A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall.......

Bob Dylan once sang ‘A hard rains a-gonna fall’ and he was right. June was a long month of hard rain for Soccer in Canada with our teams crashing out of the Gold Cup, U17 Men’s World Cup and Women’s World Cup all at the group stages. The difference between winning and losing at that level is narrow, a goal against Rwanda and a bounce or two against Panama and we would have had two of our teams in the last 8 of both tournaments, but although the difference is narrow we may as well have missed by a million miles as we judge top level sport on results not performance.

Now we have lost who can we blame? Fans and millionaire chairmen across the world always look for scapegoats when there team doesn’t get the results they need or want. Coaches are fired and programs are ripped up for the promise of something new. We very rarely fire soccer coaches in Canada, which may be a blessing is disguise this time around. Coaches and their players don’t plan and prepare their teams to lose, they spend every waking minute of every day with the players thinking and re-thinking their plans and looking for any extra edge. At the end of the day, it’s up to the players on the pitch to decide the outcome of the game and as I have mentioned before our lack of success this past month comes back to our lack of technique, rather than our lack of effort or spirit. Before I go on, let me be clear: I’m not saying our players lack technique; I am saying that our technical ability is not at the level of our opponents. I believe we are going in the right direction, just not as quickly as we would like.

We struggle to keep the ball when we are pressured and we don’t have the cutting edge to create enough chances in a game. Our teams are organised and, in my opinion, regularly punch above their weight, but when the margins are so tight it is technical ability that wins the day. Technical excellence shouldn’t be our goal; our target should be technical perfection!

We can all look at the situation and try to apportion blame as there are plenty of targets, coaches, players, CSA, provinces, districts, clubs, lack of money, too many games, not enough games, the list is endless. However playing the blame game won’t help or change things in the short term or the long term.

As coaches and administrators we need to start asking ourselves a simple question. How can I make this situation better? I would like to say that I have all the answers, but I don’t. Having said that I do know where we won’t find the answers, not in board meetings, or conference calls, or executive meetings and certainly not on internet forums. The answer is to be found on the field working with players and teaching them correct technique and in time teaching them the finer points of our game.

The answer in short, is that we ALL need to do a better job with the players we work with.

I dislike the use of the word ’mandatory’ however I see no other way forward for us. Its time to make coach certification, and more importantly, continued education a mandatory requirement across the country. In order to do this we will of course need a grace period to allow clubs and coaches to comply but in a short space of time, say 2 years, we need to educate and support our coaches. When we show up at practice we ask our players to improve, why shouldn’t we ask that of our coaches?

I like to think that Lower Island Soccer Association is a supporter of coach certification and continued education, and over the past three years we have received tremendous support from Rob Csabai at BC Soccer. He has worked with us on changing the way we deliver the courses so that we are able make them ‘more user friendly’ and we have been able to certify a good number of coaches over the past few years. However there are still too many coaches out there without any level of certification at all coaching our players.  Coach certification doesn’t make you a soccer genius overnight, but it does show that you are committed to self improvement and are willing to spend some time to improve your skill set. A good coach has a combination of certification, experience and good communication skills. Getting certified is the easiest part so why the reluctance?

Mandatory coach education won’t be an easy sell but nothing easy is usually worth anything anyway.

In closing, thanks to everyone who attended the Lower Island Soccer Coaches Association meeting last week at Lakehill Soccer associations Braefoot field and special thank to Dominic Butcher who gave us an interesting insight to fundamental movement skills. Our next meeting will be in August

…going back to Bob Dylan, I am not a big fan of cover versions but if you have time check out Bryan Ferry’s version of my blog title.

Have a great summer.