Credit to your kid but its survival of the 'fittest'. Players have to earn their time and spot in the 11. We want the strongest in all aspects to rise to the top and the mental part of the game is probably one of the most important parts of it. I was in the same boat as your son and quit at 18. I know realise why and I only blame myself.

You're 100% right. It is about the mental side as much as anything.  I guess if we were dead serious about turning him into the best footballer he could be we'd pick up the whole family and move towns.  When he played in Brisbane he was in a gun team surrounded by gun players. (He was one of the gun players.)  Had we stayed there he'd be a far better player now.

But we moved towns for a better overall life and, well, here we are. 

I have to give credit to North Coast Football and Newcastle.  The standout kids get invited to camps and trials in Newy and someone from one of the 4 NPL sides is always moving onto bigger and better things.  You'd have to say the net is being cast wider than it used to be.  Everything seems to be a step up in professionalism from only a few years ago.

Exactly. Players making it is a random chaotic mix of possibilites and is not linear. Jason Culina for example was at Ajax for years without ever playing a game then got a move to twente at like 24 where he scored over 10 goals from midfirld and suddenly was rusted on starter for socceroos. Never know how players will turn out. No one woukd have ever predicted chippeefield to move to basle like he did at 28 become a club legend and play in the champions league every year 

With the current structure in place late developers will never make it here, the cut off with aleague squads is too early and need to be at a level developing those players that come good later on.

“Like Mazis, Garner and Woods reminded Bernal of a teenage Tom Rogic and hopes they'll be inspired by his journey."Both boys impressed me immediately like the first time I saw Tom Rogic," Bernal said. "We have no A-league club in Canberra so the quicker they get out into a professional environment the better chance they have of becoming top professionals."This is a training and development trip to see where they lie in the football landscape, and be put into the club database for further monitoring."


https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6357464/two-teens-ready-to-fire-ahead-of-celtic-training-stint/?cs=14237

Massive gaps in youth development. Needs to be some research done in these areas.

I think we need to SEE the connection from

Youth leagues -> A-League & OR NT EXPOSURE -> Overseas. 

Make a name HERE -> THEN go overseas.

NOT! Nobodies , no names, then see them in the NT not knowing who the fug 

“My loan at Millwall was a big part of my development,” Kane said as he prepared for Tottenham’s FA Cup quarter-final against Millwall at White Hart Lane on Sunday. “I was 18, we were in a relegation battle and it turned me into a man. I played in difficult, high-pressure games and I managed to come out of it positively. I had a great time at the club and it will be interesting to play them again. A lot has changed since I left but I’m looking forward to it.”

https://www.google.se/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjOlN67nqvkAhWIAxAIHWqJC1kQzPwBegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2017%2Fmar%2F09%2Fharry-kane-loan-millwall-tottenham-fa-cup&psig=AOvVaw3ovXQKo0UeNs5XWEZ7J2Ki&ust=1567276605052398

18 yr old Australian players get to watch Simon and ODonovon head butt opponents from the bench if they are lucky.

I am becoming more and more convinced that youth development and football in general is suffering from the stodgy one size fits all National Curriculum.
I believe it is based on the Dutch system and the 443 playing formation.
No one plays 443 at present. 
We need to modernise and show kids different and varying systems from about age ten on .
These kids are smarter than we think and can handle it.
 We also need to let kids play and "show off a bit" if they have some flair...don't coach it out of them...encourage it .

Also ....whilst we needed to get away from the "ethnic" image the old NSL had we have taken it too far .
In the NSL days you had clubs playing varying styles of football. The Croations had free flowing individuals , the Italians a bit of everything , the Dutch were different again .
Each team had varying nationalties playing and coaching . It made for some exciting football.
When you went to NSL games you got different styles depending on who your team was playing .
It was good to watch and play .

Now we have teams all playing similar styles and no one wants to break out of the mould. 
Remember when Ange dared to do it ? "Roarcelona" were born and excited the league for a few years.
We need both junior and senior clubs to be more individual and play different styles.
Our playing style is stale and predictable.
The crowds need to see players who do unexpected things ...to get that junior players have to be allowed to try things as they progress.

I wish we could play a 443 formation.
Would really help having one more player on the pitch than our opponents!

I still laugh at coaches, players and fans who seem to think they line their players up in a 352, 442, 433 whatever it may be and their job is done. They have no concept of formation fluidity through transition and will defend their position and knowledge on the game till they're blue in the face.........

ha ...good pick up ...you know what I meant ...

@miron, speaking as a current coach, the NC doesn't actually require every coach to use the dutch 433 or any system for that matter What it does is provides a "professional" coaching framework around which coaches can develop their playing philosophies and then develop training plans to achieve them. I can say without doubt that the C-license course and NC has helped improve my coaching but I do not employ the 433 nor everthing in the NC (ie I often dont play a training game at the end of training sessions as I prefer to keep working on a specific game aspect). 

The inflexibility comes from the many "non-football" people who have gotten the coaching badges are using the NC as a crutch to support their lack of knowledge and understanding of football. For example if you played AFL all your life then get your C-license so you can coach your sons team in NPL (no I am not joking there are people like this coaching kids as we speak) all you know is whats in the NC as this is what you picked up during the training so what else can you talk about.

At the top end, your comments about the HAL are spot on and the fear of losing the ball pervades most teams so you end up with thie stodgy passing backwards no risk style of play which often makes the HAL unwatchable. Unfortunately this mentality flows into the HAL academies and when good kids are picked up out of the NPL teams the HAL academies ensure all creativity is drained and keeping possession is the only goal. There are many senior NPL coaches who wont look at returning HAL academy players as they are passing robots (normally backwards) and have difficulty adapting to different styles.

One final observation, I dont particularly rate Arzani as a special player, but one thing he did do was try go forward and be creative, which is so rare in the HAL from Aussie players that people got really excited.

Borello and Leckie say hi

Good to read your doing it your way but as you mention there is some good points in the NC.....
The problem is some Coachs I've watched train my boys (not like your experience down south ie AFL background getting C lic OMG) PL3 and this is a German Coach carried out NC by the book that I could see and turned 2 potential winning squads he had over 2 seasons into park the bus robots.
Any kid with flair was frowned upon and berated @ HT for eg.
Some of these kids were potential match winners, free kicks just near the box that were chance goals was called out "play ball" so the simple pass retaining possession FFS.
A Miron, I agree have we squeezed out far too much of the ethnic game.
As AJF mentions comes down to ingraining your own philosophy so to speak - whats wrong with throwing in the good from the current NC and the good from the NSL ethnic style of play.
We saw how good the Crows did making it to the WC Final, the Dutch are doing ok again, the Italians are re grouping and looking good etcetc....
We have such a mix here as we all know re backgrounds which is great but its NC Barcelona ticka tacka, reset reset reset, all the ball in the world doesn't win you games unless you have the skill to play one touch football that we do not currently and we have weeded out individualism game breakers.
It drives me nuts watching Youth many times but at PL1/2/3 levels I'm still enjoying some good games.
FFACup game we went to Sydney United vs PL2 St George was a cracking game of good football that went to extra time and a 8 goal thriller.
Our kids need to play like that.

That’s correct, the people that follow the NC rigidly have little to no knowledge of the game and often have little time to plan a good session together.

Which is why the robot term has been bandied around, the smart ones knows it’s a just base and the rest is on them.

The robot myth needs to be busted for the types that know little about football or just don’t have the time to plan a good session together.

were "excited"......

I agree. But not only is it mostly those with little football/coaching knowledge who seem to be using the NC rigidly, I also would argue that it has still potentially been good for those coaches and has them coaching at a higher standard. At least now the uneducated/inexperienced have something to guide to, rather than the "clear it" I used to always hear from the sidelines.

Replacing "clear it" types with robotic keep possession types seems like a win to me. 

In  the epoch when Australia did well in some underage tournaments, we failed to qualify for a senior World Cup for 32 years!

This underage stars didn't progress to fulfil the early promise as performers in international football. 

Their faults  were identified and a new curriculum was designed to redress those issues.

The main issue  has been not  having a viable second division  or not  enough professional clubs in Aus to provide sufficient pathways.

There was an interesting podcast  with Craig Foster and Mark Rudan, where they elucidated that many of their former  players they had developed, just could never ever get an opportunity to play HAL. Most quit, and thanked their coaches before doing  so.

They felt they had been given good coaching, but never had a genuine opportunity to showcase their skills in a professional scenario.

What the eclectic approach showed though, was little success in international football.

All powerhouses tend to have systems of play they adhere to. There is a lot of common ground in powerhouses, with Italy proving to be  the exception.

Italy tend to be the only  powerhouse deploying a different approach.

You do realize that the vast majority of players who played in the teams that have qualified were NSL products?

Do you also realise that neither Ange nor Arnie play the 433 depicted in the NC. Plus I would challenge anyone to describe Bert van Marwijk's tactics in the last WC as meeting the NC philosophy (below for those interested):

A proactive brand of football, based on effective possession with the cutting edge provided by creative individuals.
Defensively the key components are quick transition and intelligent collective pressing.
The Playing Style is underpinned by a strong ‘team mentality’, capitalising on Australia’s traditional strengths.

But what they don't take into account is the resources and number of potential players in these countries. They can train and play against the best quality of opposition at their age groups all the way into top quality clubs. That's where the advantage is and by proxy of having the best players they will dominate games more and be more attacking by nature of being the better team.

We aren't any of this, what we are closer too is the old English model of excluding players because they don't fit the mould of what they want. We want robots, not any flair and selfishness in players.

Can you explain how Brazil and Argentina have won so many WC's without a NC?

Those "powerhouses" have a long history of competitive international football. Australia, because of its geographical situation hasn't always had this.

The powerhouses have a long tradition of strong well supported clubs. Australia has always had a tradition of fly by night clubs, many of them not well supported.

In addition, Australia has the handicap of soccer not being the most popular football code.

And yet dicentric still mocks our "32 years without qualifying". When we qualified in 74 it was mainly an NSW state league effort- it wasn't even a unified national effort.

Also worth noting that when the current crop of socceroos have difficulty beating powerhouses like thailand there is no way in hell they would have gotten through the oceania qualifying path

Usually he says 32 years of FAILURE.

Had to laugh the other day there were half a dozen new posts on the main board with Decentric being the last contributor.  4 out of those 6 had his go-to '32 years of failure' catchphrase.

Was it Goebbels or Hitler that said 'if you say a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it'.


 

You do realise that statement is incorrect.

Most players were NOT NSL products.

thats BS. but I will make it easy for you, from the 2006 squad, name which ones werent

Read what you wrote. I am right and you are wrong.
From the 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 squads tell me how many players were NOT NSL products. Yes, that's right, the majority did NOT play in the NSL.

In the 2006 tournament, quite a few of the players, including some of the 'main' players did NOT play a single NSL game before the tournament. eg Kewell, Cahill, Moore, Neill, Wilkshere, Skoko. That's right zero NSL games between them.
There were quite a few players in that squad that played less than 1 or 2 seasons in the NSL. eg. Aloisi (21 games), Bresciano, (less than 30 games) Grella (less than 40 games), Milligan (16 games), Kennedy (4 games).

Once you get to the 2010, 2014 World Cups, the list dwindles even more.

Basically, the NSL did fail.

The full list is below, but out of the squad of 23, 3 went straight from the AIS overseas. The rest were all involved with NSL clubs in some way (I know the NND have difficulty comprehending that teams may have junior set-ups that develop youngsters but it does happen). Plus many of the new gen socceroos played juniors at old NSL clubs so it must pain you to know that the NSL keeps producing.  Also note the success of the AIS program, something that the so called failure Soccer Australia set up

Also if you apply your less than 2 seasons logic, the HAL has been a disaster.

1          Mark Schwarzer Juniors and Seniors at Marconi
2          Lucas Neill        AIS before going OS
3          Craig Moore     AIS before going OS
4          Tim Cahill          Juniors at Sydney Olympic and Sydney United
5          Jason Culina     Juniors Knights and Seniors SU
6          Tony Popovic    Juniors and Seniors at SU
7          Brett Emerton   Juniors Marconi, AIS and Seniors SO
8          Josip Skoko      AIS before going OS
9          Mark Viduka (c) Juniors and Seniors at MK
10        Harry Kewell     Juniors at Marconi
11        Stan Lazaridis   Seniors at West Adelaide
12        Ante Covic        Seniors APIA and Marconi
13        Vince Grella       Juniors AIS, Seniors Canberra Cosmos & Carlton
14        Scott Chipperfield         Seniors Wollongong Wolves
15        John Aloisi        Seniors Adelaide City
16        Michael Beauchamp      Juniors and Seniors at Marconi
17        Archie Thompson          Seniors Gippsland, Carlton and Marconi
18        Zeljko Kalac      Juniors and Seniors at SU
19        Joshua Kennedy Seniors Carlton
20        Luke Wilkshire  Youth Wollongong
21        Mile Sterjovski  Youth WW, Seniors WW, SU & Parramatta
22        Mark Milligan    Seniors Northern Spirit
23        Mark Bresciano Seniors Carlton

Wrong.

There is nothing about producing robots.

You need to gain greater insight in order to pontificate.

The point you make about greater resources in these countries is true though.