One of the challenges facing
this country, and particularly the FFA in their quest to make
improvements in the long term to Australian football, is to
develop a culture of football, which is almost the complete
opposite to where we are at this point in time.
A culture, which values the ball over the athlete, skill over
strength, and football intelligence over graft and effort.
We will need to develop intuitive players who are adaptable
during a game by instinct not input, and the natural precursor
to this of course is first to develop intelligent coaches.
As Johan Cruyff once said, how can the student be better than
the teacher?
So, to produce outstanding players we need excellent coaches who
have an understanding at the highest technical level.
This is indeed a long-term project requiring tremendous
improvement in our licenses and methodology, but in the meantime
one area that can be addressed is to continue to advance the
understanding of the football community, particularly at the
grass roots level, of what represents ‘good football’, and of
the importance of a philosophy of play based on possessing the
ball.
Yet when we talk about a culture of the game and particularly a
philosophy of play, all those reading this with a good
understanding of the game will know that all around us are signs
that at present our national philosophy is deficient.
For instance, visit any junior club around the country and you
will see more running than playing, and most players being
encouraged to play the ball forward as soon as possible,
regardless of the quality of the pass or any evaluation of the
option chosen.
In other words, there is a predominance of lumping the ball
forward for big, quick and usually strong kids to chase, to the
detriment of players who prefer to hold the ball and build up
play in a slower and more intelligent manner.
This is a by product of a poor football philosophy inherited
from England, which values fast play over good, and which
manifests itself in poor youth coaching.
But this is a short sighted strategy which is anti player
development since, whilst this may win games for now, this style
of play produces technically deficient players who will be
learning nothing about how to play the game which is precisely,
and only, what junior football is for!
And not only is it boring for the players, enforces results over
fun and enjoyment and therefore arguably produces a larger drop
out rate of youngsters in the early teens, it is in fact also
ineffective once the players mature and their physical strengths
converge as adults.
Every junior club in the country should be teaching their
coaches to appreciate that until the very late teens, the total
focus must be on producing players who understand and can play
the game, that is to say they can control and manipulate the
ball with great skill, maintain possession both individually and
collectively, intelligently construct an attack and respond well
in defence, and that teaching these principles of play
fundamentally must take total precedence over results.
And we will only be starting to improve when every youth coach
is judged on the quality of players he produces, not on the
amount of trophies he wins.
We must all recognize that effort and running alone don’t win
football matches, technique, skill, and intelligent players do.
That is why Brazil and Italy have nine World Cups between them,
Germany three and Argentina two. Because their football
cultures, and their philosophy of play, are based on these
characteristics.
If you want absolute confirmation of the need for change, this
year take a look at the Under 14 or 15 National championships
where tour best juniors come together, and you will see that I
am right.
These championships are shockingly low on teams that are both
technically (that is the individuals are capable), and
tactically (the team works together, demonstrates good cohesion,
and can solve problems collectively), competent at keeping the
football for long periods.
Or, better still, take a look at our national teams.
Both the Joeys and Young Socceroos who failed at even the
earliest Asian pre-qualifying stage could not keep the ball,
clearly neither could the 17 girls. In fact the only team that
played with any reasonable tactical skill was the Under 20 Young
Matildas, as yet our only youth age team to qualify though Asia,
who were intensely trained to do so and proved, as did the
Socceroos, that when our teams are well coached they are capable
of adaptation.
This inability to play to a high level is a factor of both
culture and philosophy.
And it remains a fundamental problem even at the highest senior
levels of our game.
In the last few weeks you might have noticed Sydney FC struggle
for long periods to keep the ball against pressure, likewise
Adelaide United against the Vietnamese, and the best sign of
what our poor philosophy of football and no insistence on
playing from defense at junior levels produces, is to see
Australia struggle to play under defensive pressure against
China in the second half of the recent international.
So, enough of where we are, let’s explore some key elements of a
good philosophy of football.
Here is a start for any youth coaches and parents interested to
know where they now stand, and in what direction they should be
heading:
1. To play the
ball on the ground at all times, which requires both supporting
play and good technique;
2. To play short
passes, which requires players to support each other in attack
and defense, and is harder to defend and anticipate;
3. To play only
longer balls in response to a movement by a team-mate not in the
hope of one - to move and ask for the ball after which the pass
is delivered;
4. To play longer
passes, and particularly those in the air, predominantly only
when there is no closer option and always into the feet of an
attacker, never just into space for them to chase;
5. To discourage
young keepers in kicking the ball long unless there is no other
option (and even here one can almost always be manufactured) and
at all times have the keeper roll the ball to a team-mate so the
team can begin to play immediately from the back;
6. If, at any
time, a youngster has no option to find a team-mate, they should
be encouraged always to keep the ball. This may mean shielding
it, keeping it moving to wait for a pass, or to dribble forward
to attack an opponent. At no time should they be told to kick it
away regardless of the position they play or where they are on
the field, and if the child loses the ball they should be
encouraged to try again;
7. To encourage
players to express themselves through their football and
recognize that everyone is not the same, and shouldn’t play so.
Some play fast, others slow, some play simple, others read
situations and find more complex solutions, and some have enough
skill to individually dominate a game, while others can only
dream of doing so, but all should be allowed to find their own
game not forced to conform to a uniform way of playing;
8. And, to SLOW
DOWN, or more specifically, vary the speed of play during a
game, which requires a team to hold the ball. After working to
recover possession, every young team should break forward only
if they have an advantage in attack, otherwise they should slow
the play down and possess the ball, back and across the field,
resting and starting to position themselves in attack to take
advantage of overloads in numbers, or weaknesses in defense.
Youth coaches need to understand that the object of football is
to keep the ball and to score goals through breaking down a
defense with passing and skill, not by booting the ball forward
hoping for a defensive mistake.
And of course a change in philosophy has ramifications for youth
training.
It means that at youth levels, the only suitable training
sessions should be completely with the ball, with every player
touching the ball between 500 and 1000 times, refining technique
and 1 v 1 skills, learning the game principally by playing in
small games of 2 v 2, 3 v 3, 4 v 4, 5 v 5 and overload practices
such as 4 v 2, 4 v 3, 5 v 2.
In this way good coaches can coach the key moments when in
possession, the opponent in possession or the changeover, build
awareness in the players to aid understanding and decision
making, and allow the players to develop a fee for the game that
comes only from thousands of hours playing it.
But at the same time the uneducated coach - such as the
voluntary parent supervisor - can, by playing these games, give
the players a structure, which aids their learning process
without having to coach specific points of play.
All fairly straightforward, but a long, long way from where the
bulk of our young teams are at right now.
So, how do you know where your club or coach stands from a
philosophical point of view? One of the best ways is by their
instructions to the players.
If the coach encourages players to slow down and relax on the
ball, to take their time, to possess the ball, to support each
other, to play together, to take opponents on, to take up
positions at angles to each other, to circulate the ball quickly
around the team, to play one and two touch football, to create
triangles and diamonds in their play, to pass backwards when no
forward option is rational, to use the goalkeeper to maintain
possession, to read game situations and play away from pressure
not into it, and to recognise and create numerical overloads,
they are on the right track.
If you hear a coach telling players to ‘get rid of it’, ‘clear
their lines’, ‘get it in the box’, ‘get stuck in’, ‘don’t play
at the back’, ‘don’t take risks’, telling a keeper to kick the
ball long or players to ‘hit the channels’, run a million miles.
Your child is in danger of becoming a boring and uninventive
player, and is most unlikely either truly to discover the joy of
playing the ball, or to even excel in the game against other
players who have spent a decade or more possessing the ball.
And as to the physical aspect and all those coaches who want to
make their young players run instead of learning to manipulate
the ball and the game itself, yes, at the elite level players
are very strong and often gifted physically like Thierry Henry
and Kaka, but just like these two the best are footballers
before athletes, and value technique over physique, because they
recognise that runners don’t make it to the top any more in
football.
And don’t forget that Australia has always been physically
strong, but we only started to improve when Guus Hiddink finally
told the players to keep the ball, to play out from the back (or
in his words, ‘to start the attack from defence’), to use space
more intelligently through better positional awareness, to stop
hitting the ball forward in hope or desperation, to understand
how to utilise the team’s spare man to keep possession, to
support the ball possessor in attack, and to be patient and play
in all directions in the build up phase until in a position to
strike at the opponent.
These are the principles, which underline the correct philosophy
of football, and the very ones every junior club and coach
should be required to teach.
Sometimes, of course, pictures tell a story most effectively and
I was recently sent an excellent video presentation by former
Marconi player and now youth coach Vince Colagiuri, which is one
of the best discussions into a youth development philosophy of
football that I have seen.
It compares the philosophy of play at youth level in the USA
against that of Brazil, and the findings presented about the USA
correlate exactly to what is happening here in Australia.
The video, titled Player Development Philosophy can be seen by
