No Hunger In Paradise Page 28

  ‘We are all fighting to keep players at this level because we know the big white shark is out there ready to hunt them down. Instead of asking themselves what is best for their sons, parents are quite obviously being influenced by money. I tell them to be careful because if they make the wrong choice, that’s the last we will see of their boy for five years.

  ‘Those temptations are not going to go away. Parents get to know things before people in my position through agents and, I hate to say, illegal approaches. All you can do as a coach is promise you and your staff will do all you can to provide the quickest possible route into the first team. Touch wood, that has been a promise I have been able to keep.’

  He believes in the vocational elements of youth coaching, ‘the simple joy of throwing the jumpers down or seeing boys move onwards and upwards’. Yet such idealism is balanced by an insight into the quiet desperation of lower-league life, where there are few paper trails and development funds are anecdotally vulnerable to plunder. He fears for the probity of the system.

  ‘I can’t get my head around how flimsy it all looks. I would say to any club that can’t commit fully to driving an academy, “Don’t do it. Cut it all out. Do yourself a favour and do the kids a favour.” There have been so many clubs who don’t fund the academy properly. Budgets are meant to be ring-fenced but I don’t believe that. People take the money, and siphon it off for the first team.

  ‘Youth development has been made very complicated by EPPP. That created around 700 jobs, which means somewhere down the line you are not getting the best. You are perpetuating averageness. I know I am going to get slammed for this, but in the old system of Football Combination and Central League you got knocked around by senior players and learned your trade.

  ‘I believe in elite principles and practices, but can you go to an under-21 league game and know that a particular boy could cope with the rigours of a Football League season? I’m not sure you could. The challenge of development is to get through your life as a pro. You’ve got to be tough, ready to do the dirty bits.

  ‘I have a big thing about heading the ball. No one teaches that any more. I teach the basics, the theory of the three-game turnaround. Everyone can play badly, but what do you do in the game after that? You’re hurt, so you make sure the first thing you do is done properly. If you are a centre half: win the first header. If you are a centre forward: win the first header, get hold of it, pass and spin.

  ‘If you get the ball keep it, pass it to the same colour shirt. Do you feel better? Yeah, good. That’s how you build a game. Do the simple things. Go back to basics. Third game you are back on blob. You never get dropped. It is not the manager who gives you confidence. It is you. I always ask my players, “Who picks the team?” “Ah you, gaffer.” “No. You do. Players pick teams.”’

  And the best coaches make better individuals, who have longer careers, more satisfying lives. They do so through contradictory qualities, idealism and scepticism, applied consistently. The game needs the emotional checks and balances provided by its tribal elders, men like Hart and Steve Heighway, whose return to Liverpool at the age of 69, in a consultancy role at its Kirkby academy, was a restatement of the club’s identity.

  ‘My mantra is engage, confront, challenge and inspire,’ Heighway told Chris Bascombe in a typically thoughtful interview for the Daily Telegraph. ‘My career has been about helping young people. I was tough with them, incredibly tough with them at times. I could be confrontational with them. Not one of them has held it against me. That’s what makes me proud. That’s my style. It’s how I work.

  ‘I hate the phrase “old school” but a lot of the ideas of the past are still relevant. In the rush to be modern, don’t kick the baby out with the bathwater and discard everything. Being new and modern is about adding to what has worked before. Not everything in the 60s, 70s, 80s was irrelevant. Not everything can be about technical evaluation. There is more to it. Who you are and what you are is about more than what you can do.

  ‘What drives a player? That’s what makes the best stand out from other technically good footballers. You can’t measure that. You can’t use science or data to identify that. Physicality, mental strength, personality – those are what you’re looking for to go with the talent. If you don’t have that you will be found out. What I don’t understand is the amount of form filling those running the game want from coaches now, everyone asked to record and write about it all. Coaches want to be on the grass watching and working with players. You can’t superscript football.’

  To borrow from legendary US basketball coach John Wooden, who regarded coaching as a cerebral undertaking, a life force rather than the foundation of a game plan, ‘it takes time to create excellence. If it could be done more quickly, more people would do it.’ The process is based on personal influence, small cells of individuals united by principle and best practice.

  When the system works well, knowledge cascades, as refreshing as a mountain stream. Experience spreads, like spilled ink on blotting paper. Inspiration is a starburst of enthusiasm. Heighway is correct: academic strictures and prescribed structures imposed on the youth development system in England will never replace the spark of human contact.

  Jürgen Klopp’s great strength at Liverpool is to recognise the club’s living legacy, and align it to current thinking. The ethos of Bill Shankly is more than mildewed nostalgia; his values have an enduring relevance beyond folklore or whimsy. Similarly, Steven Gerrard’s coaching apprenticeship, which started at Liverpool’s academy in February 2017, is an extension of the relationship he formed with Heighway as a young player.

  Complementary modernity is embodied by Pepijn Lijnders, who has moved from Liverpool’s under-16s to a newly created role overseeing a so-called Talent Group, which is being integrated into the first-team environment each Tuesday. The Dutch development coach, initially recruited by Brendan Rodgers after twelve seasons spent with PSV Eindhoven and Porto, explained the overarching philosophy to Jonathan Northcroft of the Sunday Times:

  ‘There’s a saying that talent needs models, it doesn’t need criticism. I really believe in that. So at the moment we bring Trent [Alexander-Arnold], Ovie [Ejaria] and Ben [Woodburn] up and they can watch Adam Lallana, the way he prepares himself in the physio room, the way he prepares himself before the training session, how he puts his shin pads on, how he treats his boots – everything. All these small things, these unwritten things, for young players to learn from their models is so important.

  ‘That’s before you even speak about the pitch: how Phil [Coutinho] controls the ball and turns away, how Hendo [Jordan Henderson] is the playmaker from out the back, the motor. And in training they see how Sadio [Mané] is creating space for himself before he receives the ball. That is one of his biggest strengths, so he plays one v ones in the areas we want him to.

  ‘It’s a one-club mentality. With our vision, with our future, with our ideal. The ideal means what makes us specific, what makes us recognisable. Indirectly we try to represent the fans. We want to represent their passion. That’s why we choose this playing style, because it all has to link together: the manager, the coaches, the players, the staff, the academy boys, the fans. That all has to come together, and over time you can compete.’

  Academy director Alex Inglethorpe, who learned under John McDermott at Tottenham, sought to ensure quality time for his coaches by cutting player numbers, from 245 to around 170. He, too, imposed a £40,000 salary limit on first-year professionals. He found his metier after managing Exeter City, and has proved that the best young coaches, with the brightest minds, do not necessarily need to be drawn to the soap-operatic intensity of first-team football.

  Karl Robinson seems wedded to that culture: following a six-year tenure, he was out of work for less than a month after being sacked in October 2016 by MK Dons, who six years previously had made him the Football League’s youngest manager, at 29. Braving the dysfunctionality of Charlton Athletic, a club embroiled in a guerrilla war between
supporters and an absentee owner, appeared rash.

  Yet there was instructive method in his perceived madness. His reputation as an outstanding development coach immediately prompted Chelsea to entrust him with the further education of Jay DaSilva, who had outgrown under-23 football. It triggered the thought that, ultimately, his skill set will be best suited to a senior development role, either with England or a major Premier League club.

  Heighway’s influence on him has been fundamental, personally and professionally. Robinson was one of a small group of young coaches nurtured by him at the Liverpool academy, a grounding subsequently enhanced by assisting Sam Allardyce at Blackburn Rovers and following Paul Ince to Milton Keynes. His reverence towards the old Liverpool winger, who had been coaching, unpaid, in Florida before his return to Merseyside, is striking:

  ‘Do you know my best piece of advice? Let them play. I vividly remember one of Steve’s sessions. He didn’t want any cones. He put two jumpers down as goalposts. What he got was unpredictability, freedom of expression. What he created was a natural English footballer. Now we are robotic. This has to be here, that has to be there. Coaches are told, “These are the boxes you have to tick.” Well, fuck your boxes.

  ‘Every kid needs a different development plan, so why categorise everything? Each boy is different physically, psychologically, technically, tactically. I don’t want criteria, a curriculum of how a player should be developed. That should be torn up and thrown in the bin. Do I believe in the X factor? One hundred per cent.

  ‘When I was coaching at Liverpool’s academy it was obvious to me, from a very young age, that Jordan Rossiter was going to be a professional footballer. It was obvious that Cameron Brannagan and Ryan Kemp were going to play somewhere. Jon Flanagan? Obvious.

  ‘Why does one make it when another of equal talent fails? Self-belief, support mechanisms, lack of external pressure, but Steve also used to talk to me about the best having a poorly developed sense of fear. That’s the crux of it. Do we encourage fear, massage it? No, we eradicate it, while maintaining the mentality that you want to be the best, every single day of your life. Very few have that trait.

  ‘Fear creates anxiety, anxiety creates tension and tension creates mistakes. Our job is to manage that internal process, to train the mind so a player can replicate something without thinking. Why does Steven Gerrard score from nearly thirty-five yards in the last minute of a cup final? Why does David Beckham put that free kick against Greece in the top corner in the last minute at Old Trafford? Why do the greatest players produce the greatest moments at the most pivotal times?

  ‘Because they have seen it, and trained it. Biomechanically, they know they can achieve it. Their technique stays the same in the most fearful of moments. Some players develop that technique faithfully on the training ground, but they cannot reproduce it because they tense up under scrutiny. Golf sets us an example.

  ‘If I stood on the first tee at St Andrews for a game between you and me I could hit a drive two hundred and sixty-four yards, dead straight. If I had two thousand people watching me, with millions more on TV, I guarantee you it is going straight right. Fear would lead to me tensing up, somewhere on my backswing. Tension would wreck my technique and ultimately create the mistake.’

  Pressure is minimised by poetry and physics: ‘Steve used to liken striking a ball to a boxer throwing a punch. It wasn’t thrown through his fist. It was thrown with his heart and his head, which allowed the shoulder, the elbow, the extension of the wrist and forearm, and, finally, the fist, to channel the power.

  ‘When I am teaching someone to strike a ball I talk about hip movement, biomechanical merit, how high the heel must go, about the positioning of the knee over the ball. The questions are constant. What about my standing foot? Where should that point? If I open it up more, will it give me more movement through my legs to cut the ball, just like in golf?

  ‘If I want to turn the ball end-over-end, how much does my left hip rotate, as I am a left-footed player? How can I give it that last bit of depth so the pass drops into the target’s feet? How am I going to drive the ball? How am I going to step in, hit the top of the ball, punch down through it to create that movement? I’ve not even spoken about the angle of the foot yet.

  ‘I am intense about coaching. I covet every aspect of it. I am a young manager, a young coach, but I have old-school and new-school values. My job is to fill my players’ toolbox. Their job is to pick the right tool, ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time.’

  Robinson’s additional responsibility, unspoken but unarguable, is to augment the sort of self-help networks around which education can flourish. His most underrated achievement at Milton Keynes was to oversee the establishment of a cohesive coaching structure from the under-9s to the first team. He could not have done so without the drive, expertise and innovative spirit of Dan Micciche, the Dons’ head of academy coaching.

  The son of Italian immigrants, Micciche grew up watching AC Milan and Napoli, but became a Juventus fan when he was captivated by Roberto Baggio at the 1990 World Cup. He celebrated cultural difference, relishing Serie A’s patience and control as a release from traditional Anglo-Saxon aggression, and embraced the work ethic of a large, close family.

  He dared to be different at youth level with MK Dons, creating a short-notice fixture list based on feel and flexibility, rather than the rigidity of a pre set programme. His experimentation involved shortening pitches, to challenge technique and imagination through the compression of space. Rather than relying on facile age-group victories, he scheduled physically demanding practice matches against men’s amateur teams. His subsequent appointment as head coach of the England under-16 squad signalled a welcome expansion of the FA’s thinking.

  Micciche’s coaching process involves splitting the pitch into lanes, which provide visual reference points and encourage positional understanding. Players are given trigger words to memorise and are asked to ‘play on different lines and find pockets of space’. Each individual is given three areas, linked to their strengths, to work on during a match.

  Improvisation is approved, within the context of what Micche terms a’ ‘6–6–6’ strategy. This involves winning the ball back cleanly within six seconds, attacking with a minimum of six players and progressing the ball over the half way line within six passes. Unsurprisingly, he describes his coaching style as ‘extremely flexible and instinctive’.

  He has had distinctive tutors. John Cartwright, his first academy manager at Crystal Palace, has been slaughtering sacred cows since the seventies, when his Palace team won the FA Youth Cup in successive seasons, and his England under-18 team won the European championship.

  Now 76, Cartwright has not noticeably mellowed in retirement. He still believes English football is blighted by insubstantial coaching, lack of respect for individual skill, and the elevation of players above their true worth. He decries the influence of ‘football academics’ and ‘crash-bang-wallop fightball’ produced by an over-emphasis on results. He castigates the system as a ‘confused, blind, and utterly distorted shambles’.

  Predictably, Micciche is a catalytic presence in the England coaches’ room, where the dilemma of dealing with the ‘baller’ outlook of what Aidy Boothroyd terms ‘the merchandise generation’ is a constant factor in the plan–do–review performance management system that operates across the age groups.

  Gareth Southgate confirms: ‘We have debates about whether we are indulging the academy mentality. Some groups don’t want to do things without the ball; one of the conversations recently concerned a really talented boy who wouldn’t get picked for a first team because he doesn’t do enough without the ball.

  ‘Dan’s view is that we won’t produce a Ronaldo or a Messi if that is our mentality. We don’t create that type of player because we worry too much about lads doing this, that or the other. I get that a little bit, but my argument would be, well, he’s not going to play in a Premier League first team unless he runs his socks off.
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br />   ‘I want players to express themselves massively. I want to have a picture of what is in their mind because it fascinates me. We’ve got to find a way into these boys because they have great technical ability. Can we make it work for them? It is our duty to try, but if they don’t have the other bits they’re not going to have a career in the game anyway. If we’re not hammering home that message we are doing them a disservice.’

  Southgate’s innate decency is shared by Micciche’s other major influence, Chris Ramsey, who coached Gerrard, Ashley Cole, Ledley King, Jonathan Woodgate and Jermaine Jenas at international youth level before spending a decade at Tottenham Hotspur. In his latest guise as QPR’s technical director, Ramsey blames clubs for ‘taking hunger out of the individual’ by ‘paying kids end-product money when they have yet to produce’.

  He believes an avaricious culture leads to young players ‘being burned out more mentally and emotionally than physically’. Conversely, too many ‘very early choices’ made about children recruited as young as 7 results in ‘kids being unnecessarily washed up’. Poaching, and associated underhand behaviour, is the inevitable by-product of a system in which owners promote self-interest over the collective good.

  As he expands on his philosophy, Ramsey exudes a familiar combination of concern and compassion, cynicism and a keenly developed conscience. He has managed consistently to work around human frailty, in all its forms, without losing sight of the fragility of the boys who fall within his sphere of influence. It is not a comforting scenario:

  ‘Agents have spoiled the game by giving economically challenged parents false hope. You can’t always condemn them for taking what is offered, because if you are a single parent in a run-down flat with two or three kids, who is told, we will give you a car or a house, it difficult to say, “Turn them down,” because they are understandably thinking about the rest of the family.