‘Players get bored if they’re just asked to run’
The ball is cherished on a progressive coaching course for the modern game, discovers JJ Bull
The sun is hammering down on a pristine 4G pitch in Aberdeenshire, the air is filled with the thump of footballs into rustling nets and – somewhere in the middle of it all – I am trying to discover if I have what it takes to become a football coach.
This, it turns out, is not easy, and a career largely spent analysing teams, players and coaches in the media is no guarantee of success.
Thankfully, I am not alone – there are about 40 of us on this course, set up by the Scottish Football Association, part of a drive to develop a new generation of footballers who can take that elusive next step into coaching.
Some attendees are here because they coach their children’s team and need the qualifications, some train teams of 13-year-olds and above, while others are talented junior footballers taking first steps into a post-playing career. One young lad is a goalkeeper for Scottish League Two side Cove Rangers, while another leaves a session midweek to play in a pre-season friendly against Premiership side Aberdeen.
There is a wider issue at stake here. The Scottish game knows something drastic needs to change to reverse a decline in standards which has become institutional. When Scotland crashed out of the Women’s World Cup in the summer, it continued the embarrassing trend of no Scottish football team – male or female – ever having reached the knockout stages of an international tournament. The last time the men even qualified was 1998.
But what needs to change? Part of the aim of this course is to overturn the image of the “British footballer” – who is physical, runs a lot, clears their lines, makes strong tackles, and little else.
Taking pride in this outdated model – which still applies, to a lesser degree, in England as well as Scotland – is one reason our European neighbours are able to pass their way to comfortable wins against us. To develop better modern players, the way they are taught must evolve.
With that in mind, techniques such as “skilful silences”, a term used by SFA regional player and coach development manager, and one of our instructors, Calum Macdonald, are considered crucial to producing a higher quality of young footballer.
“We want to encourage creativity, to replicate the conditions of street football,” he says. “I take my son to the park to kick a ball around, I look around and there’s nobody else there just playing football. Kids need to learn themselves.”
A factor attributed to England’s, and particularly south London’s, production line of technically
gifted footballers is the number of “cages” dotted around urban areas. Players such as Ryan Sessegnon and Wilfried Zaha believe that learning to play while in an enclosed space with older boys made them the players they are today, while many Premier League managers, including Arsene Wenger, have expressed concerns that football academies over-coach youngsters and kill the X-factor of improvised creativity.
On my course, it is stressed that those in attendance should not follow a strict method of teaching but embrace new ideas to help improve the game and ensure players enjoy football.
Pre-season tales of sprinting up hills and exhausting beach runs are synonymous with the amateur game and Vhs-era professionals, but nobody has ever enjoyed them.
One of the first drills we are shown is designed to alter the old-school, systematic thinking of football past. Players initially jog around cones, then dribble, then sprint with the ball. The exercise goes on at a fairly tame pace for about 10 minutes until Mark Slater, SFA club development manager, brings it to a halt and explains the amount of running we have done is
The course aims to overturn the image of the British player who is physical and clears their lines
equivalent to some of the horrendous sessions managers continue to put their players through. Crucially, we have been doing all that running with the ball at our feet, getting important touches, improving control.
At Premier League clubs, coaches work closely with sports scientists to design drills that replicate match situations and the manager’s demands, combining the best practice and appropriate amount of fitness work while always using the ball. Why train players to run miles in a flat line when on Saturday at 3pm they will be doing dozens of short sprints?
“Players get bored if they’re just asked to run,” Macdonald tells us. “They’ll always go, ‘When do we get to play a game?’ If I can keep players playing five-a-side, amateur football or even walking football, that means I’ve done my job.”
Keeping young players interested is one of the greatest challenges facing the game. The SFA hopes that by improving coaching standards fewer players fall through the cracks created by increasing distractions, particularly in teenage years. A few coaches share advice on how to engage players inclined to skip training to play Fortnite.
This course lasts five days, during which I am coached, taught how to coach and then deliver my own sessions until I finish qualified at Scottish FA 1.3 level, the step below a C licence. The rung above that is a Uefa B licence, then A, and finally Pro – the qualification required of Premier League managers.
Entrants are not given passed or fails; rather, they are encouraged to impress and improve each other, with Whatsapp groups formed and scribbled coaching drills shared between new colleagues as homework preparation. Some of the course feels a little like school, but the give-and-take of ideas is constantly encouraged. On the final day, I have to lead a training session of my invention, having been tasked with coaching one-v-one defending. I identify and (attempt to) communicate the tenets of the defensive philosophy I wish to impart (engage early, correct body shape, lead them where you want) while always demonstrating with the ball.
As the drill progresses, I have to stop, correct, explain and allow play. Afterwards, the players move on to “game-related training”, in this case a four-a-side match with conditions that facilitate the learnings of the previous exercise. It all applies to real football. If you want your team to press high, players can be coached through drills then learn to apply it in smallsided games – everything done with the ball. Macdonald and Slater give me feedback on my sessions, with participants also asked to contribute. It is constructive and everything makes sense.
Or, it seems to until I overhear two coaches boasting about the “beasting” session their players will be given in pre-season, running up hills and trekking over sand dunes. Not every coach will be brilliant, not every player will fulfil their potential, but by improving the standard of grassroots coaching, perhaps Scotland will produce players capable of finally going to the next level.
And the next time I watch a match and hear someone complain the manager should have done “something” to prevent his defender being bypassed by an opposition winger, I might know what that “something” should be.