It has been said before and it will be said again. Footballers in the British Isles are just not technical enough.
Physical, one-dimensional, predictable football. How often have we heard those terms when our home-grown talent is compared with foreign opposition? It may be a tiresome, timeworn, tedious debate, but it is unfortunately the truthful, debilitating disposition which threatens to leave football’s founders and its surrounding nations trailing the rest of the world for a long time to come.
Speaking this year, the most technically gifted central midfielder in the world, Xaxi Hernandez, claimed that Manchester United’s Paul Scholes is the best midfield player of the last 20 years – how could you argue with that? He can scan the pitch like no other, find and complete passes you wouldn’t dream of, and very, very rarely lose possession (he hasn’t been too bad in front of goal either has he?) Players like this are the key to unlocking defences; they are the secret to controlling games; but, regrettably, they are also as rare as an Emile Heskey goal in this part of Europe. We do our best to argue with Xavi’s philosophy.
More astonishingly though, the magician that is Paul Scholes lined out in an England shirt for just seven years – despite his football career expanding over a sevenTEEN year period so far. We don’t need to get into it - we all know how ridiculous the situation was – but you can’t help but think that Xavi hits the nail on the head when he says that Scholes would have been valued more if he was Spanish. Can anyone imagine the Barca number 6 being pushed to the left wing or even frozen out of the national team to accommodate other, less talented players? No matter who was not being selected (Cesc Fabregas anyone?), Xavi would not be moved from the centre where he belongs because if he was, then you take with him his eloquence and ability to demystify the attacking game into simple, beautiful and oh so effective football.
I think when the captain of THAT 1970 World Cup winning Brazil team warns us that, “unless you change your whole approach to football, nothing will get better”, then surely some sort of alarm bells should be going off somewhere. Carlos Alberto, a man after my own heart, reckons that the most important thing is that we improve our technique. And, as a coach with Brazilian Soccer Schools, I can’t stress just how much I agree with him. The Brazilian goes on to say that technical skills like dribbling, good movement and the ability to pick a pass are key to breaking teams down and I have experienced first hand just how vital these are – and just how effectively they can be developed.
The philosophy of Brazilian Soccer Schools (BSS) is based on the fact that the South American outfit are factually the most successful team in international football and, that’s right, they play the best football in that bargain as well. The programme uses the same techniques as they do on the streets of Brazil: a little well known concept called Futebol de Salao. I feel like I’m letting the cat out of the bag here, I really do, because ever since I have been introduced to this way of football, I can honestly say that my soccer competency has improved 10-fold (I was never one for exaggeration…). Futebol de Salao uses a size 2 ball and is much heavier than that of your normal regulated ball and thus has a limited bounce. This idea, of course, keeps the ball on the ground and helps address problems identified by the former Brazil captain of England’s lack of improvisation and their banal, repetitive use of the high ball into the area.
I don’t want to sound like I’m a publicist for the BSS scheme, I’m simply here to explore the best methods of training and, for me, Futebol de Salao is tailor made to answer our technical football cries. From day 1, kids are taught how to control the ball with the soles of their feet; they develop a unique and advantageous first-touch this way and learn to dribble with the ball under your feet – how often do we see this art performed by home grown players? This not only contributes to how comfortable players feel in possession, but it also encourages the use, and ease of use, of both feet from a very early age, and as they grow, players will learn to change direction, bluff opponents and play the Brazilian Way with an impressive command over the football.
When Fabio Capello took the reigns at Wembley, he stated (well, his interpreter stated) that one of his biggest challenges would be to overcome the “up and at ‘em” philosophy which was, and still is, so prevalent in the Premier League. How often did we hear people bemoan Ronaldo’s trickery on the wing? How often do we ignore Fabregas’ genius and question his guts to the physical battle? We, as 5 nations on the northwest of Europe, have turned our back and turned up our noses on the beautiful side of football and instead adopted a Jack Charlton-esc “Put ‘em under pressure” mantra. And as much as I enjoy a good underdog story, as much as I respect someone like Stoke City’s resilience, it is becoming all-too-clear that the Charles Reep school of thought is only a short term, results-based solution. No one playing route one, Wimbledon-style football will achieve notable success. And watching how easily Barcelona brushed everyone aside on their way to a second Champions League in three years, it is apparent that no “system” can beat the Catalan empire – to beat them, we’re going to have to match them. And whilst this is great for football, it is terrible news for the rest of us who lag so far behind and have copped on much too late.
You see, whilst the British and Irish youth systems have been designed to let players like Emile Heskey come through, their athlete-centred approach has for sure ensured underage success, but my oh my how it has been crippling in the long run. Take Man City as a perfect example: their contemporary academy has had great underage success because they brought through the biggest and fastest players from those age groups – but only Micah Richards fights for a place in the first XI there, and Daniel Sturridge seems to be the only other one who has made a name for himself. I mean, when a young player like Roy Keane is receiving rejection letters from fleets of shameful English clubs (most worryingly my own team, Villa) because he is too small, something is drastically wrong.
Meanwhile, in somewhere like Spain, and of course in Barcelona more specifically, players are being taught from the age of 10 of the shame of losing the ball – losing the ball at this age is, and should be, focussed on more than losing a game. But tragically, the importance of possession isn’t emphasised in our culture and we are left with the by-product of central midfielders who are actually afraid of possession (I don’t want to name names, Michael Carrick). The English have opted to concentrate on winning every possible match and whilst this has been great for the competitiveness of our nations and for the emergence of the Premier League as undoubtedly the best league in the world, it has cost us dearly on the international stage and in developing our own players. The most recent World Cup and European Championship speak for themselves and it is worth noting that since 1998, it has been Spain who have won 19 UEFA and FIFA competitions from under 16 to under 21 level. While we were focussing on beating each other, we forgot about the big bad world outside the population of the UK and Ireland. But Spain didn’t. Because, as the Spanish qualified more than 15'000 UEFA A and UEFA Pro Licensed coaches (more than double of any other country), England have a record of just over 1'000 equivalents on their cards. Spain have always produced great players, but their transformation from a perennial underachiever to world beaters - Barca’s unofficial claim to the title as the greatest team ever - has not all come about through coincidence.
Sir Trevor Brooking has finally recognised that we need to develop ball control and comfortable players from the ages between 5 and 11. Curriculums like Brazilian Soccer Schools ensure that every player has a ball for the entire session and attempts to recreate patterns and individual ingenuity from former and current Brazilian teams and technical players. When youngsters see people like Messi and Cristiano do something magical, they want to go to the park the next day and try it themselves; they want to show it off in the playground. Six and seven year olds don’t want to replicate how Richard Dunne can hit the ball 60ft in the air; they don’t want to learn how Fletcher can chase after shadows all day, how Kyle Lafferty keeps himself company for 90 minutes; and I’ve certainly never seen a schoolchild back off into another to hold the ball up in the same exquisite manner as an ignorant England number 9.
However, the IFA grassroots programme states in its mission statement that it aims to improve the kids’ mental, moral and physical development. Okay, I’m all for that and I completely get the concept that we still need to focus on physical literacy fundamentals like movement and balance, and a bit of social development never hurt anyone. But why don’t the IFA have any football targets? And why don’t they develop those other necessities through football like other, better systems can do? I’ve seen some of their basic sessions and it would honestly frighten me to send an aspiring footballer there to stand in queue to get a touch of the ball where I could send him to BSS or somewhere like Dutch Soccer Schools which set out to “let the children play” and let them explore their own problem solving methods at their own individual pace. It’s like someone picked up a bucket of common sense and poured it over the curriculum designers (worst sentence ever?). And the results are ridiculous. Witnessing the elite 10-11 year old group at their base in Leeds, the BSS small sided, possession games have already shown that technique, vision and quick-thinking can be picked up so quickly like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll not even get into their kick-up and improvisation abilities, but their possession play honestly made it difficult to believe that I was in the north of England.
We are behind many other nations, there is no question about that – but maybe, just maybe we are starting to catch on and we can finally start the long process of catching up. It’s just about time that all you coaches out there scrap your old, outdated manuals and just give your players a ball and teach them what is so obviously the best and most effective form of football. FIFA have woken up to the subjective and objective results of Futebol de Salao and have ripped it off with their own version, Futsal - not immoral, just necessary. It's time that this part of the continent acted as well. We don’t need fancy, hackneyed drills for a session to run smoothly – not at that age. We need to let the children play and we need to be able to work with each of them on a one-to-one basis. Just give them a ball and instil in them everything you shout at the TV every time you see Carrick blast the ball back to Van der Saar, every time you see John Terry being applauded for hitting Row Z, every time you see Heskey play… it’s that simple.
And who knows, maybe next time we won’t ignore a player like Paul Scholes.
