Courtesy: The FA.com

In pursuit of perfection

By Graeme Dell

Tuesday, 10 April 2007

Graeme is back with his latest column where he jots down what he's been up to over the last fortnight, which included more time on the lap-top and his pursuit to find the best Futsal players.

Hi everyone.

The past couple of weeks has seen mixed emotions with our England teams. The youth teams have all done really well with John Peacock’s U17 team achieving some very well earned victories in Bosnia. Trust me when I tell you it’s an unforgiving place to go and qualify but they did so with great effect.

The U18s had an emphatic win over Holland a week or so back and the U16s' Montaigu tournament finished in a final defeat yesterday but Kenny Swain will be pleased with what they’ve achieved.

That’s a great place to go and play where so many players have gained invaluable experience. I recall Dave Sexton saying what a great tournament it was for the National School players when he was in charge.

So, it appears our forthcoming generation of players are proving a good measure against their foreign counterparts which is encouraging to see.

I mentioned last time that I’ve been chained to a laptop for some time now catching up on our overseas players. There’s a big synergy between the GB student Team I coach at 11-a-side and the England Futsal squad where around the globe the student sector contributes greatly to Futsal programmes.

Whilst the university and college sectors aren’t the only areas in England that we can find Futsal players, they certainly provide a good platform for developing the game than any other area, so there is good development potential.

The FA Youth Trust have just grant-aided both the GB men’s and women’s teams to participate in the World University Games in Bangkok later his year which offers a unique multi-sport Games experience.

Having headed this programme for a number of years it’s an accomplishment to see the girls there for the very first time, something I’ve worked really hard at trying to achieve. The Games are massive on the continent, yet here at home we struggle to get a handle on their significance for young athlete development, which gives a bigger insight into what an Olympics can be like for staff and athletes alike.

It’s also an opportunity to implement Futsal sessions into an 11-a-side training diary and see how we can ‘concept transfer’ which worked really well in 2005, so I’m looking to develop that further this time around.

I’ve had to hit the ground running with this squad and whilst I have a good handle on our student players in the English leagues there are more than 350 on football scholarships in the USA who I also track monthly.

It’s a massive task but important to keep an eye on these players. Most of them are late developers having started their careers at pro clubs and who will return back to England at the end of their courses. I’ve seen at first hand over the years how their technical competences have improved with training every day at college and many of them will be suited to Futsal.

English lads are also making the MSL Draft with two, Bolton’s John Cunliffe from Fort Lewis College and Doncaster’s Ben Hunter from the University of North Carolina, making this year’s pick and that’s a great achievement.

From a Futsal perspective there are now several English lads playing in the MISL, the indoor equivalent, with two more having made it this year, one of whom, Alex Harrison, played for me in Turkey in 2005. I’ve still got loads of sifting to do yet before I close in on a final squad but I’m confident of picking up some Futsal talent during the evaluation process to feed in to our clubs.

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at other sports, trying to find what we can learn from them to give us an edge and develop my own skills even more. Football tends to be a bit insular in this regard and in the past hasn’t been that good at looking outside of its environment for new and challenging learning tools, but as a coach you have to be doing that. I want to ensure that Futsal learns what it can as soon as it can. We have to be set up using the best of the knowledge available to us.

British Cycling’s achievements have been in the headlines this past fortnight and whilst there’s no physical or tactical relationship with Futsal, it’s a programme which we can learn a great deal from away from the action.

Their Performance Director Dave Brailsford is a performance guru and rightly gets credit for their achievements since 2003 with track cycling now being one of the best achieving British sports.

Dave takes a no nonsense approach and an uncompromising attitude towards developing excellence and success – it’s podium potential or nothing as far as he’s concerned. But here’s a synergy with something else we saw with Clive Woodward and rugby during their World Cup success.

Brailsford was a corporate doctor in a ‘previous life’ and draws from that business experience to deliver uncompromising ruthlessness and meticulous planning in his pursuit of excellence. He’s also sound personnel manager, all of which are key facets in developing a team ethic and supporting the athlete to achieve and someone I’ve watched for a while.

Over the past fortnight I’ve been responding to players asking me how come it’s so difficult to get on the F30 Programme and I share Dave’s philosophy in many regards. Greater numbers of athletes with the same abilities or with limited potential dilutes the performance resources and holds back development, so with our F30 programme that’s what we’ve tried to avoid from the outset. With experience comes instinct and as a coach you have to commit to back yourself when making the judgement call as to who gets on the programme.

Almost every player I work with believes they can achieve at the highest level but that has to be taken in the context of ‘possibility’. For example, a young 24 year old player with two years Northern Premier experience has his eyes and heart set on playing for the England Senior team, great aspirations and goals but realistically, not much of a chance of Steve picking him.

A similar example is a young player with two years Futsal experience at a club training once a week without a coach and limited competition exposure other than maybe 12 matches, and who wants to be selected onto F30.

The reality is that unless he has something really extra special that won’t happen. So, we’re selecting very carefully and encouraging the players to get to clubs with expert Futsal coaching but ability isn’t all you need to make it!

That’s the approach I have to take. There are numerous players with these aspirations and everyone dreams of playing for England but unless I can see that they can grow with the programme and enhance it by being better than what we have then there’s no point in spending priceless time and funds on something that has a limited shelf-life or limited attainability.

That’s where our county development work comes in and the clubs should be tapping into that resource to create a club structure which will develop the right sort of Futsal players.

Time is a precious commodity in development terms and having judged that a player hasn’t got the facets I need that’s it, move on and look for the next but we advise them as best we can on how to develop.

We need them to go away and come back in a few years time a more rounded Futsal player. It’s a philosophy based upon trust and honesty, ensuring that there’s no favourites and that I can make the judgement call in the best interests of England, the player and our development at the game.

Well that’s it for now. Catch you in a couple of weeks.

Graeme

Your Questions

With the ongoing development of Futsal at a grassroots level, do you feel the time has come for the FA to introduce a new coaching badge which is vastly improved and more technically based? My colleagues and I have been coaching and playing Futsal for over a year now and there seems to have been no development in terms of the FA's coaching development. As the National Coach, is it not within your power to perhaps put on experienced Futsal coach seminars or even invite a few coaches to attend an F30 session to watch the type of drills you guys are doing and the ability of the players on show?
Ben Spooner

This is a question I get asked many times in a week. We are working on a series of new courses but due to various Quality Assurance issues and the protocols of FA Learning, this takes time. But it's essential to set them up properly if we are to develop the coaches. We are on target with our objectives so far and we hope to pilot a Level 2/3 course later this year. I am also hopeful that we will be able to offer a Futsal Conference later in the year with a series of demonstration sessions that will support the coach education process but that is yet to be finalised. I aim to make the F30 workshops as open as possible as I haven't forgotten when I started out that it was essential to go and watch the best coaches work. We do have visitors, by invitation only, as we have limited space and we need to ensure that these sessions are about the players as we get limited time with them as it is.

Who might our Zidane be? Have we one in mind? It was also interesting to see about France U14s and the handball goalkeepers.
Kevin Bryant

Interestingly, some 13,000 people turned out in Paris-Bercy this weekend to watch Zidane and the '98 players take part in a Futsal game versus the French Futsal team. I'm not sure why we need a Zidane type character or indeed who ours would be as I think we're all doing a pretty good job at promoting the game at present. We must also remember that the French have been at it a lot longer than we have and they have already developed a 'product' to sell. We're some way off that yet, but in the coming two to three years we will get to where they are and in that time I am sure we ill find 'our' Zidane. What will be interesting to see will be what happens with Futsal in France as a consequence of his involvement but he has certainly brought the game to the public's attention.



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