Its taken 10 years to do this but I now need to talk about the state of English football.One real problem - the players aren`t good enough.The reasons are many.I used to run a football team called Kingsdown Colts with my friends Martin Hart and Phil Poole.Our philosophy was quite simple - teach them basic ball skills and they will play well.- and they did.We won virtually every league and cup we went into and even won the Manchester Utdpetition and went on the winners podium with Nigeria and Rumanian boys and the Man Utd.girls team.We also had ,I think,17 lads go to academies in about 3 seasons. We were not so good at 7 a side ,however,which the FA wanted us to play as sides with bigger lads were more difficult to beat. We used to coach using the Will Coerver method and our players became second to none with their ball skills but our coaching methods were not appreciated by the FA .I used to use an 11 a side pitch but had to suffer the indignity of an FA official leaning on a goal post threatening to fine me for what we were doing.We also experienced a guy taking one of our training sessions who was an FA coach.After about an hour I asked if the lads were going to get to play some football.He told me they would only play as a reward at the end if they had trained hard.I asked him not to come back. Vitesse Arnhem actually came to watch one of our training sessions - local agents who had heard how good we were.In contrast I had a letter from a Premiership side asking about my players but they had to be of a certain size and weight Back to the academies.They took kids as young as 8 and kept them until they found somebody better.We witnessed lots of lads who came back from academies who were virtually ruined and didn`t even want to play football again. Our worst experience of an academy is when one of our lads did a reverse Cruyff turn in a practice match supervised by one of their coaches.The coach stopped the game and said " if you want to do tricks join a circus.Play the way you are facing.These lads are now alli in their early 20` - England age.Maybe things have got better but it doesn`t look like. The academies also take young kids out of football with some of them never coming back and some kids of 8 or 9 years old get very down if they think their chance has gone We do need more coaches but they cannot all be FA robots. No matter what the qualification a coach has unless they have lots of flair and personal ideas and a great desire to see wonderful skills.We must get away from stereotype coaching. We need to get away from the hitting a barn door style of coaching. On a more practical front what happened to the Olympics legacy - where are all the football pitches.All I ever hear is we must build more house, no ball games ,keep of the grass etc. Kids used to be able to play anywhere.Less and less schools take sport seriously and it will drop further down the curriculum as more cuts bite. One last wonderful thought.Many parents cannot afford to pay fees to a club.It is now very expensive for boys to play.Boots,trainers ,kit,pitches training facilities trophies etc.Some parents can barely afford food yet alone subs - just a thought but some youngsters may be denied from playing bacause of the cost. How great it would be if the Premier league paid. John
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 19:50:11 +0000