Leaving that aside, I worry that the new style will actually make impressionable coaching staff prejudiced against athletic guys even if they are technically good, because the coaches will be doing their best not to select athletes for the sake of selecting athletes.

Because it would be such a bad thing if we had guys who were technically good, tactically astute and gun athletes.

And while I agree that previously there probably wasn't enough emphasis on technical skills. Are there many youngsters looking as good or better than Harry, Dukes, Culina, Bresch, Grella and so on? I don't know. I don't watch as much as you guys (and I didn't see those guys play football when they were really young, but maybe some here did).

Okay, maybe we're getting better technicians than the Emo and Holman types (who were still bloody useful to the NT), but it's not as if all our past players were technically shambolic.

Could be case of the pendulum swinging too far.

BTW, Emerton doesn't not deserve to be spoken alongside Holman.  Prior to leaving Aus and then in Holland his touch and ball skills were on the same level as Dukes or Kewell or Bresciano and certainly above that of Grella.  Its when he went to the EPL that all changed, and later he was a shadow of himself in the A-league.

Fair call. I was very wee when he was in Holland. But that makes sense. You're not playing 92 matches for Feyenoord for being technically inconsistent.

How old are you?

Even i remember the constant links to newcastle before his eventual move to blackburn.

I never thought emerton lacked technique but his decision making was always shit. The reason that stood out so much when he came back to australia was because his legs and engine were gone

25 now. I watched Emo with Blackburn, but I can't recall having watched him play for Feyenoord in a live, full match. Maybe just highlights.

Actually, what you say about his decision-making being awry but technically good sounds very plausible. And it can lead one to think that technically they're not as good as they are. I recall in the 2006 World Cup group match against Brazil, Emo taking on some of the Brazilians with step-overs. It was rather mesmerising. Obviously that's just one technical component (and hardly as basic or crucial as first touch). But it would be somewhat unusual for a bloke to be able to pull off step-overs (good ones, not crappy ones) but to be poor in more basic technical areas?

It gets worse.
FFV have introduced small sided for u12 which I can see the benefits of. But they have also introduced the teams will swap at half time and play a different team so that results etc aren't the focus and its more about fun. Are these guys for real!! This is U12 not U6!

Quickflick make not mistake once these boys reach this level (AUS u16's) they all care greatly about the result. In saying this all the feed back my son gives me regarding the coaches is exactly the same. The coaches might come out and say Results is not the main focus but the message on game day is that it does. No one at that level goes out to loose, inc the coaches.  

That's reassuring. Cheers. Great to hear that from the horse's mouth.

I imagine it's a bit of a balancing act for the coaching staff. They've gotta tell the lads that the results matter and they want to see them giving their all. And the lads are doing just that. But, the coaching staff are probably also mindful that, even if the result doesn't go quite the way they want, if they're seeing specific things in the way the lads are playing (and especially improvement) then that's the key thing.

I don't know if you call it a paradox or a contradiction or what. But it's a fineline which requires emotional intelligence from the coaching staff. It's a matter of the lads thinking that results are important and they can't give anything less than one hundred percent. But, providing the coaching staff are sure of that, then they don't need to be as fussed with results as the senior side do. Or so it seems to me.

What we don't want is for the fellas to think it's okay to lose with anything less than their best effort (arguably, we don't want them to think it's okay to lose, although that's maybe a bit extreme, not sure). That's when a lack of mental toughness becomes instilled and won't help them later on their career (or in life, generally).

In less abstract terms... if the coaching staff bring through a generation of lads who don't achieve exactly what they want at youth level but they play give it one hundred percent and they play a brand of football which will serve them well, that's probably something we can be happy with. You could imagine that kind of a generation would be very successful with the Socceroos.

Development matters more than results at youth level. But, ironically, proper development depends on them caring about the results and having lots of self-belief.

Interesting point there is an art to managing this which I have some very limited experience in cricket where there is (was?) a similar philosophy to youth development

We weren't allowed to play a single shot until we got our defensive shots perfect including making the correct decision as to whether to step back or across. By definition you are going to not get any runs while you are in this phase! (actually I accidentally followed through a few times and hit some boundaries going "oh no!" thinking I was in trouble but I got high 5s instead)
Also fast bowlers were told to bowl fast even at the expence of accuracy and leg spinners were stuck with even though they bowl a lot of wides and long hops which go for 6. The only exception was when the fast bowler/leggie lost so much confidence that they were told "just bowl medium pacers today" this was typically much more effective and you would get a lot of wickets playing medium pacers

I think though we were individually very competitive while sacrificing performance over results because we were playing in the lower mens grades at the age of 13+ so we weren't expecting results anyway. Persisting with performance actually led to results in the end

On our youth development you will concede a lot of goals through mistakes at the back playing a highly technical style. If you make that many mistakes at senior level though its a much bigger problem! As far as I'm concerned as long as we keep improving technically as a whole in the a league I'm on board with the current philosophy. If we begin to plateau I'll be looking to how we can change to improve

I would say in any sport ,training and competition are seperate activities.If you are playing competitions and treating it as training,then something is very wrong.
In training you learn concepts and practice them .In competition you focus on learning how to win.
Winning is something you learn ,just like learning skills.
If u12's are not supposed to experience the anxiety of losing or are being taught to concentrate on style and technique at the expense of winning then someone has lost the plot.
Train more if you want to learn more.But you cant call a competiton ,exactly that ,if you have no intention of playing to win.
Let the kids play to win!
I just can't imagine what's going on in kids heads,when they are told ,they are playing to look good and the result doesnt matter.
Imagine being a young defender.What the hell are they doing if not trying to prevent goals?
Do coaches think these kids dont get together and play competitive games amongst themselves?
Also at what age are kids supposed to flick a switch and treat games as serious competitions to win?Clearly not at u16 it would seem.
Even AngeP has clearly differentiated friendlies form competions.He has never treated competitions as training.

Yeah absolutely. And going in the same vein as your example. What did Warnie average in the Shield before he got called up for the Test side? Wasn't great was it? You gotta have faith (especially with leg-spinners in cricket and attacking players in football). If your trade requires risks, then I think you need to encourage it at youth level.

In U15s, we'd play matches in training where you weren't allowed to take more than two touches. It was disheartening surrendering possession in bad areas. But it would mean that we'd be so much savvier in match situations about where to move off the ball. This is a fairly rudimentary drill, but it's very helpful.

My own personal thing (which I try to do in indoor, which is the only form of football I play these days), is to force myself to do one or two specific 1 vs 1 maneouvres early on in the match. This is very contrived, I know. It's a bit like pre-empting a shot in cricket. On the surface, not a good idea. But the thing is that if I don't force myself to do that, I don't tend to use maneouvres like it later on in the match when the situation is such that they'd be very useful. I'm happy with how I pass the ball and some of my off-the-ball movement. But I am more useful when I look for extra space on my own and take extra touches. I won't hog the ball and will still go for the best option first time. However, this one-on-one thing is handy for us because sometimes it's good if you can skip past the opponent if you have no opponent in a good position to pass to. But I have to force myself to do it in the early stages until it feels as natural as breathing. That's a bit like your boundary example.

The worst thing you can do is to kill off people's flair.

I daresay the FFA, Ange and Gombau know what they're doing. But I think it would be such a good thing if Gombau was in charge of the Young Socceroos. Maybe even the Joeys, too. If anybody can encourage the lads to play in creative ways which bring out the best of their ability, while being smart enough to give them the best chance of results, he can do it.

So a proactive style is what great, but in such a way that they think they need to win.

Spot on. In the end the best players in the world are the ones that make the least amount of mistakes with in a game. And we really cant judge any of these boys until really their early 20's IMO. The boys are asked to play in a particular way and not deviate from this style. Problem is that a simple passing error from your CB's can cost you.

the thing is that if ange or gombau or AUs current coach were coaching youth I wouldn't care if they lost every game by five goals I would faith in the system because we have seen them in the a league losing 12 games in a row implementing a technical style before tearing the league up and improving the players. So I would have faith that the coaches are adding value to the players.
With Berger, de roo, okon and the vidmars we don't know whether they are adding value because we haven't seen them in the a league

hopefully when we get a second division there will be enough coaching talent developed so that a criteria of coaching underage sides is that you have had success in club football coaching a technical style

I agree with this u16s they still learning their way around the national team style and so they should not be judged individually as players until they get older once they reach senior football.

Ange and the FFA made a commitment on this, so i'm keen to see who can make the leap to senior football and alot depends on opportunities to play at that level which right now is currently very small. 

Im just playing devils advocate here for a bit its always easy to see the result and go 'hey what a disaster' but sometimes we need to watch the game first and then make an honest appraisal of things, its not always black and white.

When the joeys lost 1-0 to Kyrgyzstan you think how but when watching the game i can see why they lost simply because they did nothing wrong throughout the whole entire game.

Australia vs Japan u16s on right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hsVEWUVw4E

Well why don't you make an 'honest' appraisal.

Bear in mind gents these are 17 and 18 year olds. Not 14, 15 year olds.

You'll do well to sugar coat these.

Goal #1 - Ball watching players, players not tracking runners / marking non-existant
Goal #2 - Shit control, first touch towards danger, poor body position, poor communication between defender and keeper
Goal #3 - unmarked winger, poor positioning, beaten for pace. (Diagonal long ball too. His highness would love that one.)
Goal #4 - unmarked winger, poor positioning, centre defender committed too early, right fullback too slow to cover, no other cover tracking Thai forwards. (In fact if the goalscorer wanted to he could have squared it up to not 1 but 2 Thai guys bombing through.)
Goal #5 - Poor backpass, hesitant keeper, centre defender stopping dead after backpass allowing Thai forward unimpeded run on keeper.

Shit all round but you know we 'triangled' them off the park so there is that.

If you're happy with that you're easily pleased.

It was an absolute disgrace of a game. 

Number 6 looks a player, who is he?

The defence is an absolute shambles though

Our keeper's getting a good work out.

Not getting much help is he? 

Number 13 looks comfortable on the ball, but my god his 1 v 1 defending has been atrocious, literally escorting them through on goal

Just started watching, Australia is looking good

Tony VIDMAR MUST be removed.

Same losing team essentially 3 times. Fucking moron.

Anyone else get the feeling that the NC is breeding robots who are so focussed on playing the system that their individual qualities and drive to actually play the game and win is being lost?

Discuss.

You'd be the drunkest man in Australia if you had to take a shot every time Australia couldn't complete more than 2 passes or turned it over in the Japanese half.

For a 'supposed' possession based playing style we're pretty shit at it.

Japan giving Australia no space.

Milieu, methodology, world powerhouse, dialectical, BPO, diagonals, triangles and diamonds.  Take your pick.

You are on drugs.

never questioned tonys integrity beforehand but hes clearly playing favorites now.

why was our striker moved into 10 yet three actual 10's sit on the bench? why is our tired RW tired playing over our fresh wingers? why continue with tired kids when we have kids equally as good and ready on the bench? 

i dont disagree with all choice (Pieras, King, Viggiani, Italiano all justified) but the rest very questionable given whats on our bench. 

No, unless you call coffee a drug?

Some of the build up play has been pretty good, it's the final pass that is letting us down and pace I think.
But Japan are doing a good job of defending, our right winger when he get's the ball usually has no less then 3 players around him. But there has been some good individual skill this game, since I have been watching the ball was in their half most of the time.