Courtesy: The FA.com


Student night

By Graeme Dell

Wednesday, 04 July 2007

It's been another busy fortnight in the world of Futsal, although Graeme did manage some downtime when he went to a wet Wimbledon to watch some tennis.

Hi there everyone.

I think I have to start by complimenting the fighting spirit of the Under-21s in the semi-final in Holland two weeks back.

It’s already been said by a number of people that it’s probably the most courageous fight put up by an England team and I’m struggling to remember a more resilient and dogged display.

I think that the issue of too few players, injuries and fatigue all played their part in us not making the final although the other nations didn’t suffer physically like we seemed to, but you cant read too much in to that.

Although we did drop off in the latter stages of most of the games there will always be some lessons. But for what it’s worth I always think that’s more about the preceding months preparation leading in to the tournament than when you’re there. Preparation is vital in tournaments from many months out.

It’s also such a shame that they don’t get the chance to follow that on with an appearance at the Beijing Olympics next year having won and deserved the right to be there. They will lose out on such a magnificent life changing and personal development experience.

I read recently that Carlos Tevez referred to his appearance for Argentina in the Athens 2004 Olympics as the biggest single influence in his career.

Despite what many quarters of the game think about GB representation our players are losing out compared to the other nations around the globe. That has to have an impact on their approach for senior level tournaments.

I’ve had a real football fortnight, finalising my student squad for Bangkok, dealing with players, clubs, managers and head coaches so it’s been interesting to say the least.

With so many ‘probables’ across the pond in the USA I have to burn the candle at both ends to catch the differing time zones on both the east and west coast. Messenger and Skype are great inventions, which make conference calling really easy.

I’m a bit bleary eyed but having named the Final Group yesterday I can now catch up on that lost sleep. I’ve only got four weeks to stress that they all make the plane in a healthy condition so I hope I’ll be quite relaxed by the end of July when we leave.

It’s a heavily weighted group with 16 playing in the USA, so I’m going to be on a knife-edge, but their seasons are well underway so in that regard they should be OK.

With so many players getting released by the clubs over here there is an increasing number going on scholarships to the USA and developing later with the benefit of full-time training every day. I track over 300 in the US each week so that work has paid off this time around but they are a long way ahead of many of the UK based players.

What is a worry for me is that the game here at home is losing these players and not picking them back up later in their development. They have a great league in the US called the PDL (Professional Development League) which whilst imposing major restrictions on the players in terms of salaries if they’re still at university, certainly works in development terms.

There are many lessons we should learn from their structure and something I think the non-league structure could offer which would help it and the game to evolve and develop the younger players.

I had a day off on Monday to get way from the phone after a mad several weeks. I knew once this squad was announced that my phone would be red hot with a variety of people chasing me. Instead I had a day out at Wimbledon watching the tennis where I knew my phone couldn’t be answered – sneaky but a great idea, despite the fact I got soaked and saw only about two hours of tennis.

We’ve now set about putting in place a Level 2 Futsal coaches course and have collated a plethora of session plans as well as invented many of our own, so I’ve been going through the painstaking process of categorising these between Levels 1 and 4.

This will allow us to follow up quite quickly with the more advanced courses. Its amazing, I get really excited and cant wait to try some of them out but its getting the time on court that’s the problem. There are so many great sessions and the fun thing is that they are all so new.

Video analysis is so important in Futsal and I’ve spent the past fortnight catching up on this and evaluating the players we’ve had through F30 this year.

I am about to name the 20 or so permanent berths on the 2008 Programme so I need to be sure I have evaluated everyone to the best of my ability. It’s easy to forget both good and bad performances so the analysis just re-focuses my mind going back several months.

These lads will be very privileged but in return they have to deliver. They have to commit to the Programme and make many sacrifices that will allow them to play as close to a professional standard as possible yet only is part-time. It takes a special individual and it’s as much about mental attitude as it is about ability.

Their ambition needs to match mine and collectively we need to match our culture to our ambitions and expectations over the coming months and that has weighed heavily on my choices for F30. Unless these lads have the right dedicated approach to want to do that then no matter what abilities they have they are unlikely to realise their full potential. I am however satisfied that I now have a group that will apply themselves to it.

The next fortnight promises to offer no let up with the FA Umbro Futsal Finals in Sheffield this coming weekend which I’m really excited to see followed by the FA Umbro Fives Finals at Wembley the following weekend, so I’ll tell you how I get on in a couple of weeks.



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