Everyone is entitled to their opinion and will have their thoughts on the boys U16-U23's and the coaching staff. I think its fair to say that over the last 5-10 years junior development from club land and state level has come a long way. With the HAL clubs now starting to get involved it can only get better. The biggest problem we will always have is that football is not the No.1 sport in AUS therefore the talent pool will always be spread. It is unrealistic to compare us to any European/south American nation or African some of which the kids don't even go to school and play all day every day, others that have the best facility's and coaches not to mention 2,3,10 times the population.
I guess that we can judge the whole system on how many of these boys end up making a professional career out of it and end up playing for the socceroos keeping in mind that less that 1% of the worlds junior boys do make it.

1. We wouldn't even be talking about this if we didn't even qualify.

2. Exactly as predicted, Mali and Nigeria make the final.

3. Show me the evidence where results at this level dictate performance and results at senior level.

At the end of this tournament, we should be viewing how the team played, their system, technique in accordance with the national curriculum. The coaches should be sacked if they were deemed to not play to the curriculum. It has nothing to do with getting out of the group, or how many goals we conceded or scored.

Would be happy if Vidmar was sacked based on the team's performance.

There are plenty of posters here such as quickflick, krones, redcarded, moops, arthur, robbo, and others (none of whom are lightweight forum contributors) who are explaining in great detail what they think the problems with the Under 17's were without getting bogged down in the "results are all that matter" mantra.

I'm glad that there are posters who can get past the "everything's peachy keen attitude" some on here have.

(1) - Yes. (And the only game they won they abandoned the NC.
(2) - Maybe. Depends on whether the players are adhering to the system or if they have the correct cattle.
(3) - Yes it does.

Where is the evidence that it does?

Cos, it doesn't.

They probably don't but you can bet there's scouts from all over the world watching the performances of these blokes. Presumably if they get signed by big clubs their development will be fast tracked. And presumably the more players playing at a higher level the better it will be for the national team in the future.

Look at the fapping going on over your mate Rogic. (A player mind you that wasn't good enough for the FFA. So much for pathways.)

Well if we concede 11 goals in a tournament for example then I would say the FFA NC, with regards to defending, could do with a minor tweak. What do you think?

finally

But they might too.

Seriously though Switters if we'd won this tournament would you still be saying that it makes no difference to our performances at senior level or would you say we're on the right track and it's a vindication of the pathways and the NC?

Of course you would so give me a break and the give the selective quoting a miss. (Ignoring the other 90% of the text and points made.)

And the reason teams like Nigeria and Mali aren't successful at senior level go well beyond what's happening in a tournament at youth level.





Edited by munrubenmuz: 7/11/2015 01:59:59 PM

We've nearly won this tournament before and it made no difference to the national team. Id be stoked if the boys won world cup, but none of it really means much if they don't find clubs and develop more as players. These kids aren't even professionals yet. The national curriculum in my opinion should be deemed a success or failure if the players that have gone through the system have improved the senior national team.

I'm confident that they don't.

I've posted on a previous thread about results at U-17 level over the last couple of decades.

From memory:

Spain in 1999 and 2001 U-17 WCs couldn't get out of the group including a 1-0 loss to Burkina Faso before that age group became one of the greatest teams ever in 2010 world cup.

Germany failed to qualify for the 2003 and 2005 U-17 world cups and also didn't even qualify for the Equivalent euro tournaments as well before ten years later winning the world cup.

Turkey who won the U-17 WC in 2005, finished 4th in their qualifying group for the 2014 senior world cup. 4th! Thats low even for their standards. I think they were behind a small nation like Iceland or Finland from memory.

The current Belgium national team who I believe are ranked 2nd in the world and arguably their greatest generation ever, did not even qualify for the 2005 euro u-17 tournament let alone the 2005 u-17 WC. And the 2007 side finished last in their group including losses to USA and Tunisia.

There are some success stories. Brazil is clearly the stand out and the only nation to do well at both U-17 and senior level. I think Spain have been runner's up before. But the best 4 nations at that level have been Nigeria, Brazil, Ghana and Mexico.

In fact African teams have finished in the top two or three at just about every tournament including of course the current one.

My interpretation of what the national curriculum means and what everyone else opinion will differ totally and that is its second biggest downfall . The first is that those employed to insure it is implemented don't agree with it they only use it to keep their jobs .
To make it simple if you attempt to play angie's style then you are IMO playing the curriculum if not then you are not.

Also everyone on this forum who is not paid to be involved in football honestly only has the intrest of the game at heart.

Fair enough, my opinion is that we should be grateful if we achieved something in recent times.

Remember we have missed out on tournaments completely, so this one of a few in recent years where we have done ok.

We should take the positives with the negatives in any work of life. :)

Look no doubt we have to improve,but the reality is we are all should be responsible for these kids coaching and in general envionment they recieve not just on the admin side.

We were a shambles in the 80s and early 90s when it comes to inhouse/ admin but our football culture was fantastic for our kids growing up.

We need to look at how we are coaching our kids and question if we are facilitating an environment where the kids not only just get a great introduction to the game where they have fun and learn to play it in the right mindset.

But also when they reach adolescent level where they move into the elite stage and if they are getting the right coaching and advice whilst the support of the parents is right where leave the real work to the coaches and the clubs and not their wallets! :D

Are we also going to the players rather than the players coming to the clubs and coaches, which explains the huge costs involved with private academies and most NPL clubs?

How many of them have mentioned fitness as an area we need to improve (I won't name names but it undermines their credibility in this subject. Not to say they don't have credibility in other subjects)

youth tournaments are dominated by teams that are good in three areas
1. Fitness speed and strength
2. defensive structure and organization
3. finishing

Apart from finishing it is a poor indicator of how good a player will be at adult level.
Like I said before the majority of top four places in youth tournaments are not taken by world cup winners at senior level and our best youth tournament resulted in our worst generation
I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

Really?

You dont think that the players with the best fitness, speed, strength, defensive structure, organization, finishing ability are teh best sides in adult football?

Can i ask what you think gives those adult teams the edge?

Edited by clivesundies: 7/11/2015 04:30:44 PM

technique
those other areas can be developed in a 6-12 month period the moment the get minutes for an a league/euro club. Technique can only be developed young. Every minute spent on fitness etc is a minute lost on technical development.

A prominent European based youth TD and senior educator (has performed consultant work for FFA) advised a young Australian lad approximately 18 months ago to take the opportunity at available in Europe because he deemed the level of education ( including ais) as substandard compared to the club in Europe. The lads parents were concerned about threats of not making oz team, blocking clearance requirements and visa propaganda. His response ...... Your answer is there if FFA management believed their development programs are world class they wouldnt rely on threats !

Kid went overseas, doing well and is continuing to be ignored.

And we have people like Decentric who continue to ignore issue and refuse to accept criticism of their beloved setup.
I wil no longer post regarding this topic, we are the champions of the emu effect!.

You don't have to give out info on the player, but which country is this club?

Germany , I'd say as a guess ?

Christ, grazor!

With all due respect, you really don't get it.

Technique doesn't exist independent of tactics or fitness.

Let's break this down even further.

If you can't walk (an aspect of fitness), you can't possess the technique to trap a ball in a tight space and to use your next touch to take it away from your opponent, can you?

That's the extreme, but it has been necessary to draw it out that far.

If a player has really piss poor aerobic fitness, he cannot execute technical application of various moves.

FACT!

grazorblade, please tell me how you expect a lad who can barely stand up straight to have his head up, to trap a difficult ball perfectly, to weight his passes correctly? How does he magically do this?

Do you know any swimmers? A number of my friends are swimmers, or did well at high school level swimming at least. They'll tell you that as soon as your fitness is exhausted, you lose your technique. Watch a bloke with great technique but appalling levels of aerobic fitness. After a hundred metres his technique will look crap.

Why do you expect this to be any different in football?

I also suspect you don't get how easy (time-wise) it is to get to the required levels of fitness. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is the go. It takes no more than twenty minutes to do a good sesh.

I can accept your idea that, because Germany has thousands of full-time players, they have a bigger talent pool and thus access to better athletes.

But did you notice that Germany's players were fitter? This means that Germany's coaching staff probably had comprehensive fitness programmes. Did the German players' technique suffer? I doubt it. You say that time spent on fitness is time wasted on technique? How is that Germany have managed to spend enough time on both fitness and technique? Why grazorblade can we not focus on having adequate levels of fitness?

We admire the German, French, Dutch football systems. Do you think their youth players are unfit? I should fucking think not. I don't see any of their players moving around lethargically.

And don't forget, we're just talking about how inadequate of levels of aerobic fitness limit technical ability.

Have you considered that certain aspects of technique require high levels of athletic ability?

Speed and agility are part of the equation for more advanced technical things. As is co-ordination. Do you think somebody with no athletic ability is going to be adept at 1 vs 1 maneouvres (which are part of TECHNIQUE!). Look at players like Benzema. Look at the co-ordination they possess and the turn of speed. These things are necessary for the execution of technical maneouvres.

grazorblade, I've been coached by blokes who've coached at a very high level in places like Holland and England. I can promise you they punished us in terms of our fitness training. It was torture. But it was worth it. It meant that for the entire match we could execute our technique properly.

Anybody thinking that technique exists on some abstract plain independent of fitness, tactics or (and for some parts of technique) athletic ability, is kidding themselves.

Edited by quickflick: 7/11/2015 10:29:03 PM

Edited by quickflick: 7/11/2015 10:52:13 PM

A couple of points.
Saying that just because Germany/France/Holland etc didn't make the final that we are some how in a comparable situation is strange. These are countries with proven track records at senior level and therefor with a proven youth development pathway. We are not. We are finding our way with the first generation under this curriculum and have yet to discover if we have implemented a successful strategy. It may be based on what those countries do, but we don't know yet if we have been smart enough to unravel exactly what it is that helps them produce star teams. As such people will analyse and criticize and call for reviews etc

It is great we made the final 16. However, losing does not prove we are improving just because in the past we won, with what some consider regressive football. There are lots of reasons about why you lose, technical teams can also lose to technical teams, physical bullies can lose to technical teams and visa versa dependent on multiple factors. We did not lose to Nigeria because they were bigger and scarier than us

Finishing is technique. This is something that we are seemingly poor at at all levels. Inability to perform technique at some kind of speed or under pressure is still a failure of technique. Controlling pace is great, but if you can only slow a game down, then we're pretty one dimensional. How we performed had flaws, and I don't believe that playing 'Our game' means that we should cop 6 goals. Getting sunk by that much is the sort of thing that gets national coaches sacked, even if by World Champs.

A lot of my criticism has been centred around what I consider a failure of technique and smarts. A team with good technique and good organized pitch smarts will have little issues with a team of giants who will simply be left grasping at shadows. Teaching a smarter, tactical game right from the get go is easier than trying to retrain the game mentality of kids when they turn 18. The tactical aspect of the game was sorely lacking at times. A lot of these guys train together at the AIS, as a team how did they perform, not simply at the individual level. There were other technical aspects of the games that were lacking, I've mentioned them before.

I don't mind that we didn't win the thing. Our performance could have been better, that is the thing. I don't expect them to play like seasoned seniors, just that there were flaws in their game compared to other teams

Precisely.

Leaving aside misinterpretations of how technique is tied in with tactics and fitness and appalling selection choices, the players did NOT demonstrate the correct technical aspects of play focused on by the National Curriculum for the vast majority of the four matches. Appalling first touch for openers. And tactics were seriously bad a lot of the time.

Yet excuses are made.

Edited by quickflick: 7/11/2015 11:01:10 PM

You're missing his point. Players' physical abilities tend to even out as they get older, but at youth level there is a greater discrepancy between the physical attributes of some players compared to others due to puberty. Also some players peak early in terms of physical development and are worse as seniors than say a small kid with great technique who will develop physically later.

BTW I thought the implementation of our technique was also poor and would like that to be reviewed and would not be surprised if people were sacked.

So Nigeria and Mali have made the final, both 3rd world impoverished countries with what would seem like limited football infrastructure,

How have they done it ?

No, I'm not. grazorblade said that those who think levels of fitness are important to technical ability have lost credibility. I comprehensively rebutted this.

You've missed my point, as has grazorblade. My point- technical ability suffers without sufficient levels of aerobic fitness.

Do you dispute this?

What you refer to has little do with what I'm talking about. I'm talking about levels of aerobic fitness. Puberty (especially after the age of 16) has not got much bearing on this.

Of the people I played with at U15-17 level, the fellas with the best levels of aerobic fitness were some of the smallest.

Also, some of the quickest and most agile in the team were also the smallest and not the most muscular.

I agree with you and grazorblade and you that strength is less important at that age as it will even out later. But what both of you misunderstand is that it's a different story with aerobic fitness, speed and agility. Small kids, white kids are not disadvantaged in this respect. There's no excuse.

They have their own wrist bone scanning, so they can check all their players to see if they can pass the wrist bone tests.
Mali is a lot poorer than Nigeria though.