http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blog/2015/08/20/changing-youth-development-paradigm

Watching Mat Ryan excel for Valencia this morning reminded me of the fantastic job Graham Arnold and Jon Crawley did with the goalkeeper in his formative years at Central Coast Mariners, and it made me wonder about whom else made a contribution.

By Craig Foster
20 AUG 2015 - 2:02 PM UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
   
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There have has certainly been many.

No player makes it to the peak of football without tremendous help, support and the guidance of many people, especially their coaches.

Similarly with the Australia squad announced yesterday, including some lesser-known names like Alex Cisak at Leyton Orient, my question is what was their personal journey? Who helped them along the way and guided them towards good or bad decisions to eventuate in a Socceroos call-up for the Bangladesh and Tajikistan FIFA World Cup qualifying camp?

SOCCEROOS SQUAD

Cisak the bolter for the Socceroos
Uncapped goalkeeper Alex Cisak is the surprise inclusion in Australia coach Ange Postecoglou's 23-man squad for next month's 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers against Bangladesh and Tajikistan - with Tom Rogic recalled after a long absence due to injury.
Speaking with FFA head of national performance Luke Casserley recently about this issue – in particular how youth coaches in the most important roles in the country are not recognised or rewarded for their work – it became clear the reward and validation paradigm needs to change.

We continue often to validate the wrong aspects, instead of recognise the actual work beneath.

Currently, those youth coaches winning matches and titles, irrespective of the quality of work they are carrying out every day, are elevated since this is easy: anyone can recognise which team has won a game. But understanding the work going on underneath is much more difficult.

Often, even a winning coach can be holding talented players back, or allowing bad habits to persist, which will need to be fixed at a later date by a youth educator or teacher with a deeper understanding of the game, but recognising this takes a keener eye for the game.

This is the type of eye Eric Abrams is aiming to develop with a new Talent Identification course which specifies in more detail the qualities desired both in the abstract, and positionally, in young players: to migrate the process from subjectivity, to objectivity.

The same process is occurring at national team level where a template for player qualities is being developed for all ages and National teams to bring some objective data to a selection process with so much personal bias.

How often does player A do action X (or avoid action Y), in what zone of the field, at what moment of the game?

All of these steps are important.

But the fact still remains that those in the community teaching players and enabling their progress as footballers and people, whether boys or girls, are still not being identified and promoted. And it is critical to the future that they are.

I’ll give you one example.

Having worked with the kids at Football NSW for the past three years, I have seen the work of one young coach, Jane Talcevski, a former Joey, who has heavily influenced a generation of players now coming through the system.

Jane spent several years developing much of the team that Ufuk Talay recently took to Cambodia, and which has performed creditably in the under-15 age group with Football NSW.

These kids have a great deal of improvement to make in their understanding of the game, however they are well equipped technically and ready to progress.

The outcome of Jane’s diligence and care is that a large number of clubs are seeking out his work, but largely because word gets around through the parents, and this is dangerous because many don’t know the difference between good and bad, only what is perceived as good for their child.

We need a more robust process to identify these high-quality developmental coaches.

Two aspects come to mind. The first is a process to analyse every developmental team to assess the specific outcomes by team and position, and recognising coaches who participated in the development of professional players, like Mat Ryan.

RYAN IN THE UCL

Ryan makes crucial saves in Valencia's victory
Australia goalkeeper Mat Ryan was victorious on his UEFA Champions League debut as Valencia beat Monaco 3-1 in the first-leg of it's play-off.
Clearer guidelines about the outputs of each team, and position at each age so that a youth team can be ranked on many criteria of play, such as how many times the ball was received in a certain area in a certain way, by a certain player as part of the intended playing style.

This would provide a clear picture of the work being carried out, particularly over a few years, as player quality ebbs and yet outcomes maintained, for example.

The other aspect is to track the progress of every elite youth, then senior player, to act as a guide to who actually assisted them along the way. Over time, this will allow Jane, and hundreds of others like him of course, to stand out without having to stand up.

This is a major problem with football.

It is often the loudest salesman within the club, those with the most bravado or arrogance that prospers, that pushes themselves forward, whereas the best characters, the trustworthy people, those that are motivated by the kids and by achieving excellence in their field, remain in the background because their character cannot be compromised. Yet they are exactly the people we want guiding our young players. Good characters before good technicians, I say.

Mat Ryan is an example of a player nurtured through the system who has reached an outstanding level.

I would like to know exactly who has had an input into his growth. Who were his youth coaches, at which clubs, all the way until today?

This acknowledgement to those that made a contribution would allow us to cut through the noise and find out who is doing good work: the coaches, the teachers, and the clubs.

I’d like to see a website for every player that makes a national squad, at any level, with every former club and coach involved listed.

This would become the benchmark for promotion, and recognition of the work being done behind the scenes.

It would also allow the rest of us to say thanks, and well done.

When this becomes the norm, we will have changed the paradigm from self-promotion to work devotion.



Edited by Decentric: 20/8/2015 05:28:01 PM

I know this is in the Oz section, but it will pass fairly quickly.

There are a few more coaches in this section who will visit this over time.