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The
response to my last column
Possess
the ball - a new philosophy about maintaining
possession of the football attracted an incredible response, with
the article being reproduced on coaching sites in the UK, Canada and
Germany as well as here in Australia.
The reaction to the video on Brazilian and American football
philosophy was extremely well received, and touched a nerve for
people who needed a visual explanation of what they see every
weekend in Australia, with parents and coaches screaming at kids who
just want to enjoy the game.
Of course as adults in charge of the junior and youth football
environment it is our responsibility to allow them to do so, and our
agenda to ensure that as they do they also learn the game in the
most effective way possible, developing and refining their technique
and understanding in an environment free of derision or the
adult-generated results phobia, so that they may become the finest
senior players their mental and physical capabilities will allow.
As discussed in
Possess
the ball - a new philosophy, one of the critical
areas that determines how a team will learn and play is the club and
coaches’ philosophy of football, that is, how they wish to see it
played.
It is not difficult to develop the proper philosophy, merely sit
down and watch the world’s best teams play football and you will
notice that the Argentines and Brazilians, Barcelona and AC Milan,
Mexico and Italy, all have players who are perfectly comfortable on
and with the ball, play a game predominantly on the ground that is
based entirely on keeping the ball to make the opponent compete
defensively, and that the world's finest and most valuable players
rely on technique, skill and a football insight developed over
decades by exploring their capabilities in games of every kind.
Exploring, that is, without a coach telling them it can’t be so.
For how could the imperious Diego Maradona beat four and five
defenders at World Cup level if he had not attempted the feat tens
of thousands of times growing up, without being told it can’t be so?
How could Zinedine Zidane or Johan Cruyff, Pele or Garrincha,
Francesco Totti, Kaka or Ronaldinho play passes that no-one else
sees, drift into positions that others don’t sense, or score
wondrous goals from distance or chips from impossible angles if they
have not attempted the same thousands of times without the pressure
of a coach, or a parent, saying that was the wrong option?
And the more people who develop the right football philosophy, the
closer a country moves towards a positive football culture based on
a love of the ball and an appreciation of technique and skill, and
of beautiful football.
It will take decades to change a national understanding, but for
each parent and coach who sees the light, we move forward.
One of my arguments a few years ago in
Revolution
not Evolution was that our British heritage has
culturally translated across to football, which saw almost all of
our major coaching roles go to Brits, particularly English coaches,
including key roles such as the National coaching Director, AIS
coaching roles and the overwhelming majority of the National
Training Centres in the States.
The natural result of this is that we developed a British
understanding of the game and this continues today with many of the
State academies and almost the entire developmental systems and
junior representative coaches in states like WA and Victoria, still
being of British background.
I argued that this reliance on an outdated coaching culture and
playing philosophy holds us back from moving to a more technical
view of the game, and that in fact England is not producing world
class coaches because their methodology and understanding lags
behind the more successful countries such as France, the
Netherlands, Italy and the South American greats.
And while the message is slow to sink in here, the English Premier
League (EPL) clubs haven’t missed the point which is why they are
importing coaches from Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and France
as head coaches of their biggest clubs, and as youth directors and
skills trainers at the developmental level.
The parallels with Australia are very real and very important, such
as how the Socceroos are comfortable playing at a high intensity
such as in the EPL but when forced to slow down, keep the ball and
construct an attack we struggle for understanding and cohesion. Play
stops dead, runs aren’t made, and passes miss their mark.
This is one area where Asia will teach us the most and will,
hopefully, enforce cultural change at youth level, for it is one
thing to carry on in a column about the value of possession, quite a
more powerful demonstration when your national team so obviously
struggles at times to do so.
The first Asian Cup match against Oman was an excellent example, and
this is one of the reasons we needed (and need) a quality coach like
Hiddink, to overcome our technical deficiencies with organization
and tactical discipline.
Australian football is changing, though not fast enough at the
junior club level where most clubs are still intent on playing on
pitches that are too big with too many players, resulting in a lack
of relationship with the ball and too few opportunities for
youngsters to experience every football problem, too much pressure
from parents and coaches to not make mistakes, and a results focus
at young ages (below 15), which inhibits the learning process of
children.
All of this will change in time but the message must be continuously
pushed, and recently there have been a few articles of interest to
reinforce the arguments discussed in this column over the last few
years.
In
Five years
to save English football, fomrer Engladn
international Sir Trevor Brooking discusses the problems with
English football and their lack of a technical emphasis.
Another from Brooking,
FA enlist
experts to raise skill levels, in which he points
out that, though England made their first Under 21 semi final for
twenty years, they in fact had only 30% of possession against a
technically superior Dutch side who won the title (and 11 of the
Italian squad who won last year’s World Cup had also won a European
Under 21 title, proving the correlation to senior success).
England
pay the price for failing to invest in youth development
is a particularly excellent insight in to the importance of
technique, quoting the dual European Under 21 title winning Dutch
coach Foppe De Haan, and Hiddink.
Dutch
reform pays dividends discusses the rating system
for youth clubs implemented in Dutch football in 2002 by Louis Van
Gaal, which assesses the standard of players being produced, not
trophies won by the club’s junior teams.
This is the future in Australia, and the FFA have had discussions
with a group in the Netherlands recommended by the Dutch Football
Association (KNVB) to advise on such a system, so that in time every
junior club and every youth coach will be ranked on what they
produce, not how much they win.
At present, though, Australia are in a situation where the warnings
being shouted for decades by Johnny Warren and others, which were
never heeded have now come home to roost, and we are trying to
qualify for junior World Cups through Asia against players with
greater technical ability, who are in most instances better coached
than our teams.
So we must turn our focus right down to the earliest levels of the
game, to the next generation of junior players and their clubs to
build a new and better culture, and to this end we aired a video
clip on The World Game on Sunday 8 July of the Ajax Under
10’s.
It includes one of Australia’s most promising youngsters,
nine-year-old Panos Armenakis, and though only a couple of minutes
long, it nevertheless shows the style of football played, the
constant passing on angles on the ground, very few balls in the air,
early signs of good positional play and in particular, the keeper
rolling the ball out immediately having received it to the nearest
defender to start the play from defence.
You may ask yourself how it is that the style of football being
taught impacts on the players’ technical development, what they are
being asked to do and how this translates to the techniques they
must learn to use, and compare what you see against any Under 10
team in this country.
I read in the UEFA Grass Roots Newsletter this month that the Dutch
have a saying: No Youth. No Future.
Australia needs desperately to implement a national plan to start
developing both.
Last modified: 12
July 2007 11:17:34
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