Recently Liverpool's Jamie Gaaragher was interviewd about coaching. He said that some years ago KNVB was considered best methodology. Then Clairefontaine, the French academy, was considered to be world's best practice.

Now he contends Barca Academy is considered world's best practice.

Given two of the above have a massive Dutch influence, it seems plausible Australia has gone down this road. Also, Germany has overhauled their system based on Dutch principles.

In 2006, if we had had a French coach and the Socceroos were successful, we may have gone down the French coaching track. Instead Hiddink had Dutch connections.

South American practice is probably based more on having large numbers of kids who have played enormous amounts of street football, which is probably a major reason for their success.

Conversely, the Europeans have probably produced more footballers through organised club/ national federation academy practices than South America. In Australia, given other distractions, being a western country, we are unlikely to replicate producing large numbers of good footballers through playing lots of street football. European practices probably best suits Australia.

The first three placed teams at the last World Cup all used Dutch practice.

Some good points here. I agree that we have adapted the dutch system merely because it was a dutch coach with a better playing system than we had which combined with our best players to give us the best success at world cup level.

It was slightly ironic that the players that combined with Gus's system were not from the dutch leagues or products of a dutch system. I think it was simply the best players we have had in years coupled with a genious coach that yielded those results. For Australia to produce our best players in years the system had to be doing something right at the time. Hence everything fell into place at the right time.

Australian football is a bit like a boat full of people rowing in all different directions. It goes around in eliptic circles until finally it passes where it needs to be then heads off track again. It doesn't really matter whether we followed a Dutch, Brazilian, German or even a Marsian system. What we need is an Australian system based on the strengths of our multi-diverse culture. Every other sport here in Australia can crack a world championship or two there is no reason why Australian football cannot do the same.

Sure but again nost football litreature available to us has come from the UK and the Dutch. There is minimal liteature and from the South Americans French Germans and Italians availble in English in comparison which must give us a bias.

Plenty of French or German English-speaking football experts too though!

And if Zico can go to Japan, well...

Johnny Warren always said we should have taken a Brazilian path to Football development.

Clearly with the Dutch Methodology incompassing Cruyff metodology, Coerver, Ajax and the KNVB presents a style of learning suited to a first world nation.

While not underestimating South American football methods the available footballing literature and the availability of English speaking foreign coaches from the UK and now Holland seem to be the easy explaination.

Interesting thoughts - how are we culturally suited to a Dutch way though?

Maybe it's just my opinion but maybe it could be the Hiddink effect that we choosen the Dutch way, also culturally we are more suited to a northern European game style like Dutch, German etc just my opinion though...

We've all heard about the so-called Dutch Mafia and the British Disease present in the world game in Australia and preached around the world.

But given the fact that since 1978 there have only been three world cup finals not to feature a South American team, why is so much of the 'fashionable' or 'current' football thinking based on methods from Europe (and specifically from countries that have not won at senior level for quite some time - countries like France and Germany have been far more successful, yet we are not after their coaches, methodologies, or strategies?)

Discuss.


(Note: Not a naive comment or Dutch/Brit-bashing post either, just a legitimate question)