This is a topic many of those reading will have pondered before, the sun rises earlier and sets later yet our children no longer seize this temporal opportunity to do one thing- (learn how to) play football. I believe my generation was the last to learn football through peer exposure, rather than a coach led or facilitated approach to youth football.
A player acquires so much from the street environment, playing against taller or older players results in you releasing the ball quicker, playing against the parked cars or the curb permits you to change direction, in the cage you use the sides to bounce the ball and run beyond, playing on concrete means you have to learn to stay on your feet. The complexity of the game is always present, it's not simplified for the sake of development, it's players playing- often multidirectional with players dribbling behind the makeshift goals. That is football in its glory.
It wasn't just small sided games, it was also games like Wembley doubles or singles- which started from a goalkeeper booting the ball high and you- with your partner- would fight to win the ball and score to get through to the next round. Depending on the number of participants this would create situations where the pair in possession would have the near impossible task of beating 6-8 players to score that ellusive goal. Messy, Chaotic, Relentless- but in those games the future academy scholars and league players would be formed.
The street does not need structure, rules or interference, it is fine the way it is, there is no hierarchy besides who owned the football or who picked the teams, you just have to jump in. Games played with the intensity of Champions League finals, every kick mattered, every goal debated - whether it was over the imaginary crossbar or if it went across somebody's jumper.
Football itself is an embodiment and manifestation of local culture, the environment shapes identity, connection and purpose. The street creates the best players, not academies, it's tough, creative and unpredictable, it demands personality, adaptation, every action is your awareness of the environment, opposition, teammate and ball.
“When a child plays in the street, he learns in a playful environment that favours creativity. Today he plays in an environment that tends to undermine his creativity & the relationships he plays from”- Fernando Diniz
This topic goes beyond disillusion of the lack of creativity showcased in the elite game, or the nostalgia of those hot summers, but an outdated and flawed approach to youth development that is holding our game back in Europe. Federations have looked to import development modules from other countries and environments at the detriment of their own countries footballing culture. Universal concepts are exposed to players at an increasingly early age, compromising player autonomy, player perception, ability to self organise within a collective structure and an individuals overall decision making.
I believe young players should have exposure to unstructured football as early and for as long as possible, thats the only way we keep the essence of the street alive.
Cesar Luis Menotti: "If you think that football is not part of the culture, then you haven’t understood anything. Football is children playing until late, it’s culture and representation, each place makes it unique. It is not played the same way in Barcelona, Rosario, or Rio."
This links to a theme explored by Mark O’Sullivan in his work on early professionalism. As he argues:
In an interview with Cano Football Pep Guardiola was asked if we are over professionalising the game for young players the Catalan expressed a slightly different view. Pep responded- ''No i think if the kid has the talent to dribble then he'll do it all his life, he just needs to know when and how to do it. If we create places where a player feels more comfortable to dribble then it's not real, good players know how to see what is happening around them''.
Going back to how this links to developing young players, creating false environments is the worst thing that an academy can do. Teach the children their game, not ours. If they play 7v7- teach them 7v7, if they play 9v9- teach them 9v9, and so on. There is such a rush to expose the players to the demands of the 11v11 game and its macro, micro and meso principles. Academies want players to be ready to slot into the first team seamlessly with an above competent understanding of the tactical demands and recognition in relation to the club's top-down game model.
Someone who played as a midfielder in the academy debuts at left back, that in itself is not a bad thing, the problem arrises when players are developed to understand the game model rather than their game. The current trend most modern academies are now following is the pursuit of fluid position-less structures, in the Luis Enrique school of thought. You would've heard the PSG manager a few months ago claiming that he would love to have 22 players who were so versatile that they could play any position.
This outlook can be interpreted in two ways;
1. A more universal outlook to player roles, players understand the game by navigating the changing ebbs and flows, by moving into new spaces with dynamic movements to receive or disorganise the opponent, regardless of how far it takes them away from their position. Their zone of influence is where they see fit, not pre defined roles in static units like midfield, defence and attack, they play their own game through relations and interactions with nearby components.
2. A more coach dependent outlook- this means a player gets moved around the pitch at the beck and call of the coach and his tactical preferences.
How are we supposed to create gifted attacking players if they are deprived of touches? Most of the touches in a game are between the goalkeeper and centre backs playing with their sole resting on top of the ball to hook pressing strikers in. A heavy emphasis on tactical preparation through game pictures and phase of play sessions is detrimental to the environment in which youth players perform.
This argument was prevalent recently when Italy failed to reach the World Cup again, how do you create 1v1 wingers when every youth team in Italy uses a 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 with wing backs and half space 10's. In England it's the same, i've come up against teams in U21 football who use these structures solely for the purpose of having good rest defence, being able to attack the 5 lanes, optimal inside diagonal passing lanes to the two 10's. Looking at football through structural or system dependent lens is so tiresome and something i just can't engage in.
Players should self organise around collective and unit intentions- seeing the game through the lens of their teammate, how to combine to goal, can they go against the flow of the opposition and what tools do they have at their disposal to achieve this?
It's this top down approach and hyper specialisation attitude to youth development that pushes coaches like myself away from academy football. Who in their right mind wants to coach for very little money, having to coach from a template so development is linear and in accordance to the clubs 'philosophy'.
Whilst talking about the emphasis on isolated technical detail in academy football, a foundation phase lead coach at a Premier League club told me recently, when you coach in an academy you might be a UEFA B coach assigned to the U10s, but if you get asked to step in for an U14 or U15 session at short notice you have to make sure that you're capable of giving those players value- which might include schoolboy internationals.
A very simple but striking thought crossed my mind- what if a player- a child- does not want or need value from the coach - what if he just wants to play football with his friends. It doesn't have to be directional, conditioned or aligned to the game model- it just has to involve a ball, 2 goals and some peers- the environment and game context provides the 'practice' with all the necessary information to make the game realistic and present the individual with receptive information to interpret in diverse ways.
When you talk to coaches there is a discussion on the role of facilitation, which in academy football has a negative meaning. There is an expectation to coach by affecting every unit, anything else is considered to be 'winging it'. Facilitation doesn't have to be a bad thing, coaches shouldn't be dependent on it and never intervene in their sessions but there is a time and a place for it. As long as practices provide players with opportunities for perception-action coupling.
Academy session design is often templated, with many sessions exploring the same themes in which are aligned to the club's overarching game model- attacking a deep defence, build up against high pressure. The problem with these types of practices is that there is a fixed information source, as coaches we are isolating one moment of the game into one continuous practice- players aren't recognising when, where and why these tools are appropriate- as the playing environment has been manufactured to achieve certain outcomes.
Is this a good use of differential learning or task representative design? If emergence fails to take place then we restrict a players ability to develop these technical and perceptive capacities Pochettino alluded to earlier. Early specification of training may help players to understand how to execute the game model, but when it comes to creating adaptive and perceptive footballers i would disagree it has the same effect.
We need to develop players who are able to initiate dynamic advantage, not understand roles or movement patterns within a structure, we must prioritise the development of a players perceptual quality in unison with their technical one. Adaptive players should be able to resonate with the playing environment, using connections to react quicker than the opponent and using motion to solve an action.
A direct consequence of social media has been the copy and paste culture within youth football, coaches watching Guardiola possession games or passing activations and attempting to import this into their grassroots sessions. I've watched many U14 sessions focusing on crossing and finishing patterns to question my own sanity. This way of working doesn't align with how i train.
There are many benefits to these types of exercises that you can't see in these 30 second videos, complex passing patterns are good for sustaining concentration levels, finishing gives an end goal, there are analytical reasons to do patterns- for a coach to step in and correct. But these types of practices lack game transfer due to the overprescription of solutions.
You might ask what's so bad about coaches doing crossing and finishing, it's part of the game and it should be coached. But when young people don't play enough football outside of their formal sessions, tasks should be opposed and / or with various levels of interference to provide contextual information- rather than the majority of their training time being isolated unopposed work.
Tasks that provide context are objective orientated rather than solely goal orientated, creating playing environments that allow players to interpret the game demands, rather than them being subject to a criteria within the task orientation the coach is looking for. Many coaches have opted for slick, clean, feel good sessions rather than create challenging and complex environments and this is all down stream from an overemphasis on game models.
Earlier in the year a Championship club placed a job advert for a foundation phase game model coach, that there is the root and cause of the problem, this is an approach that has been embraced wholesale by every football club in the country. All academy teams want to mirror what trends they see in the Premier League, start the build up with the CB, pass to GK, hook the striker, bounce to free CB via pivot- move up the pitch , rotate into new structure to achieve more occupation between the lines. Year after year, we could talk about the same thing. What happens if you don't fit in?- as a player or coach- you get left isolated- conform or sink.
There is an overemphasis of putting 1v1 technique and ball mastery under the microscope, which in my opinion reduces the spontaneity of a technical action. You can’t isolate the technical components away from the context of the game: opponents, space, teammates, ball- perceptual skills develop game interactions, a players technique depends on it.
People look for success by tangible returns, easy wins, rather than adaptation and exposure to new challenges. I feel like i've seen so many sessions following this same template, as a player i wouldn't want to take part in these sessions nor would i want to coach them. What can a passing pattern achieve what a 4v4 with GKs in the 18 yard box can't? All coaches have to do is attune players to the context- do we combine to create or combing to score?
This is not to argue that all structure is bad, a tactical framework becomes more essential the closer to first team football the players are, good coaching and good coaches is what separates the best academies from the rest- Tony Carr at West Ham, John Mcdermott at Tottenham, Michael Beale at Chelsea. The problem lies in the current imbalance, too much professionalism too early at the expense of a players autonomy over their decision making.
A lot of what i see to justify this approach to development is to satisfy the four corner bias- psychological, physical, tech, tac. In my opinion tech-tac is built from perception-action coupling- which makes game realistic tasks vital- and the social corner- you need a goal to share intentions in order to self organise. Everything else is secondary.
Going back to the start - what makes the street so good and why does its values embody the adaptive nature of football?
Football is becoming a game of approximation, playing in small distances, the intentions of a team are built on the players and their instincts, their characteristics are their sentiments, this allows them to travel together and explore invitations to act. To combine on the diagonal line, using synergies and player led cues as the guiding tool in chance creation.
''We want our players to understand what kind of relationships they need to create in each moment, with the ball, teammates, opponents and space. We aim to be a team that can adapt, move and create advantages through connections and not just through positioning''- Jose Alberto- manager of Racing Santander.
A relational concept approach to development must take centre stage, football especially at a young age should be spontaneous and concept driven- without isolating different components from each other. Football should look messy, each moment should be set up for the opportunist to attack the game. Players develop an appetite and understanding of recognising opportunity- to interact, to commit, to create. That doesn't come from creating positional advantages on a tactics board, it comes from the players own psychological makeup- empathy, socio-affective conditions and self determination.
Why do coaches talk about freedom within the structure when it can be freedom within concepts? Asymmetrical or imperfect structures can be as effective as rational ones, wingers crossing over to play on the same side can create better opportunities than two wingers wide on both flanks, abandoning spaces away from the ball to support the possessor and retaining the ball locally might be better than the 2v1 for the overload to isolate. It's a matter of freedom of choice and having the opportunity to explore not hinder affordances.
What are the solutions clubs can use to fix youth development?
1. Prioritise environments for free play - even if that is outside of the academy building- young people need exposure to different environments- not a gated community.
2. No game models until U16 - concepts and core moves- learning the game of 2v2/3v3/4v4 to best attune players to local affordances in relation to teammates, ball, opposition and space- socio-effective qualities. The emphasis on tactical advantages- creating positional or numerical advantages through structures should come later.
3. Game Representative Task Design- create basic practices that have more context than isolation, more skill than technique. Don't over condition practices to desired technical or tactical outcomes- the third man, no touch turns, half space runs.
4. Player engagement - prioritising the social corner just as much as the technical, tactical and physical, creating practice environments that are both coach-player led to put players at the heart of the creative process.
I'll finish with a quote from Fernando Diniz- after a recent Corinthians game.
''There are other things that are often even more important''- than professionalism and specialisation.
''The way the players connect, the will to play, the moment they live in. People have no way to measure fear, courage, joy, or enthusiasm. And that's what interests me the most. I have the part that measures and the part that feels. And I believe that both football and life are more about feeling more than measuring."
Maybe if there was less coaching there would be better footballers.
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