Australia is producing 'robots', says youth guru Smith
BY DAVE LEWIS

AIS Youth coaching kingpin Ron Smith, the man who nurtured golden generation stars like Mark Viduka, Vince Grella, Craig Moore and Lucas Neill, has added fuel to the furnace of the Socceroos’ FIFA World Cup exit by claiming the country’s development systems produce “robots” high on energy but short of goalscoring technique.

With the recriminations over Australia’s impotence in the final third in Russia raging, the former chief of the now defunct Canberra-based AIS finishing school for budding Socceroos insists an "obsession" with producing players "who run about like lunatics" in adherence to a methodology put in place by Dutchman Han Berger during his five-year reign as the FFA’s technical director from 2009-2014 is partly to blame for what ails Australia.

Famously hailed by the legendary Viduka as the best equipped coach to lead Australia, Smith believes a lack of focus on encouraging individual technique and a return to a landscape which sees youngsters playing the game at a competitive level for only six months each year have also contributed to a vacuum in the production of top-tier talent.

"Are we looking for strikers who are like Olympic athletes and can do shuttle runs ad-nauseam but may not be able to score goals?” Smith said.

"If someone else pops up do we just go ‘oh no he’s not going to fit the mould’.

"I’ve always been about tailoring the team’s playing style around the quality of the players. Right now in Australia we have people chasing the ball and running around like lunatics.

"We’re more concerned with that than we are about nurturing people who can put the ball in the net.

"The mentality is ‘yes, he can score a goal but he can’t chase people around all day, so I’m not even going to have a look at him’.

"That attitude that emanates all the way down to the junior teams. Why can’t we develop flexible players and allow our coaches to be flexible in their thinking. People are obsessed with systems.

"I’m beginning to hate that word. I’m sick of hearing it. Everybody has one but they never say what it is."

The AIS Centre of Excellence, under Smith and his predecessor Steve O’Connor, also produced Mark Bresciano, Brett Emerton and Mile Sterjovski, plus the likes of Ned Zelic before that.

It was closed in an FFA cost cutting measure last year.

Smith, 67, traces the beginning of the end of Australia’s ability to harbinger intuitive players of the ilk of Viduka and fellow great Harry Kewell to the arrival of Berger and his Dutch coaching manuals.

"When he rode into town he virtually kicked out everything that had been the standard procedure before," Smith said.

"What was implemented was a system where you blow a whistle and players all run to their starting positions like robots.

"It was the complete opposite to the philosophy that had been in place for 25 years, which was about developing individuals within the team structure.

"Decision-making was at the crux of everything. Players had the freedom to do pretty much what they wanted but within the realms of the structure.

"There was a consistent message from the state institutes up to the AIS.

"All the advances we made were just thrown out of the window. Culturally there was a mismatch.

"I tried to educate Han Berger on what had gone before but he never listened to a word I said," added Smith, at the time an analyst within the Socceroos set-up following his departure from the AIS.

"It was a case of ‘you’re going to have this, whether you need it or want it because I have it in my manual’."

The advent of the A-League in 2005 also played a part in the suffocation of the talent pathways, with Smith explaining: "Between 1992 and 2005 we had the opportunity for kids to virtually train and play all year around. All the NSL clubs had a youth teams.

"But that ended with the A-League and from that point on kids put their boots away and went surfing.

"So we went back to what we used to refer to as a six-month mentality - that was the situation in the 1970s when we all played in the winter.

"It’s hard to compete on the world level when you’re only training and playing six months of the year because nobody else does that.

"If you’re a national youth coach now and you want to find players it’s like a dogs breakfast. There’s nothing in place.

"There’s also not the same dedication to go out and play for the love of the game as there used to be ... kids just have too many other distractions."

Smith describes Daniel Arzani - an uncut Socceroos gem who began his football education on the streets of Iran - as "a breath of fresh air".

"But why aren’t there more like him?" he added.

"I think it’s because there is zero emphasis on teaching technique in our coaching programs and I don’t believe kids just become great technicians just through playing the game.

"At some stage you need to be able to refine technique. That requires a fair amount of ability from the coach; you don’t just inhale that through the atmosphere."

uh oh, secrets out

Yep. Rather than trying to copy the Dutch we need to be ourselves. The golden gen was influenced by a melting pot of styles including Italian, British, Eastern European, etc and our own unique Australian twang which consisted of high fitness and strong physicality. Now we have Han Bergers and the FFAs shitty Dutch model which fucked everything, we’ve developed nothing close to the era of the golden gen. I guess this is what happens when you bean counters posing as business people hijacking the creative process by mandating their own shitty guidelines and systems. The Dutch manual has clearly failed and we need to fuck it off and take the responsibility for development off the suits and give it back to the grassroots.

Agree with a lot of what he has to say. He’s clearly very experienced and in the know. BUT, our youth system was broken before Berger and the Dutch system came along.

I don’t like how he’s trying to rewrite history as though it was he Dutch that broke everything.

By the time we started going Dutch, we already had a severe lack of talent coming through.

We can’t blame that on Berger or the Dutch system. Players coming through the Dutch generation are an improvement on the one before it (the Missing generation).

Thats perfect. Time to keep Han Berger and his mob away from the FFA. Bloody leeches.

A few points here.

* The tactical nous of our current players and coaches has improved immeasurably since the time when Ron was national TD circa 2003-5. I did  coach education in the old Soccer Australia system and current FFA system. There was little  emphasis on sharing methodology across Australia in the old system under Ron. Everybody did different things. Basically, our coach education was utter rubbish. I learnt more in two hours of Dutch KNVB than five days of previous Soccer Australia coach education

*Ron Smith has some good instructional videos, and has some good ideas. But in his era of national TD, it wasn't shared  across Australia.  

*He also struggled as a coach for Perth Glory in the HAL and was sacked along with Mulvey as assistant at Roar. Ron also presided over a system with 32 years of failure to qualify for senior WCs. A lot of the good stuff Ron did, was never shared with coaches across the country.

* In the recent WC we did well in all three thirds of the pitch in 5 out of 6 criteria. As we all know shooting and finishing was absolutely shocking. Ron is right. ATM there is a dearth of  Oz strikers. There are few playing in the HAL. Wind back to the mid 2000s and we had Agostino, Despotovski, Mori, Mrjda, Allsopp, Archie, Milicic,  Zdrilic, Pretovski, just playing HAL.

* To solve  the striking problem we need a FFA TD again, like Berger, to go to places like Brazil, France and Belgium and have a good long, hard look at what they do for coaching strikers, attacking interplay and shooting training.

Ron is correct players need individual technical training. Nevertheless, he has been nebulous highlighting 1 criteria out of 6, to claim we  are struggling everywhere on the pitch.

And the blame goes on. Anyone would think Aus football was a world superpower before we hired some Dutch influence. Not saying things are great right now, but all these dinosaurs sticking the knife in aren’t helping. We’ve only ever produced a handful of players you could say are genuinely better than what we have now, hardly compelling evidence of the current failure.

So if what we were doing pre-Burger was working, why didn't we produce more Mark Vidukas and Harry Kewells?

The revisionism that goes on in this country is unbelievable. If you didn't know better, past players and coaches would make you believe Australia was some sort of footballing powerhouse - regularly winning World Cups and producing Ballon d'Or winners - before the collapse of the NSL.

Reality check: we were just as much a global laughing stock then as we are now.

These old, bitter has-beens and never-weres need to stop shitting on the current model/players and come up with ways to make what we are currently doing work better. But they won't, because there's no financial gain. 

Beat me to it.

Too many older generation players and coaches who have no knowledge of the new system say this.

None who've undertaken new FFA coach education do. 

The biggest sceptic has been  Frank Farina. He is one of few coaches who has undertaken new FFA  coach education, but ignored a lot of it as a HAL coach.

Being ourselves was nebulous and ad hoc and poor practice. 32 years of failing to qualify for a WC is evidence of it.

I tend to agree with Nearderthal’s view on this one.

Football was in many ways going backwards in this country, which was before this Dutch philosophy came into the picture.

The NSL structure has its benefits but it also was failing to gain traction, so although there were good news stories around some player development, it just seemed each year to be less and less stable.

The HAL transition was a challenge, which has started to click again now but we needed a rebuild. The benefits of such change can take time to flow through, but overall it is about time we started to see more technical, smart footballers who have composure and can read a game better than we currently have.

Let’s hope we are on the right path but only time can truly tell.

So true.

The way Ned Zelic in particular, and sometimes Bozza and Robbie Slater speak on Fox Sports, one would think we qualified for every WC and progressed out of the group stages at every tournament the way they discuss their era.


They are highly critical of teams and players since 2006 who achieved far more than they did as international players.


it is arguable whether Bozza would replace Ryan as keeper, Zelic would replace any of the  current CBs or DMs, or Slater would get into the current team as a wide player.

There are so many who fatuously criticise a system that is based on European powerhouse methodology.


At the same time we need drastic measures to improve striking. Appointing a senior FFA TD would be a start.

How I knew the system would get smashed I guess this what happens when people are dissatisfied and frustration with the results shown in the last few years FFA...

For all of the skepticism we are seeing more technically gifted young players coming through in the last few years

But I do agree with Smith is the lack of individual quality they have (not individual technique but individual quality in executing the technical things like passing, shooting, 1v1 defending).

So we are seeing technically proficient players but seem to lack in decision making and execution under pressure which is noticeable with the lack of quality forwards, strikers and defenders.

So I get what he’s saying what he means by producing robots, technically and tactically we are producing better players but what’s missing is the individual quality part along with the improved parts.

How to incorporate it is the question for the experts.

Maybe study how the top talent in attacking and defensive players in France, Germany and Belgium are being developed? Is there any special techniques they use? Who knows.

He may have a point,  but anyone coming out with opinions like this needs to say at the start.. 

"what I'm talking about has nothing to do with the current Socceroos, they mostly weren't brought up in the Dutch system, I am just using the opportunity of national soul searching to talk about something unrelated"

Otherwise it comes across as a bit misleading 

there are reasonable criticisms of pasquali, arzani, mcgree, caletti, deng, atkinson, warland, folami etc. but not sure if it makes sense to call them robots.....

We need to get rid of this useless dutch fetish and forge our own path. 

Well said, in the past Clubs developed players based on their Club's philosophy in many cases this took the form of their ethnic heritage.

Whats occurred now, everyone is playing to the one philosophy. We've created homogenised football.

In Europe and South America a Clubs Philosophy is their own.

Its another Global Standard thing.

Hands up if you loved missing out on world cups for 32 years??

From my understanding the so called “Dutch System” isn’t actually very Dutch at all. The curriculum is a hybrid of theories from all the most successful football nations around the world.

But hey, we were doing so well in international football prior to 2006 so let’s just throw the baby out with the bath water and go back to playing EPL clubs in “international” friendlies.

Just for an interesting observation the FFA NC got released in mid 2009 and the roll out of the first year of the new system with it would have been in 2010, the kids from 6 or 7 would be 15 or 16 of today.

Those from 18 to 21 would have go through the new system but only the middle to latter stages unlike the 14 to 16 year olds now who have been from the start from u7 playing 5v5 to now which are in the game training phase and soon to be in the performance phase.
These kids are the current Joeys (u16 kids that will be competing in the u16 AFC Championships) later this year, so then we can judge but the lack of preparation for the junior teams of late have been very poor so if they don’t do well I fear the conversation will go back to how the system has let them down when it’s the same story about the poor preparation unlike other countries where it’s fully funded and take care of unlike now with the FFA.

So let’s judge the NC from now with the kids from u16 and when they get older without judging them as robots.

Another different take,

The current Socceroos apart from Arzani have come from the old development system and never been through a skillaroos program or even the odd SSGs which most kids go through now.
The youngest after Arzani with MacLaren was with Football Victoria NTC in 2009 but still never came through new system at all.

So maybe the conversation should have more context instead of people to smashing it down without analysis or discussion about mplementation or the tweaks that could be made from this?

Just giving some perspective here as these are facts, by no means defending the system by the lack of context within the Australian football discussion is quite appalling.

Too funny!

The use of satire to ridicule  something silly that Ron said to highlight his agenda, and others are deluded in believing, is very well done!  

This is exactly what I have been saying for ages ....there is so much misinformation about this ...everybody keep blaming the Dutch and the National Curriculum because some "old dinosaurs" Smith , Slater, Zelic, etc   think things were better in the past...quite simply put  ...the facts do not support this .
One of our biggest strengths and also biggest failures is we Aussies want instant success..and instant success at anything rarely lasts.
The NC has not yet been going long enough to see what sort of internationals it produces. We will start to see its results over the next few years . Even then you can't expect instant Socceroos stars . Like any system it is still evolving and in its early years it may or may not produce great players until coaches and adminstrators etc work out how best to implement it and that is basically a case of trial and error.
We, as a nation, are far too impatient for results.
Our professional league and its clubs are all only 13 years old and are still figuring out what works and what doesn't for our unique landscape.
Euro clubs evolved in a time when there were no distractions . You worked and you played or watched football for entertainment.
Now we are trying to grow clubs and a league in an environment when kids have the attention spans of gold fish. They have so many other choices of things to do ...which is good for them ....but not good for football.
We need to be more patient .
Sure ..we do need to address our lack of strikers ... our league set up.... and dozens of other things but gees guys let's just do it calmly and patiently.
We are not going to start winning World Cups in my lifetime so lets just concentrate on getting a little better each year.

Our current Socceroos, particularly  the older  ones who've played in the HAL in the last five years are a partially  a  product technically of the older system, but definitely structurally and tactically a product of the new system.

The younger Socceroos have learnt most of  their tactical and structural training under the new system.

The imported HAL coaches are finding local players much easier to coach tactically. This is a product of the Dutch, French, German, Spanish amalgam of coaching methodology, which the Belgians also currently adopt. 

The likes of Guus, Pim, Berger, Baan, Versleijen, had great difficultly coaching our players because unless they had played in Italy or Holland, and to a lesser extent, England, because the tactical senior coaching in the NSL and early HAL was abysmal.

In the last five years or so, all Aussie trained coaches, with Arnie, Kenny Lowe, and Merrick structurally, not so much tactically, partially adhering to it, particularly  with the Pim and Guus influence for Arnie, while Farina disregarded a lot of it, the rest have used their new tactical acknowledge from FFA coach education to great effect - Ange, Muscat, the Aloisis, Popa, Okon, Rudan, Miller  and Valkanis.

In the last five years if we have had ACL success,  it  is because of the superior structural   tactical ability of the Aussie coaches, who've  had technically inferior cattle.

Unfortunately like Spain also just found out, that 1 criteria is the one that wins matches.

I would also say that we aren't great defending in transition. 5 out of 5 goals we conceded were in transition from possession to defence. Once our defence was set we were difficult to break down

At the 2006 world cup we conceded 3 in transition (including the pen against italy which knocked us out), 1 from a free kick and 2 from goal keeping errors

You sprout a lot of garbage.

Of the 23 man squad Guus took to Germany in 2006 there were 3 HAL players (Archie, Miligan & Beauchamp) and none of them played any minutes.

In 2010 Pim only took 2 HAL players, Culina who recently returned from an extended stay in Europe and Galekovich who was called up because Jones's kid was sick. 

With so few HAL players participating not sure how they had any difficulty.

Pim coached Socceroo teams comprised of all Aussie domestic HAL players in some qualifiers, it may have been Asian Cup, when Euroroos were unavailable, like playing Kuwait at home.

He said it  was difficult because of most of the HAL players lack of tactical knowledge.

Pim  also commented how much the HAL has improved in recent years.

Many teams concede goals like this if they play a higher defensive line at some stage in the build up.

It is when teams  have to turn a chase and defend facing their own goal, it is harder to defend.

At the same time, we need a new senior FFA TD to refine the curriculum. When I did a lot of coach  education tiki tala was hang great success.

In our case, we desperately need to add some new attacking interplay and shooting ideas.

Source or is it your normal sauce?

Pim said the the A League was a like a Bundesliga 2nd Division training session.