No more laps, let's teach football

It’s also the time when many kids are subjected to the wrong type of training and put through tortuous physical regimes which they are neither developmentally suited nor need, in order to learn how to play football well.

Football Federation Australia’s National Curriculum carries all the correct philosophical pointers any coach needs at any level, particularly for teams under eighteen years old - for which the primary driver must always be learning to handle the ball accurately at speed and developing game awareness, both individually and within a system.

According to FFA’s curriculum, analysis of football in Australia reveals:

"Strengths: Physical & Mental Competitiveness."

"Weaknesses: Technical & Tactical Abilities"

"As a result the domestic game at all levels is still very much a traditional “long ball-second ball” type of game while the modern game is one of “effective possession,” it states (Page 2, FFA “The Building Blocks’).

"In Australia the development of general physical attributes is already strongly emphasised outside of the football environment (school, outdoor life etc.)"

Therefore:

“ No waste of precious FOOTBALL training time!” - Page 13, FFA National Curriculum.

I’ve been banging on about this for years and as I travel around there is no doubt the message of the curriculum is getting through. There is a great deal of new thinking and changing paradigms within junior clubs and individual coaches.

But for all that progress, I am still hearing plenty of horror stories about kids being made to run sandhills, perform mini marathons, attempt military-type physical training and other ridiculous methods.

Is it really any wonder we are struggling to identify high-quality young technicians to populate the A-League - kids who are capable and confident enough to break a game open, to execute complex techniques under pressure and demonstrate technical qualities of the highest level in the world?

As the curriculum points out, our kids already have a number of factors going against them - such as the lack of an integrated development pathway, resulting in our most talented kids typically playing for several different clubs, elite academies and schools at once, all with different training regimes and technical foundations or visions of the game.

In young years, most players train less than their counterparts in Europe or South America, particularly with the declining phenomena of free play in the neighbourhood that produced so many great players decades ago. It is absolutely vital to our future that every moment, in every training session, for every child, is fully maximised.

At any rate, as the curriculum points out, it is dangerous to work kids too hard physically in the growth spurt years between 14 and 15:

“Sudden big increase in height limits physical capacity (injury prone),” it states (Page 27, FFA National Curriculum). “In this phase the intellectual learning ability is bigger than the physical learning ability.”

There is absolutely no need for our young players to be traipsing around a field doing laps or climbing ropes. They need to be learning the game to become accomplished players.

Take it from me, sand hills will not help them play good football, unless they want a role on Bondi Rescue.

Still, in some quarters the message is slow to permeate. For those who are still in two minds, here's a link to an excellent instructional video featuring the one and only Jose Mourinho, coach of Real Madrid.

Regardless of your preference for a club or even personal characteristics, no one can argue with the simple fact that Mourinho is one of the world’s top three or four technicians, one of the most highly trained coaches anywhere, with a background both in sports science and physical education as well as football methodology.

Mourinho understands what is cognitively and physically best for young players, quite aside from having a very deep understanding of how to translate complex football principles across to each age group, and then form these players into a cohesive unit.

This is a real specialty, and the more we research and take an interest in youth development the more we realise that we need to produce our own specialists who know the child, understand the science of teaching and can instruct children in the concepts of football in a manner that suits their age, development and technical qualities.

In this video, Jose points out very clearly that everything in every session for children and youth players must be done with the ball.

According to Jose, running children without the ball does NOTHING for their capacity to play football efficiently and intelligently. The only way to train to play football well, is to train for football. Precisely the same message you’ll find in the national directional documentation.

Jose says that making a young player run without the ball is like making a pianist get up and run around the piano.

I reckon it’s a fantastic analogy.

A youngster is, in essence, a football pianist who needs to learn his or her notes, keys, technical dexterity and musical competency to become both a virtuoso soloist and an important member of the orchestra that is a football team.

So next time you are tempted to get your players to do laps or head to the beach for a sandhill session, please remember the wise words of Mourinho, get the ball out and play.

Be well. Fozz