No Hunger In Paradise Page 30

  Perhaps we should enjoy Parnaby’s principles before they fade into history, as tantalising and mysterious as an entombed inscription on papyrus:

  ‘I couldn’t care a toss about agents or predator clubs. I haven’t got the time or energy to worry about them. It doesn’t matter if you put barriers up, and try to exclude them from your training ground. If they want to operate, they’ll operate. When I hear about the shenanigans of money, contracts and agents in the North-west, London and the Midlands I reckon we are geographically advantaged, rather than disadvantaged.

  ‘I contest the agents all the time. If I get a whisper of somebody approaching one of our boys, before the first of January of his sixteenth year, I challenge them because, as I understand it, it is illegal. We had one boy who had been with us since the age of nine. I wanted to offer him a scholarship, and called the parents, asking them to come and see me.

  ‘Half an hour later, my phone went. It was a number I didn’t recognise. This person said, “I am with the family.” I’d never spoken to him in my life. “Which one? Who are you? First of all, I don’t know you. I am not going to give you any information. I am allowed to offer a scholarship any time after the first of January of a boy’s fourteenth year, and I have decided to do it now. I am not going to talk to you about it. I’d have a think about what you’re doing.”

  ‘That’s my stance with all of them, but too many clubs are fearful of losing a player rather than testing the agent. If any parents want to walk out and speak to one that is their choice, but don’t come back to me. I don’t have the pressures at board level that others have to deal with. I’ve never been asked about where the next one is coming from. They’re interested, but Ron’s credo of potential and patience sits as well upstairs as it does down here.

  ‘There’s an understanding of what youth development is all about. There’s a lot of talk about players getting £5k a week – and the rest – elsewhere but our first professional contract ranges from £400 to £550 a week. We are really pleased when a boy gets an England call, because we value the Three Lions, but some of them come back and are never the same again, because they have shared a room with a Chelsea boy or a Man City boy.

  ‘I do not know what their wage scales are, but I do remember Lee Congerton sitting in on his first meeting with us as Sunderland’s technical director. His background was Liverpool, Chelsea, Hamburg. He was quite astounded by our first professional contracts, amazed by how we’d kept the lid on it, kept it controlled.

  ‘Who is right or wrong? Management is about standing by your principles and convictions. Some academies are a business within an organisation. We know who we’re talking about. Do they have to operate like that? I don’t know. My concern is that the talent within them would be better across the game, rather than sitting at one, two, three or four clubs. Is that healthy for English football? Is that producing better equipped players for England, as EPPP is set out to do?’

  The questions hang as heavily in the air as his swiftly sidelined solution to the overstocking of the system, first proposed seventeen years ago at a meeting of Premier League clubs at Loughborough University, which had the pretension, formality and backstage manoeuvring of a United Nations summit.

  Parnaby suggested a two-tier system. Below the age of 12, boys should be registered on a coaching rather than playing basis, enabling them to represent their schools and play with their friends. Once they reached secondary school, the best would be filtered into a competitive academy-based games programme. The FA and Premier League, he insisted, had a dual responsibility to tend the grassroots of the game, where parental and behavioural problems fester.

  ‘The coaching registration was a new concept, almost like a sorting office, where once the under-12s came along you narrowed the base so there was a smaller group to work with. You’ve given them five years to develop, they’ve had decent coaching at the clubs, but they’ve integrated with their friends before they come on board.

  ‘I was new to it all, a bit wet behind the ears, and nobody grasped the nettle. Why? The only thing I can think of is fear of losing that special seven-year-old, or ten-year-old. There has always been the challenge that there are too many players in the system. We’ve talked about combining age groups, nines and tens, elevens and twelves, but the rule book dictates.’

  EPPP limits choice and innovation. Parnaby is a friend and ally of John McDermott at Tottenham, who sought, unsuccessfully, to withdraw from PL2, the under-23 league, and institute a less formal programme of practice matches at home and abroad. Though conscious of disquiet at such regimentation, Double Pass, the EPPP auditors, who operate from the Brussels suburb of Dilbeek, refer to their role as ‘strategic optimisation’.

  The company is run by Hugo Schoukens, a former banker who progressed, from 1992 to 1999, from being a part-time youth coach to Anderlecht’s academy director. Seeking a thesis topic at the Vlekho business school in Brussels, he was approached to develop a football version of a software programme designed to evaluate gymnastics academies by Jo Van Hoecke, a professor at Vrije University in the Belgian capital.

  This thesis formed the basis of his MBA in Sports Management at Leicester University, and was rolled out by the Belgian Football Federation. Schoukens and Van Hoecke founded Double Pass in November 2004, and once Vrije University had been compensated for their intellectual property rights, the company rapidly expanded their reach.

  They began working in the German development system in 2005, linked up with the Premier League in 2012 after being recommended by Bundesliga officials, and operate similar models in the United States and Japan. Clubs are evaluated on a so-called eight-dimensional approach, incorporating such ‘critical success factors’ as strategic and financial planning, talent identification and development, organisational structure and decision-making ability.

  Double Pass demand a huge amount of operational data, aligned to what is generally a four-day study visit. Clubs are judged on specific objectives, ranging from coaching standards, social support, communications strategies, infrastructure programmes and facility management. Though neutral and objective, conclusions are invariably controversial.

  Middlesbrough were harshly judged, even though their 160-acre training complex, set in the village of Hurworth, near Darlington, was substantially upgraded in 2012, when it was used for Olympic preparations. It has been good enough for the All Blacks, but not, apparently, for disciples of a strategy based loosely on the marginal-gains model employed, most prominently, by British Cycling.

  Parnaby offers a cogent case for the defence: ‘It was quite clearly stated to me that we hadn’t operated with a GPS unit for every player. We hadn’t upgraded our indoor and outdoor areas, hadn’t employed a full-time psychologist, and didn’t have sufficient or appropriate performance analysis to a level of those we were being judged against, or with, in the cluster method.

  ‘What we have invested in is in the kids. We have put time and energy into making sure they are OK, that the parents understand what we’re trying to do. We have not lost a player over nineteen years. I am not saying we are the best, I never would, but does that not give you some indication that we have a decent environment here?

  ‘The scientific approach dictates that GPS units should be used by every single boy within the professional development phase. In our case it’s something like forty-four boys. Who processes that data? How is it used? Does every boy use that data? I’m being sarcastic here, but does anyone know the average number of sprints for a left-sided centre back under twenty-three? I don’t think I’ve ever looked at any of it like that.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with good housekeeping. Administrative and facility development can only be good. But, to my mind, it has become too scientific. Everything has to be accounted for and measured. If you’ve got a philosophy, how do you measure your philosophy? If you’ve got a curriculum, how do you measure your curriculum? If you’ve got a playing philosophy, how do you measure that? You’ve got targets to set f
or each department in the academy. What are your progress targets? How do you measure it?

  ‘I don’t come from that background. I don’t speak that language. Mine is more about emotions and people, relationships with parents and between players and coaches. There are lots of informal chats around the building, up to and including the chairman and CEO, that you can’t actually record or measure. In our report we got lots of plaudits about our informal, everyday operation, but we were criticised that we don’t formalise things enough.’

  That glaring contradiction was emphasised by the success of the annual Premier League coaches’ conference at Rockliffe Park, held over three days in May 2016. The irony of the event featuring the national under-14 final, in which Middlesbrough defeated Chelsea 1–0, was compounded by praise for the texture of the club’s thinking, and the all-encompassing nature of the welcome. Parnaby’s pride was tangible:

  ‘We stripped it back, warts and all, and invited the whole country to come here. We peeled back all the layers and let them see everything. The plaudits we got were fantastic. Basically, it captured what we are about, the coaching philosophy, playing philosophy, how we educate children. We shared everything, didn’t hide anything. It was a fantastic credit to all the staff, who were brave enough to expose themselves to scrutiny.

  ‘Whenever I am asked about the academy I speak of a whole host of people. It is my job to make sure they are not undervalued. From a remuneration point of view, that’s a difficult jigsaw puzzle to put together. I have to make sure the recruitment department and the army of scouts at 40p a mile are appraised and patted on the back in the same way as the under-23 coach who’s just getting promoted to the Premier League.’

  The academy had six full-time members of staff at its inception; it now employs twenty-four. The three senior squads – first team, under-23 and under-18 – are on site every day. Younger age groups from under-11 to -16 train in a hybrid system on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Two new classrooms, lowered into the complex by a crane, house an expanded performance analysis department. The car park situation, though relieved by space at an adjoining school, is dire.

  Middlesbrough can reclaim the modest wages of young professionals, but have one of the lowest youth development budgets in the Premier League. The subtext of its expansion from £2.3 million to a little less than £3 million is that even Gibson and his board will be tempted to demand a reward on inflated investment. That prospect is a more pressing form of accountability than any player audit.

  Parnaby is no Luddite. He welcomed the unanimity of a ninety-two-club meeting at Chester Racecourse late in 2016, which agreed to academy managers undergoing a mandatory two-year foundation-degree course, funded over three years through the Premier League’s learning programme. Yet there is a sense he is getting out at the right time:

  ‘I couldn’t define the role of an academy manager. It is impossible because it is so diverse. You have to deal with a full spectrum of backgrounds and influences. I know this is the way we are headed, and it was good at last to see the Premier League, Football League and Football Association sing from the same hymn sheet, but does a degree equip you to deal with little Johnny’s dad who is shouting from the rooftops?

  ‘Parents are more knowledgeable about their rights, because we have given them so much information down the years. I am always trying to reassure my coaches: “You are professionally trained. You have to be tactful in your response but when they challenge you on what you are delivering you have to be strong enough to stand and say, actually I am an expert in this. I have been professionally trained. You wouldn’t go into a classroom and tell a teacher how to teach.”

  ‘I’ve tried to put a salary structure together, to value the lead coach for the under-9s and -10s the same as his equivalent with the -15s and -16s. I’m thinking about the really testing years for development, at thirteen and fourteen, when you’ve got to deal with puberty, self-esteem, growth maturation. Have we got the know-how, the gut instinct, the eye, the experience within the building to get it right?

  ‘Steve Gibson says football has become a science not an art. He paid me the biggest compliment by telling me, “I do believe you are an artist.” That is really nice. That’s what I do. Can I define myself, quantify why we have been successful? If you went round the staff I’m not sure what they’d say. I’m pretty good with people, pretty crap with management and structures. Hard work, long hours, enthusiastic staff, a balance, a humility about us.

  ‘All the top, top performers and coaches have that. I spent a day with the All Blacks. They wouldn’t let anyone unload their bags from the bus. We talk about mavericks, but they wouldn’t suffer them. No dickheads in the dressing room. They haven’t got time for high maintenance, because you end up spending eighty per cent on managing that, and only twenty per cent on pushing people along.’

  One of the most famous coaching maxims involves being tough on talent. A process more subtle than it is grandstanding or intimidating: it requires a teacher’s deftness of touch and a priest’s depth of commitment. Parnaby’s inspiration, Sir Ken Robinson, speaks of finding your element, a place in which passion can be expressed and explored without restraint or remorse.

  Parnaby understands: ‘Something happens when I am around this place, something that feels really good. Does that make sense? It could be when Ben Gibson comes to me and asks what I think. It could be when I’m watching the first team, and Stewie Downing cuts in from the right and smashes it into the top corner with his left, just like he did in the under-17 play-offs, all those years ago.

  ‘I was in my element last week. I had the under-23 leftovers, a couple of first-team players, and some promoted under-18s. I prepared the session, went out, and knew I was in a different place. Something chemically happens in your body at that moment. As Sir Ken says, “You love talent so much you will never work again.”

  ‘I ask the kids whether they are in their element and they think I am mad. I tell them they were in their element when they were ten, when they used to get out of Dad’s car and run in here. Now they get out of the minibus of a morning and they trudge in with their toilet bag underneath their arm. Another bloody day at Middlesbrough Football Club. I ask them, “Why is that? Is it just your age? Is it where you’re at in your life? Or is it us? Are we not providing the stimulus you had at ten years old?”

  ‘As a coach, there are times in the dressing room when you know you have pitched it right. Roy Keane said on the Pro Licence course that Alex Ferguson never failed to press his buttons, either before a game, at half-time or at the end. Even that is getting prescribed. “What is your match-day preparation? What is your match-day plan?” Let me deal with my emotions. Let me deal with the boys’ emotions.’

  Another of Robinson’s notions, that ‘life is your talents discovered’, filters through the brain as Parnaby sees me to the glass double-doors before saying his farewells. He has the busy man’s knack of appearing unhurried, unflustered, and has obviously been at work in my sub conscious. I wound down, after a five-hour drive home, by watching a TEDx talk given by Robinson in his native Liverpool.

  A sanguine, meditative figure who leaned on a stick and sketched a stellar cast of characters from the Beatles to the Dalai Lama, the educationalist reached the following conclusion: ‘We live in a virtual world, a world of ideas and thoughts and feelings and theories and possibilities. It is about the old maxim that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come, and nothing is as influential as a life well lived.’

  Dave Parnaby’s football life has been well lived. Don’t listen to those who tell you that his time, his ideas, have come, and gone.

  19

  Tropical Fish in Shark Bay

  THE ABUSE CONSISTED largely of mindless mockery, vicious in its tone and consistency. The dominant coach had a tight circle of allies – including support staff, a veteran first-team player and a senior club administrator – who appeared to conspire to varying degrees in the creation of a climate of
fear. Contempt was collective, but individuals would endure selective humiliation in front of their peers.

  Its effect was cumulative, devastating. One foreign teenager ran away. Another promising player suffered from clinical depression and gave up the game. Good staff, including other academy coaches, did what they could to help, although they felt powerless; a sympathetic video analyst advised yet another victim, a second year scholar to feign homesickness if he could not bring himself to report for training.

  The coach had played top-level football when the money was modest and the fame was local rather than global. He was protected by his status as a trusted servant of a club of great virtue and tradition, but reminded of his perceived ill fortune each time he drove into the training ground in the sort of family saloon used by time-serving double-glazing salesmen.

  His high-mileage Vauxhall was conspicuous in a cluster of high-performance four-by-fours. He could show the kids his medals, but their youth and prospective wealth taunted him. He knew he was winding down his career, because he had been demoted from the first team to the role of development coach by a manager who arrived with his own backroom staff.

  He came from a generation in which bullying apprentices was standard practice, part of a supposed toughening-up process. He wielded great power over his charges, since he dictated selection policy and influenced the loan programme. His infamous behaviour eventually persuaded the father of one prospect to act. Unlike most parents, he was an educated observer, since he had coached and managed semi-professionally:

  ‘Football celebrates the hairdryer treatment. There’s too little debate about the effect of that. Bullying is deeply ingrained in the game. Each case is subtly different, but what happens to a young player if he returns to a lonely room in digs after a day being subjected to aggressive behaviour? I’ve heard of so many stories from ex-pros suffering from depression, that’s an obvious worry.’