ARE WE SEARCHING FOR A ‘HOLY GRAIL’ ?

ARE WE SEARCHING FOR A ‘HOLY GRAIL’ ? / IS THERE REALLY A “SILVER BULLET”?

There is lots of discussion and opinion voiced through the internet and traditional media currently, (in England especially, but now expanding to Scotland after the Hearts / Tottenham game) about Youth/Player Development.

WHAT CONSTITUTES “BEST”?

There is a general appreciation of Spanish football and particularly the way Barcelona play and whilst the English Premier League is generally regarded as the “most exciting league in the world”, there is a tacit acceptance that it is not the best league in the world. I guess that depends on your perspective…. What is ‘best’? Is it the league that scores the most goals (Bundesliga) or is it the “technically” (?) best league (Spain?) or is it the league that produces the most home grown players or is it the league that generates most international winning sides (Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina)?

SPAIN

Spain is, arguably, the ‘best’ team, internationally at the moment and if Heineken did football teams, Barcelona is probably the one they would ‘do’. However, there is a school of thought that suggests that Spain are really playing a derivative Dutch game based on the ‘Total Football’ of the 70’s and which owes a debt of gratitude to the vision of Rinus Michels and Johann Cruijff (who is now 64, would you believe – remember the first ‘Cruyff Turn’?).

NB As of 24 August 2011 new FIFA rankings officially place the Netherlands as number 1 in the World. - Ed




YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

There is a groundswell of opinion against the ‘Win At All Costs’ approach to grassroots football (at the potential Elite level, results have come second to development and performance for donkey’s years).
Coaches and managers are increasingly aware of their responsibilities to teach the GAME not just how to WIN

(“In England, you teach your kids how to win. In Portugal and Spain they teach their kids how to play” - Jose Mourinho)

That being the case, everyone is looking to the optimum way to develop players. Accepting that at Grassroots level you may have players once a week for an hour and a half this is a bit of a challenge.

A great deal of coaches accept that ‘Constant’ or linear, drill based practices are a thing of the past and that this approach doesn’t transfer well to the game.

Increasingly, ‘amateur’ coaches at the grassroots level are creating and using game related practices to teach the game – overloads, under-loads, 2v2, 4v4, 6v6, 5v5+2 and so on to recreate what happens in the ‘big’ game in order to allow the players to develop experience at an accelerated rate.

These “variable” and “random” practices help players to build game memories, which, in turn, transfer better to the ‘real’ game and makes it easier to recall and apply in the weekend match.

“The same thing NEVER happens TWICE in a game – but LOTS of SIMILAR things happen ALL the time” – Paul Holder, FA Staff Coach

CONTINENTAL APPROACHES

Of course, on the continent, game-like practices have been the norm for years. But now we are looking to replicate the best of what the world has to offer in football – Spain and Barcelona are the current ‘Gold Standard’ of football.

But, with a closer look, Spain have won one World Cup and two European Championships (the first in 1964), so, not consistent performers by any stretch of the imagination (although Barcelona and Real Madrid have won a ton of European Cups -Champions League and equivalent- between them over the years).

Most people will accept the Brazilians as probably the all-time greats (5 World Cups) but the Italians aren’t far behind with 4 wins and of course the Germans have 3 World Cups and 3 European Championships and are regular qualifiers in the last 4 of major competitions.

Various nations have tried to mirror the Dutch development, again, as they are recognised as producing some of the best players and coaches, with the exportation of their respective talents across the world as evidence.

Or is it a case of having a Vision and a philosophy of the way to play that is important? After all, if you have no collective vision, how can you plan a developmental programme to which everyone can subscribe and that is intended to provide gradual steps from the grassroots to the pinnacle of the elite levels? If we are all singing from different hymn sheets, do we really know where we are headed?

THE SILVER BULLET / THE HOLY GRAIL OF FOOTBALL SUCCESS

But, aside from the discussions about the merits or de-merits of ‘Variable – Random’ practices over ‘Constant’ practices, are we deluding ourselves that someone has “The Answer” as to the best / one right way to develop players?

With an acknowledgement to “10,000 hours of deliberate practice” to develop expertise and the coincidence of opportunity and desire is the rest of it perhaps cyclical?

Looking at incidences of World Cup and European Championships’ winners, only Italy and Brazil have won back to back World Cups and no team has won consecutive European Championships.

Perhaps the consistency of achievement at the latter stages of major competitions would be a more accurate gauge of success, in which case you’d be hard pushed to better the record of the Germans, but we rarely seem to consider replicating their development approaches / strategies – maybe we should?

But does anyone really have all the answers? Is it more a coincidence and combination of developmental approach/philosophy, the numbers of people available, the quality of coaches (another post, perhaps?), money available, deliberate practice and the cyclical nature of another (I hesitate to use the phrase) “golden generation”?

THE FA CUP FINAL

So, it’s FA Cup Final Day again. For me, it’s one of the magic days in the annual calendar. It’s up there with birthdays, Christmas and the first day of school summer holidays. For the true football fan it was ever, and will forever be, thus.

It brings to mind magic days with my mates as an older teenager and into my twenties where we would meet early on the Saturday to have a few quiet beers, maybe a game of snooker and to discuss the forthcoming game.

It was always sunny and warm, of course, as all Cup Final days are. Well, except for the ones that were a bit colder with drizzle in the air, but they were few and far between.

Black & White Football

I can think further back, to the games I used to watch with my parents; games in black and white in the earliest case, with the curtains drawn against the sun reflecting across the TV screen and obscuring the view of one of the few, and most times only, live game shown on television at the time.

The first Cup Final I can remember clearly, coincidentally enough, was the 1969 Final between Manchester City and Leicester City (1-0 to Manchester with Neil Young – not the singer – being the scorer of the solitary goal). I can vaguely recall bits of the 1968 Final but it’s the ’69 version that sticks in my mind.













All Day Event

I can remember an ‘all-day’ Cup Final, with “It’s a Knockout”, cameras on the team coaches to Wembley and much discussion and prediction from the experts ‘back in the studio’.

The immediately post-adolescent years sent us on a quest to find the most accommodating parents with which to watch the game as brothers in arms. Brothers in Arms, in some cases genuine brothers, who had all played the game at some level both at school and since we left to make our way in the world.

Excited by the coming match and choosing one team about which we had to be partisan – you just CAN’T watch a Cup Final as a true neutral, can you? Except, of course, for the games where OUR team was IN the Final, in which case we didn’t have to choose to be partisan, we just were.

The accommodating parents, having determined to accept this rather large gathering of youngsters, could generally expect us to arrive some 30 minutes before kick-off, traditionally carrying some variations on a theme from the nearest chip shop. Later in life, when we had secured our own abodes one of us in turn down the years would be the host for the afternoon.

It was my turn to be the host, at my flat near the station, for the Coventry City versus Spurs Final, the majority of us supporting the underdogs Coventry and cheering in unison, when they went ahead, whilst at the same time sharing the pain of the two Spurs fans in our midst.

1983

I can remember being fascinated by the tradition and emotion that was, and still is, Abide with Me. I recall how, when Brighton & Hove Albion met Manchester United in the 1983 Final, crass and ignorant journalists condescendingly castigated Albion fans for singing, with gusto, the Cup Final hymn. We were inexperienced and naive, some said, in the following days’ papers. Maybe we were, but it was OUR Cup Final to live – theirs only to observe and report as mere bystanders to the passage of history.

Oh, and for the record; Smith DID score !

Time moves on and the group of friends have gone their own ways – some live close by still, but some are in foreign lands. Some are still here in England and one, whom we miss and remember, is no longer here.

But wherever we are, though we may be apart, I hope we are all watching the game together and recalling the shared memories of the games and the fun, the joy when our team won and the disappointment when we lost. The nonsense we talked when we analysed the game and the cases we made for why the team we cheered had lost.

It’s a Kind Of Magic

A day in the calendar, that’s all it appears, but they live in the memory every year it comes round. And that, my friends is why they call it The Magic of the FA Cup.