FFA have  been to Japan often and are blown away by how good youth development is.

There is a feeling we can never catch up.

Arsene Wenger has recently stated Japan has a world class development system.

So why are we still trying to copy the Dutch / Belgium model ?
Mind you the mental aspect of the Japanese is something I don't we could replicate.

There is also the possibility of training with senior players by staying with a HAL club. I read another article on 442, where the SFC youth coach from evaluation  of Arnie's training sessions is trying to produce payers that fit his philosophy. This is good.

However, Arnold is backwards in a lot of ways and may not have pursued much professional development in Europe over the last five seasons - like many of his HAL rival coaches such as Kevin Muscat and John Aloisi.

Arnie may be stuck a little more with what he learnt from Pim and Guus. He has also done most of his coach education  with Holland's KNVB. The world has moved on since Pim and Guus as it inexorably does.

Last year with a good squad for the first time Arnie failed to  live  up to expectations at SFC, like the even more backwards FF before.

An amalgam of Dutch, German, Spanish, French, Belgian models that have a lot of similarities.

All of these nations have looked to the Dutch KNVB for methodology prior.

For the first time, the Dutch are now having to revamp their curriculum. They are in France and Germany trying to learn what they are not doing as well as the others.

Japan's youth system is very strong they have invested a lot of time and resources in the last 20 years making sure they match the world's best elite from u17 but as know things balance out and when they get older they get exposed for their lack of physical power and at time tactical naiveness.
But Japan have always been technically very strong, they probably in the world's top 10 in terms of high technical level and even teamwork but they lack other things i've mentioned in the first sentence.

Apart from having all j-league sides having youth academies down to u10 which they play all year round, they have done something very special in the grassroots.
Why they technically so strong? You can thank Tom Byer for that who has introduced the importance of learning technique and repetition of learning technique in the ages of 3-6, the thing is he doesnt teach the kids alone he educates of the parents of those the kids the importance of learning the basics and the right habits of the game at a very young age like what they do in the world class nations.
As he says culture eats coaching for breakfast!
And now he is trying to replicate the same in China, these countries understand the importance of having a strong grassroots foundation unlike us where we think development starts at the age of 9 like with SAP but where it should start by the time they could walk which Tom Byer has done in Japan is unbelievable they were nothing 20 years ago and look at them now. 

If the FFA are not careful and naive which i think they are already! They should seriously get on the phone to Tom Byer and ask for his opinion on how to fix our football i think he may know the answer, it all starts from the very start which we always get it wrong and by the time they hit their teens its too late.

Tom byer wouldn't last 10 mins here , totally differnt mental attitude towards sport and or repetition , as I've said earlier the discipline of the Japs can not be replicated in Australia .
Just not in or culture

In essence, this is true. Japanese kids will not leave their house for ages and ages and ages for studying and studying productively. Ridiculously disciplined and tenacious. In that sense, there probably aren't that many places in the world which are like Japan. China, I suppose. Soviet Russia was also hardcore.

But Australia's such a cruisy place. I think we need our system to make the football fun. They need to be encouraged to think outside the box and to play creatively, both in link-up play and in one-on-one's. This is more likely to suit Australian culture (whatever the hell that is).

Barca4Life

The are aspects of the Japanese system which Australia can, realistically, look to emulate. Things related to technical stuff, yes, to an extent. But it's just on another planet culturally. The level of dedication in the place is off the charts. It's such that it's easy to get kids to repetitive things in ways no reasonable person in most other parts of the world would ever consider.

We'd be better off looking at Iceland's rather successful system for cultural things. We'd find more in common with them culturally than we would with Japan (and no idea what we have in common culturally with Iceland except that Nordic folk tend to be both professional and easy-going, which we tend to be too, although not as much as Kiwis).

Only snake oil salesmen, failures & frauds continue to defend the indefensible.  They stake out a position regardless of facts in order to continue their disgraceful & disgusting mango sucking in order to deny one undeniable fact. 

Australian youth soccer is fucking shit. Fucking shit & will never ever be any good. 

Remember if you stick by the results don't matter mantra then you can eliminate accountability & oversight & continue to leech off the game like the over staffed EffEffAyyy do every game. 

Stick to youth eggball Straya because at youth football you are fucking shit. Fucking shit.  

So many conmen, failures & frauds in this thread & throughout the Strayan youth football system.  

I remember reading about youth development and attitude in baseball between Japan and America. What a Japanese player coming to America found was that in America they enjoyed playing the game, they had fun and as a result the players produced were more creative and flexible. In Japan the rigidity and constant drilling drained that out of them, it produced technical players, but ones who could rarely think on their feet. Also, that since young players trained with more fun they were able to absorb more in a shorter time. So, really ideally a happy balance needs to be found, the solution isn't in my opinion Victorian era rote drilling with iron discipline until your get bleed every night, although that can be part of the mix

Final tonight against Thailand. 

Thanks you condescending prick but we covered all of that. 

I'm not here to answer your questions... who do you think you are? You are not the convenor, or moderator, or quiz master, or whatever. I'll give an opinion, or identify bullshit. I'm not one of your schoolkids. I'm not going along with your "I'm an expert and I'm here to teach you all" game. You are just another joker on an internet forum. Why can't you converse with people here like a normal geezer, and not some sort pedagogue? You will reach the point where nobody will take you seriously...If you ever wanted to engage in a real discussion about football, of the sort millions of fans around the world have every day, I'd be happy to oblige... but I'm afraid you live in la la land.

Whilst we are on the subject of journalists, I'm finding it rather strange what you are saying about them. As you know, freedom of the press is supposed to operate in this country. Anyone can write about football, if they have a mind to do so.. its up to editors to accept or reject their writing. I don't think there is a rule that says you have to have a degree in football to write about it. It may be an advantage, but it is nice to have a broad spectrum of writing on the subject.

Someone with little background in football is quite entitled to attend a match and write about it. He can describe the stadium, the food and refreshments, the crowd, pick out some amusing incidents, and if he finally gives the score and goalscorers, some people will be happy and it will still be an interesting piece. This sort of human aspect of football seems to be beyond you, and your endless posts about tactics, techniques and formations is tedious and only of interest to a small minority.

So, does the FFA only want to accredit journalists who will write PR for them? And ban those who supposedly "don't know football"?

The facts are most of our so called football Journalists wouldn't have watched one minute of these youth tournaments 

That's not the point.  Anorak is saying only 'approved' footballing KNVB mileu types need apply for FFA accreditation.  All the other plebs can rack right off.

I've watched nearly every game.  The technical standard has ranged from woeful to brilliant.  Giving everyone a trophy and patting them on the back and saying we play better football when we lost 5 - 1 is a recipe for disaster.

For all the talk about tactics not one person has critiqued the game where we lost 5 - 1.  I've posted the video twice.  Every goal shows horrible technical deficiencies across the board.  Not one poster has the balls to admit that some players are not up to standard.

It's this sort of head in the sand garbage and elitist wank which is producing the rubbish we are forced to sit through.

Look only 2 or 3 players actually make it to senior socceroo level from every generation of junior teams.

I was worried after 2006 there were no good players coming through...and lo and behold Ange too over, took us to the world cup in 2014 and ..  look how well..ok you might have a point.

But it backs up Decentrics point that Journalists are more interested in bullshit storylines around governance etc. then they are quality of youth football 

It does nothing of the sort.  These kids need to be subjected to scrutiny.  Having sycophants and brown-nosing arse lickers reporting on the wonderful triangling abilities of our teams is hindering development not helping it.

Hard questions need to be asked.

Well , been as you know fucking everything about both the u16s and u19s why don't you give us your warts and all summary of each and every player ?
Maybe a breif note on each will do and then when you are finished maybe you can pick replacements for any you do not deem worthy to wear the Aus jumper.
We will be waiting :)

I know results aren't everything at youth level but the Joeys were really disappointing. Our play was alright at times but atrocious at most others, particularly defensively. We threw away a 2 goal lead to lose against Vietnam, got spanked 6-0 by Japan, and lost 1-0 to fucking Kyrgyzstan. That's just not good enough no matter how you look at it.

This crop of U16s showed great character in the AFF tournament where they fought back repeatedly to win the whole thing, so hopefully the players learn from the experience and grow as footballers; but there need to be some serious questions asked about the coaching staff and the system in general.

yeah but lets not forget this is the Centre of Excellence side. the Centre of Excellence side masquerading as the joeys. that is a slap to the face for me

I can think of at least one good reason why people are not ripping slathers off the players in the Joeys, it's because they are 16 years old. It is not a good look when a group of anonymous strangers get together online to write harsh, and from experience on this forum downright abusive, criticism of the performance of kids. I'm not saying that youth development in Australia is all rainbows and moonbeams, obviously it's not, just that there are ways of being constructive about it.

Anyone know a link for tonight's game? 

came here to see if this thread was less toxic....I'll come back later.

Do you have "kids" of your own?

Which is why I'll speak in generalities rather than explicits.

The first thing they need to do is stop blowing smoke up every kid's arse and cull the SAP program back by at least half.  There is FAR too much dead wood involved in SAP and a severe lack of intensity.  

If we want to get better as a country they need to set the bar WAAAAY high and keep it there and select only the very best and not just make up the numbers with whoever.  

Can't kick with both feet, not selected, can't trap a ball, not selected, can't take a first touch, not selected, no drive, no determination, wrong attitude, not selected, lack of intensity in training, booted out..

Establish right off the bat, in writing, what are the expectations and minimum standards of players at certain ages that are trialing for these teams.  

Be extremely harsh.

For example I'm involved in coaching 3 SAP sides (and overseeing other SAP age groups) andt taking just one age year for example these kids could easily be culled by one half without any effort at all.  It would distill the talent, create competition for places, harden kids up, raise the standard and create in the mind of the kids and the parents an expectation of excellence.

Instead of the best of the best you get a melange of kids that show 'promise' and 'potential' and a waste of resources, time and vast amounts of money from conned parents.

I have said this before 11 twelve year olds that play for fun on a concrete pitch court in Bosnia would wipe the floor of kids playing in a 13's, 14's SAP team hands down every day of the week.

I have my suspicions as to why the SAP programs and the like are so lackadaisical towards selecting players that aren't good enough.

Let's take a squad of 12 players in the under 13's for example.  There are 3 squads, each kid's parents pays at least $650.  That's $23 400 in the coffers.  Half of those kids shouldn't be there.  But given the cash involved are they going to run one team ($7 800) or three(23 400)?  Well you do the math.

Take the NTC's that are in Coffs coming up and that I'll be at for the week.  There are 27 teams.  Each team has what 15 players?  Each kid pays, depending on subsidies, somewhere between $1500 and $3000 to attend.

Taking the lower bound amount that's 27 teams x 15 players x $1500 = $607 500.  That's right more than half a million bucks at a minimum.  (Deduct some for expenses and you still have yourselves a nice little earner.)

And here's the rub right.  There are no teams from Sydney playing because every other team attending would have their arses kicked by those teams. (And I guarantee you half or more of those kids will not be anything approaching elite level.  I'll even provide you a little bit of video if you so desire.)  Edit.  There are 2 teams competing from Sydney as correctly pointed out below by Clive.  

So here's the thing Mr Jonsnow.  The FFA have, and are, creating and fostering a pyramid of mediocrity.  Your kid is at the pointy end of that pyramid and I don't know which kid he is but it is plain to anyone with a set of eyes that the standard of the players and their technical skills are simply not high enough.

I love how someone made a comment of how the Japanese system wouldn't work for us because they're culturally different.  Well maybe yes, maybe no.  

Until we say to the kids and their parents THIS IS THE STANDARD WE EXPECT or you won't get selected this is what we will have to accept as the best that we can offer.  Getting are arses handed to us by 3rd world countries.

I know a kid in the under 16's playing at the moment.  I don't know what has happened to him in the past year but he appears not to have progressed one iota from when I last watched him. (If anything the poor lad has gone backwards.)  It could be a myriad of reasons and I'm hoping it's not the COE but given what's on show it could very well be.

If you're OK with how it all runs at the moment then you're part of the problem.

Link for NTC draw.

http://northernnswfootball.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Official-Fixture-Draw-2016-National-Youth-Championships-for-Boys.pdf

Here

Another goodie