Did they mention height as the reason for success, or did you come to the imaginary conclusion yourself? 

More mayo, full stats in link but at current WC South American heights are:
Panama 181.1
Brazil: 180.4
Columbia:180.2
Mexico 179.5
Argentina 179.4
Peru 178.3

Which is actually taller than South American average of 172, hang on the South Americans are picking taller players....

 https://www.statista.com/statistics/871381/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-teams-by-average-player-height/

What about African teams like France ?

Very entertaining watching a particular forum member talk in circles when challenged to provide evidence for his genralisations and opinions.  Keep up the good work.

If we actually look at the results of these plodders in major tournaments they have actually been quite successful. 

Of the 12 euro championships, Denmark have won it once, Greece once, Czechoslovakia once and the soviet union once. So a 3rd of the euro championships have been won by the plodders and they have made countless finals and semi finals between them. Including the likes of Sweden.

Then for world cups Sweden have made the top 4, 4 times. A decent effort for the useless tall plodders from North europe.

Ummm...how about we worry about technical and tactical aspects of a player as it is pretty obvious there is room in football for great tall and short players. The fact that japan and Belgium had a great game is proof.
Also having a team of 11 messi's or maradonas mightnt work. Sometimes a team needs a tall sainsbury and a shorter arzani, depending on position and style of play. 
Fixating on producing only a messi, while important, may miss out on a lot of talented good players who might mature in different ways into different but valuable players

What's particularly funny about your fact based refutation of the usual Decentric garbage is that he will now not post in this thread as an appearance here would be an admission of being 'loose with the facts' or at the least warrant a retraction.

None of this however will stop him from spamming the site incessantly elsewhere.  It's the same old, same old. 

Very pleased to see other forumites pull him up on the dross he regurgitates.

Careful though or he'll threaten you with a good hard 'muting'.

To view this height table indicates three European powerhouses out of five , as defined by FFA's Technical Dept,  Spain, Holland and France, select shorter players, compared to the average national height of these countries,  relative to the  plodders from Northern Europe.

Italy, another powerhouse, appear to select taller players,  relative to the Italian  average.

Germany, the  fifth powerhouse, is  still shorter  as a football team, relative to other football teams, then their standing as  average height per capita of population compared to the rest of the world. 

In various lists I've seen, the height of the top  10 nations is, and it varies depending on which data  one views. 




1.Holland

various juxtaposition of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany for the next four positions

Croatia is about 6th 

10. Australia 






Interesting Holland has a relatively short football team for the average height of the general male population - the tallest nation in the world.

France and Spain are also relatively short compared to other football teams in Europe.

Italy are the one powerhouse who seem to select taller players relative to the average population. 

Latvia, Greece, Denmark, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, Poland, Iceland, Belarus, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Austria, Moldova, Northern Ireland, Ireland, select players considerably taller than their average citizen. All these teams are plodders, devoid of the technical quality on the ground across the pitch,  sufficient to win World Cups.

I'd surmise this is because technical qualities of 1v1 evasion skills on the deck,  rapid fire passing in tight triangles, the ability to change direction  quickly with the ball at one's feet, are of low priority for the football federations of these countries.

That many of them play in freezing winters, where it is difficult to grow grass, it appears likely  the ball is in the air a lot.

If Ron Smith thinks we play like robots, I've seen most of these teams play WCQs, ECQs, European Champs and in WCs, and they are robots devoid of flair, given they are ostensibly nations where football is the number one or two sport.


 None of these teams will ever go far in WCs.

In European Champs they can get away with it, because they meet other robotic teams, devoid of flair.

If fans in Oz think these teams are immeasurably better than Asian Confed teams like Japan, South Korea and Australia , they must be deluded.

In the last  50 years the quantity of quality players produced by these nations of robotic plodders  is very low compared to the production line of talent from powerhouses like Spain, Holland, France, Italy and Germany. The plodders will have produced  some exceptions to the  norm though.

It is good Football Fed Aus have identified successful nations and the qualities that has made them successful.  The  national football federations of the  five European  identified powerhouses, and the three South American powerhouses, view technique as paramount for all positions.

Ron Smith needs to take a good, hard look at the aforementioned robotic football nations of plodders, before he casts aspersions on what his successors have done in Australia.

Ron has an agenda, like many others who were apparatchiks of the old regime of football in Aus involved in 32 years of failure. He was sacked by FFA, like Raul, Les et al, and they want retribution.

It might be an idea for some other Eurosnobs in Aus to objectively analyse that many European countries have domestic leagues little better than Australia's given the robots who represent these countries in Euro Champs and World Cups.  

Wrong again Decentric, Germany's last world cup squad selected players well above the average height of their country as did their squad last year as shown in the post, then the South American countries including Brazil pick players way taller than their average height. I would read the rest of your nonsense, but your lack of fact checking makes me rather not.

It's a shame you didn't read all of it because you may have missed this gem "That many of them play in freezing winters, where it is difficult to grow grass, it appears likely  the ball is in the air a lot."

Fuck me fucking dead! 

Obviously has never heard about winter breaks and/or grow lights.  I suppose when you stopped watching the EPL in 1976 when they used to play in snow or bog like pitches you may not have been brought up to speed on the latest technologies.

Great so we have established that some plodder teams are taller and shorter than quality teams and that some quality teams are taller or shorter than plodders.....it is also incredible that any quality youth players come out of a northern country like england because of snow or cold weather....likewise holland...or belgium...

Ha ! I am 5 feet 8  so do not consider anyone my height a midget (although looking at the size of some schoolkids these days it is getting that way).

I had to go back and check what this thread was about ...it was about whether we in Australia are producing robots now .

It has morphed into whether taller footballers are better or worse than shorter ones .
There are tall good footballers and short good footballers ...just a there are tall crap footballers and short crap footballers.

However it is more to do with position than a teams average height .
Often (but not always) good creative number 10's and mids are on the shorter side i.e Maradona, Pele, Bobby Charlton,Iniesta ,Modric .Pirlo, ADP etc etc .
(Pele and Maradona were the exceptions....they could set goals as well as strike like strikers ...freaks of nature..both of them...but both short).
Good strikers tend to be taller ..around 6 feet .
Wingers tend to be able to be slightly shorter as height is not such an advantage as is speed.
Centrebacks tend to be tall .for obvious reasons.
Wingbacks can be shorter but can probably have a larger range of heights as they often also rely on more on speed than a particular height .
Obviously goalkeepers need to be tall or tallish (6 feet and above).
Basically all heights are useful in any given team depending on a players position and skillset .

So ....back to "are we producing Robots ?"  ???

So it’s gone from robots to height....interesting haha!

Personally I don’t think height matters to me if you have a good understanding of the game whatever position and with a decent technical level to boot you play it at any level as should not be a factor for that player.

Sure it can bring advantages at youth level but in the senior level it diminishes so other factors become important too.

I think the entire height conversation proves Smith's point about "Robots" as certain people seem to take what is said in the textbook or seminars way to literally and they spout this nonsense onto the kids they train. 

Size doesn't matter

It's what you do with it

@CitySam it actually proves quite the opposite with what Ron Smith is saying.

And it’s result of the new players starting to come through are still in it’s infancy, with the likes of Arzani, Pasquali, Caletti, McGree, Italiane and Theoharous all benefactors of the new development system and with more to come underneath them.

You have missed the point of my comment, the issue is some of the coaches who don't have a clue what they are doing.

@CitySam I don’t quite get what you mean that the coaches don’t know what they doing? In what basis you make that point?

We have to remember that the FFA NC is only a guide and not a bible, and the coaches that get it know this is just a base to work with within there own ideas.

The ones that supposedly follow it to a tee is a combination of a) the lack of coaching knowledge and b) lack of time and commitment to create ideas within the framework

And most of those coaches who follow it like that are prominatly volunteer coaches which are mums and dads (that’s why a revised NC was made in 2013 just for them), but with elite coaches they get what the FFA NC is for and use it as a base.

That’s why the idea of the term ‘robot’ is quite flawed in this case.

This is from the Belgium Director of coaching

4. GIVING PLAYERS FREEDOM

When I started playing football, 45 years ago, it was on the streets. Often I'll ask coaches “who played street soccer?” There was no referee, so you could try anything, and there was no coach, so there was freedom.

If you want creative players, you must create an environment of freedom.

That means a coach who observes, who is there as a guide, who will help them reach their destination, but not a PlayStation coach, who says, "do this, do that," who makes the decisions instead of them.Create the environment, free them and help only if it's necessary. Let the kids discover – they are more intelligent than you think they are.


https://trainingground.guru/articles/coaching-revolution-that-took-belgium-to-top-of-world

1. PLAYER-CENTRED APPROACH

One of the main principles is that the main actor is the player; not the coach, not the team. Then it’s very easy to understand that in children’s football we have to do what they like. We call it the tailor-made approach. Who is in front of me? Look at the characteristics of the player and then adapt the environment to fit them.

2. SMALL-SIDED GAMES

Kids want to play football in their own way, not the way adults want to play. If you put a child on an adult’s bicycle, they’ll say, "are you crazy?" But this is what happens in football, we ask them to play 11 v 11 or 8 v 8 at a very young age. They are not able to do it. 
As a child, how did you start playing? In my case, it was with my brother, playing 1 v 1 at home, in the garden, in the garage, dribbling and scoring.We created a format that is tailor made for this. We put one player in the goal and one on the pitch and at five, six years old, they play 1 v 1 with the goalkeeper and they adore it. They have a lot of touches, a lot of scoring opportunities. It’s all about that fun environment and fun means scoring goals.They play two halves of three minutes, then they go to the next pitch. The winner goes to the left and the loser to the right. After one or two games they’ll be playing against a similar level of opponent and everyone scores goals, everyone wins games, which makes it fun.I remember at my home club, some of the parents said: “Kris, you’re crazy. What are you doing? Football is a collective game and you’re making them play 1 v 1 and a goalkeeper.”I said: “Yes, football is a collective game – but only when they are teenagers and adults." When they are five years old, they don’t want to pass the ball, they just want to dribble and score.We used to play 5 v 5 at six years old and had a big problem, because there was only one ball and some players never had a touch of it. After a few weeks, they'd say, “I don’t like it, it’s not fun.”Under-14 is when they will first play 11 v 11 with us.

3. MULTIMOVE

This is an amazing project funded by the Flemish government. It is about basic motor skills - teaching them to move and preparing them for choosing a sport when they are older. That is an approach we wanted to focus on more and more - making children active in several sports and at a later age they can decide if they prefer basketball or football or whatever. That is very important. 
Parents tend to look with the glasses of adults. They say: “I want my child to play football. Now I’m seeing him catching balloons.” But you have to start with the basics. If they are not able to master these, then they cannot go into complex situations. Then they will stop loving football.

4. GIVING PLAYERS FREEDOM

When I started playing football, 45 years ago, it was on the streets. Often I'll ask coaches “who played street soccer?” There was no referee, so you could try anything, and there was no coach, so there was freedom.If you want creative players, you must create an environment of freedom. That means a coach who observes, who is there as a guide, who will help them reach their destination, but not a PlayStation coach, who says, "do this, do that," who makes the decisions instead of them.Create the environment, free them and help only if it's necessary. Let the kids discover – they are more intelligent than you think they are.

5. GAME-BASED PRACTICE

Football is complex and it is a decision-making process. Young players must be in an environment of making decisions by themselves. Once the game starts, the coach is out. The player has to read the game, makes the decisions.In training, this is what you have to simulate – real game-based situations where they can make decisions, read the game and learn from it. This is very, very important.

They have to learn to be aware of space and time. In football you have opponents. You might want to do a passing and shooting drill as a warm-up, but then you have to go into situations where the players are aware of the opponent and are thinking "how can I create space for myself?"All these things you can only learn in game situations. When I was a young boy and we had to pass from one cone to another in training. It was so boring. We used to say: “Coach, when are we going to play a game?”He'd say: “If you do well, we’ll play a game at the end of the session.”
READ MORE: Meulensteen - how to develop a gem like Rashford

We have changed this completely. One of my slogans to coaches is “make your players love the game.” After that, you can help them learn the game. They love the game through maximising game situations.

6. WINNING DOESN'T MATTER

We don’t have league tables until the Under-14 level. That was one of the big battles for us. Coaches shouldn’t be concerned about tables and trying to win trophies before this age - they should be thinking about developing players.Coaches are inclined to focus on winning the game. That makes them play the big, strong players who give them the best chance of winning, so the late developers end up on the bench 75% of the time.The second thing we did was play four quarters. At the end of the first and third quarters all the subs had to come off the bench. That was the only time the coach could make substitutions. Otherwise they don’t develop, because they’re on the bench watching the game instead of participating in it.Remember that slogan again – love the game, then the learning can start.

7. LOOK AFTER THE LATE DEVELOPERS

Late developers will go one year lower if they need to. Then they can play in an equal battle and show their skills. If you don't do this, you can lose some big talents who are late maturers. Nacer Chadli, Dries Mertens, Kevin De Bruyne – they were all late maturers.In fact Kevin did not appear for the national team until the Under-19s - now he is considered the best player in the Premier League!
In Spain, Real Madrid and Barcelona are really focussing on late developers, because they are aware of what they can do. If you give them the time to grow, they can develop into a Messi or an Iniesta!These are the players who have really developed their brain, the intelligence and this is what modern football is – reading the game and making quick decisions, being able to execute what you have in your mind.

For latest updates, follow us on Twitter at @ground_guru

A Beta Male Generation at street level produces a Beta Male generation of sportsman.

Leckie versus Lazaridis or Kewell on left wing for Australia? No contest. The latter two any day of the week.

Because many of them have been on the FFA courses and swallowed the handbook, are very good at statistical analysis and repeating the mantras, but haven't actually played the game at a reasonable level.  
Of course, not all great coaches were great players - or even particularly good players - but those who didn't play tend to have an innate understanding of the game that a fair few youth/school coaches here seem to lack.

Here's the problem; We know this!!!

All that has been said by this TD from Belgium is common knowledge in Australian Sporting circles. Check out the Australian Sports Commission or books on Physical Education or Sports Science.

The problem for everyone in the First World is implementation and political will.

The politicians want to give AFL $250Million and a Tassie AFL team $25Million.
All I see is 275 Sports centres in Victoria and Tasmania that are a social, cultural and community game changers.

Our sporting bodies spend most of their resources on their elite levels to the detriment of grassroots.

It is interesting seeing some of these old threads during our way too long off season

So many of the talking points look like they are cut and pasted from england where they also complain about new players being robots and sideways and backwards passing. The difference is people aren't blaming it on the english ntc, just changes in football and how things were better in their days. Incidentally whenever I visit the continent I never hear people in germany france or holland complain about robots or sideways/backwards passing. Our football culture is probably hugely affected by england to this day

The first to go through the sap phase v1 of the ntc were born 2001. The results in the olyroos campaign were spectacularly bad, but there is a noticeable step up in club success for that group. But the training sessions in v2 I think were pretty vital and that group are born 2006 and older. The a league also has shot up in how much ball circulation there is and how fast the ball moves.

we made a v3 of the ntc in 2018 with a game intervention game model for the SAP phase which reminds me of the brittish national curriculum. The kids who go through that are born 2010 or later. I'm not a fan of the GIG model personally. The sample exercizes are better than the ones you get in england though. One piece of criticism that does seem to have stuck for the post sap part of the ntc is aloisi and okon saying they were told you have to play 4-3-3. Rob Sherman actually agreed and said if people are getting that impression it is Rob and the fa's fault. Rob said it was meant to be that you learn 4-3-3 as a guide and then implement your own philosophy once you have learnt the principles.
See here
https://www.sbs.com.au/sport/video/former-ffa-technical-director-sherman-the-controversial-curriculum/m9zapz6yd

Anyway, I think we one day be baffled by the crazy war over a coaching manual for grassroots noobs (like myself!) where every country in the world seems to have some sort of ntc which seems to follow similar principles as ours. Even England is reasonably similar to ours with inferior practice sessions and some weird complicated stuff about the shape of the training pitch. But they give sample sessions, small sided games and have lots of touches on the ball. Surely our issues are not the ntc but the lack of pathways. The fa running the a league for 15 years meant we could basically make it like a nrl competition. Squads were full of 30+ year old journeymen getting paid more than nathan cleary. The fa probably was covering costs and had no incentive to build the pyramid or fix grassroots. Now we face the double boost of a league clubs being forced to play youth to survive financially and the fa being free to build a pyramid and focus on grass roots.

After the closure of the nsl we went from 2000 players in junior nsl teams to 0, roughly 150 starting spots for aussies in the domestic league to 42. We made some very bad decisions and some very good ones. In the end it is what it is and fingers crossed the ship is righting itself

good decisions
1) ntc
2) move to asia
3) making the top league pro

bad decisions
1) summer football
2) throwing out the old nsl teams permanently. The 2nd division should have started the moment we had 10 teams in the a league. A reset to make a pro league is defendable imo
3) fa and a league together rather than separate which led to the first issue

Decisions I don't know enough about to have an opinion
1) the restructuring of the npl
2) The points system in the npl
3) state federations continuing to exist. I tend to be suspicious of consolidating and centralizing power but have heard some strong arguments for the fa to run everything

Bump past spam

6 years on and this shit is still being defended....

"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."

To be honest is no right or wrong answer to this, it seems there is a culture clash going on at the moment and not just locally but globally especially with the influence and success of Pep Guardiola in terms of he's style with he's successful positional play model and there is the side of the argue where 'you let the players play' but with more chaos and less control in terms of the teams success.

As someone called it 'positional play' vs 'relationism', i.e the team vs the power of the players.

In terms of the NC I know its dirty word for some, as long as if you add the good and improve the flaws then these things can be evolved.

Not a bad outlook Barca.
Mentioning Pep, for obviously its looked upon Europe more than anywhere else and we having followed the Dutch so its mentioned in the past or whatever FFA/NC I think coachs are not open minded enough possibly in fear of getting wrapped on the knuckles......
One wonders why we see the Latino/Sth Merican Clubs/NT's play a similar game (possession/play from the back) but allow more freedoms to their players by the look of it and more aggressive being their nature.
Argies are the reigning WChamps and obviously many/all of them are in the Big 5 leagues playing to their Club football system what would be cool is to review their Jnr days development.
The "relationism" is something that a smart coach should look to encourage and foster but isn't that how any good Team works in the first place.....
Movement off the ball, skill, support, know where each other is without having to look, I mean every great winning team do this from way back it is nothing new imo.
Its just that its all getting down on paper more and more and new wordism's :)

The NC is just a "user manual" if you will mate, a book of exercises and "recipes" for lack of a better word... Its the not the document that I have issue with its its implementation.

Or maybe to pu8t it a better way, as a pure "curriculum" like in our childrens high schools for example...  When we do national performance testing in areas like maths, STEM, english and comprehension and find that they sylabus and curriculum is not sufficeint, what do we, as a nation do? That should be the same in football no? Not hide behind the "Well its what the Dutch say, or the French say or what the Lowy regime said we should do"