Courtesy: The FA.com


Concentration dilutes trip

By Graeme Dell

Tuesday, 30 January 2007

As the dust settles on a UEFA Championship preliminary round trip, England Futsal Coach Graeme Dell continues his bi-weekly column by telling us how things went in Romania...

Hello again, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks.

Our adventure to Romania for the UEFA Futsal Championship Preliminary tournament hit a problem before it had even started. Mark Phillips, our goalkeeping coach, fell ill on his way to the hotel near Heathrow and had to head straight to bed.

After consulting with the Doc in the early hours of the morning, I took the decision to leave Mark in England to recover. Although he had been with us throughout our preparation period, the risk of passing anything on within the group was too great to ignore.

So, the day not having started too well, we set off on our 12 hour journey. Travel days can be the most stressful and tiring part of any away game and have to be well managed, but we arrived safely in a cold and dreary Romania, eventually settling in to the hotel at 9pm.

Having attended the UEFA Technical meeting and trained at the match arena in the morning, we were soon aware of the task that lay ahead when the game kicked off. With a vociferous home crowd cheering on Romania, we were on the back foot straight away, although the lads did play well against talented opponents. In the end, Romania ran out convincing winners 9-2, which was not unexpected.

I met with the squad later in the evening and reminded them how well they had done and that our tournament was always destined to start on day two. It’s hard sleeping after the excitement of late games, so I sat up with ‘Bridgey’ our video analyst until 2am and watched the re-run of the game and the analysis of Latvia v Bulgaria.

There were a couple of things we needed to work on, which we did in our recovery session on Friday morning before we played Latvia.

Having started well we looked good for a draw, and maybe even a win, but a mad four minutes where we lost concentration and made basic errors cost us dearly. Before we knew it we were five down. That’s how quickly a game can change. Once I had stabilised things we hardly lost possession, but it was too late.

Knowing that any chance of finishing as group runners up had gone, the challenge was to win the final game and get the best for the development of the players.

They didn’t need telling that they themselves had lost the chance of beating a team that were ripe for the picking - it was evident on every face I saw. We have a very professional and experienced staff behind the team and we all set about planning the rest day to lighten the mood and re-charge batteries.

Seldom do footballers get the chance to watch other sports live, so we took the squad off to a Premier League handball game on the Saturday night, which opened a few of their eyes to the demands of other court sports.

Our final game against Bulgaria started early on Sunday, so the 11am kick off meant a 7am alarm call for us. Our chats over the previous 48 hours appeared to have worked - the warm up was one of the best I have seen them do and they looked focused on the task ahead.

However, once more lapses in concentration saw us go behind, which was compounded by a penalty decision which seemed harsh and changed the face of the game. Despite a spirited comeback we were unable to make up lost ground at it ended 9-4 to the Bulgarians.

Looking back I have taken the positives. While we are still awaiting our first win, we have learned how to play the game and can now compete with teams on our level. The squad know that they could have played better but this experience will teach them that they have to take their chances the moment they’ve created them.

Having arrived home last Monday night I was immediately back in to preparing the next F30 session and looking at a new batch of players. It is always time to look ahead and now we are planning for the next macro-cycle to ensure that we are continuing to move forward and improve.

Graeme Dell

If you'd like to ask Graeme a question ahead of his next column in a fortnight, email us at editor@TheFA.com




Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com