The FA 4 Corner LTPD Model

The above attributes in the picture contribute towards developing the complete footballer, but do coaches look at the FA's 4 Corner Long Term Player Development Model and apply it to every training session and every match day they are involved in?

Like I said in my Wednesday post - 'Coach & Parent Education' - there needs to be a massive shake-up of how young players are coached. How that happens is for coaches and parents to review what they understand to be good coaching and re-educate themselves with the FA's 4 Corner LTPD Model.

Watching the young players at football training this week, there was a HUGE gap in where the 4 Corner LTPD Model should have been. To build the young people and players of the future that gap needs filled NOW!, otherwise nothing will change and England, like tonight's performance against Montenegro, shall continue to produce players without great Technical, Psychological, Physical and Social skills.

This link - http://www.falearningshop.com/p-878-falearningshopcom-the-future-game-grassroots.aspx - directs you to the FA Learning website where you can buy The Future Game - Grassroots pack. I suggest you buy it as it's a fantastic resource for everything I've just talked about. 

Back in July I posted a review of it here - http://elcollectiu.blogspot.com/2011/07/non-i-want-you-to-do-it-like-this.html

Rebel, Risk Taker, Thinker, Different

Yesterday saw the passing of Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Computers.

He had nothing to do with football and possibly knew little about it but what he was as a man, in my mind, links directly to what I believe all players, coaches and teachers should be.

Rebel, Risk Taker, Thinker, Different - all the things he was and in many ways still is within all Apple products. Those 4 characteristics are what as coaches we should be encouraging our young people footballers to be. They might sound extreme to a few but lets look at players/coaches who represent those ideas.

Eric Cantona, Diego Maradona, George Best, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi... Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger...

Players and managers we love who have changed the way we think and approach football. Just like Jobs, he changed the way people looked at technology and for the better.

In this excellent 15 minute talk given in 2005 at Stanford University, Jobs talks about his life and career and the importance to "live before you die"

"...Don't be trapped by Dogma which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become".

As coaches, teachers, parents, let us sometimes stop thinking what we understand to be best for our children and allow them to be rebels, risk takers, thinkers, different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

Coach & Parent Education

"It is not PlayStation for dads"
- Les Howie

The English FA believe, (as do I), that the time is now to change how football is ran at youth and grassroots level. I've mentioned him before but Nick Levett, the FA's national development manager for youth football and mini-soccer has just about finished his mammoth tour of the country, putting forward plans the FA believe will change the game forever and for the better.

Having this week been to visit a club for 3 evenings in Greater London to see coaching methods and behaviour, the changes the FA have in mind can not come sooner enough. But it's not just the 'format' children play their football, it's the coaches themselves who to me just don't understand how to teach the game. What I saw was children not 'learning how' to play football but being 'told how' to play it - A HUGE DIFFERENCE!

The FA have the resources for coaches to educate themselves with better methods and game knowledge but it's a MASSIVE challenge to get coaches to actually want to do it.

Being the Football Development Officer (F.D.O) at my club I, like probably many other F.D.O's, will find it a huge task to change and win "hearts and minds" of coaches and parents alike. It will be a long road but one worth walking down.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/it-is-not-playstation-for-dads-fas-grassroots-plan-for-richer-england-future-2252321.html

✕ To Pass, ◯ To Shoot

With the new FIFA 12 being released last Friday I was reminded of a post-match interview in 2010 between the then Arsenal captain Cesc Fàbregas and Theo Walcott... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAEdSSIJTIg&feature=related 

A lot is said about the negative impact computer games are supposed to have on young children today but from my experience in coaching, talking here about football games, they can improve real game understanding (off-side rule, direct/indirect free-kicks) and encourage players to try new things they might have experienced in the game on the pitch at training or on a match day (skills, combination play with team mates, communication - through on-line multiplayer games). 

There are obviously larger issues to discuss here regarding home entertainment, not just computer games. Hopefully this is something that I can post about in the future.

5 Point Press

"5 Points Press is an independent journal of news and opinion on the New York Soccer Scene. It covers all aspects including local leagues, supporters culture, and professional teams".

http://issuu.com/5pointspress

Kicking and Screening

Tonight London will host it's first ever International Football Film Festival. Kicking and Screening, an annual New York based event that brings together football and film enthusiasts to celebrate the beautiful game on the big screen is setting up a series of week long events which hope to "engage, connect, and inspire" football fanatics and non football lovers by showing them a side of football that, in the words of Tom Watt one of the co-producers of the event, "a Sky or BBC camera might not normally take them".

The events first screening is the excellent documentary 'Once In A Lifetime' - The rise and fall of the legendary New York Cosmos, the team that brought Pele to America, set against the backdrop of New York City in the 1970s.

http://kickingandscreening.com/

Festival Lineup - 
http://www.kickingandscreening.com/blog/2011/08/football-film-festival-soccer-london-2011-everyman-announce-lineup-schedule.html

MVB

Having recently posted on the Dutch team AJAX Youth Academy I though I would inspire you to look at one of their teams (and the worlds) greatest players, Marco Van Basten.

In the video below you can see arguably one of the greatest ever goals scored by the great man himself in the 1988 European Championship Final verses the USSR.

Why Don't You Just Grow Up!

A powerful and emotive video from The FA's series of Respect films focusing here on extreme parental behaviour.

Now I must say, thankfully, that I have never ever seen anything like this before but have spoken to other coaches/managers/parents who have been witness to this sort of behaviour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-6NMMZU1kQ