Graeme Dell speaks to Manchester Futsal Club

Part 3

Manchester Futsal Club are proud to announce the third and final part of the exclusive interview with England Futsal Manager Graeme Dell. Graeme will give his personal insight into the key issues that all English Futsal clubs are currently debating.

The interview is posted on Monday 25 of June 2007 and covers the England National Futsal team and FA National league. This will be the final extract from our exclusive interview.
We hope you have enjoyed following the topics that have been discussed and developed your understanding of the current structures in place in English Futsal.

Visit www.manchesterfutsal.com for the latest questions and comments.



The England Futsal Team and the Development of the FA National Futsal League


Could you explain the player pathway into the England Futsal team and your strategy for talent identification and the investment in player development once they reach national level status?

This one's a simple question to answer.But let me explain some things first. F30 and the England team isn 't an exclusive club just for players who play Futsal – it was never intended to be but that will change over the coming years. It's for those who can play the game better than anyone else and who can contribute to the need s of the game, it's development and by raising the bar for the England team


Look, I have a player on a programme at the moment who went to the US on a tennis scholarship. Having got there he was then identified as actually being a better footballer and transferred onto the football scholar programme. They didn't say ‘hey, you're a tennis player so you're not entitled to play football' . What they probably said was ‘your a better footballer than what we've got, but you're not as good as what we've already got at tennis, so let's make something of you to strengthen us in another sport' That's an attitude we don't do very well with in Britain if I'm honest as we ‘pigeon hole' athletes, but we are getting better.

Take Shelley Rudman, a former GB hurdler who gave up athletics through injury and decided to give bob skeleton a go. Earlier this year she won a silver medal at the Winter Olympics. Another example is Nicky Minicello, a former GB heptathlete who was on the GB team with me at the World University Games in 2001, but who by 2005 was our top women's bobsleigh driver and a World Champion.The point I'm making is that Futsal is new and the opportunities are open to everyone and whilst we have limited talent at the moment we have to search to find it. It's worked with other sports and we should be no different if we want to move it on.

UK Sport have recently introduced a scheme called Talent Transfer for our Olympic sports in the build up to 2012. As in the examples I've just given you high performance athletes who have either dropped out because they haven't achieved or, they have achieved and retired but may still have something to offer another sport or, would simply be better at another sport or discipline, are targeted and their talent assessed to see how they could benefit another sport. It follows a successful Australian model adopted before the 200 Olympic Games in Sydney and ensures that talent stays in sport and doesn't get lost. How many ex-players can you name who got disillusioned with football and ended up on the scrapheap? We don't want that to happen and waste the investment and talent, we want to offer an alternative.

So, it should give you confidence in our commitment that in fact we've been looking at and implementing ‘talent transfer' on the F30 programme since the beginning. We had to, when we started we had very few Futsal players in England but there are numerous football players out there who can transfer to Futsal and immediately be better than anything we so far have. Now that's because their talented, fit, bright, wanting a challenge, they have a dedication and they're intelligent enough to play Futsal. That won't stop happening if we want to spread the word about the game so we need to get used to it.


I watch an inordinate number of games, as many as 3 or 4 a week at varying levels of both football and Futsal. I also watch other sports like handball, in an attempt to find goalkeepers to talent transfer and all of that covers the length and breadth of England but we need more coverage to talent ID. That costs and at the moment we have to spend the money on grassroots development so we can't get to every corner of the country but I'm having a go! I'm wary of recommendations from people I don't know as they've historically proved to be totally misjudged recommendations or very biased.

There is no way for example that one club will have 5 players good enough to play for England so why recommend all 5 to me? A club coach recommends his best mate or son to me who are simply nowhere near being good enough and that lack of integrity makes me wary. I try hard to ensure it doesn't reflect poorly on those who are trying to do a decent job in recommending so that message needs to get heard. Recommendations have to be of a national standard, if you don't know what that is then get to the England games and watch.

Similarly, I've lost count about how many recommendations I get that tell me how many goals ‘abc' player scored in a tournament and how much better he was than anyone else. Nothing about his vision, his pace, his passing accuracy, what a dedicated lad he is, what great balance he has, how much he's developed since being at the club, how well he can defend but maybe needs a bit more work on his counter-attacking mentality etc.

The fact he scored a bag full of goals quite frankly means very little unless I know the standard he's up against. I think you'll sense some frustration in my explanations!

Anyway, once a player gets identified we invite them on to F30 as a guest and work with them. In some cases they simply aren't up to it and we can't justify keeping them but we hope they've seen how professional the whole England set-up is and take that back to their club. In those instances I feed back to whoever recommended them and explain why we haven't retained the player so that next time they're better focused on what to look for.

In other cases, we need to see more and invite the player back. From then on they survive on the programme by their commitment, dedication, adaptability, capability and development. I have to be mercenary in this regard so if they add value to what we already have then we keep them. If they aren't as good as what we have or offer future potential then that's not enough to warrant keeping them in front of another player we've invested in already. More of the same dilutes attention and slows development and each step we take in the F30 evolution has to be progression.

By adding science into our selection allows us to benchmark, so unless a player can attain level 12 on a bleep test I'm unlikely to touch them. Statistically, we now feel that's what you need to play the game effectively at a basic level and that message is getting out there but that's just one facet the scientists are looking for. We've educated ourselves in the fitness levels and that's taken time but it's been an investment that will now save us time across the next period.



When you're invited onto the F30 Programme then you get treated in almost the same way as any other England team. I say ‘almost' because I don't believe in comfort. I don't believe in pandering to individual requirements either and therefore F30 live by the rules we set. We have a vastly experienced staff group who's collective experience in performance development is almost unrivalled so we have a good idea of what it takes. These players are the kings of our programme and we are but the minions who create the performance environment for them to learn – but they trust our judgement and experience. Personally I'm not easily impressed so high maintenance players, flash and those without realistic expectations don't get very far.

‘Live down to play up' is a motto I adopted a long time ago and it's respected by the entire F30 Programme – players and staff alike. As a group we have to earn the plushness of 5 star hotels and the other such comforts that go with national squads as a matter of course. They may well have earned that right and for us it will come in time, but for the moment we need to spend our limited budgets on development and not comforts and that way when we travel to less enticing places we aren't affected by poor food, delayed travel or less than average accommodation.

F30 has monthly sessions at Lilleshall and that's fully expensed by The FA so we fund the squad to the fullest extent without wasting money. I spend the budget as if it were my own so ‘wastage' isn't a word I take kindly to. We support the squad with full video analysis from training to matches and record everything along the way, this way the players get feedback, which is great for focusing the mind on where they think they did ok but could to do better.

I said earlier talent isn't the only thing I look for. Being ‘on the road' with a national t eam takes a very special type of person with the right mentality and focus. I've had some very talented lads come through F30 but simply no good on the road.


‘I got bored having to rest so much'- ‘I don't like that food' – ‘ I'm missing my girlfriend ' or ‘ I've lost my water bottle – again ' aren't the right signals for someone who might have to spend a week in a 1 star hotel in an underdeveloped Eastern European country in a qualifying group. So we take note of all these issues and may explain why some lads haven't lasted, if they lose interest and focus or can't re-fuel then their talent won't be realised when it matters! Supply on demand is the challenge.

So, back to the beginning, the simple answer, if you've got what it takes and you're good enough then you will get onto F30. That's just the beginning of the education process and shouldn't be the achievement.



What are you aspirations for the England Futsal team in the next 5-10 years and what will be the key drivers behind future success?

I've always tried to be realistic since I took this job, at the point of upsetting a few people I'm sure but I'm employed to understand where we are, be effective and take on the challenge in moving us forward!

It's very easy to get over optimistic, as one can also get pessimistic but I recognise more than most the reality of where we are on the international stage and that progress will take time.

I work alongside an extremely supportive group of people in Football Development at Soho and a fantastic FA Council Small-Sided Games committee. We all share a common desire and a realistic vision for Futsal, where we are and where we want to get to, but what's key is that we all appreciate the ‘road' there will be a lengthy one, uncomfortable at times yet challenging and it is immensely helpful that I have that support.


We've played over 30 games now without a victory, using some very talented and gifted lads at the level of the game we're focusing on. We've been close but we might as well have been miles away not having won but the encouragement is that the players have shown better game understanding, tactical knowledge and implementation since we started the programme. Results are fine but you aren't going to make progress in the long term simply by short-term gains.

Repeatability is the issue, but the F30 group generally get more focused Futsal work than club players at the moment although they need more. I'm always looking to move the group onwards but my aspirations remain the same – to keep improving in what we do and how we play.

I firmly believe that the path we're mapping is the right one and whilst there will still be some pain to endure, it has yet to be proven we're taking the wrong steps but with my staff team we constantly review where we've been and where we're going and never taking anything for granted.

My aspirations therefore remain realistic. Until we get a national league up and running in a format similar to that which I have eluded to previously we'll progress slowly and we shouldn't expect anything other than that internationally until it happens.

I want to be able to look back over one, three and five years and say we have made progress but talk of major championship success for England in that time is simply delusion, it under values the level of competition we face and doesn't recognise where we've had to start from. Expectation has to be looked at internationally and not in a parochial manner which happens far too often in the UK which can often over value our player asset base.

The drivers for success are simple. Better educated players with core Futsal abilities and that precious commodity – patience!

A coach I have immense respect for is Don Howe. He once taught me that building a team is like building a house, the goalkeeper and defence are your foundations and if you get the foundations right the house will stay up but you can re-decorate it in whatever way you like beyond that (formations). If the foundations are weak then decorating isn't even an option.



It's the same with developing this game. Unless we have sound foundations everything we put on top will become fragile, flawed and won't stand the test of time. Should success come then it would be a great reflection on what we have done but setting such success as a target this early on just creates obstructive pressure but also shows a naivety of the standard of the global game. We don't want to play up our capabilities until we've earned that right or we'll become a laughing stock. We see too much of that in football already.

To ‘achieve' we need players. Think of them as our tool kit.I want and need the clubs to develop players and fill our national team ‘tool box' with sharp, interesting yet variable tools I can use in a number of ways to make the most versatile product. With me as the National Coach or, you as a club coach we're the craftsman – yet we're only as good as the tools we have to work with! If we use the tools in the wrong way then that's a different issue, but first things first.



There are a number of interesting debates going on amongst English Futsal clubs about the development of a FA National Futsal League. Could you provide an update on current developments and a time frame for its implementation?

A national league is essential if Futsal is to progress in England and that will happen but in what format we have to wait and see.But, I exercise caution here as I've heard some of the debates to which you refer but they're missing the point by a wide margin.

What's important here is that we'll get one chance to do this right and that's the opposite side of the one chance we get to make a mess of it! If we make a mess of it then potentially that will make future attempts irrecoverable. Now, whether that's The FA who sets it up or a third party provider under a Licence remains to be seen but substantial six-figure investment will be required each season. When it happens we'll do it properly from the outset and The FA will oversee governance.


Putting my commercial hat on, it's my view that unless we start with something of absolute quality that delivers the best TV friendly venues, proper club structures, ‘A' Licence Coaches which attract the best English players, provides proper medical support, has a youth development and community programme which are all linked to sound LTPD strategies with appropriate financial support, we won't stand a chance against the power base and financial muscle of football.

A national league has to have as set of regulations approved by The FA and these have to be administered professionally and not in an ad-hoc manner. Some work has already been done to look at what needs to be in place but regulations, player registration, player contracts, league structure and governance are all but a small portion of what has to be thought about before we can implement. Take as a good example The Football Conference and how that's set up, any national league will more than likely have to replicate at least that structure, the clubs too, and on a related scale.

Therefore club structures are of significant importance in the equation and many of those discussions you refer to have ignored a large number of factors which will be essential if this is to be the best platform for what we have. Each club will more than likely have to provide a doctor at each game, employ a chartered physiotherapist working to The FA medical c ode, probably a sports-scientist, an accountable club representative, stewarding, audited financial accounts, club management, qualified and regulated coaches and so on.

Any national league will come under the jurisdiction of The FA's doping control procedures and consequently specific and dedicated doping control facilities would need to be in place at each venue, as would the administration of players requiring TUE's and registering these with the authorities as with any other level of football. But I'm guessing that many clubs haven't even thought about this despite it being a pre-requisite for football already!

would like to see us deliver a quality, well structured and thought through product and whilst this sounds like a lot of issues they're all essential in delivering that end product which will command respect and attract the revenues required to operate it. If you don't have those in place at a club now but have aspirations of being a national league team when it happens or are claiming you're one of the best in the country my advice is to start looking at it now.


The other factor of course is that it won't work as a product either if clubs simply train once or twice a week as that won't develop a player base of the standard we need. It won't be enough. There needs to be a structure which provides financial support and guaranteed facility access that allows players to train each day, maybe only for an hour or so but that will be important.

It can all be achieved and I have my own views on this, as do others and these along with numerous views from our consultation base will be debated in the months ahead. From a National Coach perspective what I want to see is a platform to develop English players for England , that's what this is for isn't it? A concept to aid England 's growth at the game. That won't happen if the national league teams are full of players ineligible to play for England . We do need some foreign talent involved by which to learn from and aspire to but within EU legislation guidelines that has to be carefully controlled and is another factor we have to consider.

When will it happen? Well that's the million pound question.

It's on the radar and we've been given approval to progress the concept to a proposal stage but implementation is very heavily reliant upon new and additional sponsorship. To ensure that clubs can be properly supported in the initial seasons and implement the requirements takes money and we therefore need a substantial sponsorship package to support it, and whether that's The FA or an external provider is yet to be determined.

We have a one off opportunity but I think realistically we are 3 years away from that. There are regular ‘think tank' meetings so we're gradually putting some more meat on the bone but it's a mammoth project – we can't get it wrong – or maybe we can if we rush it!








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