterwards. Other work found the same.

I'd point out how strong that result actually is. These weren't beginners who improve at everything you give them. These were good players, using the most-studied tool in the category, in exactly the situation where an effect should have shown up if there was one.

Getting better at tracking dots makes your child better at tracking dots.

Balance and agility. A trial published this year found that adding VR to a standard warm-up improved balance and agility more than the warm-up on its own. Balance was measured by standing on one leg and reaching as far forward as possible. Agility was measured by running a fixed pattern around cones.

So, cool. Your child can now stand on one leg and reach further forward than they could before.

The only problem is that this doesn't transfer to the game, because nothing resembling it is required during one. And the agility test is a cone drill, which doesn't look like football either.

Same rule as everywhere else here. Getting better at a balance test is getting better at a balance test.

The brain studies. There's research suggesting that VR training produces measurable changes in the parts of the brain dealing with anticipation and movement preparation. It's interesting stuff. It's also a preprint, which means nobody independent has checked it yet.

But the bigger issue is that brains change in response to anything you repeat. "We measured a change in the brain" and "the child plays better" are two different claims, and only one of them was tested.

Heading. This is where I changed my mind a bit. Simulators let kids practise the timing, the run and the contact point without a ball ever touching their head, and in one study they went on to score more real goals afterwards, with no impacts at all. A second trial compared VR-only against VR plus physical heading. Both improved. The combined group improved more.

Supplement, never replacement. That's the whole story in one line.

Motion sickness. The ads don't mention this one. Susceptibility to sickness in virtual environments peaks somewhere between about two and twelve years old, which is more or less exactly who this is being sold to. And a session that makes a child feel unwell doesn't just get written off. Their working memory and attention are measurably worse for a while afterwards. So if your child is queasy and you push them through the session anyway, you're training the opposite of what you paid for.

Something less obvious. This is the one that concerns me most, and it's closest to my own work.

In a headset, your child's eyes focus at one distance and point at another. Out on grass, those two things always agree. So the depth your child is seeing inside the headset isn't quite the depth that exists on a pitch.

That matters because movement is guided by what you're seeing while you're moving; continuously, the whole way through. Change what they're seeing and you change what the movement gets tuned to. It's a bit like a child who has only ever practised on a flat, dry driveway and then plays their first match on a heavy grass pitch. Everything is slightly late, slightly off. Not because they forgot how to play. Because the surface is telling them something different and they haven't adjusted to it yet.

A headset does the same thing to their eyes.

Cost. The academically validated systems run to several thousand a year, once you include the computer, the trackers and the space. The consumer versions need a headset plus an ongoing subscription. And none of them give you a ball on the foot, grass under the studs, a shoulder from a defender, or a teammate shouting at you.

So, back to the rule at the top.

Look again at the two things that actually crossed over into real matches. Both of them made the child do something a match makes them do. Turn the head to find information that isn't in front of them. Time a run onto a ball that's already travelling.

Now look at everything that failed. Floating spheres. Flashing lights. A balance test. None of those are football, and none of them transferred.

The headset was never the active ingredient. The resemblance was. VR only works to the degree that it looks like a match — which is the same thing I'd tell you about a cone drill, a private session, or a Tuesday evening in the garden.

That's why I'd call almost all of this interesting, not important. Your backyard already passes the test that a ten-thousand-dollar rig only sometimes passes: a real ball, real ground, a real opponent, and a reason to look up before it arrives.

If you're going to use VR anyway, use it where a backyard can't reach — the eleven-a-side picture, the injured spell, the long winter. Match footage only. Eleven or twelve and up. Fifteen to twenty minutes, two or three times a week. Stop the moment they feel ill.

Everything else, you can already do for free.

Best,

Hans Martin

P.S. I read all replies, so if you do have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me by replying to this email!

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