Whether it’s the long term revival of Borussia Dortmund or the shorter term resurgence of Borussia Mönchengladbach, the Bundesliga is becoming accustomed to comebacks. Looking on a smaller scale, Freiburg and Augsburg can be proud of their resurgence in 2012. Neither club has the history or the tradition of Dortmund or Gladbach but nevertheless, their recent runs of form have been impressive.
Let’s not be too cliché – all was not lost after the first half of the season. However, both occupied the two automatic relegation spots and hadn’t illustrated much to think this would change radically in the second half.
This is slightly harsh on Augsburg who flickered into life before Christmas after a solitary win in their first fifteen Bundesliga games. Mainz was the scene of that victory. After visiting Bavaria on Saturday, they became the only side so far this season to be beaten home and away by Augsburg.
The 2-1 victory over Mainz meant Jos Luhukay’s side had only lost one of their last eight games. Having gone behind to a Sami Allagui strike, Augsburg struck back through Ja-Cheol Koo with the winner then coming from Sebastian Langkamp. He has also been superb for the Bavarians at the back recently contributing to a defence which has conceded three goals in their last four.
Strong defence isn’t something Freiburg have been synonymous with this season – they have the Bundesliga’s worst in fact. However, since the turn of the year, there have been marked improvements under new coach Christian Streich. This looked improbable too when their main attacking outlet, Papiss Demba Cissé, left for Newcastle having been an integral part of the team since his arrival in 2009.
In 2012 though, Freiburg have nearly doubled the amount of points they gained in the first half of the season. This was helped by picking up another three at Hamburg on the weekend. Goals from Johannes Flum, Daniel Caliguri and Cedric Makiadi ensured the third win of the Streich era.
Now as much as Freiburg and Augsburg deserve credit for their recent upturn in form, it needs to be put into perspective – the teams around them have been abysmal. Below, Hertha Berlin and Kaiserslautern are having scoring difficulties. That’s being very kind. Between them in 2012, Hertha and ‘Lautern have managed a pitiful six goals in eighteen games. Together they shipped ten at the weekend against Bayern Munich and Schalke respectively.
More confidence can be taken by the two teams above the resurgent pair also. Cologne and Hamburg are panicking. Hannover thumped the Billy Goats 4-1 on Sunday afternoon whilst Freiburg saw HSV’s problems up close on Saturday in their 3-1 victory.
It doesn’t matter then whether Freiburg or Augsburg glance up or down – the signs are good in both directions. They can take encouragement from being the most in-form sides in the bottom six of the Bundesliga. Better organisation has unsurprisingly led to both sides playing with greater confidence. Having been favourites to go down just over three months ago, they’re certainly best set to escape from the relegation battle.
For more on the Bundesliga, follow @arhindtutt
Matchday 26 Results:
Hoffenheim 1-2 Stuttgart
Augsburg 2-1 Mainz
Bayer Leverkusen 1-2 Gladbach
Borussia Dortmund 1-0 Werder Bremen
Hamburg 1-3 Freiburg
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Lovech took another step towards clinching the Bulgarian A-League after a 4-1 win over Montana on Wednesday.Lyuboslav Penev’s team maintained their five point lead at the top and were untroubled by their 11th-placed opponents.
A brace from Brazilian attacker Doka Madureira had Lovech 2-0 up after half an hour and when defender Alexandre Barthe made it three early in the second half, the points were sealed.
Forward Georgi Ivanov pulled a goal back for Montana, but full-back Petar Zanev responded five minutes later to make it 4-1.
Lovech would have wrapped up the title if not for Levski Sofia’s 3-0 derby win over Slavia Sofia.
A brace from midfielder Hristo Yovov, either side of a Vladimir Gadzhev strike, kept Levski’s hopes of winning the title alive with two games to go.
In the relegation battle, none of the bottom three were able to record a win.
Rakovski, who sit in the relegation play-off spot, managed a 2-2 draw at home to Minyor Pernik.
Aleksandar Branekov and Atanas Ivanov had given them a 2-0 lead after an hour, before conceding twice to settle for a point.
Fares Brahimi struck first on 67 minutes and Tomislav Pavlov hit a 92nd-minute equaliser for Pernik.
Akademik Sofia lost their sixth-straight game after a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Lokomotiv Plovdiv.
Zdravko Lazarov opened the scoring for Plovdiv from the penalty spot, before Asparuh Vasilev equalised for Akademik.
But Sergio Organista scored an own goal to hand Lokomotiv three points and leave his team in second-last.
Bottom-placed Sliven’s struggles continued as they suffered a 2-0 loss against Lokomotiv Sofia, following goals from Marco Dafchev and Vladislav Romanov.
In other games, Georgi Iliev and Rumen Nikolov struck in the first quarter of an hour as Cherno More beat Kaliakra 2-0.
Beroe struck twice in the first half through Simeon Mechev and Vladislav Zlatinov in their 2-0 win at Chernomorets Burgas.
CSKA Sofia ensured their Europa League place after playing out an entertaining 2-2 draw with Pirin Blagoevgrad.
Rumen Trifonov and Apostol Popov struck for CSKA, but Dimitar Iliev and Ivan Tsvetkov were also on the scoresheet as the teams shared the spoils.
Going into Sunday’s clash with the champions, Liverpool fans were feeling far from optimistic, and rightly so. The jubilation surrounding the club since the final whistle of an important victory is completely understandable. However, despite a suspicious amount of positivity coming out of Anfield in the last few weeks, there is still a long way to go before the gloom that has plagued England’s most decorated club over the last eighteen months is lifted.
There is a renewed air of optmisim surrounding Anfield since Liverpool fans are now waking up from the nightmare that was Hicks and Gilletts reign of terror, which has also coincided with Liverpool stringing together three consecutive Premier League wins and emerging from the unknown waters of the relegation zone. This must have undoubtedly breathed new life into fans and players alike, though the mess the club was left almost became irrepairable, and there isn’t going to be a quick fix. Liverpool’s rise up the table was in someway inevitable, given the talent at Hodgson’s disposal, and as Fernando Torres is beginning to look more and more like the player we all know he is, it would be a quite spectacular failure for the reds to stay floating around the bottom half of the table.
However, a little perspective is needed. The three wins Liverpool have accumulated in the last three weeks have come against weak Blackburn and Bolton sides, and a very much below par Chelsea lacking that bit of luck champions usually take with them to difficult away games like this. Along with their lack of luck, their starting line up was also lacking Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Didier Drogba. Despite this, Liverpools first half performance was undeniably the best half of football the reds have seen since Hodgson’s arrival on Merseyside. And a Liverpool team with an on form Torres are capable of beating anybody, and that was proved Sunday with two expertly taken goals. Liverpool’s number nine has now scored six goals in five games against Chelsea, a remarkable record given the gulf in class between the two sides, and the strikers injury problems.
Regardless of the home sides first half display, it was the second half performance that should concern Liverpool fans. It was a reminder of Hodgson’s insistence on giving the opposition an undeserved amount of respect, and was remarkably similar to the manner in which Stoke or Wolves would cling on to a goalless draw at Old Trafford; not the Liverpool way. Although the majority of the nations football fans may see Liverpool fans as being spoilt, it won’t be acceptable for Liverpool to sit back in such timid and fearful fashion, especially given the wealth of attacking talent the squad boasts. With Maxi, Miereles, Gerrard, Torres and Lucas all having their best games in a red shirt for quite some time, it is worrying that much of their best work was done in their own half, instead of going for the jugular at the roaring Kop end, as Liverpool fans are maybe too used to.
Without taking anything away from a great victory, every point that Hodgson’s side earns, will give the wrong man that little bit more time.
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On Sunday evening Football FanCast caught up with Fulham and Nigeria central midfielder Dickson Etuhu at the Sony Playstation Fifa 2012 Interactive World Cup UK qualifiers. The eventual winner of the UK qualifiers, Ty Walton, will now go on to the Grand Final to compete against the winners from countries around the globe to compete for $20,000. Walton said of his victory: “I was delighted to be back again challenging for the Qualifier event here in London, so knowing I’ve secured a place at the Grand Final is a dream come true. My experience at the 2011 Grand Final in Los Angeles was unbelievable so hopefully I can go back and win the tournament outright this year.”
Etuhu, who has been with Fulham since 2008, recently saw his good friend and star striker Bobby Zamora leave for QPR in January: “Bobby was probably the most popular man at the club so it was difficult for us to see him go, a lot of us still keep in contact with him, funnily enough I spoke to him today he’s a very good friend of mine. We miss him, not just his quality as a player but his banter too; he was a big part of the club.”
However the signings of Pavel Pogrebynyak in January and Bryan Ruiz in the summer will go some way to make up for the loss Zamora and Etuhu feels as though Bryan is beginning to find his best form. “Bryan’s doing well, obviously it was a bit of a slow start for him but the Premiership is a difficult league, it’s a lot faster than the Dutch league but he’s settled in now and he’s another good lad. He’s very quiet but he loves his football, he’s doing well for the team. The manager has been trying to find a position for him but now we know he probably plays best on the right or just behind the striker and we’re going to get a lot of good out of him because he’s a top quality player.”
In Martin Jol Fulham fans are now witnessing their fifth manager since 2007; whilst they have enjoyed mixed success the 29 year old Etuhu expressed a belief that Jol was the right man to take Fulham to the next level. “Martin Jol is big on his attacking football, the man loves proper football, he loves flair, he loves us keeping the ball and he loves to entertain the crowd. I think you cans see that in the type of players that he’s bringing into the club; we’re getting better to watch, especially away from home, we’re not as boring as we used to be and that’s something that he’s brought to the team.”
Nigeria, like many of the big African teams, have, in the eyes of many, underperformed in recent years, particularly in their failure to qualify for the 2012 African Cup of Nations, and whilst Etuhu admits there have been problems he is hopeful that new manager Stephen Keshi is the right man to restore Nigeria to its former glory: “For me there are a lot of reasons [for Nigeria’s poor performances recently]. Yes we’ve got some of the best African players in Europe playing for our country but you could say that some of the managers that we’ve had in the past haven’t been the right men for the job or you could blame it on other things, but that’s finished now. We’ve got a new manager now in Stephen Keshi who I think is the right man for the job. You know I refused to play for the old manager for a year and I really missed playing for my country so much so I’m happy now that I’m back playing again, I’m actually going away next week to play the first qualifier [for the next African Cup of Nations] and I think now we’re going forward now.”
With Libya having to withdraw from hosting the next African Cup of Nations due to civil unrest Nigeria, as the reserve host, thought they were in line to hold the competition. However the Confederation of African Football decided that the tournament would be held in South Africa instead. Whilst understandably disappointed, Etuhu insisted that there were far more pressing issues at hand for Nigerian football. “Obviously South Africa has got the stadiums from the World Cup and they’ve got the facilities for a big tournament like that. We would have loved for it to be in Nigeria but we’ll just move on from that. We just have to concentrate on doing well in the next tournament and qualifying for it. All that other stuff is irrelevant to us right now; we just want to concentrate on getting into the next [African] Nations cup considering we missed the last one. That’s more important to us than hosting the tournament.”
This year’s African Cup of Nations was won by Zambia as they beat the Ivory Coast on penalties to secure an historic victory. Yet whilst many were surprised by the outcome of the tournament it was less of a shock for the Fulham midfielder. “It’s funny when people speak about Zambia like that [as underdogs] because I’ve played against Zambia this year and we knocked them out of the last African Cup of Nations and they’re a good team. People keep thinking that they’re the underdogs but I said from the beginning of the tournament that I fancied them. You know it didn’t really surprise me that they won, not one bit. They’re not underdogs; they are a very good team. They’ve got a great manager, he’s been with them for a while which is something that I think every African team should look at because we change managers too quickly. I think you need to have a good foundation like they have. That’s one of the reasons they play really good football and have a good understanding within the team. They actually play like a club side, which is very difficult to see in international football, and I think they deserved to win it.”
Dickson Etuhu and Jay Bothroyd attended the UK final of the FIFA Interactive World Cup on EA SPORTS’ FIFA 12, which was won by Ty Walton. Players can still compete online through their PLAYSTATION 3. For more information, visit www.fifa.com/fiwc
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We now know that QPR and Norwich will be joined by either Reading or Swansea in the Premier League next season. The three teams that go up will all know that the Premier League is a huge challenge and survival is often considered a major success – but how have teams fared in their first season in the top flight.
Well in the Premier League this season the newly promoted sides were Blackpool, West Brom and Newcastle. West Brom and Newcastle have both had their problems and both clubs have had a change of manager, but they have moved well away from the relegation zone and can start planning for another season in the Premier League. Blackpool have had a mixed season but have pleased many people with their attacking brand of football but they are currently in the relegation zone and will certainly need to win their final game to have any chance of survival.
In the 2009/10 season the newly promoted clubs were Wolves, Birmingham and Burnley. It was a season unlike this season and a points tally as low as 31 points would have been enough for Premier League survival. Wolves finished in 15th place with a tally of only 38 points – which in other seasons would have not been enough for survival. Birmingham was a real standout performer in the Premier League and finished in a very impressive 9th place. However, Burnley had a very poor season and was relegated in 18th place with a tally of only 30 points.
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West Brom, Stoke and Hull were the newly promoted teams in the 2008/9 season and the three teams that were relegated that season went down with relatively low points tallies. West Brom finished rock bottom of the table and were relegated. Stoke had a very solid season and finished in an impressive 12th place and Hull finished in 17th and survived in the Premier League by just one point; their season’s tally of 35 points proved to be just enough.
Birmingham, Derby and Sunderland were the promoted sides in the 2007/8 season and all three teams struggled. Sunderland eventually managed to scramble clear of relegation and finished with 39 points in 15th place. However, Birmingham and Derby were both relegated; Birmingham finishing in 19th place with 35 points and Derby finished rock bottom with a dismal tally of only 11 points. The 17th place side survived with just 36 points that season.
Reading, Sheffield United and Watford were the promoted teams in the 2006/7 season and it was Reading that performed the best with a very impressive finish of 8th in the table. However, Sheffield United and Watford didn’t enjoy the best of seasons and were relegated. The team that survived that season in 17th had 38 points.
The news over the last five years is fairly positive for the newly promoted sides for next season. With the possible exception of this season teams in the previous four years haven’t needed to reach 40 points in order to survive. Despite the fact that the promoted teams are labelled as relegation favourites they don’t all get relegated and as the facts above show one team can perform very well.
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If next season follows the same trend one or possibly two of the promoted sides can expect to survive. However, it remains to be seen how long those teams that do survive can remain in the Premier League. They may take some inspiration from Stoke, who have had another solid season in the top flight that this season included an FA Cup final and qualification for Europe. But perhaps the most important statistic is the fact they will be competing in the Premier League for their fourth consecutive season next year.
Join the conversation on Twitter and give me your thoughts on newly promoted Premier League teams
Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp believes money is ruining the motivation of youngsters at top clubs.
Redknapp has spoken out on the state of the game following a turbulent week at Manchester United involving Wayne Rooney.
The England striker signed a new five-year contract on Friday after performing a dramatic U-turn.
The 24-year-old had initially requested to leave Old Trafford in a statement which sent shockwaves through world football.
The role Rooney's advisors played in the saga has been criticised and now Redknapp has had his say on the subject of agents.
"The biggest problem for me is the kids," he told The Mail on Sunday.
"They've all got agents, they've all got long contracts. When I began in the game, then after I became a manager, it was usual for a youngster to be given a one-year contract, at most two.
"At the end of the season, you went to see the manager and you either got a new deal or were released. Nowadays, kids at clubs like Tottenham and elsewhere get four or five-year contracts for crazy money.
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"They get their feet under the table, go and buy a big car and get a nice few grand a week. Where's the incentive for them to practice, work hard or dedicate themselves?
"They're on Easy Street. But they're stuck on long contracts for fear if they do become any good you could lose them. There are the odd ones who have the proper desire, but there is so much wastage."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email
Sir Alex Ferguson has stated that he does not want to retire for another two to three years, but admitted that his eventual successor at Manchester United needs to be someone with a wealth of experience.
The Scottish coach recently completed 25 years in charge at Old Trafford, but has revealed that he is not planning to walk away from the game just yet.
“I think you always want to go out on a winning note,” Ferguson told Sky Sports.
“Hopefully we can do that. I don’t know how long I can last now, but if my health stays up I don’t think another two or three years would harm me,” he admitted.
Ferguson also stated that whenever he does leave the Premier League champions his replacement must be someone who has a track record of success.
“I think United need to have someone experienced. If I was coming into United today I would struggle because of the beast it is.
“When I came in we were in a valley because Liverpool were the dominant team and United were well adrift from that so we had to rebuild the club and it wasn’t easy, it took time.
“But the experience I had was the success from Aberdeen and that gave me a chance in terms of respect from the dressing room and gave me self-confidence I could do the job.
“If I was taken from the job in Aberdeen today it would be a much more difficult task even though I was successful,” he continued.
Finally, despite all the success that Ferguson has seen during his tenure with The Red Devils, he admits that he has made a mistake or two.
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“I could have bought Joe Hart for £100,000 [in 2005] so we all make mistakes,” he concluded.
Roma boss Vincenzo Montella said his players can defy a long injury list for their Coppa Italia semi-final second leg against Inter Milan.Francesco Totti, Philippe Mexes, Matteo Brighi and Rodrigo Taddei are all out of Wednesday’s clash at the Stadio Olimpcio, but Montella believes his side still has the ability to overturn a 1-0 deficit at the San Siro.
“We’ll try. Of course this is a difficult match taking into consideration all unavailable players: Mexes, Brighi, Totti, Taddei, who would give us a huge boost,” Montella said.
“Therefore it’s going to be a difficult match, but we’ll do our best because we have the ability to and we’ll do it till the end.”
Montella also praised his squad for turning around their disappointing start to the Serie A season, to leave them fifth with two games remaining and almost assured of a European spot for next term.
“The team should have been able to finish second or third in the table. I think that these players are committed and have given their all for me. It is also thanks to them that our form has changed,” he said.
“Of course everyone was expecting more from this team, but it isn’t simple to get out of a rut. There has been an improvement and it has been achieved especially thanks to the players.”
The popularity of betting on sports events has really taken off in recent years and there are now many websites where you can have a flutter on the footy. Not only can you have a flutter and make an upcoming football match potentially even more exciting, but you can also take advantage of the free betting opportunities that are available that give you a chance to win big without even having to part with your hard-earned cash.
Betting on football is a great way to make sure that you’re glued to the match right up until the final whistle. There’s nothing worse than watching a bore-draw in which you’re not bothered about the result, and you can ensure that this is never the case by having a few quid on the result. You can say goodbye to the days where you used to fall asleep when watching certain footy matches on the TV when there would be more chance of a goal being scored if you were on the pitch yourself and welcome in fascinating footy.
You can bet on a wide range of matches, but the Premier League is where most money is bet. You can choose to go for some accumulators where you need a handful of football results to go your way over the weekend, or you can just bet on a one-off match; perhaps one you’re going to see or are planning to watch on the TV.
One tactic employed by many football fans, especially those who are of a pessimistic nature, is to bet against the team you support. This means that you cannot lose either way, but of course you’ll never be completely happy either. Instead why not back your team all the way so that not only will they go home with three points but you’ll go home with a bit of extra cash in your pocket as well.
Whatever football bets you plan to make, you can claim over three thousand pounds worth of free bets online. With just a couple of clicks of your mouse you can access free credit on a number of betting sites for you to bet with as you wish. With daily and monthly free bets featured on the Internet, you can make sure you don’t miss out on any of the great online deals and get plenty of free betting cash.
The free credit usually comes in the form of matched bets, so the online bookies will match the initial sum of money you bet on their site. This gives you two bites of the cherry if you like, and if your luck was out first time then maybe it will prove to be second time lucky. All you have to do is register on the betting websites featured online and then claim your free bets. You can even check out the latest news to see what matches are being shown on the box, which players are being favoured by the bookmakers to score in the next match and what football specials are available for you to bet on.
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By betting responsibly you can add a great deal of excitement to upcoming football matches. Depending on the bets you make you might find yourself supporting teams you’d never usually want to win on one-off occasions. Just make sure that if you back one of your rivals that you don’t cheer too loudly when the result goes your way and you have a winning bet as a result.
So next time you settle down on the sofa to watch a match from the Premier League on the TV you won’t be relying on the quality of football to entertain you. Instead, you can ensure that the match is exciting even if it’s a 0-0 draw by taking advantage of the free betting opportunities and staking money on the number of corners, yellow cards and much more.
A series of early international tournament exits in the last year have placed question marks over the quality of English footballers. Unsurprisingly, the finger of blame has yet again been pointed at the system responsible for developing young players. Zarif Rasul investigates the English youth development system.
THE diminutive young Nigerian Olarenwaju Kayode skips down the left-hand side of England’s box, and whips a superb ball across the face of Jack Butland’s goal. The ball eludes almost everyone and lands at the grateful feet of Edafe Egbedi, who duly smashes home. Fifty-two minutes gone, and Nigeria lead England 1-0 at the Centenario de Armenia stadium in their FIFA Under-20 World Cup 2011 last-sixteen clash.
Despite the valiant attempts of Blackpool winger Matt Phillips, Nigeria hold onto their advantage for the remaining 38 minutes and dump England out of the tournament. England coach Brian Eastick bemoans the failure of clubs to release eligible players, but admits that his side’s performances in Colombia, which failed to see them score a single goal in four outings, are indicative of failure.
The Under-20s were not the only group of young Lions to follow in the underwhelming footsteps of the senior side. Seven weeks earlier, and less than a year after England’s 4-1 humbling at the hands of Germany in South Africa, Stuart Pearce’s highly-touted Under-21 side left Denmark having failed to make it out of the group stage of the European Under-21 Championship.
This recent run of ignominious international tournament exits has sparked another witch-hunt to find the scapegoat responsible for England’s failures. And yet again, critics have been quick to point to the perceived technical inadequacies of English players and flaws within the youth development system.
Overplayed and under-coached
The current system, which has been in place since 1998, is drawn from Howard Wilkinson’s landmark 1997 report Charter for Quality. As Technical Director at the FA, Wilkinson was commissioned to undertake a comprehensive review of the existing youth development structure at the time. This review laid the foundations for the Charter.
During the 1990s, concerns had developed over the amount of coaching contact time and playing time young footballers were engaged in. Wilkinson says that dealing with these problems was a key priority.
“Youth development in professional clubs was confined to the then Centres of Excellence. Some of them would be very lucky to get to a Centre of Excellence [for coaching] for about an hour and a half a week.
“The best players at 15 years old, would be playing over 100 games a season because as well as being registered with, say, Tranmere Rovers’ Centre of Excellence, or Liverpool’s Centre of Excellence, they would also be playing for their school, their district, their county and the national team.”
Playing too many competitive matches was seen to be detrimental to the development of young footballers.
Ben Marskell, an ex-professional footballer who enjoyed spells with Brentford and Luton in the 1990s, was forced into early retirement due to a series of recurring injuries. As a youth player Ben trained with Chelsea and Aston Villa, and was considered one of the best defenders in the country. Now running his own soccer school in West London, he describes the rigorous playing schedule that elite youth players often had to adhere to.
“Sometimes, I would have to play three matches a day. I’d go from one pitch to the next – because when you’re a good player, everyone wants a piece of you, and you just get stretched and pulled each way,” he explained.
He believes that overplaying as a teenager eventually caught up with him and forced him to retire early.
“Overuse injuries made me stop. It wasn’t one injury that finished me, it was an accumulation of injuries. I would probably be playing at the top level now if I hadn’t had those injuries.”
A Charter for Quality
Wilkinson’s report, which he wrote soon after he joined the FA, revolutionised the youth development landscape and gave birth to Academies.
“The Charter for Quality was about creating more and more effective coaching time, and more quality practice and quality playing time,” he said.
“And to do that we had to get rid of the FA rule that allowed schools priority over talented footballers. Academies were the vehicle to deliver those principles.”
Having looked at several continental models, including successful methods employed by Dutch giants Ajax, Wilkinson also sought to lower the age at which clubs worked with players.
“Ajax were churning out hundreds of great players. They’d be finishing school early, being bussed in and bussed home three, four, five times a week,” he said.
“In Holland they believed in boys staying at home and being bussed in, and therefore the Dutch were effectively looking at a much earlier age. They were bussing kids into Ajax at 11.”
After being appointed manager at Leeds United in 1988, Wilkinson introduced changes to the way in which young players were developed at Elland Road, changes which influenced his later work with the FA.
“When I joined Leeds they were typical of other clubs, so I outlined my ideas to the chairman to develop what I called a ‘training centre’. The idea was to increase practice time by having boys living near, and we did that at Leeds.
“By the time I left Leeds and joined the FA [in 1996], I’d seen my ideas on youth development start to take shape. Consequently, my ideas had not just been a hypothesis.”
Wilkinson’s changes at Leeds resulted in a string of high quality players, such as Ian Harte, Alan Smith and Harry Kewell, making Leeds’ first team. All three players featured in the club’s memorable run to the semi-final of the Champions League in 2001.
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Academies and Centres of Excellence
Under the Charter, the Premier League and the Football League are authorised to award licences for Centres of Excellence or Academies to clubs. All but three Premier League clubs (Queens Park Rangers, Swansea City and Wigan Athletic) run an Academy, and 23 Football League clubs also do the same, whilst an additional 51 Premier League and Football League clubs run Centres. League Two side Hereford United were recently granted a licence to run a Centre and began their youth operation this season.
Clubs with an Academy or a Centre of Excellence can coach boys from the age of nine; before the Charter, clubs first engaged with young footballers at 14. The switch which allowed professional clubs to coach boys at younger age was key, and a point highlighted by several notable figures.
Speaking to BBC Radio Five Live, ex-England manager Glenn Hoddle described the period between the ages of six and ten as “the most important time in a child’s technical development”. Former Arsenal and Holland forward Dennis Bergkamp famously labelled the eight years to twelve years phase as “the golden period of learning”.
As the flagship product of the Charter, Academies must meet more stringent criteria than Centres. Academies are required to operate at all age levels from under nine to under 21, as well as providing a minimum amount of weekly coaching time. Those under the age of 11 must receive a minimum of three hours of coaching over two sessions, boys between 12 and 16 must receive at least five hours over the course of three sessions, whilst full-time scholars aged 16 and over must be coached for at least 12 hours per week.
On the other hand, Centres are permitted to operate at any age level, as well as being allowed to set their own weekly coaching hours. Differences also exist in the standard and quantity of facilities and staffing required, and Academies, as such, require far greater investment.
Upon reflection, Wilkinson admits that the implementation of the Charter hasn’t turned out quite as he had planned.
“I only envisaged 12 to 14 academies, but we finished up with 40, which in my humble opinion was always too many. I didn’t think the country had enough talent to support 40 high-level development centres,” he said.
“A lot of clubs and a lot of clubs’ directors would ask ‘Where’s our Rooney? Where’s our Joe Cole?’ That’s how they actually judged it. The notion that 40 academies can unearth 40 Rooneys every season is unreal – it won’t happen.
“The second thing was that there has to be adherence to rules. It’s fair to say that there wasn’t. The high standards set out in the Charter were not adhered to in some cases, in terms of numbers of coaches, the number of medical staff and education provisions and so on.”
Although the Charter successfully facilitated increased contact time, the amount of coaching time English youngsters receive still pales in comparison to the amounts received by their continental counterparts.
According to the Telegraph, young footballers in Spain enjoy 4,880 hours contact time between the ages of nine and 21, whilst this figure increases to 5,740 hours and 5,940 hours in Holland and France respectively. English players, on the other hand, receive a meagre 3,760 hours.
Coaching
Domestic resistance to the idea of coaching as a serious profession is an oft-cited failing of English football. In continental countries such as Holland, a suitable coaching qualification is an essential prerequisite to coaching players at any level, including grassroots.
Wilkinson says that this mentality developed due to the way physical education was taught.
“In the 1990s I recognised that culturally there was a different attitude in England, a fundamentally different culture to that what existed on the continent, in particular France, Italy and Spain.
“Physical education was performed by a teacher, who was supposed to be skilled in a multiplicity of disciplines. On the continent, however, you had education at school, and where there was physical education or sport at school it was theory.
“[Playing] sport was left to clubs, so all towns, all villages, had some form of sports club. Barcelona is a prime example of a sports club that’s become huge. In those clubs, professional coaches were part of a profession, so on the continent, training and education of coaches was recognised as wholly legitimate and essential to the sport.”
The Guardian reports that there are 2,769 English coaches holding UEFA’s three highest coaching badges (B, A and Pro), whilst Spain (23,995), Italy (29,420), Germany (34,970) and France (17,588) have significantly higher numbers.
Although England has fewer UEFA-qualified coaches than these countries, Nick Levett, the FA’s National Development Manager for Youth Football, says there is a perfectly good explanation for this.
“When we joined the UEFA coaching system and our courses fell in line with B licences and A licences, the other European countries had been running their systems along that model for a number of years before us. They’ve probably been doing it ten years longer than us. If you look now, the amount of coaches we train at A licence and B licence level is comparable every year with the other European countries,” he said.
However, Levett, who also coaches at Fulham’s Academy, feels that the coaching pathway is not necessarily tailored towards the best interests of young, developing footballers.
“I think it’s a bit of a paradox to be honest, because in this country we put our beginner coaches with our beginner players, and you could argue that you should put your best coaches with your beginner players. If we could raise the professionalism and respect of younger age appropriate coaches, I think it would be a good thing for the development of young players in this country,” he says.
Another issue, one that is particularly prevalent at grassroots level, is ensuring that coaches have age-appropriate knowledge suited to the children that they are coaching. Stuart Allen, County Development Manager at Middlesex FA, illustrates from his own experiences how beneficial and important coaching qualifications can be.
“I got involved with an under-11s club through a friend. He said his son’s club were losing ten-nil every weekend and I offered to help. I went down and said ‘we’re here for an hour and a half, we’ll do half an hour of physical work, half an hour of technical work and half an hour of a game.’ I thought that was right,” he said.
“Totally wrong. We did shuttle runs with these kids, I used to say ‘faster, faster, I used to do this as a kid.’ But shuttle runs aren’t appropriate for a ten-year-old, because their lungs can’t take in the amount of oxygen needed to keep it going. So my knowledge was completely flawed, and I couldn’t see that until I did my coaching course.”
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Role of the FA
The role of the FA within youth development has also been scrutinised. Sir Trevor Brooking, speaking in Chris Green’s book Every Boy’s Dream, opines that the FA is the “only governing body that doesn’t have power over its academy system”. Its influence extends as far as permitting the Premier League and the Football League to award clubs licences for Academies and Centres, and providing coach education courses. Howard Wilkinson explains the role of the FA.
“The FA is mandated by UEFA. The role of the FA is player development and coach education. It’s a different matter with the Rugby Football Union (RFU), and in the case of cricket and so on, where the governing bodies have a much stronger hold over the clubs then the FA does,” he says.
Wilkinson’s reference to the RFU highlights an interesting comparison. With one World Cup triumph and another appearance as beaten finalists in the last 10 years, it could be said that the English rugby team has enjoyed something akin to a golden period over the last decade. The current Six Nations title holders will enter September’s World Cup in New Zealand ranked fourth favourites by most bookmakers and with genuine aspirations of reclaiming the crown they won in 2003.
Gary Henderson, Head of Coach and Player Development at the RFU, believes that the role of the RFU and its relationship with professional clubs has been a key contributor to the quality and depth of elite young players coming through on the English conveyor belt, as well as ensuring that the nation’s best players perform for their country.
The clubs and the RFU signed an eight-year agreement in 2007 which ended long-running club v country disputes. Henderson believes that this deal was essential in order to ensure harmony between the two groups in the long run.
“Basically it’s just a legally-binding contract which says, ‘this is how we’re going to operate, this is the framework we’re going to operate.’ It’s given certainty for how the game’s going to be run for eight years – it almost traverses three World Cup spans.
“What we want them do is get [players] to play for England and for the professional rugby club too.”
As well as smoothing relations with clubs over the availability and use of players, the agreement also sought to encourage the continued development of young English players.
“A lot of the funding for the Championship and Premiership clubs’ players is now based on England-qualified players. The more England-qualified players you have in your Academy, or your starting 15 or matchday squad, the more money you will get. So there’s an incentive [for clubs] to develop English players.”
Arsene Wenger’s reluctance towards the idea of Jack Wilshere featuring for the Under-21 side earlier this summer mirrored the stance of several Premier League managers over the last twenty years. After being beaten by Nigeria earlier this month, England Under-20 coach Brian Eastick pointed to the clubs which refused to release up to 30 players for last month’s U-20 World Cup. If clubs are not willing to support English national teams by releasing their best players, how can we possibly expect the national sides to achieve success?
“In rugby the interests of both (the professional clubs and the RFU) are entwined with each other – they have to work together. I just don’t think that there is a joined-up approach to the development of players [in football] – the clubs basically do pretty much what they want despite what the governing body is doing,” said Henderson.
High hopes
Incredibly, Fifa’s latest set of international rankings place England at fourth place. Whilst there would be very few who believe the national side are amongst the top four teams in the world, there tends to be a heightened sense of belief amongst fans and large parts of the media that they can succeed in international tournaments. Inevitably, this leads to disappointment, accusations of underachievement and calls for a root and branch overhaul of the youth development system when it all goes wrong.
“Define underachievement? Because if achieve means winning, I’m not sure that should be our benchmark. If you look at Brazil for example, they’ve got 200 million people in the country, and statistically they’ve got a hell of a lot more people to pick from than us. So potentially we overachieve based on population,” says Nick Levett.
“I think the weight of pressure from the national media and their expectations, we always seem to have a golden generation of players that underachieve. I think under Sven, when we got to two quarter-finals, I think that is probably where we’re at, because if we make the semi-final or final we’ve done well. Therefore if we don’t make the quarter-final then I think we’ve underachieved.”
With this admission, is there anything really wrong with the way young English players are developed? Although Wilkinson believes that there is “an expectation far in excess of where England are placed in the ranking”, he says that two main issues may be preventing young English players from achieving their full potential.
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“Firstly, I would say that talented boys now find it more difficult to play top-level football, opportunities to play with the best and against the best,” he says.
“Secondly, we have to focus on the development of individual skills, and that has to be a top priority, from an early age. The boys have to play the sort of development football that encourages creativity – we’ve got a long way to go when you see some of the youth football that gets played.”
The diminution of opportunities for young English players is an increasingly worrying threat. Chris Lightbown states in his 2007 report Meltdown that “the number of overseas players making Premier League debuts every season is running at three times that of English players coming into the game through the Academy system”.
Although Premier League clubs have been criticised for overloading their squads with foreign talent, Levett sympathises with them.
“It is tougher for Manchester United and Chelsea to produce players from their Academy, than it is for Darlington or Stockport, because they have to produce players for the top nought percent in world football. And the likelihood of the best right-back in the world coming from within an hour and a half of Old Trafford is unlikely.”
Lack of technical ability amongst English footballers is frequently used as an excuse for the national team’s shortcomings. This explanation has curried more favour since the recent rise of Spanish football and the virtues of their style of play, but few would suggest that the likes of Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard are not as technically gifted as Xavi, Iniesta and Villa.
The view from outside – France
Matthew Spiro, writer and broadcaster specialising in French and African football, discusses youth development in France and perceptions of English football.
ZR: Could you outline the youth development system in France?
MS: There are 14 elite academies run and financed by Fédération Française de Football (French Football Federation). These take around twenty 12-13 year-olds every year, and train them for three years.
Clairefontaine houses one of the academies, and is the administrative centre. Clubs have recently been given permission to run their own academies for 12-15 year-olds. After finishing their pre-training, the players, aged 15/16 are integrated into clubs’ ‘centre de formations’ (youth academies).
ZR: What sort of impact did Clairefontaine (the national football centre that was opened in 1988) have on the French national team successes in 1998 and 2000?
MS: Clairefontaine was a great base for the national team at 1998. But the academy system cannot be said to have had a major impact. Henry was the only Clairefontaine graduate in the World Cup 1998 squad.
Clairefontaine’s centralised training programme for players and coaches had a broader impact on the French game as a whole than the elite academy at Clairefontaine itself. The talented generation of intelligent, tough players was a more significant outcome.
ZR: What is the perception of English football and the English ‘style’ in France?
MS: The perception is that the Premier League is great to watch but that it has sold its soul to foreign investors and no longer provides opportunities for English players. The French watching games on TV regret this as they love the all-action styles of players like Gerrard and Rooney.
In terms of style and coaching, some of the French look down their noses at England. They feel the English still like to play kick-and-rush with a big striker and a terrible goalkeeper. Of course, these comments are generalisations!
The view from outside – Holland
Ernst Bouwes, columnist for ESPN Soccernet and expert on Dutch football, discusses youth development in Holland and perceptions of English football.
ZR: Could you outline the youth development system in Holland?
EB: Most professional clubs have a youth academy. All amateur clubs have youth teams in competition in age categories, starting at age six. Anyone can join in.
ZR: How is the Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond (Royal Dutch Football Association) involved in youth development?
EB: They demand that coaches need KNVB certificates to coach at any level. They provide referees, organise the leagues, provide advice on club structure and regional selection teams.
ZR: What is the perception of English football and the English ‘style’ in Holland?
EB: That it is very physical and tough. Players are not able to change positions. A lot of emphasis on the result, less emphasis on the gameplay.
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