Monday, December 3, 2007

Very sorry Sir Trevor, but ...

I read an article by Martin Samuel in the Times, today, about ‘the crisis facing youth football in England.’ It was based around an interview with the FA’s director of technical development, Sir Trevor Brooking.

There were various hints in the article about things that go wrong at grass-roots level; leagues that want to play 11-a-side for U-8s, the long-ball approach to winning games, and badly behaved parents making a nuisance of themselves from the touchlines.

I ran a boys club for 5 years and, though I say so myself, I was very good at it, practically a genius compared to some managers that I met. We were way ahead of most clubs in terms of the coaching that we offered, the ethos of the club (fun, fairness and player development, above all else), and in our communications and expectations of parents.

The unfortunate thing is that, despite giving it up - due to work commitments - several years ago, I still think that the FA and other involved bodies are yet to catch up to the level of enlightment that I and a few others had back in 2000. True, I believe that the FA do now set parental guidelines and they do try to get managers to take a half-day coaching course, but they still permit the counties to allow the leagues to operate on a point-scoring basis, and there are still plenty of small children playing on big pitches with big goals.

So, you may ask, what is wrong with leagues which award 3 points for a win and 1 for draw? Simple, it encourages the managers and the parents to worry about results. I sent 10 year-old players out to play in games where my best player was, on occasions, man-for-man marked. In other words, his opposite number was sacrificing his own game to stop my boy playing, which is ridiculous at that age.

Leagues, as we know them, are the perfect way to stand in the way of the development of personal skills.

Ideally you want players to be trying new skills and attempting to showboat a bit when they take the field, not playing safe for fear of surrendering possession. You want defenders to learn for themselves the risks involved in playing the ball neatly, or dribbling, out of their own penalty box, not to always be told to welly it clear. Players should not rigidly be set in one position for an entire season/s, they should be encouraged to learn about all aspects of the game by playing many different positions. Managers need to feel free to be fair to their youngsters and put their weaker players onto the field more often than some do, rather than think that they cannot risk doing so, for fear of weakening the team and losing a game.

All of these problems crop up in every league, in every team, every week. Believe me!

If you take away the points system in leagues and just leave the fixtures, the games will be just as exciting and the manager will still feel that he has to win, the parents will still be in raptures of ecstasy, or fits of anger on the touchline, but that absolute need to win will be diminished by just a bit. Perhaps enough to allow the manager to say that he needed to experiment on that particular day, because the result didn’t really matter. We thereby enable the bravest, most well-intentioned managers to feel free enough to lose matches in order to assist their players to develop.

Why do I think that this will work? It works in Holland and elsewhere.

All of this would take some selling to managers and parents alike, they would not get it straight away, just as nobody wanted 7-a-side for all U11’s before it was forced upon them. However, once it is spelled out to people they will see the point, we are all capable of grasping a better idea when it comes along, but the question is who is leading the way?

Martin Samuel made the point that to listen to Sir Trevor you get the impression that he is attempting to alter things from the standpoint of a frustrated bystander watching from the wings, rather than a Colonel ‘H’ Jones type who is storming the enemy from the front.

Brooking talks about the Professional Game Board and the FA Technical Control Board as groups that have to be brought into line and persauded before major alterations can be brought into effect. Even with the power of Google at my disposal I have been unable to find out very rapidly exactly what these groups do, but in a sense it does not matter. The point is, too many cooks are clearly spoiling the broth.

And this is always going to happen if it is allowed to. Everybody who loves football would like to be involved in it. If somebody asked me to join an important FA committee I would, then I would worry about whether if I was doing a worthwhile job afterwards.

If Sir Trevor cannot get out from the quicksand that he is currently flailing around in, then maybe he needs to be replaced by a stronger character, or else find re-enforcements.

For a long time I have felt that Simon Clifford is perfect for the position of FA director of technical development. He has a rare combination of vision, mastery of PR, pig-headedness, arrogance and obsession. There could not be a better candidate in my view. He would be just the kind of guy who, given the power, could steamroller new ideas into being and he would have the media dexterity and political guile to floor any obstructions from football quangos.

I have blogged about Simon Clifford before and, just as before, I will state that this is not because I have anything to gain from it, I just happen to think that he is an exceptional individual and perhaps even an authentic genius in his chosen field. And we are short of those in English football.

Very shortly the FA will most likely approach Jose Mourinho for the vacant position of England manager. They will do this because they see it as a no-brainer and a choice that will garner public support.

Asking Simon Clifford to take on the role of director of technical development would not have public support, most would ask ‘who the hell is he?’ On the other hand that is what they said about Arsene Wenger when Arsenal took him on and yet, despite the disquiet at the time, he did all right, didn’t he?

Simon Clifford's web site is: http://www.icfds.com/

The last time I gave Simon Clifford a mention it was in this posting:
English football and the Football Association

No comments: