When I hear a coach say that he or she developed all these top players, I say stop stroking your ego. You probably helped guide players by creating really good game-representative environments, but you can’t take credit for developing them like your Jesus with a whistle. The fact is that top players have thousands upon thousands of hours of street soccer, cage soccer, beach soccer, futsal, and even technical training by themselves in their own unique environment. Last spring I helped send an 18-year-old player to a team in the English Championship (they took him to pre-season with the full pro team). This is a kid that refused to play in his youth league, instead, he played pick-up soccer every day for hours in his front yard with his older brothers and the kids from his block. Each summer he would stay at the local field and play in pick-up games for 8 hours a day. It wasn’t until around 12 years of age that he joined his first organized team. Another friend of mine recently had his son sign a full pro contract in the MLS. This young player didn’t have access to street soccer daily, but he trained 20 hours a week himself outside of local club. His story sounds very similar to that of Damian Duff. This young player is one of the most technical kids coming up in the MLS that I have ever seen. I would expect him to be playing in Europe at some point. When I speak to my players from Brazil the story of their environment is fascinating. Since 5 years old they play pick-up in the streets for 5-6 hours a day. Their parents know they are safe in the neighborhood, as they are in a soccer-immersive environment. By the time they go on trial at 14 years old, they have 12,000 – 14,000 hours of street soccer. Can you imagine logging in 14k hours of soccer by the age of 14, it’s unreal. Met Ozil grew up playing cage soccer, Neymar played futsal, and Ronaldinho beach soccer. The Proving Grounds (small soccer courts) in London produce more EPL players than any other place in England. These courts are open 24 hours a day and pride is always on the line in these games. The emergence of top-level Japanese players can’t be denied on the pro and even the college level. When I speak to Japanese players from high schools and academies, they all have similar stories to share. These kids are training 3 hours per/day with some doing extra on their own. They mostly do 90 minutes of technical and 90 minutes game representative environments. When I ask them about streetball, they say that it is uncommon in their environment in Japan. However, the formula they have created with 90 & 90 plus extra work is producing impressive results in their unique environment.
Notice the common theme here. It does not revolve around a coach. It is players learning while playing the game in different game-representative environments. In places where streetball is rare, the players play with a team and supplement the lack of streetball with a lot of technical work. Representative Game Design is a simple concept – do players make meaningful decisions, adapt solutions, and adapt intentions in game-representative environments. In the end, soccer is about two things, exploiting time and space to score or shutting down time and space to stop the opponent from scoring. These two simple things are trained in game-representative environments. The major catalyst for development is not a coach questioning kids, setting up endless isolated drills, or calling the team in to speak to them about some principle, the catalyst for development is constructing environments that are game-representative and constrain, forcing a change in perception and action. The relationship between the player and the environment can teach technique, tactical solutions, and overall soccer intelligence.
A top coach constructs environments that constantly force players to adapt their solutions. The coach should be able to help players attune their visual perception to help them search for even more solutions or a preferred solution in some cases. Coaches who can do this from 4v4 to 11v11 are rare and highly skilled. The days of drills, non-representative environments, environments with no real decisions, no changing of intentions, tons of questioning, lectures, coach centered stuff, are something I find little to no value in at all.
In my opinion, the entire soccer licensing system is far too complicated and unnecessary. It lacks academic theory, and it lacks a clear simple vision of player development. If the federations really value coaching education they would do it all online for $30. That way every coach in the world could have access to education, it would no longer be the pay-to-coach model where licenses are required for coaching opportunities. I recently took some courses and it was painful to say the least. The instructor was great but the content from the federation was so poor, it makes me wonder who is making the content for the stuff. Think about this, you can get an online Bachelor’s, Master’s, and even a PhD, but you can’t even get a recognized USSF Grassroots without a field session in person. A coach with 25 years’ experience in the NCAA DI and no license, would need to start with the USSF grassroots license – insane to say the least. In education, people with life work experience are qualified to begin a real teaching job in many states in the US based on their life work experience. The USSF has not learned anything from online education or life work experience.
In the end, my views are simple. It’s a player’s game and real development is up to the players themselves. Every environment is different and unique. Top coaches are masters of creating environments that contain real information, changing intentions, adapted solutions, meaningful decisions on and off the ball, changes in perception, variability, constrain, and contain real game-like energy.