Graeme Dell speaks to Manchester Futsal Club

Don’t miss the second part of the exclusive interview with Manchester Futsal Club where England Futsal Manager Graeme Dell will give his personal insight into the key issues that all English Futsal clubs are currently debating.

The interview will be posted on Monday 11 June 2007 where Graeme will be giving an insight into Coach Development and the future of English Futsal. Visit www.manchesterfutsal.com for the latest questions and comments.

Manchester Futsal Club representatives will be in attendance at the Grassroots Football Show at the Ricoh Arena Coventry UK this weekend (9-10 June 2007) where they will be promoting their Choose Futsal! ® campaign.


Below you can have a look at the first part of the Graeme Dell interview:


Futsal Club Development

Despite the recent growth in the number of Futsal clubs being established in England , Futsal is still a sport of informed players and coaches. Who should now take responsibility for promoting the sport to a wider audience - clubs, local authorities or the FA?

I would agree that any involvement in Futsal is knowledge based, restricted to those who know about it, and there lies the challenge! Spreading the word and raising the profile of Futsal is of significant importance if we're to progress as a nation and we have to attract people to the game and be less insular than it has been previously – shared ownership of the game by the Futsal community is essential.

Whilst we are further-on than when we started, it remains a fact that the perception of Futsal simply being 5-a-side and carrying with it the tag of ‘pub' football will hold it back. That has to change in any promotion of the game and the clubs are generally responsible for this but we all have a responsibility to raise its profile.

Let me explain why I think the clubs have a major part to play. When I go to tournaments and see some clubs who are amongst the self-proclaimed ‘best' we have, and see, just as one example, each player turning out in different shorts and socks and with no team structure, whilst it's great to see the enthusiasm, it does little to promote the game beyond that initial perception of ‘pub' football. If the clubs want the game to grow then they too have to help themselves at this early development stage.

However, the promotion of Futsal to the wider audience is a shared responsibility. It has to be.Clubs, coaches, players, referees, Local Authorities and County FA 's as well as The FA are all responsible for its growth and promotion albeit perhaps each focusing on differing areas but, with that we have to be cautious.

5 a-side regulation has, for many and varied reasons, been lost over the years and nobody really doubts that although with a fresh start that situation shouldn't be allowed to happen with Futsal over the coming years and The FA are eager to ensure that it doesn't. Futsal has the potential to be the ‘golden child' so we need the game to grow in a controlled and regulated manner if it's to move forwards and upwards the way we need it to. That means that it has to be regulated by The FA and its partners to ensure the correct governance of the game and that takes time to implement.Consequently, ‘big' and ‘more' isn't necessarily going to produce ‘better' so I think the key words here for each party involved is ‘patience', ‘focus', ‘quality' and ‘structure'



What is your opinion of the standard of Futsal clubs, club structures and most importantly the standard of players that you are seeing come through into the F30 squad?

Well, I speak my mind and tell it the way it is, which is the way I've been brought up in the game so I'll probably tell you what you might not want to hear, but I'll break my answer down into several parts.

At the minute we are where I expect us to be. On a scale of 1-20 we're realistically only at 5 – for some probably a harsh yet realistic view when I consider where we want to be and where other nations around the globe are. Each step in that scaled development cycle doubles in complexity and its challenges so its a long road we're going down and we might not see the end of it in my lifetime - of that I'm sure. We must all be realistic about the enormity of what we're trying to achieve and realise it's not a quick fix, but equally realise that what we have started might evolve in to something very different along that road.

This is a game that is effectively being started, learned about, developed and implemented from scratch – it won't arrive on the global stage of sport in the UK overnight but standards will dictate the pace that it does.


We all have to start somewhere yet we must have a collective view on where we're all heading although rightly it should be The FA that provides the direction and governance through knowledge and consultation. Much of the Futsal we have seen around the world has been shunned by its national football Federations so we have adopted an approach to governance in England which FIFA and UEFA want nat ional federations to by encapsulating Futsal as a component of football.

I often describe what we're doing as a bus gathering momentum heading off down a road, some will stay on it for the duration and others will get on and off as the pace excites or frightens them but we have to do it together and the ‘Futsal Family' have to realise that. They also have to know that we firmly believe in that too. In part that's why I agreed to this and many similar interviews, to enforce the partnership

We've been consulting widely as its still very early stages but we also have a vision that encompasses all areas of the game and that vision is slowly but precisely coming more into focus to give a clearer picture and the key to it has been patience.

As a general statement its my opinion that most clubs lack a definitive structure and this needs some attention paid to that area by the clubs themselves. Setting up a Futsal club is no different from setting up an 11-a-side club and there's substantial expert advice and help available from the County FA 's. At the moment, with a few exceptions, I see small groups of lads, although some girls teams too which is good to see, with great enthusiasm setting up a Futsal club but with no coach, no financial structure, no physiotherapy cover and no real idea what the principles of the game are. In a few other examples I do see those structures yet they're simply groups of mates playing together but with nothing tangible in terms of talent.

Its all great to see but these types of examples will limit our domestic development if it becomes the norm so ‘more' doesn't necessarily mean ‘better'. Structures have to be created within a club to enable the athletes to perform and if they're not then don't expect delivery of performance.

As for the talent, if we take out the overseas players from the current crop of clubs then we don't have very much except for a mass of enthusiasm about the game – but that's not enough! We'd be better placed having fewer yet more focused clubs and within those a greater English player and ability base which is focused on a Futsal education. I hear lots of people already emphasising they're Futsal clubs but few in fact are. Don't get me wrong because I'm just giving you some direction here but you have to make your own minds up what's right for you and the generality of the development of the game. We need the enthusiasm but we need game understanding at the moment like we need oxygen – it's the bit, but a very key bit that's missing and some of the coaches are missing the point. Now that's a very general and blunt opinion but I'm not going to tell you that its all great when it needs more focused attention.

Talent development requires a massive education contribution and I'm confident that this will happen in time and we as The FA have a major part to play in that but we're still treading carefully. It's a challenge to raise the profile of the game at no threat to football but rather as a partner and that requires care if we are to succeed.

The players coming through? There have been very few coming through from the Futsal clubs but I expected that. I am now seeing some improvement but there is still a long way to go and I'm supporting them with advice and assistance as best as I can.

The understanding of what an international level Futsal player needs probably needs continual clarification. I either get recommended a very fit lad with no idea of Futsal or, a lad who thinks he's a Futsal player because he plays for a Futsal club but only plays 5-a-side on a Futsal court and that's my biggest concern at the moment. He doesn't know where to run, how to track, how to counter attack or in some cases, wait for this one, the Laws of the Game. Now that can't be right can it for someone wanting to play for England ?

I go back to my club structure comment, the first practical process must be to educate the players on the Laws! In other cases I get a player with great ball mastery but who smokes 20 fags a day and enjoys a few pints with the lads – that's the pub mentality I referred to earlier but it's not what we need for England . OK, if that's what you want to do then I support you, but you shouldn't expect to play for England or be on F30 if that's your approach or concept of what it takes to become a highly tuned performance athlete. To be amongst the very best in any walk of life you need to make sacrifices and playing for England is no different and we do ask a lot of the F30 group – its the way it has to be.

We have to start with the mentality of the player who's probably been told for a very long time that he of she's ‘a really good player', not that they ‘could be if he works at his game'. The complete player doesn't exist and never will do, there's always somewhere they can improve and as coaches we have a responsibility to aid that development, always looking to improve the product. I watched a game only last week, a player beat three and shot wide yet his coach shouts ‘brilliant son, well done' – no it's not, he's failed at what he was supposed to do – score! How can the player be told what he did was ‘ brilliant '? In reality it's that approach that's let the player down so far in his career and questions if the coach really knows what ‘brilliant' is!

So, given time we will get that generation of dedicated Futsal educated players who will contribute in greater numbers to the England squad but at the moment I need high performers, real super fit athletes who are bright, intelligent with the right dedicated approach and who understand realistically where their talent sits on a national basis.

Talent alone isn't enough – and that's the same for any team but more so with a national team which is something I learned a long time ago.You need a mix of players in a squad and that may include less skilful players but ones who bring character to the group, those who keep the group alive. I need players who will go away and work on their own with a meticulous dedication, do weights programmes, focus on diet and nutrition, work on their aerobic and anaerobic conditioning, ball mastery, game knowledge and want to become a student of the game whilst understanding that they have to make a sacrifice or two by doing that. That's what it takes to be a cut above and create the chance to play for England .

Closing out your question, the point I want to emphasise here is that the growth of the game in England already has been phenominal. We started with 16 teams in the FA Umbro Futsal Cup four years ago and this year we have over 400. That's real credit to the whole Futsal Family and the work Dermot Collins and the team at The FA have done. What we now need to do is make sure that each of those clubs gets focused, applies the direction and gets on a pathway that ends up delivering and I'll support them all the way.



As a newly established Futsal club we believe that the FA could be doing to more ensure that clubs are supported in adopting the right approach to long term player development and attracting 5-11 year old players to play Futsal, what are your thoughts on this issue?

It's interesting you put the question in this way. If you take a look at what The FA have been promoting for the past 3 years or more, specifically what Trevor Brooking has been saying, and he's right, you'll see we're talking the same language! Almost everyone at a grassroots level I speak to has the same opinion so it's a widely supported view across the game as a whole yet more clearly accepted in many other sports at the performance end.

We've been banging the drum about how important the 5-11 year olds are and slowly people are taking note but the top end of the game is about the ‘here and now' rather than ‘tomorrow' but that's where it will fail England in the long term in my view. If grassroots doesn't implement the concept then we'll all fail the players we're here to develop.

These are the next generation, the 16 – 25 year olds are in many ways ‘has beens' by tomorrow's standards, sad but true in development and influence terms. We can't affect them in the same way as we can influence the 5-11's and that's where the focus of concentration needs to be. It's my view that we need age group specific coaches, in some regards the best coaches need to be working with the group more likely to be influenced but that generally doesn't happen. However, that's no good if the best coach can't relate to the age band he works with so it's a balance but one, which is in the control of the clubs.

LTAD (athlete) and the Istvan Balyi concept of principles which started the whole buzz phrase back in the early 90's isn't anything new in sport, it's just a new tag given to something that sport has actually done for a very long time – how else do you find and develop the next generation of athlete? The reality is that some sports have been a lot better at it than football has in the past. However, evolution has brought about the more recently developed LTAD concepts which enforce the ‘golden thread' to ensure that thinking and implementation is more joined up to get an end product. We've got some highly experienced and respected people at The FA who have been looking at that for football.


Our concept has been re-tagged LTPD - Long Term Player Development which we felt was more suited to ‘our' game and we're fully behind a programme which supports this concept.

However, with that evolution generally depicts change, ideally positive, and that's something I've historically tagged as the ‘SID' effect. That's how it's S tructured so that there's some joined up thinking, Implemented to achieve the effect and D elivered to ensure the output. Many people I know use different acronyms for the same principle but this one works for me.

I'm absolutely convinced that implementing a programme of Futsal for 5-11 year olds will deliver us a better footballer and spread the knowledge of Futsal. In the long-term it will create a much needed generation of Futsal players for England but lets not forget that there is a synergy between the two codes - much the same as there is in rugby union, league and sevens.

But, and here lies the issue, The FA can shout as much and as loud as we like about it but if parents, coaches and clubs don't buy in to it there's little chance of succeeding with LTPD in football. It's the national game and with so many numbers involved, implementation is a challenging process as there are too many personal agendas yet we have to have a common goal, more so than for any other sport.

What I'm saying is similar to what I said earlier – everyone has a role to play in the implementation and promotion (of LTPD) so, whilst you are asking for support, is that what you really need?

In my view what is needed is the unswerving focus, desire and dedication of the clubs to implement a structure of principles that will ensure LTPD. You don't need indirect help in that, you need belief and the dedication and control to see it through.

I can tell you that The FA's Football Development Department is convinced about how useful Futsal can be for developing the 5-11 year olds and much more will be seen of that in the coming months.







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