coachzone wrote:Have a read of the following. Quite and interesting perspective and insight. This is Part 1 of 10. Written by Assistant Coach of Perth's W-League team..
http://www.coachzone.com.au/Blogs Thanks for posting this , Coachzone.
It is also topical because Keith, the author, is the assistant coach for Perth Glory's women's team. Opposite him as the men's head coach at Glory is Alistair Edwards. AE is the archetypal, highly technical and tactically aware coach of contemporaneous Australian football and probably our next FFA Technical Director after Han Berger.
Like most other people from my profession, teaching, the organisation of football sessions seems easy, because we do it all the time in a professional capacity. Most teachers would take what Keith says as a given. They would automatically do what Keith says coaches should do, without a second thought.
Also, in Australia we are very aware that we have lacked the technical and tactical know how to become a world powerhouse. Keith dismisses this, which is antithetical to the world's best practice found in KNVB and Clairefontaine.
Keith is also a product of the American college system. Appraised by those outside the country it is perceived as extremely backwards and heliocentric. Given the massive number of professional players (including their millions of US college footballers of both genders) the USA really underachieves for the number of footballers playing in full time programs.
We wouldn't even have a thousand in each gender in the whole of Australia, playing as much football as their millions of college players. They follow grid iron practices in college football. Politely, American football coaches are laughed at in Europe. They waste hours and hours on weight training, because they do it in grid iron. I know. I sought a lot of advice from elite coaches in Australia and overseas when a family member played college football.
That member did about 10 hours weight lifting in a week, lifting ridiculously big weights and wasting a lot of time starting to look like a professional body builder. A national Australian assistant coach, another Asian national team assistant coach, originally from here, and a KNVB staff coach, all concluded that it was absolutely preposterous and typical of "soccer' US style.
If Alistair Edwards was calling the shots at Perth, Keith's knowledge base would have been the antithesis to what he was looking for in Glory's assistant women's coach. Yes, Keith may have many useful attributes as a coach. He may be a great motivator, and have many good coaching qualities, but the technical and tactical know how to take Australian to the zenith of world football is probably not one of them.