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.

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.

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.

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

@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.

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 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.

Size doesn't matter

It's what you do with it

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. 

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 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 ?"  ???

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).

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...

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.

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.

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.  

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'.

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

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.

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.

What about African teams like France ?

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/

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

South American teams and Mexico are a lot shorter and have had consistent success.

In a FFA seminar I attended the average of some South American teams in one WC was closer to 1m.75. 

Using specific performance analysis criteria , we performed well in five out of six criteria in three thirds of the pitch.

It shows that Australia performed abysmally in one  criterion.

The onus is on us to improve the one criteria to match the other five.

The match stats also support this.

No you've changed the criteria and excluded countries so your point isn't a load of rubbish.

People will find all sorts of excuses for failure, interestingly the Scottish complained they were too short in article below,. Table shows average height of teams in 2017.

 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-41549709

Country	Height (cm)
Serbia	186.5
Bosnia and Herzegovina	185.8
Iceland	185.7
Belgium	185.3
Sweden	185.1
Montenegro	185
Germany	184.9
Latvia	184.8
Russia	184.8
Greece	184.5
Denmark	184.4
Slovenia	184.4
Ukraine	184.4
Austria	184.3
Lithuania	184.3
England	184.1
Belarus	184
Croatia	183.9
Faroe Islands	183.8
Finland	183.8
Georgia	183.6
Czech Republic	183.6
Norway	183.6
Republic of Ireland	183.5
Hungary	183.5
Northern Ireland	183
Moldova	183
Switzerland	182.9
Italy	182.9
Macedonia	182.8
Bulgaria	182.7
Slovakia	182.4
Poland	182.4
Kosovo	182.3
Albania	181.8
Romania	181.7
Estonia	181.7
Portugal	181.4
France	181.4
Wales	181.4
Netherlands	181.4
Turkey	181.3
Azerbaijan	180.4
Scotland	180.1
Spain	180.1
Armenia	179.8
Israel	179.2
Cyprus	178.3

But Croatia are one of the tallest teams this world cup, how could they possibly also be technical as well? It doesn't compute? Wait I've figured it out, height is completely irrelevant to success.

You are trying to be belligerent.

I've identified the Balkans as a separate football entity from Eastern and Northern European teams.

It is probably that the criterion they use to select players, isn't as technical as the powerhouses.

And, they don't emulate the powerhouses' methodology.

Countries like Croatia, Portugal and Uruguay, have small populations, but still produce gifted technicians - and - punch well above their weight.