The print I have enlarged is reflective of my opinion that for the Socceroos to be successful at International level and at a World Cup by consistently making Quarter finals and Semi Finals, we need players at clubs competing in Champions League, playing in the top leagues in Europe and in the starting line ups of clubs like Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal, PSG, Lyon, Marseille, Barca, RM, AThletico, Valencia, AC Milan, Inter, Juve, Bayern, Dortmund, etc.
This is what Klinsmann is telling the USA players need to achieve this to if they are to become a World Power.

I would add that we could take a slightly different route as well if our boys played in the top South American teams in particular Brazil and Argentina, something that the USA could more easily achieve with their players.
But having players at Santos, Sao Paulo, Corinthians, Vasco, Boca, River Plate, Newells Old Boys etc may also be options.

When thinking along these lines there is a massive job to be done in player development in this country but maybe creating channels or links to these big European, or Soth American, Clubs may assist with our progress.
These channels could be for coaching exchanges, adminstration conferences, player links of course, sharing sports science, providing training facilities etc. etc.

Wednesday, 26 December 2012
INSTANT RESULTS
http://foundationssportsgroup.blogspot.com.au/
Gus Cerro
In today's society, we are all looking for instant results, instant gratification, so we can feel good about ourselves, so we can justify our exertions.
What one needs to understand is that in Football nothing is short term. This is especially so when it comes to game related methods.
What many don't understand or are not aware of is that what Spain has achieved these past few years did not happen overnight!
It is hard to write about football because when you do, quite often it will be misunderstood or more than likely questioned without any validation or facts behind what they are being critical of!
Football is a highly opinionated game and everyone is an expert with in depth knowledge of a game that after all these years I myself am still trying to understand. However when you dedicate your life to doing so you are able to form an educated opinion on matters relating to the game and on my part that of developing footballers.
After nearly 10 years of working with children of all ages I can honestly say that I am not nearly close to perfecting myself as an educator and it is this attitude I take towards continuing to learn something new every day that I believe has equipped me with the ability to do my job well. What I have learned over the years is that there is no magic wand that transforms a child into a football superstar. I have learned that many of the world's best players are the best not because of their development through coaches but through circumstances that include their childhood environment, their influences, their parents and where they live.
These are only a few amongst a plethora of factors to consider before you even begin to delve into their football development. This, however, does not mean that a child is destined to become a superstar merely because of their circumstance. A child that has talent needs that talent to be realised. In the case of Messi, he was fortunate that he ended up at Barca because he entered a development system as such that provides the means of fostering talent and which has helped him reach his full potential along with those around him - today we see a team packed with super players capable of incredible feats. One must understand however that the end product was a long-term and continual work in progress. This progress has led to the fruition of clubs like Barca which is now at a point where their development system is regarded as the best in the world.

It takes time for anyone to truly develop their full potential.
When discussing game related methods those that do not understand the concept will question its merit.
Most will not be able to understand how a child develops technically within a game. I keep hearing and reading the words 'corrective technique method'. I keep reading that a player cannot progress unless the game is stripped back to its solitary movement or function and such movement/function must be corrected in isolation.
These opinions all come from coaches that think they can improve a player's technique with this method. The problem is that it is only one small part of developing technique!
Football is a dynamic game and within that environment you have a million different variables that exist. Variables such as time, movement, moments, stance, positioning, thinking, reading, size, cohesion, cognition, motivation, boredom, excitement, adrenalin, confidence, speed, space and the list goes on and on and on.
These variables cannot be taken literally, for example, size cannot be treated as a singular variable, size can mean multiple things along with speed. The bottom line is that there is no one-size-fits-all way of doing things unless you utilise the game in its entirety. The only true form of development which encapsulates all of these variables is the game. This is so for any age group and any level. The key is for the teacher to understand the game and all of its variables first.
Understanding the variables allows you to chop and change, adapt and assess. Understanding kids' cognitive, physical, mental and emotional stages will enable you to adapt the games to suit the level that these players are at. Coaching kids is liable to constant, unpredictable change. No training session is ever the same: you could do a game related drill that goes extremely well, players executing things perfectly the next day; you can do the same drill with the same kids and it could all turn pear-shaped. Finding the balance and learning to identify the dynamics of what you are teaching will improve the players' technique, insight and every other variable within the game. It would be close to impossible to write a book on this as there are a million different ways you can facilitate a game based drill.

Technique can be learned within the game; South Americans have been doing it through street football for as long as one cares to remember and they are still producing more technical and more creative players than the rest of the world. Once again it would be foolish to think that this is the only reason why they develop so many players, you can add all the other variables that don't exist in other parts of the world that contribute towards the large number of players they export every year!

A coach can teach technique within the game environment, in fact I believe players learn to control the ball quicker in game play and if the game is structured properly they will still get their thousand touches of the ball per session only it will be a thousand touches where they will also have a multitude of other variables around them to focus on. By doing it this way they adapt to chaos and learn to make sense out of chaos. Again it is silly to presume that this is a one size fits all solution. Common sense tells us that this is why we have grading, to find the balance, allowing kids to evolve at their own pace within their own level and ability.

The only form of isolated training I use and endorse is co-ordination exercises with a ball. These are fundamental for the younger age groups. I do not do passing practices, only individual one player one ball co-ordination work and the amount and time spent on such a task once again is dependent on the level of the group. Sometimes I'll do ten minutes sometimes it will take a three quarters of a session, it is determined by a multitude of different variables such as emotional state, weather and group dynamics or numbers.

JAN 22, 2012


http://blog.80percentmental.com/2012/01/michel-bruyninckx-trains-soccer-brains.html#.UQJyjL8U9-Q
Michel Bruyninckx Trains Soccer Brains
By Dan Peterson

Michel Bruyninckx
When describing what’s wrong with today’s youth soccer coaching, Michel Bruyninckx points to his head. “We need to stop thinking football is only a matter of the body,” the 59-year old Belgian Uefa A license coach and Standard Liège academy director recently told the BBC. “Skillfulness will only grow if we better understand the mental part of developing a player. Cognitive readiness, improved perception, better mastering of time and space in combination with perfect motor functioning.”

We’re not talking about dribbling around orange cones here. Bruyninckx’s approach, which he dubs “brain centered learning” borrows heavily from the constructivist theory of education that involves a total immersion of the student in the learning activity.

In fact, there are three components to the related concept of “brain based” teaching:
Orchestra immersion – the idea that the student must be thrown into the pool of the learning experience so that they are fully immersed in the experience.
Relaxed alertness – a way of providing a challenging environment for the student but not have them stressed out by the chance of error.
Active processing – the means by which a student can constantly process information in different ways so that it is ingrained in his neural pathways, allowing them to consolidate and internalize the new material.
This “training from the neck up” approach is certainly different than the traditional emphasis on technical skills and physical fitness. The brain seems to be the last frontier for sports training and others are starting to take note of it.

“I think that coaches either forget, or don’t even realise, that football is a hugely cognitive sport,” said the Uefa-A licence coach Kevin McGreskin in a recent Sports Illustrated story. “We’ve got to develop the players’ brains as well as their bodies but it’s much easier to see and measure the differences we make to a player’s physiology than we can with their cognitive attributes.”

At the Standard Liège facility outside of Brussels, Bruyninckx currently coaches about 68 players between the age of 12 and 19, who have been linked with first and second division Belgian clubs. If there was any question if his methods are effective, about 25% of the 100 or so players that he has coached have turned pro. By comparison, according to the Professional Footballers’ Association, of the 600 boys joining pro clubs at age 16, 500 are out of the game by age 21.
His training tactics try to force the players’ brains to constantly multitask so that in-game decision making can keep up with the pace of the game. ”You have to present new activities that players are not used to doing. If you repeat exercises too much the brain thinks it knows the answers,” Bruyninckx added. “By constantly challenging the brain and making use of its plasticity you discover a world that you thought was never available. Once the brain picks up the challenge you create new connections and gives remarkable results.”

The geometry of the game is stressed through most training exercises. Soccer is a game of constantly changing angles which need to be instantly analyzed and used before the opportunity closes. Finding these angles has to be a reaction from hours of practice since there is no time to search during a game.

“Football is an angular game and needs training of perception — both peripheral sight and split vision,” said Bruyninckx. “Straight, vertical playing increases the danger of losing the ball. If a team continuously plays the balls at angles at a very high speed it will be quite impossible to recover the ball. The team rhythm will be so high that your opponent will never get into the match.”

Certainly, brain-centered learning faces enormous inertia among the coaching establishment. Still, for those teams looking for the extra edge, the Bruyninckx method is gaining fans. “Michel’s methods and philosophy touch on the last frontier of developing world-class individuals on and off the field – the brain,” respected tennis coach Pete McCraw stated. “His methods transcend current learning frameworks and challenge traditional beliefs of athlete development in team sports. It is pioneering work, better still it has broad applications across many sporting disciplines.”

Standard Liege's Bruyninckx leads way in developing mental capacity
Story Highlights
Michel Bruyninckx is innovating methods to improve the brain's performance
To improve decision-making, complex drills are designed to foster concentration
Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho is among those interested in Bruyninckx's ideas


By John Sinnott, Special to SI.com

Belgium international midfielder Steven Defour is among those to have benefitted from working with Michel Bruyninckx.
Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

Editor's note: This is an exclusive offered to Sports Illustrated by the collective of writers at The Blizzard. To read more, download Issue Three of The Blizzard which is out now on a pay-what-you-like basis. Find out more at http://www.theblizzard.co.uk/.
Football, Johan Cruyff said, is a game you play with your brain. Michel Bruyninckx takes that claim more seriously than most. Terms like pedagogy, didactical principles, cognitive readiness and differential learning trip off the Belgian coach's tongue as easily as catenaccio as he explains his "brain centred learning" approach to training young players. "When you make use of difficult words people feel resentment," said the Standard Liège academy director, who is arguably the first football coach to develop a training method specifically to target improvement in the brain's performance. "But when you see the training you can see it works."
Bruyninckx is talking in his office in the €18 million state-of-the-art Academie Robert Louis-Dreyfus, which is widely regarded as one of the best in Europe. Located in the Saint-Jean forest just up the road from the club's Stade de Sclessin, the academy has a futuristic feel, particularly when set aganst the fading industry of Liège. It is an appropriate setting for a coach who is as comfortable talking about neuroscience as he is about football tactics.
The idea behind his approach is simple -- to make players think as quickly with their brains as they kick the ball with their feet. "We need to develop an engram -- a neurological track -- in the brain," said Bruyninckx, who aims for his players to be in a state of "conscious" learning at all times when they are training and playing. It is about creating new connections in the brain's circuitry and hard wiring them in. Key to this is the part played by myelin, an insulating material that forms a layer -- the myelin sheath -- usually around only the axon of a neuron and which gets thicker when the nerve is repeatedly stimulated. "What do good athletes do when they train? They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire. That's what makes them different from the rest of us," George Bartzokis, a professor of neurology at UCLA, told Daniel Coyle of the New York Times in 2007.
The attraction of developing more intelligent players would seem obvious for any self-respecting football coach, but the high drop-out rate -- "In England we've judged players by the time they are 17 or 18," said the Southampton scout David Webb -- suggests the world of youth development in Britain could do with a little more blue sky thinking. And why are they being rejected at such an early age when the brain is not fully developed until the age of 25?
But it's not just the high wastage rate. In the 2008-09 season 57 percent of players at Premier League academies were born between September and December, while 14 percent had their birthday between May and August. That suggests that the more physically mature children in any given school year are being selected by clubs, which in turn means an English Lionel Messi (born June) or Andrès Iniesta (born May) is unlikely to be turning up any time soon. "We always thought that sporting activities were mechanical activities, but we know that there are interventions from the brain," said Bruyninckx, warming to his theme. "Think of what Real Madrid experienced during el Clásico when they were beaten 5-0 by Barcelona last season. This requires high concentration and creativeness, which is only possible if you bring the brain into a conscious process of performing. A new way of training -- actually synaptogenesis -- creating new brain connections."
Bruyninckx is not the only coach advocating more intelligent and innovative approaches to training. "I think that coaches either forget, or don't even realise, that football is a hugely cognitive sport," said the Uefa-A licence coach Kevin McGreskin. "We've got to develop the players' brains as well as their bodies but it's much easier to see and measure the differences we make to a player's physiology than we can with their cognitive attributes."
The worry for McGreskin, who delivers workshops to professional clubs, is that for too long England has been coaching players in "pretty much the same way, but expecting the end product to be different and thinking somehow talent will magically appear."
The drills Bruyninckx uses -- "in five years I don't think I've used the same drills three times" -- start off simply but grow in complexity to foster concentration and touch. This idea of "overload" ensures that the players are more actively involved during an exercise even when they are not on the ball. The pre-eminence of the team over the individual is key for Bruyninckx -- "we have to do it together" is one of his mantras -- and as he shows a video of players performing various training routines he jokes that what they are is doing is football's equivalent of social media networking.
"Football is an angular game and needs training of perception -- both peripheral sight and split vision," said Bruyninckx. "Straight, vertical playing increases the danger of losing the ball. If a team continuously plays the balls at angles at a very high speed it will be quite impossible to recover the ball. The team rhythm will be so high that your opponent will never get into the match."
The idea of overload is as key for McGreskin as it is for Bruyninckx. While the Belgian might get his players to speak in four different languages when they are doing strength and conditioning work, the Scot has devised one exercise in which players have to throw a tennis ball and call out colours while they are passing a football in sequence. "We are not providing kids with the challenges that they need to meet the demands of the modern game," said McGreskin, who has recently started a project working with the Partick Thistle first team. "Overload exercises help the player speed up the feet and the thought process."
McGreskin argues the decision making of too many players is not quick enough, a weakness that is caused by their inability to scan the pitch when they are without the ball. It is a view supported by research carried out by Professor Geir Jordet of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. Using Sky Sports' PlayerCam function, Jordet examined 55 Premier League midfielders' head movements and found that the more these players scanned their surroundings, the statistically more successful they were with their passes. "The visually most active third of the players completed almost twice as many forward passes as the least active players," said Jordet.
McGreskin added, "Don't forget almost 98 percent of the game is played off the ball. Even in a basic passing drill I force the players to work on perception, scanning skills, technique, adjustability, concentration, attention focus and attention bandwidth. It's quite amazing the effect it can have on players."
Bruyninckx is the first to admit that he is a bit of an outsider -- "when Darwin was talking about evolution people thought he was crazy" -- but this summer the Belgian got a foot firmly inside the football establishment's door when he was appointed head of Standard's youth academy. His growing reputation has led to a couple of meetings with Real Madrid, including one with José Mourinho, an interesting development given the way the Madrid club have lagged behind Barça in the development of young players. "Mourinho immediately understood what I'm trying to do and he asked a lot of intelligent questions," said Bruyninckx. "He also noticed that the organisation of the drills requires a greater team involvement, more concentration, attention, a continuous inciting of perception and that intelligent playing could grow a lot. I was most of all surprised by the fact he could instantly see how several technical details would be in favour of his players and the straight coupling of the contents of several drills to his players' individual characteristics was striking. He was not talking about a general programme but processed directly the new insights to his daily training and coaching. He cares a lot about his players."

Before his appointment at Liège, Bruyninckx was coaching youngsters between the age of 12 and 19 who were affiliated to first and second division Belgian clubs such as Mechelen, Westerlo, Anderlecht, Sint-Truiden, OHL Leuven, Vise and KVK Tienen. The youngsters, both boys and girls, had been selected by the Belgian football federation and studied at Redingenhof secondary school near Brussels. Now Bruyninckx is at an institution which has a very different raison d'être -- to produce football players who will help Standard win the Jupiler League before they are -- more than likely -- snapped up by other European clubs.
With five grass pitches as well as an 800-seater stadium, an artificial pitch, a covered training area and a luxury hotel with 30 rooms, the Liège academy, which opened in 2007, is much in demand. Since arriving at Liège, Bruyninckx has received approaches from hundreds of young players from all over the world wanting to come and train with the Belgian club. For weekend matches it is not unusual for 40 agents to be watching games.
Bruyninckx's appointment at Liège followed the arrival of the club's new coach José Riga, another advocate of brain training, who used it when he was coach of the second division club CS Vise. "It's such an intelligent way to learn," said Riga of his academy director's approach. "The exercises are always based on geometrical figures such as rectangles or diamonds. They start off simply but increase in complexity. You have to be running at the same time and looking to see your partners' rhythm. You need to think about putting the ball at a certain angle and you have to think about rhythm, synchronisation and movement. It's not repetition without reflection."
Bruyninckx emphasises that each drill makes use of "tracing" which forces players to reposition themselves as they would in a game. "My organisation is always referring to the reality of a game," he said. He insists that the work he does as a coach incorporates many other aspects -- kinesiology, psychology, biomechanics -- while his players also train with the rhythmic ball -- a small net with room for a football that is then held by the hand to ensure that the ball always stays close to a player -- to maximise the number of touches.
Geoff Noonan, who is Fulham academy co-ordinator for the Under-7 to Under-11 age groups, decided to order 150 of the balls for his players after meeting Bruyninckx at a conference in May. "The rhythmic ball helps to open the hips, and is good for passes across your body, side-on volleys as well as helping a player's weaker foot," said Noonan. "It also allows kids to practise at home and helps them to balance both the left and right sides. The idea of home practice is really useful -- we've lost that culture of kids playing impromptu games on their own and the rhythmic ball provides a way of replacing that."
Barcelona players' high technical level and non-stop movement provide the benchmark for Bruyninckx, but Noonan argues that Barça's recent success as well as Spain's Euro 2008 and 2010 World Cup triumphs are linked to the number of games Spanish youngsters play. "Having visited Spain the way the game is learned over there is not by drills, because that doesn't teach game sense," said Noonan. "In Spain they learn through a games-based approach to help develop and understand time and space. They might play 80-120 games a year, with lots of matches at tournaments and festivals. Playing so many games helps young players to see images in similar situations over and over again. What we need to do is give the kids a good game sense -- understanding time and space -- and develop good technique. We need lots of games and lots of different types of games -- 2 v 2, 3 v 3, 7 v 6 etc -- with lots of different tactics."
Noonan has brought in the consultant and author Mick Critchell, who in the past has coached Arsenal's Theo Walcott and Southampton's Adam Lallana, and has carried out research in the way the brain works. Critchell is an advocate of this approach based on small-sided games -- in essence a way of replicating street football -- and provides a scientific explanation to support his argument. During a two-hour exploration of the brain's workings and its development from birth until it has fully formed, encompassing an in-depth look at its reptilian, limbic, neo-cortex and corpus callosum structures, Critchell explains that while the left side provides logical and rational skills, the right side is the resource for more emotional and intuitive skills.
He argues that the game in England has been taught through the left brain, which is too slow for a fast-moving game like football, and that players develop best when the right and left brain are working together: the technique and the decision making. "It is essential to activate the right brain and analogous vision by continually putting players in unpredictable situations," said Critchell, who walked out on an in-service evening when he saw the Cruyff turn broken down into 13 different parts. "We therefore need to teach small-sided games which are appropriate for the age and ability of each child."
The 68-year-old Critchell references a piece of research by John Moores University that found that more than 50 percent of time in English academies is spent on fitness training or unopposed practices and less than 20 percent on playing small-sided games. "Not only are we developing poor technical players, said Critchell, "we are also creating poor decision makers. We need players who have the ability to play in the future -- a vision to know what to do before receiving the ball. This won't change unless we get rid of the drills."
A former secondary-school teacher, Critchell talks of the importance of the brain's place and grid cells -- "space-mapping neurons linked to a memory-forming region in the brain called the hippocampus" -- which allow players, indeed all humans, to map space. "In roughly 10 seconds, Paul Scholes will see a hundred alternatives and then make choices that will draw on his place and grid cells," said Critchell. The grid cells "act as though the playing surface has got triangles marked out all over it," he added. That makes the playing of small-sided games like 3 v 3 so important "as it allows players to understand that shape better".
Listening to Critchell's advice, Fulham have also introduced a movement programme for all their age groups. He points out that many African and South American children grow up in societies in which dance is a major part of culture. In dances like the samba and salsa, the brain has to coordinate eight or nine different body parts at the same time, which is great for balance, rhythm and body control. Noonan heard Bruyninckx speak at a conference organised by Bacons College academy, a secondary school in Docklands, the day before Barcelona's victory over Manchester United in the Champions League final in May. Over the last few years the former USSR international Sergei Baltacha has established a thriving football academy at Bacons College -- a number of his players also train with London Premier League clubs -- and has developed a close relationship with Bruyninckx.
The Belgian insists that his players be as committed to their education -- "If I can affect your concentration and attention during my training you will take it to school" -- as they are to their football development, a belief shared by Baltacha. "Keeping the athlete grounded will stop us from creating 'Tin Sporting Gods' who in their late teens or early twenties fail to reach their potential in and out of sport," said Tom Eisenhuth, who works closely with Baltacha at Bacons College. "This model is the lifeblood of Sergei's philosophy."
Bruyninckx estimates 25 percent of the 100 or so players that he coached before joining Standard have turned professional or are in the women's national squads. The former Standard Liège midfielder Steven Defour, now at Porto, and the PSV Eindhoven attacking midfielder Dries Mertens are the two most high-profile players with whom the Belgian coach has worked. Another player Bruyninckx coached is the Belgium midfielder Faris Haroun, who joined Middlesbrough in the summer from Germinal Beerschot, scoring on his debut in the 3-1 win over Birmingham. On a trip to Belgium to meet Bruyninckx earlier this year, Haroun joined his mentor for lunch and happily sat through a two-hour Powerpoint presentation that included a hefty dollop of neuroscience. Haroun's concentrated demeanour was noticeable.
Perhaps what really differentiates Bruyninckx from other coaches is that he is not only interested in creating better football players, but also wants to create better human beings so that if they do not make the grade professionally they will be capable of going on to have fulfilling lives. "It's all about having communication with your athletes and finding out how your players are organised," said Bruyninckx. "It is important not to impose your ideas immediately. If a child has a recently divorced family, that child is not emotionally available to learn something. We all see present-day problems and that sometimes the social behaviour of players is not correct. We have to do it together."
Talking to a number of interviewees who have had experience of youth development both in the UK and abroad, what is striking is the sense that European clubs have a more rigorous and analytical approach to coaching young players. Villarreal have 76 coaches working in their academy, all of whom have physical education and child development qualifications, while up to the age of 12 their players would be deployed in at least three different positions during a game. "In Europe there is a real understanding of a child's emotional development and where the kids have come from," said Webb, who is currently studying for an MSc in Sports Psychology while scouting for Southampton, and has been a frequent visitor to Bayer Leverkusen's academy. "I noticed there is more human and cultural understanding with foreign coaches. And there is a real understanding of the type of coaching kids need at certain ages. It's a very systematic and analytical approach to development."
Over the last few years the exploration of how talent is best developed has seen a proliferation of books on the subject, notably Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, Matthew Syed's Bounce, John Ratey's and Eric Hagerman's Spark and Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code. As Critchell notes, "Everybody is searching for the Holy Grail." Given the millions that are at stake in developing players the search is only likely to intensify. Bruyninckx's theories may seem strange now, but as that quest goes on they could become standard practice.
Follow John Sinnott on Twitter @JohnSinnott
This is an exclusive offered to Sports Illustrated by the collective of writers at The Blizzard. To read more, download Issue Three of The Blizzard which is out now on a pay-what-you-like basis. All issues are available to download for PC/Mac, Kindle and iPad on a pay-what-you-like basis in print and digital formats. The Blizzard is a 190-page quarterly publication that allows writers the opportunity to write about the football stories that matter to them, with no limits and no editorial bias. Edited by Jonathan Wilson, it features articles by a host of top writers including Philippe Auclair, Gabr



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Liverpool's Tactical Confusion

What are the tactical issues Liverpool face in implementing a slow build up approach under Brendan Rodgers? Today on the blog Jed Davies discusses the task confronting the club.

The fundamental differences in playing style between La Liga and the English Premier League are what cause Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers struggles with the implementation of successful ‘tiki-taka' more than anything else. Sure, Liverpool do not have the profile of player at present to even enable such a style of football to take place, but this can be resolved within Rodgers’ reign. What cannot change is the very nature of the English game.

Counter Attack - The English Approach
The English Premier League and all those beneath it in the English pyramid are essentially leagues made up of counter-attacking teams - this was something that a Premier League coach put to me recently. I was left a little stunned by those words, “a counter-attacking league!”, not because he generalised every team in the league or even because of the general negativity towards being a ‘counter-attacking’ team but because if we step back and think about it for a moment, he was right.

Manchester United are widely known as the “crossing kings” of football, they’ve scored more goals using this as an assist method than any other team over the last ten years, not because they have better wingers, but because the team is built around the process of the counter attack. They break beyond the opposition and get men in the box, all the while the opposition are still getting back and trying to position themselves to defend the cross.

The response to this threat is to do what QPR did against Tottenham Hotspur in recent weeks: to sit deep and play with opportunism going forward and at worst settle for a draw. By sitting deep, QPR did not allow Spurs to play to their strengths of counter-attacking and crossing against an unprepared defence. Instead QPR were defensively prepared for crosses throughout the whole game and Tottenham struggled to produce the result they wanted. Manchester United however (unlike Tottenham) do and have always had players to break down a low-block and win games - Rooney, Scholes, Van Persie etc.

Wigan vs. West Brom, November 2012. Here we had a game whereby West Brom realised Wigan were a team that relied on attacking down the flanks and combined that with a slower than average build-up of play (to win the possession statistic). West Brom responded to this by sitting deep and forcing Wigan to play the ball out wide time-and-time again, all the while West Brom were perfectly positioned defensively waiting for the crosses to come into a 6”4’ Jonas Olsson and a 6”3’ Gareth McAuley - 44 crosses in total were sent in by Wigan and they were only the ones that got past the primary block of the full-back. The counter-attack was then employed on the likely occasion of the ball being caught by Boaz Myhill or headed away by an outfielder. The tactical match-up led to West Brom taking an away win, 2-1. West Brom, despite only having 44% of possession, controlled the game from start to finish, they controlled the game with and without the ball.

While Wigan vs. West Brom is hardly a game that most will reflect on as a highlight at the end of the season (I can doubt it was even first on Match of the Day that evening), the game highlighted the problem that Liverpool will continue to have under Brendan Rodgers - even with the right profile of players. That’s not to say Liverpool under Rodgers won’t succeed (and I think they will) but that wont be without many obstacles put in their way.

Counter Attack vs Slow Build Up
The slow build-up play of Liverpool is the defining issue at present. It is necessary for Liverpool to play that way to achieve the approach that Rodgers desires but it cannot be combined with the reliance on wide play. In the ideal theory, a slow build-up team concentrates it’s attacking play around what coaches call ‘zone 14’. Zone 14 is consistently the zone on the field that yields the most assists season on season and is consistent in every league and competition throughout world football (see supporting article at end). What a slow build-up team should attempt, in the ideal theory, is to pick their “moment of disruption” from this zone of the field as often as possible (the words of coach Juan Luis Delgado).



A counter-attacking team of course, is able to succeed in assisting from wider-positions because they have the unique opportunity of the possibility in out-numbering the opposition in their own penalty area (see Stoke’s ability to do this at Stoke vs. Liverpool December 2012). The following two images are ideal theoretical representations that detail the relationship between build-up play and the assist location.



A team with a slow build-up would therefore be expected to ‘make the pitch as big as possible’ when on the ball and ‘as small as possible without’ (as phrased by David Winner in his book ‘Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football’). This idea is correct, but only really relates to the first few phases of build-up play when in possession. The Ajax team of the 90’s did however, play with far more width than the Barcelona team of today do. Barcelona instead, concentrate their possession to zone 14 and as a result score more goals per game than any other team influenced by total-football (see Cruyff and Michels’ goals per game at Barcelona compared to Guardiola and Vilanova).

On the contrary, a counter attacking team will look to turn this relationship almost on it’s head. The counter-attacking team will ask the opposition to push forward in possession and employ a slow build-up, that way the counter-attack team can break beyond the opposition with pace and outnumber the out of position opposition inside their own 18-yard box. The relationship between the choice of build-up play and areas of concentration of play is therefore clear cut in the theory.

Letting Go Of Old Habits
So here’s the issue - Liverpool have failed to ditch their crossing habits but are a team with a slow build-up (pre-Rodgers and present). In the 2012 season, Liverpool put in more crosses than any other team, 1102 and required a staggering 421 crosses per game to score a single goal. This means that Liverpool FC during the 2011/12 season needed 14.5 games to score a goal assisted from a cross - a tactic they employed blindly with total faith.

The reason Liverpool performed so poorly on this statistic is simple, you cannot be a slow build-up team AND a crossing team, it just doesn’t work in any league anywhere. Forget the low completion rate in crossing (typically 20-30% and far fewer end up in the back of the net), this isn’t a question of whether crossing is a good methodology or not, it’s a statement about the combination of your attitude to build-up play and your methodology of assist attempts.

Having analysed a considerable amount of Liverpool games this season we can see that this problem is evident. However, I would argue (in Rodgers’ defence) that this is (again) a question of having the incorrect pool of player profiles available to him. Liverpool (like Wigan) lack the players who can play in advanced positions centrally and pick out a pass in a condensed zone in front of them, they lack a David Silva, or a Xavi or Iniesta (or Isco!) - and the problem here is that these players are both scarce and extremely expensive. And it is due to this inability to play through teams that sit deep that leads Liverpool to playing wide and resorting to crossing and giving the ball away (leading to an opposition counter attack). The Wigan vs. West Brom scenario returns.

Concluding Remarks
Therefore, this article puts forward two issues. The first being that you simply cannot combine (with success) a slow build-up approach with a dependency on crosses as a methodology of assists. Secondly, there is a real shortage of players to enable the slow build up play to work and the English Premier League, whether you like it or not, is full of players who will excel in the counter attack against such a style of play - big strong defenders to win the balls coming in and fast advanced players to break beyond the opposition in the counter attack. While the ‘counter attack’ may not be winning the fan’s vote, it’s a tactic that does win games.

Follow Jed on Twitter: @TPiMBW

Jed is a football coach who writes on tactical theory and philosophy for a number of sites and publications including LiverpoolFC.com and his own site JedDavies.com. Jed will have two books on tactical theory and coaching published in March 2013.

The God Mine effect, interesting reading and book.


http://www.thegoldmineeffect.com/

Listen on interview ABC radio

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/the-gold-mine-effect/4224522

http://english.gazzetta.it/Football/24-01-2013/youth-systems-italy-last-europe-liga-kings-of-home-grown-talent-913972575349.shtml

Youth systems: Italy last in Europe
La Liga kings of "home grown" talent
Milano, 24 January 2013

On average, Serie A clubs only have 7.8% of their players come through the ranks of their youth system. In Spain, the average is 25.9%, France and England follow, ahead of Germany. The majority of players brought in from outside are forwards and central defenders
It’s the `14th minute of the Levante-Barcelona game at the Ciutat de Valencia stadium, on November 25, 2012: Daniel Alves isn’t fit enough to
continue, so he asks to be substituted. His place is taken by Martin Montoya. An insignificant statistic, just one of many lost in yet another win for the Blaugrana...? Yes, well... perhaps not. As, that day, for the 1st time in their history, Barça started a match with 11 players all of whom had come through their successful youth academy: Valdes; Montoya, Piqué, Puyol, Jordi Alba; Xavi, Busquets, Iniesta; Pedro, Messi, Fabregas. The final score: 'La Masia' (the name of the Barça training facilities and youth academy, although we really do mean Barça...) beat Levante 4-0. The magical ‘quarry’ where the Catalan side ‘dig up’ their stars of the future is an exception to the rule, as, not even in Spain, a country now considered the breeding ground for exceptional football stars, does any other club have so much success in building a side of future champions with players that have come through their ranks: and La Liga is the league in Europe where more home grown talent gets a stab at 1st team football than in any other country. “Home grown players” account for 25.9% of all players in Spain – essentially, more than a quarter of the squad has cost nothing on the transfer market. Now that we know who tops the league for home grown talent in Europe, let’s look to see who is propping up the table: no need to look too far away from home as... it’s Italy - with a miserly 7.8% of players coming through the ranks. It really makes us want to say something like “let’s focus on youth systems so that we can come out of the current crisis...”.

METHOD — We simply have to look at the reason why more closely: the people who compile these statistics are the Swiss "CIES Football Observatory", who look at the 31 major domestic leagues in UEFA across Europe. And what these statistics reveal to us is that, outside Italy, a player who “comes through the ranks” at a club is considered “important” and he’s nurtured from a young age, through all the various levels of the club, until, finally, making an appearance with the “big boys” in the 1st team. In other words, Xavi at Barça can be compared to Macheda at Manchester Utd, Marchisio at Juve and Alaba at Bayern Munich. It’s the reason why the Premier League is still high in this list, as academy systems in England account for 17.5% of the players who run out for their clubs: when looking at the “top” leagues in Europe, rather than the smaller leagues, the Premier League is 3rd in the statistics, behind la Liga and Ligue 1 in France (21.1%) and, surprisingly, ahead of the German Bundesliga (14.7%).

ON THE LOOK-OUT FOR GOAL SCORERS — Italian and English clubs are the clubs who also buy in the most players from outside their borders: over 50% of 1st team players in Serie A and the Premier League have come through the ranks ‘abroad’ (the average in Europe is 36.1%). And it’s also interesting to note just which type of player clubs bring in: they are keener to bring goalkeepers through their ranks (25.9%) compared to full backs (22.5%), attacking midfield players (22.2%) than defensive midfield players (21.6%) but they bring through fewer central defenders (18.8%) and forwards (17.4%).

UNFAVOURABLE REGULATIONS — But why is it that in Italy - where, according to those in the know, football clubs can overcome the “current crisis" in the game by focussing on their youth system - football clubs appear to lag so far behind their European cousins? It’s hard to narrow things down to just 2 or 3 reasons - just as it would be absurd to try to sum up the entire complicated and massive issue in just the few lines we have available here. But what is clear is that the biggest problem faced by Italian clubs is the ease in which the youngster can be “attracted” by clubs outside Italy, especially the Premier League (remember Rossi, Lupoli, Macheda, Petrucci, etc.). It’s all down to rules and regulations (and UEFA should really think about adding one or two more rules in a bid to protect clubs a bit more...) but also down to the fact that Italian clubs aren’t allowed to offer young players the same sort of lucrative deals they can sign outside Italy. In recent years, more often than not, many Italian clubs with thriving youth academies (in particular Atalanta) have been begrudgingly forced to accept the compensation that they've been offered for the loss of a player as they stand absolutely no chance of matching the deal the other club can offer the youngster (and perhaps even offer other members of his family...) to make the switch abroad.

MENTALITY — The other fundamental issue is the notion of the way football is played in Serie A. And Italian clubs have no good excuse when it comes to defending themselves from criticism. Barcelona play the same way, use the same tactics and the same system, throughout their ranks – from youth team to senior team. Again, they’re the exception to the rule rather than the norm. Indeed, finding another club that has a set-up like that operated at Barça - we can even refer to it as “the Barça model"... - is extremely difficult indeed, even though many clubs in Europe focus on developing players through their youth systems – players who will eventually play for the senior side. Its easier developing youngsters and bringing them through the ranks until, at the age of 20, they're ready to stake a claim for a regular place in the 1st team than to try to buy someone who will “fit into the club", fit into "the Juve style" or “the AC Milan style” or “the Inter style”. Players who are ready to fit seamlessly into the way the side is playing - and who are capable of making a difference to the team. Players who can be considered ‘good enough’ for the 1st team without the need for the club to dip into the transfer market. Youngsters who can come through the ranks, who know the systems, the ‘feeling’ and ‘spirit’ at the club. Youngsters who deserve to be shown faith by the clubs - clubs who gave them their chance in football many years earlier... - and to be part of a mid-to-long-term plan. Perhaps we’re still a long way from achieving that in Italy, but if in Italy we don’t start now, we never will...

Stefano Cantalupi
© RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA

http://www.soccercoachinginternational.com/pdf/Dan%20Micciche-MK%20Dons.pdf

Philosophy
A transparent and shared philosophy is essential for any
successful youth development programme and at MK Dons, Mike
Dove (Academy Manager), myself and the coaching staff, share a
common aim - To produce players for the first team, if not at MK
Dons, then at other clubs. We look ‘Holistically’ at Youth
development and need players to be resilient, resourceful and
reflective individuals who are willing and able to take control of
their development rather than rely on others.
Consequently, we run a coaching programme that reflects these
aims. Also, we try to follow the changing ‘trends’ in the game. We
‘evolve’ as the game itself ‘evolves’. 2009 football is
characterised by Shorter, quicker Passing, Fast and clever
Combinations and Counter Attacking - these are ‘core’ to our
practice

The sad truth is our coaches are not of high quality.

Great resources clips inline with NC http://possessionfootball.wordpress.com/

Great resources clips inline with NC http://possessionfootball.wordpress.com/

Guys

Possession football is my site, if you want anything specific let me know.

I have been through and passed, KNVB Youth, Italian Youth, FFA B, FFA A.

Possession football

KNVB Youth 5 years ago in Canberra. It was a 7 day Residential course not with examination just a certification course, good preparation for Advanced B and Advanced A.

It was a very enjoyable course, 4 days on 4v4 training for Youth and 3 days on 7v7 training for Youth. No drills, only things that could be called football.