After Tuesday’s impressive 0-0 draw with Montenegro at Wembley, it would appear the same issues are being brought up about the quality of grass-roots football development in England, as they were around mid-June when an athletic but technically average United States side made Jamie Carragher and our ‘Golden Generation’ look slower and more confused on a football pitch than my nan and her mates. Only unlike my nan, the J-bone has played for Liverpool, arguably one of England’s top footballing teams…since he was born!
So, is grass-roots football development the main reason why every Englishman cried more than the average baby this summer? Quite possibly; here’s my semi-educated reasoning.
I’m playing for a sixth-level football club in Spain (the equivalent to the Conference North/South) and like every other professional or semi-professional club in Spain, CE Manresa has what can only be described as a shed load of youth team coaches to groom its multiple youth teams.
Let me explain this more clearly. We train at the stadium three days per week and every night there are at least two of the clubs youth squads sweating their little Spanish scrotes off, sometimes three or four with one of the girls squads thrown in, who I’ll predict do not have ‘scrotes’.
Assisting, coaching and observing these kids are an average of four coaches per team, all licensed up to their eyeballs, giving lessons in ‘How to become a world champion’ or ‘How to look like Carles Puyol and still manage to land a super model’…my Spanish is still a little rusty, but I imagin thats what they’re talking about. My point is that the future of CE Manresa looks very bright due to the youth coaching structure at the club, a structure which is mirrored at almost every football club in this 2010 World Cup-winning country.
All I see them doing is technical drills, possession grids, tactical situations, playing small-sided games, smiling and eating paella. It’s amazing to see all of the center mids passing the ball around like Barcelona do, or wingers running at defenders like they’re Pedro or David Silva.
These kids are ten years old when they start learning about defensive zones and have a list of set plays as long as their arms for each situation…kids, all looking more confident on the ball than Joe Cole, all defending like Piqué, all taller than Shaun Wright-Phillips! I can’t speak for youth development in recent years, but I’m 100% sure things weren’t like this when I was playing for my county as a sweaty little scrote.
The player production line they have going on here is like a sweat shop in ‘Nam’. They’re chucking out talent left, right and centre. Here’s some math to help paint this picture. In the Tercera Division (level 4) there are 18 leagues of 20 teams, 360 teams in all. Yes, I’m a mathematical genius and yes, Spain is bigger than England, but we have a slightly higher population so thats not an excuse.
Although the fourth level here is undeniably lower in quality than our League two, it’s not a million miles off, yet here there are 360 teams filled with talent compared to our 24 teams. Let’s say for argument’s sake that only 200 of the fourth level teams have this top class youth structure going on. That means every year when the oldest youth teams graduate, there are 200 squads of professionaly drilled and trained 17-year-olds looking for first team football - and thats just the fourth level. Imagine the quality coming out of the youth set up of the 42 teams in the top two divisions. That’s 42 potential Pedros or 42 potential Iniestas every year.!
I have know idea what the solution to our problem is, but a start would definitely be setting up a very high quality youth system within all professional clubs all the way down to the non-league level. It certainly seems to be working in Spain!
Tags: Youth Football
Awesome. Nail. On. The. Head.
Mitch,
Great post and you’re certainly on the right lines.
As a player that’s played lower league pro and worked in numerous Academies as a coach, England certainly are falling behind. Spain is the obvious, but even the United States have a more tried and tested means of developing young talent.
They have a constant stream of education aimed at parent-coaches, they employ dedicated, professional coaches that understand how the game should be played.
I blame it all on the Parents. Too much pressure on their kids (YOU’RE KID WILL NOT PLAY PRO), abuse of the refs, abuse of the coaches, parent coach kids heavily overestimating the quality of their child. We need stronger coaches with stricter guidelines to parents. We need to reinforce the fact that winning 15-0 doesn’t matter at 10 years old, but being able to have a good first touch and being able to play with your head up is important.
It’s all wrong here and unless we don’t rip out the foundations from the top up, we’ll never be able to match Spain and, in the future, the United States.
Nice little piece Mitchy, not sure your gonna get that freelance journalism role with the BBC if you use scrote in your future articles mind! However some good points made.
Not sure in England that we could take such a long term approach as the spanish purely because even at 10 years old our football is results driven by a win by any means attitude which generally manifests itself as the biggest kid you can lay your hands on booting the ball as far as he can towards the opposition goal while the rest of the players stampede like spoked wilderbeasts after it
I do believe the stat is there are 24 000 coaches in spain and only 6000 in England which highlights the point you touched on which is these kids in spain have 4 coaches and outside of academy football yout lucky to get half a coach! Not sure if you saw the programme on the beeb the other day titled can England win the next World Cup? i think we should be asking the question can we win the world cup in the next 20 years and unless we either get very lucky in term of a ‘Golden Generation’ or have a radical change of attitude then then answer to that is a massive no.
Keep living the dream lad
Thanks guys!
The 1 - you’re right mate, I noticed that in the USA a lot, they’re very enthusiastic about parent coaching & although they can be aggressive like we see all the time in England, they understand that coaches/Refs are only trying to help & develop, qualifications mean something! English know best & of course everyones kid is the next Beckham or Gerrard!
You & Iain both mention that its all about winning & not improving/learning how to play, very true! When I played youth level the big kids won & smaller talented kids lost interest. When they turned 17/18 they became the big kids who could’ve made it had they enjoyed the sport & been correctly educated.
Iain, thank you mate & scrote is very professional! The England/Spain coach ratio is frightening & that fact realy makes you wonder why the FA didn’t realise this might be an issue years ago!
Only the big kids got looked at by pro clubs (youth systems) when I was young…so Pedro, David Villa, Iniesta, Xavi, David Silva & the rest would be playing for pub teams if they were English…brilliant!