Courtesy: The FA.com


Hello from Hungary

By Graeme Dell.

Thursday, 28 February 2008

I think this past week is tainted with thoughts from everyone in football for the horrific injury sustained by Eduardo da Silva on Saturday.

It was a sickening injury, exemplified by the footage being shown. Football is a bizarre game where other more forceful challenges don’t have anywhere near the same outcome.

Last week I was at RAF Uxbridge to watch the RAF play the English Universities where the students played a reasonable strong forces side. It was a bitterly cold night with the pitch clearly freezing over during the game but gave me a chance to have a look at another group of players for the F30 Programme.

I was also pleased to see an old coaching pal of mine, Gordon Bartlett, the manager at Wealdstone who I haven't seen for ages. Our paths used to cross frequently during my time at Wycombe and he has been a real stalwart at that level for a long time so it was nice to chat and get up to date on movements of some old colleagues and players from years gone by.

Last Wednesday I was in Exeter to watch the England C team play Wales on another cold night. I bumped into former Spurs captain Steve Perryman in the boardroom and again we had a quick catch up on the last 15 years or so. He was a director of a soccer school I used to coach on and then having spent a fortnight together at Lilleshall in 1985 on the same ‘A’ Licence course our coaching careers have taken varying twists and turns over the years.

You bump into people in the oddest places at football grounds and that was the case with Exeter manager Paul Tisdale. I haven't seen Paul for a while despite having some contact with him during the summer regarding the release of a player of his for Bangkok but I got to know him quite well from his time at the University of Bath before he moved to Exeter. He has done a great job in difficult circumstances at Exeter so we had a quick catch up which was nice.

During the game I sat alongside FA Vice Chairman Barry Bright and FA Councilor John Ward which gave us time to chat and catch up on a number of issues within football and Futsal. They are both County FA men and have a great feel for grassroots development which is a breath of fresh air when you hear about the passion and dedication in the work that they tirelessly do promoting and developing the game.

The match wasn’t the best if I’m honest where the end product, apart from two magnificently worked goals, was poor and really England should have scored more. Passion and pride are what matters at international level and the whole group showed that.

Welsh forward Stuart Fleetwood from Forest Green, who I’ve seen a fair bit of, showed his class at this level and why there is so much interest in him but I’m not sure how much further up the ladder he will go.

Exeter’s Dean Moxey had a good first half but the lack of width in England’s play in the second half restricted his effectiveness but nonetheless he has something about him both as a player and an athlete which I liked.

Ricky Holmes made the bench for England. He was on our F30 Programme last year and I think he has some real talent but sadly his size will deter a lot of clubs at the higher level signing him. I would love to have him involved with us again but, as ever, clubs pressure the players not to commit to national teams and it’s a sad position that players find themselves in.

Much of the past fortnight has been spent getting our World Cup squad sorted for the Qualifiers in Budapest where I’m writing this from and that is now done, although some late withdrawals have turned that into a headache but that’s the way it goes I guess.

I’ve spent some considerable time analysing the past 15 games we have played and it’s our starts which are the problem area and I think that is simply down to the transition from football to Futsal - it has to be better if we want to make progress.

Unfortunately for us the damage is usually already done by that point and our resolute second half approaches in all but two instances have been much improved so that’s an area we have to be mindful of this week. That will be high on the agenda in our team meeting.

The heart rate data we collected from Falcao in Kuala Lumpur has been very interesting to interpret which I’ve done with Dawn Scott. Although we are lacking his baseline heart data we can draw some reasonable conclusions from what we’ve seen. We had one player spend an identical time on court to Falcao in a game so it has allowed us to draw some comparisons.

Clearly Falcao is substantially fitter than any of our players and that will be down to his Futsal specific training and his recovery is so much better. Alarmingly, for the period he spent on court less than 30 percent of his time was in his maximum heart rate zone compared to almost 80 percent for our player.

When I reviewed the games the simple issue is that his speed of thought and game understanding is that much better and consequently he gets into position or makes himself available for the pass that bit quicker. Conversely, our own players' technical limitations mean they are constantly fighting to get to similar positions which consumes much more mental and physical energy and they have to work that much harder.

That’s an interesting set of data and highlights what we already suspected but only with spending more time playing the game will our players develop that understanding.

I have also attended a series of meetings regarding the new Level 2 Futsal coaches award and that is coming to a conclusion and will be piloted in April. We had a purposeful meeting at Soho Square with some of The FA’s very experienced coach educators who are well versed in putting courses together and we are confident we will have the right blend of teaching material to move the game on in England.

In wanting to spread the Futsal technical knowledge I have built up over recent years we have now launched a new Futsal portal as part of the FA Learning website.

All FACA members can access this part of the site and download session plans which will be added to on a fortnightly basis and these range from basic game session plans through to complex set plays. There is very limited published data on the technical aspects of Futsal and by developing this portal we can share the sessions we have developed and discovered around the world over the past four years.

That’s it for this week, I’m off to concentrate on my work in progress.





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