The Azzrentice Week 3

In the absence of ZZZ and Afro, myself and Marky have read through the Future Game philosophy. In this, it has two aspects of the game which need to be looked at. The coaching side of things, and the playing side of things. Using this brought us two recommendations and we have used our own knowledge to come up with a third key point. In addition to this we would like to wish Sir Azzy many happy returns on a Birthday!

1. Improve coaching in the country.

Many young coaches do not need to do much in order to be coach youngsters. Only a basic knowledge of technique is required and the only theory they get is 'Emergency First Aid' and 'Children Ensuring Safety in Football'

Obviously both of these are important, but we want to give coaches more training in tactics. The coaches should have a better knowledge of the game, which wuld result in them being able to teach the youngsters more capably and give our young players a better 'footballing brain.' Many youngsters have came through and are currently playing in the Premier League, but make the wrong choices. With a better footballing brain, they could be world class.


2. Focus on the possession rather than winning.

Many games, say at an U11 level, are being played in a way where winning is everything. In the Spanish model, keeping the ball and possession is seen as a better skill and more important than results. The mentality of keeping the ball would stick with these players throughout and has worked wonderfully in Spain where they regularly dominate possession.

England had less than half of the possesion in every Euro 2012 game, except Sweden (52%) which proves the point. England have always had problems retaining the ball. These sorts of activities would encourage ball retention.


3. Increase the attention to the Youth Games

At the moment, nobody has the rights to show the Professional Development League. We would like to offer these out to make it available to more fans. A weekly highlights show would give fans to see the brightest young talent coming out of English football. We would like this to be aired in a morning when more youngsters will be watching, on a channel such as ITV4, BBC3. With snippets of coaching advice from Premier League coaches and tactics also included.

We also want to increase attendances to Youth Games. There are two ways we would like to do this:
Better advertising would improve attendances for youth games. Stuff like "See the next generation's Wayne Rooney/Gareth Bale/Jack Wilshere/Joe Hart/John Terry/Steven Gerrard" would tempt some fans young and old, and when the prices are so cheap already, its a chance for a dad to take his children to football for that family tradition, something that is at risk of dying as it is.

We also would like to get a couple of players to attend each youth game. During the Olympics, Joe Hart and some of the Man City players came to Old Trafford to watch. If a couple of players would be present as a meet and greet with some of the fans, signing autographs and the like. Hundreds if not thousands more people through the gates watching and publicising youth team football.

To begin with we tried to narrow it down to three ways in which we could improve the state of the English game. It soon became apparent that changing how youth football is coached and how youth games are done needed to be changed. Hero with his connection to the youth game through his son was the best placed to comment on this:

Hero wrote:
Immediately my thoughts on this is at grassroots level, the only way to achieve any form of LONG term improvement is to address the issue at the outset and the current system that is in place in England has failed generation after generation.

My son this morning was meant to be playing an under 7 game v local rivals slight bit of frost and the game is off, this will probably repeat for most Saturdays now until February, that's 2 months of no football. The pitch our boys play on is a disagree which every home game I have to arrive 2 hours early with a bucket and pitchfork trying to sort out puddles that have settled on it. Huge investment needs to be made on quality all weather pitches for kids, and I stress on this for kids, because otherwise the 5 a side adult teams quickly pay more than the kids clubs can and take all the best pitches.
The next I'd mention is the recent FA change to 5 a side for U7s and U8s, 7 a side then up to u11s 9 a side to u13s and full sides above. I'd like to see
this improved on even more, it's finally a good step in a long need direction as for years at an early age it was 7 a side which sapped any potential skill being learnt and resulted in 12 kids kicking each other around a ball until it broke free.

I'd like to see 4 a side for the initial 2 years without keepers, decrease the goal and pitch size further and this encourages individuals to move with ball at feet, be aware more of team mates in space and grows their game a lot more. Nextimprovement is an even simpler one. We now at our training have a real quality instructor for the kids who is UEFA trained and very much follows the methods in Holland & Spain for early years so we count ourselves lucky. The first thing he does every week is to ensure from the moment each kid arrives that they have an individual ball and they spend as much of the hour training with that ball. Far too many coaches have kids running up and down, barely touching a ball for the first 20 minutes, then standing in line take shots so being idle and not doing anything and then a brief game at the end. The actual contact the child has with a football in a normal training is so small in most FA training sessions is minute and that really needs to be addressed.

In summary: Basically more funds aimed at the cradle, reduced team sizes to improve
individual skill and always training with a ball to improve technique

We then turned to the psychology of the British footballer, this was something that Viva inparticular felt strongly about.

VivaPaulScholes wrote:
Since I've been watching International Football I've noticed England do not have the physical ability to compete with the best teams and also the Psychology side of the game they lack which is less docummented. Gaining an advantage off the pitch is just as important as gaining an advantage on the pitch. The "This Is Anfield" is psychological warfare getting to the opponenets before the game.

Doctors need to be bought in to speak to players, help them get over the barriers they fear, we need to get to the root cause of why our players freeze at the top level. I feel its because they haven't had much experience at a younger age or the level they played at was not intense enough. The bridge between the reserves and first team is massive some players mentaly may not be ready for it which can cause them to slow down in thier progress.

In summary: Increasing the psychological presence a player has, so he can perform at the top level as soon as he is able to do so talent wise. This will also hopefully allow players to be more grounded as well as allowing players to open up as to any mental problems they may have.

This in turn fell in nicely with the ideas raised with Sod about the national idenity needing to be strengthened and making young players feel that playing for their country (and not receiving a huge paycheck) is the biggest achievement that a footballer can have.

sodhat wrote:
Since the last notable success for England at international level, on home turf in 1996, there has been a growing feeling of playing for England being a burden and a curse. It brings media attention to your front door, public scrutiny to your play, and a weight of responsibility that failure is not going to be tolerated. It seems that gone are the days that the pinnacle of a career was being in the white of England, and that this is now replaced by playing in the Champions League or earning big money transfers.

On top of that England is a diverse society, and it's getting ever tougher to have one single culture pervade all the towns and cities. Kids playing football are not necessarily dreaming about pulling on the three lions, but about playing for the countries of their fathers, mothers, and grandparents - because these are the places they feel connected to culturally. We can't bring about a cultural shift for the entire nation, that is down to politicians (aside from being improbable, bordering on impossible); but we can use football and history as a motivator for young players still unsure of where their international aspirations may lie.

The idea is a reproduction of an Argenitinian initiative, started by Jose Pekerman, who noted that a large proportion of young Argentine footballers were emigrating abroad at ever younger ages. The fear was that they would forget the homeland and naturalise for other nations. To combat this, he made sure all Argentinian youth sides had an element of classroom study and lectures on the history of Argentina and its football.

I suggest that the best ideas are usually stolen. So we are pinching this. We would propose that all players that come up to play in the England youth system are entered into compulsory studies about football, its origins, the history of England's football team, as well as the ethical side of the game. The hope is that we can not only persuade youngsters that it's an honour and a matter of pride to represent England, but also to drill home the important principles of fair play and ethical behaviour. St George's Park seems the perfect place for such studies and lectures to take place, and if successful, it
can be opened to wider audiences than just those in the youth squads ofthe nation.

In summary: We raise the feeling that playing for your country is the biggest accolade that a player can have, looking at other sports whether it is an Australian donning the Baggy Green or a New Zealander pulling on an All Blacks shirt it really means something to them. We need our young players to want bleed for their countries.

In conclusion of these Lord Azzy we have a trident to attack the British game with: Changing youth development and ensuring that kids spend as much time as possible with a football at their feet. Making sure that players are as mentally ready as they are physically. And finally reinstalling a sense of national pride.

Another part of the game that we considered was the Woman's Game. We didn't include this in our main three as the task did not mention it by name, however we do feel that getting more girls interested in football would allow us to be a beacon of Womens football which is something that we believe would allow the image of the game to improve. By looking at Cricket where there has been huge success in having a womens game for free on the same ticket as the mens match would ensure that as many people as possible to enjoy the female sport as well. Hopefully this would mean that more women and girls would start attending matches. We could play on how the England ladies haven't been beaten in a qualifier for 10 years, and install this as a source of national pride as well as how this won't be able to continue if we don't get more ladies and girls interested in the game.

So there you have it Lord Azzy, Team Wilshere's submission in all its glory. We welcome your questions and wish you a very Happy Birthday!