Miscellaneous Football Thread

shravi

National Board President
Joined
Jun 20, 2005
Profile Flag
India
this is still my favorite football-related video. i've literally watched this a million times

 
Last edited by a moderator:

shravi

National Board President
Joined
Jun 20, 2005
Profile Flag
India
1907403_694077377324155_8337744350558628607_n.png





He’s so lonely: Some of the best Ashley Cole memes after his apparent ‘isolation’ from new Roma teamates | JOE.ie

Roma photo spawns 'lurking Ashley Cole' meme - ESPN FC
:lol
 
Last edited:

Lee1981

International Coach
Joined
Aug 26, 2009
Location
Surrey- England
Online Cricket Games Owned
Not sure if the right place to post this so please move if needed

So been doing my boys team now for 15/16 months now, the improvement has been phenomenal, the boys are 7 turning 8 this season.

I've done my level 1 fa coaching badge, now considering level 2 or one of the other module courses, although personally I'm not sure if some of the courses actually teach you anything you don't already know, it's just something that looks good on a cv.

My main point of this post is to give you an insight into youth development which most of you including me a year a go knew nothing about, which really is the blueprint of the future of the English national team.

My findings so far beyond my team is that in general their are not enough coaches for one, second the coaches I see and come across yes may have the various bits of paper work needed to coach kids, but that is a far as it goes, they don't have "it"


What I mean by "it", is the actual want to improve kids not because it's your job, because you get satisfaction from doing that, to know you have made a difference to that kids development is a massive thing.

So far in all the football schools and development centres I've been to with my Jack only one coach stands out, a young 21-22 coach who also has a unique skill of remembering every kids name in seconds who come to his sessions, we are talking 60/70 kids sometimes, he has "it"

Obviously at this stage I can only really comment on my boys age and similar, but the coaches seem more concerned with wearing their nice adidas/nike tracksuit and jacket with coach written on the back, they have no rapport with the boys, they always come across distant to the boys.

I think more so when they have kids in their sessions who are of mixed ability, they seem to struggle to stay interested in the session as obviously if you have 12 kids and 4 are poor then very quickly the sessions can go wrong, now I get that frustration from the coach, the point is these guys signed up to do this as a career, surely you have to expect kids who are not gonna be great, a bit hyper, their concentration is poor?

It seems unless you have that top level talent they don't care about you, they want kids who are already very good, no one seems to care for good kids or average kids, don't get me wrong some kids you know and can see are just never gonna be any good no matter how much time you spend with them.

Now I'm not saying I'm the next Jose here, but when my team started up, only 1 or 2 could actually play football so I then had 6 boys including mine had hardly ever kicked a ball and being honest were terrible, now a year on, we are now playing In the second division out of 8 leagues In surrey, and last month I received email from afc wimbledon asking me to bring my boys down to a trial day, which in fact was yesterday.

So basically in a year these boys had gone from nothing to being good enough potentially to be in an academy.

We went to the trial day yesterday, took 7 of my lads down, facilities were great 4g pitch, the main coach who spoke seemed like a good guy., however, this is where the same problems occur, they basically are grading like this
1) they want the boy to come train at the elite academy
2) the boy is good and should come back to the local development sessions, after school, weekend, ( this parents need to pay for each session)
3) the boy is not ready for it yet

All seems ok right, point is they are only really interested in no1, a stand out kid, 2-3 they don't care about you, let's be honest if your number 2 and you don't want to pay for coaching or perhaps don't have the money to, they have another 100-1000 kids and parents who will, there is no genuine connection to the kids who are good even very good.

And for me watching yesterday I could see that straight away, there was probably 40/50 u8 boys and did I see any no1 kids, NO I didn't.

Lots of 5 aside matches which is great, however these games fall apart when you only have 1/2 coaches watching 4/5 matches going on, the coach also plays no part in the matches, as it's "their way" to just allow the boys to play

All well and good if you have elite players all playing but from watching my boys matched yesterday you had boys in goal just booting the ball one end to the other, slightly bigger boys just barging all the other kids around, there was no organisation of the matches

And to me that is wrong, you put a coach next to each game and you will see a massive difference, not so much to the poor player, but the good player will all of a sudden stop messing about, stop being greedy and the game will flow as it should as the kids know how to play footy.

Don't get me wrong yesterday was a free session on a lovely surface, it's just it turned out to be everything I hoped it would not be.

Yes the fa have got a few things right on this road to recovery, and we need more coaches yes for sure, but more than that we need coaches who genuinely want to improve the kids they coach, not just wanting to look cool with your folder and track suit and yet have no clue how to interact with the kids.

Hope you understand the point I'm trying to make, I'm not digging out these men/women who coach, it's a hard job yes, but it is also a job of massive satisfaction if you go into it with the right intentions.
 
Last edited:

Users who are viewing this thread

Top