Is our product good enough?

Over the last two months I have been watching a lot of games in the U8 and U10 age groups. When I was 8 years old I played for the not-so-world famous Grimesthorpe Boys Club in the Sheffield and Hallamshire U12 division. I had to play U12 because in 1975 that was the start of organised football in the area I grew up in. We didn’t win a game for a season and a half and probably didn’t keep the score under 10 goals against in our first season, our first two games were 24-0 and 20-0 defeats but we didn’t care. The oldest players on our team were 9 and we played together as a team in the U12 division for 3 seasons, no one got hurt and our fragile ego’s certainly got toughened up. Our parents never complained about the coaches because luckily for them, the parents that is they didn’t see too many of our games! We really were that bad. When we played away we went in the boy’s club van and sang songs all the way there and back regardless of the result.

 Sheffield in 1975 is a totally different animal to British Columbia in 2011, bring our team forward in a time machine and most of us would have quit after 3 games because we weren’t winning or being developed! The parents would have hunted our coaches down and replaced them with someone who knew what he was doing as how could they possibly be doing a good job if we were getting humped every week! In 1975 we had no other sports that we could play, none of us had play stations or Wii’s, we felt very lucky to be involved in organised sports and be on a team that had our own shirts that we didn’t have to wash ourselves. We paid 10p a week subs, which is less than 20 cents, and we enjoyed the games and the feeling of being on a team, however if we would have had some different options I am sure that most of us would have looked at them at some point. But the point is we didn’t have any other choices when it came to playing organised sports so we stuck with it.

This brings me back to the situation today: After watching some U8 and U10 games I have come to the realisation that our product, the game, is not as good as it could be. This is certainly not the fault of the volunteer coaches who are doing their best to keep the children active, its not the fault of the clubs or districts who are also doing their best to keep the teams playing and on the field and its not the fault of our governing bodies who are doing all they can to keep the game ticking over.

The fault, or blame, or whatever word you want to use to describe the deficiencies in our game, is, in my opinion…the game itself. Most games in these age groups revolve around two or three players on each team. They dominate the majority of the play and the other players are on the edge of the game and only get a kick of the ball when it comes near them. At this age the two things our players need from the game are, touches on the ball and exercise to keep them active. For two or three of them we are providing this, but for the rest of the players on the teams I think we are falling short. If they don’t get touches on the ball then they won’t improve as soccer players, if they don’t get the exercise or activity they need then the result of that can be much more serious. With a multitude of different sporting and activity options available to young children and families today it’s no surprise that we lose players from our sport as they don’t have to stick it out.

As I am watching these games I constantly ask myself, is our product good enough and if not how do we improve it so that we can retain more players.  We aren’t developing future pro’s in these age groups, we are trying to keep them active and get them to choose soccer as their primary sport and as a  life long sport, as in stage 7 of “Wellness To World Cup”. Once we lose a player to another sport they are pretty much gone for good, how many top class athletes do we lose every season because some other option proved to be a better one for them? Can we afford to keep losing these players to our rival sports?

The down side to having an opinion is that you have to be prepared for it to be wrong. Well, next season at Lower Island we will be monitoring a number of games in the U8 and U10 age groups in the hope that I am wrong. We will look at the number of times each player kicks the ball during a game and we will also be asking our customers, the players and their parents, what they like about the game and what they think would make it better, after all in the service industry the customer is always right!

When our research is completed we will share that information with other clubs and districts. If ,as I suspect, we find that the players are not seeing enough of the ball in the game or getting enough activity we will look at trialling some changes to our games program on the Island so that we can improve the product and keep more players playing.

Is it worth wasting all that time in the kid’s games on something we can introduce in the space of one week when they are a little older?

As promised, my Champions League prediction: Barcelona, but if it goes to penalties then I go for United as they have the best research on penalties in the game. Read Soccernomics if you get the chance as there is a great piece in the book on the penalty shoot out between United and Chelsea in Moscow in 2008

Could Roy of the Rovers have the answer to stopping Barcelona?

When I was a kid I used to read the Roy of the Rovers soccer comic and one story in particular stuck with me. Roy’s team were playing in a cup game against a team with a great striker who was scoring goals for fun. They asked one of their players ‘Blackie’ to mark this striker and keep him quiet in the game. As the game went on Blackie kept leaving the striker to try and win the ball elsewhere. Not surprisingly Melchester Rovers went on to win the game; it was after all their comic book.  After the game, Blackie got a grilling for not following the plan, and was asked why he didn’t follow orders. Blackie explained that when he watched the opposition he had noticed that the real threat was the number 6 who got all the assists. He told Roy that he thought it would be easier to cut off the supply to the striker than deal with the striker when he got the ball. What a clever lad Blackie was!

Anyway this lesson stayed with me and here are a couple of examples of how Blackie’s tactical genius might be able to help Manchester United deal with the headache that is Barcelona.

In the 1977 European Cup final Liverpool met Borussia Monchengladbach in what was to be Kevin Keegan’s final game for Liverpool. Keegan was imperious that night and led Liverpool to their first European title. He was able to receive the ball in advanced positions and dictate the play. He ran the Gladbach defence, including the great Berti Vogt’s, ragged for 90 minutes. Keegan ticked and Liverpool tocked and ran out eventual winners.

Three years later, Keegan was back in the European final this time with Hamburg against Nottingham Forest. Keegan was probably playing the best football of his life and had recently been crowned European Footballer of the Year. However the one question mark with him was his habit of dropping deeper and deeper to receive that ball if he wasn’t getting the service the needed.  Forest, under the leadership of Clough and Taylor chocked off the supply line to Keegan and forced him to drop deeper and deeper to gain possession.  The plan worked a treat and Forest beat Hamburg 1-0 in a massive upset.

Now how does that relate to trying to deal with a team that has more than one threat? I have heard that Jose Mourinho believes that the best way to beat a team is to take away the thing they do best, whether or not he believes it, I thinks it’s a pretty good place to start. For me Barcelona’s strength is not the make up of the team, it’s the wonderful rhythm and tempo that they play at. You can’t double Messi and then try to deal with Iniesta and Xavi as you can only play with 11 players.  If you are going to have a go at beating Barcelona then you have to try to take that rhythm away from them. The chances of doing this twice are slim, but in a one game winner take all you have a chance.

The key for me is two fold. First of all you have to stop the two full backs from taking up advanced positions Dani Alves, in particular, spends more time in the attacking third than the defensive third. Secondly when the two centre backs, Pique and probably Puyol, split when they are in possession; you have to stop Busquets from receiving the ball. He drops in and acts as the link to the advanced players.

Now if I was Sir Alex Ferguson, and I’m the first to admit I’m not, here is how I would put Blackie’s plan into play. You can’t choke the supply line as they simply have too many players that can hurt you, however you can disrupt the rhythm. Manchester United work harder than many give them credit for, and in Park and Valencia they have two great athletes who can cover amazing amounts of real estate, combine that with Rooney playing high up between the central defenders, a three man central midfield including Park, and Valencia, Hernandez or Nani as deep lying wide attacking players and United have the personnel to threaten Barcelona, playing in a 4-3-3 scheme.

If they can stop Busquets linking the play and keep the full backs from getting higher up the field then they take away, in my opinion, Barcelona’s biggest asset, which is their rhythm. So, look for a three man midfield with Carrick and Park and possibly Giggs in front of them with Rooney up top and two from Hernandez, Valencia and Nani wide.  I am sure that Pep Guardiola won’t be reading this so as long as he didn’t learn from Blackie and Roy of the Rovers, United have a chance! The strength of Manchester United is their squad and the flexibility it affords their manager.  In the first leg of the quarter final Arsenal played higher up the field and pressed Barcelona and had success. The staff at United will have seen that and you can be sure they will be well prepared.

On a final note, we should all enjoy watching Barcelona as we don’t see this type of team that often. They need to win the Champions League again to guarantee their place at the top table. I haven’t seen a team play such expansive soccer since the Brazilian team at the 1982 World Cup. It’s worth remembering that Brazil’s downfall at that tournament was a well prepared Italian team with a central striker who set the tournament alight in the final stages.  Rooney’s return to goal scoring form could see the pattern repeated. I won’t predict a 3-2 win for United just yet but I will stick my neck out before the game. Whatever the score I hope we don’t have to wait too long before we see another team like this Barcelona team, they are always a treat to watch.

Just a quick reminder, the Lower Island Soccer Associations May meeting will now take place on May 6^th at the Braefoot turf field in Victoria starting at 5.45pm. Many thanks to the Lakehill Soccer Association for providing the fields!