Ex-pros in coach education: fast-track or do the hours?

"The big names gets an easy ride while the others have to do it the hard way."

Hard-hitting words from Will Foley - a Welsh based coached perplexed at how quickly Thierry Henry had completed his UEFA A license. What has become obvious is that the Welsh Football Association have fast-tracked Henry through the qualification.

It has been a trend in the past few years for ex pros to go through their coaching badges with the Welsh FA, Sol Campbell (notably criticising the English FA in the process), Roberto Martinez, Jens Lehmann just some examples of this while recently Patrick Vieira praised the Welsh organisation citing that they are "holding our hand" through the process. An interesting view point.

Should Henry have been made to take the course
in it's full duration?

James Beattie took over at Accrington Stanley without having even taken the level two coaching qualification. He claims to have then completed the UEFA B course and assessment within twelve weeks. Will he really have been able to learn everything he can from the course in that time-span?  I have heard tales of other professional footballers being fast-tracked through their courses or given assistance to get by through different national governing bodies. 

Quite frankly, what type of message does this send to aspiring coaches? Particularly ones with no playing background?

It is difficult enough to forge relationships and gather experiences within the game, let alone having to watch players given the easy route up the coaching ladder. It is disheartening to hear and see these stories. For me, I know I will have to work far harder than a recently retired professional going through the same process and that is something I have to accept because it is not going to change any time soon. 

The argument I saw today on social media was 'well what can a player like Henry be taught about management techniques in a classroom'. Personally, I find this quite arrogant and offensive towards the coach education tutors who are employed to teach the game to coaches. These are the people that know all about player development and the principles of play, and how to implement this as a coach. It's not always so much WHAT you are coaching but HOW and WHY!

Thierry Henry's experiences in the game are something I, nor any other coach with little experience in football, can not ever truly relate to. Yet how often have we seen a great player turn out to be a poor manager? Ability as a footballer is by no means a guarantee of football knowledge, and translating that knowledge into coaching is difficult in itself. Gary Neville is finding that out the hard way.

What message does this send to young aspiring coaches?

Having information, experiences or ideas in your head are very different to putting it on to paper or delivering this in a coaching session. This is why coach education is so important. How much of what you know do you truly understand? Can you effectively explain it to a player? Can you demonstrate this knowledge on the training pitch? While you take these courses, you are meant to be going away and practicing your sessions with your own club. Now Thierry Henry probably has access to any club he wants (he has been working with Arsenal) and can coach every day but even then his learning has still been accelerated and he could be missing out on vital components. 

By working so quickly through his badges, Henry is missing out on precious personal development as a coach. Might it not be detrimental to his learning experience to fly through these courses in such a way, leaving him little time to reflect on what he has learnt? I have noticed another ex-professional, moving straight onto the A license having recently passed the B license in England. Unless they are a specially talented coach (which they may well be) it will be very difficult for them to have consolidated their knowledge from the previous course and be ably prepared for the next level.

Would this kind of support or opportunity be available to a coach with little background in professional football? I very much doubt it. If the Football Associations running these courses did so with consistency - or highlighted potential coaches (ex pro or not) who should be fast-tracked - then at least there would be some justification for it.  I am yet to hear of this being an official line of coach education.

This culture of 'jobs for boys' is potentially harmful to the future development of coaches in England and is an issue prevalent across football in general. It is a barrier for people embarking on a coaching career if they see a disparity in how they are treated in comparison to ex professionals. They could be potential influential people who are overlooked and therefore long term this may impact upon the young players this country produces.

Youth Module 3: Principles of play, interventions and challenges!

I had been looking forward to attending the FA Youth Module 3 for some time. It had taken a while to find one that was in a suitable location and that I could afford, but I am glad to say that it was well worth the wait. Ever since attending the Youth Module 1 in 2013, I have been a massive fan of the FA Youth Award and have looked to progress through the course.

Though we had a hiccup with the state of the pitches at the initial venue, it was great to be amongst other coaches and learning valuable information from the tutors and everyone in attendance.

There were some key messages that I took out of the first two days of the course. This was for me personally, as I am sure others took different aspects of the course out of it. Anyway, here are mine:

Setting the scene

Something that I really liked was the way tutors and coaches made the session relatable in a way that kids would really enjoy. We had 'match attax', naming players relevant to the topic, the qualities they have that make them good players, letting players offer their opinions. From that, I had the idea to create my own 'player challenge cards' (pictured right).

Mesut Ozil challenge card

If you can set the scene well at the start of the session and quickly allow your players to grasp the concept of the session, they can gain a greater understanding of the topic and get them onside with what you want to achieve from the short time you have!

Incorporating the principles of play into your planning

This is moving slightly into UEFA B territory I suppose - but it has really helped me to consider the principles of play when planning my training sessions. I work with an u7s side at the moment, so I'm hardly going to go into phases of play but it does help me to keep my topics interesting and stops me rolling out generic topics that aren't tailored to the needs of the players. I was already aware of the principles of play but it was good to see them in action in coaching sessions and how I would add that to my own coaching. For my own development, as someone who would like to enrol on the UEFA B in the future, it was great to get a snapshot in how to consider these principles and include them in your coaching.

Challenges

When I think about this it is very obvious and I'm not sure why I don't consider these more often. Not that I do not do this at all, I do, but the course opened my eyes in to how best to give challenges and be able to review them too with players. I put on a session on day two and while I set challenges during this feedback I got was to set these at the beginning too. So now what I do is bring a whiteboard with me and set team, unit and individual challenges. This way everyone understands what the challenges are rather than just one or two players and I can get the messages behind the topic across to the group. In a recent session, I would constantly refer back to these challenges and by the end of the session the understanding within the group I was coaching and considerably improved!

Interventions strategies

How can you support the needs of your players?

Trial and error is probably the key coaching intervention that is encouraged across the first two days of the course. However, the mistake we as coaches made was to take that as what they wanted to see when we coached in front of them. Trial and error is simply ONE way of intervening and managing a session. As a result we actually saw quite little coaching within the sessions produced. The use of the 5 pillars of coaching (Command, Question and Answer, Guided Discovery, Observation and Feedback, Trial and Error) is key and in fact part of the Youth Award assessment criteria is that you show a variety of coaching styles! I do think some of this owed to the pressure of coaching in front of other coaches - in our own environment I think we would be more likely to coach in a manner we are more comfortable with and use different intervention strategies.

Plan. Do. Review!

At a first glance, the Module 3 logbook can look quite daunting. Five or six pages per session plan seems a lot, but it really helps for you to consider the needs of your players, how you are going to improve them and it gives you the opportunity to effectively review after. Being honest with myself, I don't always reflect as well as I should do but with these sessions I can't avoid it! The plan, do, review process is becoming a huge part of the Football Association's coach education. This could become influential in raising the standards of how coaches work. From personal experience of the Futsal Level 2 and Youth Module 3 in just the last few months - my own standards have certainly improved.

Overall - I throughly enjoyed the first part of the course and these were just some of the aspects that I took out of the course. I look forward to going back in April for the final two days and see where I can take it from there!

It's all relative: birth bias in youth football

As a coach, have you ever considered your players' date of birth?

If the answer to that question is no, you may be missing a trick.

Concerning statistics reveal that a large proportion of youngsters in professional academies are born in the first three months of the selection year (i.e. September-November). This is also found to be prevalent in grassroots football where there is competition and a league structure.

The Relative Age Effect was highlighted in the mid eighties in elite youth ice hockey by Roger Barnsley. It was discovered that those that had been selected at elite level were born nearer the set selection date. The Relative Age Effect proposes that in the higher levels of sport, participation comes largely from those born in the first three months after an eligibility cut off date.

Just consider it.

Your star player in your under sevens side may be standing out currently but just remember, he or she may be up to eleven months older than another of your players. Someone who is seemingly dominant at the beginning of the season can easily be caught up. It's often a mistake that a coach, or scout or even parents can identify an individual's early physical maturation as 'talent'.

We could be overlooking a large amount of talented young players because of the opportunities given at a young age based on their date of birth.

Harry Kane - one of many of Spurs latest academy
graduates who are summer born!

It is very difficult to get into an academy set up past a certain age. If you aren't being watched from an early age and having exposure to the academy life (i.e. three training sessions a week) your chances slip away as time goes by. Some academies sign up to twenty five boys at under nines.

A theoretical model was put forward to suggest why this birth bias occurs. It considers that there are three social agents that affect the relative age effect; the parent, the coach and the athlete.

The theory behind how the coach can impact the relative age effect is called the pygmalion effect. It suggests that when an individual places greater expectation on someone then they will conform to that expectation. So if a coach perceives a young player to have high levels of ability for their physical maturity, it is possible that they are shaping that player's development with those expectation levels. Meanwhile, little Jane or Johnny are being further disadvantaged.

Ask yourself this, do you find yourself praising just the players who you see as the stars? Or can you manage the whole squad and meet their individual needs?

On the FA Youth Module 1 course, the relative age effect is indeed touched upon. If you own 'the future game' book published by the FA there is also a large section around it.  Through education, coaches can help themselves understand and limit the relative age effect.

How can this be further combatted? Is it just down to the coaches?

Since last year, academies have begun to trial "bio-banding". This is a process of grouping young players according by their physical maturity. Sports scientists are tasked to work out a young person's biological age for this process.

My issue with this is that considerations for the other three corners (technical, psychological, social) of the long term player development model might now be taken out of the equation.

In Nick Levett's article on the relative age effect, he mentions that although there are fewer late born players in academies, those players are given a fantastic education because of the challenges they face.

Lots of early maturers can also be talented!

Those challenges can help them become better learners, deal with being smaller physically and improve the other three areas while they mature physically. For the earlier born players who were once considered the big talent in their age group, they are given less of those challenge and may not be asked to maintain as high a standard as the others. I have definitely seen that happen to players at a local professional club where I grew up. It works both ways!

West Brom have a late birthday project and Tottenham have shadow squads throughout their younger ages. It certainly is not something that has been ignored.

A key concern of mine is towards grassroots football and participation. Where there is less competition and in non-elite sport the relative age effect is found to be reduced. However, managements, coaches and parents are far less likely to have received the education on the matter to assist in reducing birth bias. It is entirely possible that in physical sports such as football less developed children will be out off by the demands, and also being perceived as having low levels of ability. Can this be considered a form of social exclusion?

I welcome your views surrounding the Relative Age Effect, and the possible ways you or your club may be looking to combat this phenomenon!

There is no 'I' in 'team'...

... but there are five in 'individual brilliance'!

A common theme that I tend to hear on the touchline in grassroots football is the shout of "use your team mates, pass!" from anxious, or sometimes angry, coaches. "It's a team game" they say.

These are the same coaches who will reminisce and rave about the days of George Best or Diego Maradona and now Lionel Messi.

And yet when a nine year old dribbles down the line (and quite often, it does not matter if they are also successful in doing so) the screams are so often "PASS!" from coaches and parents alike.

Is it not entirely possible that these children are also 'team players'?!

Where an individual's strength may lie in defending or passing, another's may be in taking players on! Players who can play one versus one effectively are rare commodities so why are we quite actively discouraging children from being this type of player?

Jack Grealish rolls his socks down and
inevitably is fouled quite frequently

Of course, some just have their view of the way the game should be played and favour a strict passing game. That team work looks like running around lots, making tackles and giving someone else the ball quickly. I am not for one moment questioning that these are important factors of a successful team! However, the 'dribbler' plays a very crucial role in any team. They attract opposition, they create spaces for others to exploit, they win free kicks, they give their team mates a breather. Sounds to me like this player is doing plenty of work for the team already.

There is a more sinister view, too, of the angst towards dribblers. One that I have witnessed myself. That parents who tell other people's children they need to pass the ball more are simply jealous of their talents. Why can my child not do those things? I have coached a talented young boy who was playing a year up, at ease, and some of the shouting I would hear during games was terrible. Sarcastic remarks towards a seven year old, commenting to the parent of said child on their performance, shocking! It is likely that these adults are not acting in the best interests of the team, but their own child. This was resolved appropriately by a senior coach but scenarios such as this can put young people off of football and we certainly do not want that.

Finally, the dribbler to me is one of the bravest players there is. Resisting all urges from spectators, your peers, your coach to change your style of play, to pass when you would not usually and knowing full well you are going to get a good kicking at some point too.

All types of footballers should be embraced and this is just one of many, but I would hate to see this type of players disappear from the game. The new England DNA asks players to 'stay on the ball, to master the ball'. I hope that this message can be shared amongst grassroots coaches across the country as we continue to attempt to develop technically excellent footballers!

Coach Education: Changing for the better?

It has been mooted for a while now that the shape of coach education is set to change in major ways. Exactly how it would change it wasn't easy to say, but it was quite clear that different courses and pathways are to become more 'aligned'.

After attending a CPD (Continuous Professional Development) event last Monday - based around the FA Youth award - we were given a snippet of how it was going to look come the end of 2016. Coach education is set to become more modular, and set in blocks. For example - the Level 1 Football could be block one, while the Level 2, Youth Modules 1 + 2 could fall into block two. We weren't given the exact or full detail, but you get the picture!

Equally, the way in which candidates will be assessed is changing. You do get the feeling that the Football Association want to move away from the old school, high-pressure assessments. Back in August I attended a UEFA B assessment day and the tension was immediately obvious. This was very much make or break for some people, they had a lot riding on completing this qualification.

It was not at all nice to see that pressure affecting people. There were sighs of relief for those who weren't to be assessed that day. They didn't feel ready whatsoever. And while it didn't put me off applying for the course - it made me consider if I was ready just yet. To hear that the form of assessment was to become more competency based pleased me.

There will of course be those who disagree, of the belief that this might water down the courses and make them easier. But there are good coaches out there who are let down by the system currently in place. They need support, not rejection.

The brilliant candidates on the recent Futsal Level 2 course!

I was able to see this in full flow last weekend as I completed the FA Futsal Level 2 course. My own session went swimmingly and I passed well. There was a great mix of people from various backgrounds on the course but for a couple of candidates there was an obvious language barrier and this had become evident in their assessed topics. I don't think any of us doubted their knowledge of Futsal, in fact one was a truly excellent player! It was simply a case of articulating this knowledge through their coaching.

Rather than failing those that hadn't quite ticked all the boxes there and then, they were given the support they needed to be able to pass the course. They were asked questions to check their knowledge and offered another opportunity to demonstrate that in their session. They passed.

Is there really anything wrong with that? Shouldn't the tutors, the coach educators, be doing just that? To their credit the tutors on my course were brilliant.

The direction the education of coaches is going in is a positive one - and social media does a good job of highlighting this. Coaches can interact, learn off of each other and network.

I hope that this new approach will be welcomed and that the Football Association will update us accordingly. What is needed most is transparency to not allow any confusion over the changes.

One thing is for sure - times are changing, don't fall behind!

Why English Football needs the Rooney Rule

"There is a hidden resistance."

The words of Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the professional footballers' association, on the lack of black and ethnic minority coaches in english football.

The debate around the 'Rooney Rule', a rule that was initially implemented in the NFL in 2003, has been a subject of much debate in England in recent years. 

Will Chris Ramsey find it difficult
to find another managerial role?

While the debate rattles on, the stats do not improve. Only this month Chris Powell and Chris Ramsey were sacked in the same day by Huddersfield Town and Queens Park Rangers respectively. This reduced the number of black asian and ethnic minority head coaches by a third, to just four in the professional leagues. The timing of these two sackings was rather unfortunate, but while around 25% percent of players are black asian and ethnic minority males they make up under 4% of professional coaches. 

Surely that evidences that for whatever the reason be there is a problem in english football? 

And even for those who consider a rule that supports representation to be 'positive discrimination', it would also address the serious issue of the hiring and firing rate that football currently has. 

Nineteen managers in the football league have already been sacked, meaning nearly a fifth of the clubs have already experienced a managerial change. And there will be more, plenty more. 

The problem that must really be tackled though is the lack of a systematic process for appointing a head coach or manager. If a practice was implemented where clubs were asked to interview black and ethnic minority candidate, it would actually be urging the club to actually stop and think about a major decision at a large organisation.

These decisions affect a huge amount of people and I think that can be easily overlooked.

Gary Bowyer the latest casualty of the ridiculous
hiring and firing nature of English football

A massive misconception of the Rooney Rule is that it is a quota. It simply asks that a QUALIFIED candidate from a black and ethnic minority candidate is INTERVIEWED. Not hired - interviewed. 

Such a rule would mean all clubs would be required to have a professional, thought out interview process. This is clearly not the case at many clubs. How often do you see clubs sack a manager, only to replace them a day later? While this might be seen as forward planning, it also blocks the opportunity for promising coaches to apply and make their case in front of chairmen of football clubs.

And for those that are still against the idea and think that the issue is non-existent, a transparent process such as this one would surely, if they are right, prove that there is not a problem of discrimination?

But as long as managers such as Dean Saunders (three relegations in his last three jobs) and Neil Warnock continue to be offered jobs based on after dinner speeches and who they play golf with, you are going to find it difficult to convince me that this is not a pressing issue. 

I look forward to hearing the thoughts of those who have an opinion on the matter. Please feel free to comment below if you would like to debate the matter further!

Central venue leagues: the way forward for grassroots football?

Starting up a grassroots football club is difficult (and then running it is pretty tough too!). There are so many considerations to take into account such as; insurance, affiliation, attracting players and finding volunteers amongst many.

Another challenge is finding a suitable home venue. One where a club can provide a pitch for all it's teams if required on one day. In the modern day it is rather difficult to find that kind of space and furthermore, if such a place exists it is unlikely that one club can have access to all the pitches just for themselves.

Hackney Marshes was - and still is - a great venue for football

So when the grassroots club that I work with in London looked to address this problem, a league in East London provided the solution. All games in this league were held at one venue with the pitch and referee part of the package.

For clubs who struggle with the logistics of arranging home and away matches at the weekend, this eradicates that issue completely. And for those who do not have a coach per age group, it allows them to travel from game to game with relative ease.

This year I have been coaching with an under sevens side in the Southampton area. The league they are in have a similar system but play the games on an astro turf pitch. They are able to run three games simultaneously, with each game filling roughly an hour slot. This runs most of the day on the Sunday so it allows plenty of teams to play football on a quality surface where games are also significantly less likely to be called off. And what's more, there is a great atmosphere about the place (below is a picture of the first thing you see when you arrive).

A great sign to see entering the pitches
in a youth league in Southampton

If this became a more common system across the country it could become a real positive for scouts and people working in talent identification. I mentioned in a previous blog that scouts appear more prominently at summer tournaments and I would imagine this is because they have access to more players in one place, saving them valuable time and money.  At central venue leagues this would be of a similar advantage for them to witness young players in a competitive, realistic environment during the season.

With the Football Association planning to create one hundred additional astro turf pitches over the next four years, when organisations and football clubs look to secure funding for these pitches a case for their proposal could be to have a grassroots youth league playing their on the weekend. This would provide evidence for it being financially sustainable, in addition to the potential stream of money that would come from the hundreds of people that will be there who may want to buy tea, coffee, hot food etc.

I hope that this can become a more common sight. I have seen so many stories of clubs having to fold and this could be one mechanism that can help to reduce that occuring so often. There is a real possibility I believe for creating a system that can be easily organised nation wide which would begin to improve and bring together the grassroots football community!