LEE CARSLEY has spoken this week about the need for England to develop more “orthodox, poaching, goal-scoring” No 9s.
I love . You’re a great coach but you’ve been in that FA development system for a long time.
Lee Carsley has spoken about the need for England to develop more ‘orthodox, poaching, goal-scoring’ No 9s.Credit: MI News/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Troy Deeney insists young England players need to learn the basics
You can influence that. So why haven’t you? It sounds harsh but you’re part of the problem as well.
You’ve got to be in a position now to make the best possible footballers in positions that we need, instead of creating these multi-purpose players who aren’t brilliant at anything.
And to be fair to ’s Under-21 boss Lee, is that not a bigger reflection on the FA as a whole?
The and all these development programmes and youth team set-ups are doing these kids a disservice. They’re not getting a proper education.
Call me a f****** dinosaur but learn how to be a pro first, doing the basics well on the pitch.
We spend so much time worrying about the physical numbers, the f****** ice baths and recoveries, the nutrition programmes . . .
We’ve actually stopped asking: Are they fundamentally solid as a footballer?
Coaches are willing to accept players who don’t have the basics. They make the team because they can run lots.
They end up crammed into positions they don’t know how to play. It’s got an air of desperation about it. The problem is, fundamentally, we don’t make good footballers any more.
We spend too much time getting people to be a good wide player, a good No 10, a variety of different roles without nailing down anything concrete.
When I started, I was a right-back. Then I went into midfield. When I got to Walsall, I played as a striker for the first time and I was given the time to learn on the job how to be one.
And if I failed, I’d be going back to the construction site as a builder. That’s the pressure I was under to make it work — and it paid off.
In the academies now, one year you’re playing left-back, the next year you’re at right wing and the year after that you’re a striker.
“Now, you know what, we’ll stick you in goal because you’re good with your feet.” F****** hell!
How can anyone master anything if they are being thrown around a pitch with no plan or consistency? The saying goes you need 10,000 hours of practice to master something.
Lads now are lucky if they get a quarter of that time but are still expected to succeed. And if they don’t, the debate starts about why we no longer develop out-and-out strikers.
‘Grinds my gears’
It really grinds my gears when people describe someone as a real “old-school player”. What’s “old school” about doing the basics for your position really well?
Strikers now are called “old school” if they run in behind, are good at holding the ball up and score goals. Aren’t they the basics and the absolute minimum they should be doing?
Sport isn’t complicated. Do you know who makes it complicated? Humans trying to mess with a model and trying to reinvent the wheel. What’s the aim of football? Score more than the other team.
But now we’ve got schemes, systems, terminologies and these kids aren’t being taught anything they need to make it at the top level in specific positions.
All about the basics
I heard a great line from an old player the other day. When asked to compare players from different generations, he said that athletically, players now can do things his generation couldn’t.
But players back then did the basics incredibly well week after week, because they didn’t know any other way. It’s the same with football today.
The reason we had a depth of great strikers years ago is because the likes of Alan Shearer, and knew how to hold the ball up, run in behind, score goals and head the ball. They perfected their craft and did it brilliantly.
There are kids now who are ten or 11 years old having one-on-one sessions with strength and conditioning coaches and putting together little skills clips that look good on Instagram. They are like little robots.
Instead, they should be mastering the basics and doing it again and again and again until they can do it with their eyes closed.
It’s football snobbery and, in my opinion, it’s the reason we aren’t developing good footballers, let alone top strikers.
