There’s definitely talent in SA

Arsenal Football Development Lead coach, Simon McManus, an UEFA Level 3 coach from the Gunners’ famous academy, was in South Africa last week. Thanks to SportPesa, the Arsenal coach took the Coaches To Count On programme to Cape Town. Local coaches took part in the coach the coaches workshop, with the likes of Kaizer Chiefs and Bafana Bafana legend Doctor Khumalo, as well as former South Africa players George Dearnaley and David Nyathi in attendance, and exchanged ideas about the beautiful game. Soccer Laduma’s Kurt Buckerfield caught up with the Gunners’ coach to find out more on why he came to South Africa, how he experienced the level of Mzansi’s coaches and what South Africa must do to bring more players through to the national team.

Kurt Buckerfield: Can you tell us a bit about your time so far in South Africa so far? What has brought you here?

Simon McManus: Yeah, of course… We’re excited to come out to Cape Town. Our partner, SportPesa, have a really cool campaign around Coaches To Count On, which is about sharing the expertise and philosophies from different UK clubs here and give it back in parts of Africa. Arsenal’s role has been to come out to Cape Town and work with Cape Town City FC coaches, which we’ve been really happy to do and then we’ve had 10 coaches from the wider South Africa area come in, so hopefully they’ll be able to make the opportunity count when they go back to their communities. It really aligns with the values of Arsenal and SportPesa. Arsenal’s really renowned for giving back to our community in London, but it’s also part of what we do in terms of our football development globally. We’ve got really strong fan bases and we know Africa, and in particular, South Africa have a real affinity for Arsenal. It’s been a really good event. We’ve worked with players, we’ve worked with coaches, and we’ve mixed a variety of theory and practical session to try and share the knowledge and philosophies we use back in London with our academy players.

KB: Interesting! How long have you been working with Arsenal and what particular age group do you work with?

SM:

Of course, we’re coming up to the end of my third season at Arsenal now. Previously, I was at other Premier League clubs, Southampton and AFC Bournemouth. And it wouldn’t really be fair if I said I had an age group or an academy group back in London because, luckily for me, I get to travel all over the world. We have full-time coaches for each age group and we have supporting coaches for each age group back at the academy, and I thought I’m the lucky one that gets to sit in on our CBDs, watch the sessions at Halen, learn from our academy manager, former Germany World Cup winner and Arsenal captain, Per Mertesacker, and our head of coaching Marcel Lucassen. And then my role was to oversee our football development programmes around the world. So, effectively, I get to watch the coaches in London, sometimes get involved in the sessions, but really my main aim is to take what we do in London and spread that to, like I mentioned before, our really strong fan bases that we have around the world. We’re really proud to use our partner SportPesa to do that here in South Africa.

KB: You’ve previously stated that at Arsenal the idea is to develop a holistic player. What does that exactly mean to a club like Arsenal?

SM:

I think it’s a real fundamental, not just to football development but wherever you’re coaching in any sport really. So, what we mean by ‘holistic player’ is most teams and most clubs will develop players technically and tactically, because that’s the action, the technique in football and then you have the decision-making element, or the working in combinations together, which is a tactical element. Those are the obvious areas to develop, but we thought Arsenal had the responsibility for our young academy players because unfortunately not all of them are going to make it into our first team and not all of them are going to play football for their whole lives, so there’s obviously a lot of social values that sport has. It brings communities together, it promotes confidence, it promotes social interactions, it promotes a community feel so, as well as the areas I’ve just mentioned technically and tactically, we try to also develop players in the phycological area of development so they’ve got confidence, composure and concentration, then socially we’ll try to get them to have a growth outlook. We have a saying at the academy that goes “every choice matters, every behaviour matters, every day matters”, so it’s just around those areas we try to include in our sessions. We obviously want all of our players to make it at the end of the day as professionals, but if not, we want them to go have good education

“Coaches To Count On is about sharing the expertise and philosphies from different UK clubs here give it back in parts of Africa”

and get into, hopefully, jobs within sport and within football. We’ve got a lot of success stories where maybe players’ careers have been curtailed by injury or just not reached the level they hope to, but they still stay within football, whether it be as a coach, whether it be as a strength and conditioning coach, whether it be as a phycologist or whether it be as a nutrionist. That’s really the motive behind it for ourselves at Arsenal and it just lives and breathes our club values, which is acting with class. We have that responsibility to the children. I think the challenges here in South Africa will be different to what they are in England, but it’s still important we use the power of sport, of bringing people together and teaching them core values they can take into everyday life and I think the coaches really understood that this week. We had some really good twoway learning experiences, lots of discussions, lots of questions. By the end of it, I think the coaches could really see the value of what we were trying to share with them.

KB: You’ve also talked about isolated practices vs integrated practices…

SM:

So, an isolated practice will effectively have a single area of development, in terms of the objective you’re trying to achieve. If you think back to if you played football and how you’ve been coached and how you’ve been taught to pass the ball and you have a line drill or you have square and you’re passing the ball around the square, that’s effectively just kicking the ball. It’s not really promoting decision-making. It’s got a sole technical aim, whereas at Arsenal, we expect our coaches to have an attacking, defending and transitioning element in the session, which therefore means we’re stimulating the decision-making opportunities for players. So, there won’t just be technical aim, but tactical aim. And depending on where we are within our coaching programme, the coaches can also then include psychosocial aims and also physical aims in that session. So, again, rather than spending 20 to 30 minutes on what we just referred to as kicking the ball, we’d like to spend that time on how we do pass the ball, when do we pass the ball, what way do we pass the ball, how do we make space, how do we support the ball and within that you can then have various aims socially. So sometimes you might underload, sometimes you might overload to change the challenge, for example. On the last day of the coaching clinic here with SportPesa, we actually coached defending and the psychosocial aim was communication. It’s just having multifaceted aims to what we do so we can have more of an impact with all of our contact with the players.

KB: What is the standard of coaching you’ve seen and experienced since you’ve been in Cape Town?

SM:

For me, I’m still quite young in the grand scheme of things. When you go into a new environment and you’re working with a different group of people, it can always be quite challenging, but I think the Arsenal way of doing it, the twoway experience, the first thing I always say is that I’m not here to tell you how to make your players play the game, I’m just here to share knowledge with you and I’m going to learn and they’re going to learn. I think the coaches really took that message to heart and there was a lot of engagement, loads of discussion. They were really keen to the point that, on our second day of theory, the plan was to get through 12 slides of a presentation and we actually only made it through two just because of the discussion points that came out of that slide, so all of the theory sessions went really well. As well as the local coaches, we also had some Bafana Bafana legends such as Doctor Khumalo, and to hear his feedback and how the theory was received and to hear his comments was just really pleasing and reinforcing. The coaches here understand the culture better than I ever could, so again, it’s about using their knowledge and combining it with the knowledge of Arsenal to work towards a common goal of developing football here in South Africa.

KB: Do you think key to developing football in South Africa is developing our coaches? We’ve got loads of talent, but it sometimes it seems we’re not sure what to do with it.

SM:

Yeah, 100%, I would agree with you. There’s definitely talent here in South Africa. I’ve obviously been fortunate enough to coach Cape Town City FC’s reserves this week within the practical sessions and, through one of our other partners, I was able to coach Bloemfontein Celtic in London two weeks ago. You can see the talent in the guys, in terms of how you want the game to be played here in South Africa and then educating your coaches and how to coach that way of playing. Obviously at Arsenal we’re famous for our playing style – it’s very unique around the world in terms of our attacking football, our ability to pass, dominate games through possession and our tactical positioning, so that then effectively motivates our players and gives our coaches clarity on how we see the game and I think that’s the first starting point here – developing an identity for the Bafana Bafana team and providing that coaching framework for local coaches.

KB: Thanks so much for your time, Simon!

SM: Thanks for your time, Kurt. ❐

“We know Africa, and in particular, South Africa have a real affinity for Arsenal.” “To hear Doctor Khumalo’s comments was just really pleasing and reinforcing.”