Courtesy: The FA.com


Tackling the White Bear

By Graeme Dell

Tuesday, 22 May 2007

After another busy two weeks, Graeme looks back on three trips to Wembley where he bumped into some familiar faces.

Hi everyone.

And just as I thought the season was nearing an end I thought I could have a rest!

It’s been a real Wembley fortnight for me with FA Trophy, FA Vase and FA Cup Finals to attend so I’ve seen a fair bit of the new stadium.

Watching the public enjoying it for the first time, it is especially pleasing to see so many youngsters in awe of the magnitude of the stadium.

No sooner had I sat in my seat at the Trophy did a hand touch my shoulder and sat behind me was John Gregory, who’s now the Marketing and Commercial Director of the Stadium. John played for me as a student in the 1991-93 groups and it was great to catch up with him.

In an almost surreal earlier moment Lee Howarth, who also played in those same groups, walked into the lounge so all three of us managed to meet up during the day. Lee’s brother Neil is assistant manager at Kidderminster so maybe the day didn’t turn out too bright for him.

The Trophy Final was a real cliff-hanger in the end and Mark Stimson has created a real relationship with the competition with three successes. I’ve had a few dealings with him and he’s always been very co-operative and has the players’ interests at heart.

It’s also one of the few times that I’ve seen an old mate of mine, Steve Guppy, play. We signed Gupps at Wycombe when I was there in 1989.

If my memory is as good as I hope it is, he cost us about £300 and a sack of footballs from Overton United in the Basingstoke & District league. Hilarious - but a great spot by a guy called Ian Crossley and Jim Kelman, who was the manager at the time, had no hesitation.

I remember Steve’s first reserve game for us in what was the Capital League, at Wealdstone. I remember talking to him and telling him just to enjoy the experience. He did that alright, he set the place on fire that night and burnt a trail for many years beyond.

The Cup Final was a spectacular occasion with a full house for the first time. I can’t make my mind up whether the atmosphere was as good as it was in the old stadium but that might have something to do with its size, yet a similar number of people inside.

It will be very different for an England game. Like most people I thought the game only got going in its latter stages but both teams were tentative and you’re unlikely to get a real ‘barnstormer’ with tactical games at that level. Drogba’s goal, especially that one touch sequence, was what it needed to break that deadlock.

We gave a presentation at Soho Square ten days ago to some of the parties expressing interest in being part of a new FA National Futsal league.

I was interested to see the diversity of people represented and with many more unable to attend yet interested in an involvement, the future and optimism that it will happen remains buoyant.

We have done a lot of research so far on the concept and only when we can all but guarantee a quality product will we be able to implement it. The clubs are critical to that implementation, but that was the overriding issue which came out as we need Futsal clubs and not simply teams which was the message taken away by the attendees.

I’ve also been busy looking at our England fixture programme for the rest of this year as it’s vital that we get a good set of games under our belt going in to Pre-Qualifiers for the 2008 FIFA Futsal World Cup.

These we now know will be at the end of January 2008 but the time between now and then needs to be well used and properly planned. We’ve now confirmed a two match test series away to Andorra between 24-27 September and are now just awaiting confirmation of the remainder of our home and away opponents, but I’ll let you know about those.

The draw for the UEFA Championships took place in Porto last week, with Luiz Felipe Scolari the principal guest of honour to do the draw. It achieved massive exposure across Europe but not a single column inch here in the UK which shows how much of a challenge we have to promote this great game.

The Grassroots Football Show takes place at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry next month and we were due to play an international as part of that show. Getting an opponent at that time of year has proven impossible, but rather than lose an opportunity, I’ll be playing an F30 Group against London White Bear, the National Futsal Champions as they prepare for their foray in to the UEFA Futsal Cup in September.

It gives me a relaxed opportunity to look at some of our newer players on F30 whilst also giving LWB some proper opposition in preparation for their challenge. The game will be on the Saturday afternoon and access is via the show, so if you want to see what it’s all about, please pop along.

One other aspect which has kept my mind in overdrive is a new breed of Futsal coaches. It’s important for us to concentrate on the coaches as well as the players and ensure that we can develop a pool of Futsal coaches with the right knowledge. Players need direction and we’ve been looking at a Level 2 Award to follow on from our Level 1 introductory course.

Dermot Collins, our National Development Manager for Small-Sided football, has put together a Technical Development Group consisting of people with a variety of expertise in areas such as education, Futsal, generic coaching, playing and administration experience to look at the structure and content right up to Level 4. We had a good debate at Warwick last week and agreed a structure for the various modules and we’ll now set about putting the content to the courses and these will be available via FA Learning.

We want to get the course right and make sure that it achieves the goal of educating coaches about the game so that they can create and develop a good end product – players! Realistically, we’re aiming to ‘pilot’ the Level 2 at the end of this year with a view to several courses next year.

Our next F30 session is at Lilleshall next week and I’ve been planning for that for some time now. We haven’t been together since March and it’ll be my last chance to see what is very much a new group prior to naming a squad for the fixture in Coventry in a couple of weeks. In many regards I’m conscious that we may be taking a step backwards to make the next move forwards but sometimes that’s what you have to do for progression.

We have some new and exciting talent on the F30 Group yet we still have to affect their Futsal knowledge and that won’t be an overnight solution. Only by spending time on the Programme and playing fixtures will they learn.

I am happy that the base level of the group has moved forwards with this new influx and I am confident that given time they can move us on to the next level.

Bye for now,

Graeme



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