| Dear Mr. Lewis... |
An open letter to Richard Lewis, Executive Chairman, RFL, and chairman of the review group "A Review of Young Player Development in Professional Football"
By Gary Allen
My name is Gary Allen, and I am a longtime member of the U.S. Soccer National Staff and US Youth Soccer National Staff. The views I express are my own and should not be considered as coming from either U.S. Soccer or US Youth Soccer.
I want to commend you on a thorough and succinct review of the Young Player Development Program in England. We on this side of the pond have an enduring interest in the developments being contemplated there. In the United States, we have sought to develop players in a somewhat backward way compared with the rest of the world. We first have created an adult-initiated infrastructure for league and club play, into which we have been trying to fit an ever-increasing number of young players. This has forced us to face many of the same issues you confront. First, we have been trying to fit younger players into an adult scheme based upon the mistaken notion that they will develop through earlier and more intense competition. Second, we have never had a tradition of “street soccer,” so trying to create such an environment is as challenging as your efforts to re-create it.
THREE IMPORTANT THEMES
In addition to the excellent point that coaching should be age-appropriate, you raised at least three themes that have captured the essence of the problems facing the development of young players: (1) the need to develop the attributes of the “street soccer” of old in our modern setting, (2) the notion that there is a need for a system that will accommodate both precocious talent and late developers, and (3) less emphasis on results at all age groups.
I believe these three concepts in many ways are central to understanding the development of young players. Many pay lip service to these concepts, yet they fail to see how inextricably they are intertwined. Perhaps it may be because most view the development of players purely from a soccer vantage point. The danger in this approach is that one focuses upon the result and works backward, believing, mistakenly, that the first step is merely a matter of identifying talent early and then putting it in the right environment. This is a major error in the Academy Program, in which only a select few between the ages of 7 and 15 are chosen to participate.
Selecting so few players limits growth and has compounding ramifications. First, it assumes that young players are miniature adults and fails to consider the paramount issues of how players develop mentally, physically and emotionally at different ages. Second, it fails to consider these developmental issues in the context of the nature of the game itself. Because it is free-flowing and both requires and allows players to solve problems for themselves, each game takes on the character and personalities of those players. It is only when the differences in players’ developmental stages and the nature of the game are considered together that true breakthrough is possible for youth development. Application of the three concepts you present, coupled with a better understanding of youth development in general is what is needed.
STREET SOCCER
Because the game is the only team sport in the world that truly takes on the character of its players, our developmental focus must be on guiding, but also allowing, young players to solve the problems the game presents technically, tactically and physically. I say “allowing” because there is an all-too-pervasive mentality among adults to prescribe the ways young players solve problems. This is part of what is missing with the absence of “street soccer.” In the days when youngsters played pick-up soccer, they competed with many different types of players. They had to sort out problems presented by not only the opponents on any given day, but also their own teammates, and, in many cases, the quirks of a particular pitch—all without the aid (or interference) of adults.
We bemoan the lack of creativity in today’s youth and often chalk it up to the amount of time many of them spend with mind-numbing video games. However, the issue in sports goes deeper than this. Today’s youngsters do find creative outlets, as is readily apparent in the rise of extreme sports such as snowboarding, skateboarding and BMX bike riding. The common thread appears to be an environment where they can experiment with outrageous concepts without the constraints of adult interference. Therefore, I would argue that in trying to recapture what has been lost with “street soccer,” we should provide environments where young players can play with and against many teammates and opponents of different types, sizes and abilities.
The small numbers of player that are being selected for the Academy Program present a major roadblock to develop ing the same type of player as the “street soccer” of the past. Such limited numbers inhibit three major aspects of “street soccer” that foster development: (1) the opportunities to mimic or copy from observing other players; (2) the freedom to experiment without the fear of being cut from the squad or benched; and (3) playing with and against many different players each day, allowing each player to adopt many different roles.
When players play with and against the same small group of players, they quickly identify the strengths and weaknesses of the limited universe of players around them and repeatedly fall into the same roles. A main ingredient in “street soccer” is the inclusion of supposedly (I will explain later) stronger and weaker players. It is only through the freely repetitive and (to the adult eye) inefficient experimentation by the players themselves that creative problem-solvers are nurtured.
YESTERDAY'S RESULTS SHOULD BE MEANINGLESS FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW
A second component of the old “street soccer” was the fact that even though one might compete with all of one’s effort each day, yesterday’s results had no bearing on today’s or tomorrow’s games or who would or would not play. Therefore, there was no dearth of experimentation, even if certain things didn’t work the first few times.
This is an important component of learning. I think you have captured this notion with your point about placing less emphasis on results. Although this is often understood in the larger concept of league standings, it often is not applied on a day-to-day basis. The concept of de-emphasizing results permeates each area of development, because the players are not yet mature on numerous levels, and the only real way for them to learn to be creative is for the adults to truly “allow” them to experiment – in essence, to fail and try again.
I had the opportunity to spend time with Mark Dempsey, the youth director for Manchester United’s Academy program. As part of my interaction with Mark, I viewed a video of 12-year-olds in the program, which has selected 12 players at this age from the surrounding area. At first blush, the participants, playing 4 v 4, seemed advanced, freely taking on opponents and trying to win 1 v. 1 battles. That part was, indeed, exciting; however, I began to notice that all of the players used the same repertoire of moves to beat opponents. After a while, it became obvious that they had been shown certain moves and had practiced them with and against the same group of players.
The coaching guidance in and of itself is good, but the limitations of the system are apparent. Part of the problem again relates to the numbers and similar qualities of the players involved. It seems that there would be more creative development with an increase in numbers, as well as many opportunities for experimentation without consequences. With the increases in numbers and variations in quality of players, even though certain moves might be shown, the opportunities for players to develop their own interpretations of these moves and expand their experimentation would increase dramatically.
A SYSTEM TO ACCOMMODATE BOTH PRECOCIOUS AND LATE DEVELOPERS
The second point you raise about precocious and late developers recognizes that players grow and mature at different rates physically, mentally, socially and emotionally. The game played by adults rewards physical and technical speed, the abilities to see and create space and the ability to work together collectively in groups to create numbers up and exploit the opponent’s weaknesses.
In the adult game, physical attributes and maturity are important, but so is the ability to understand abstract concepts. Your point about the need for a system that will accommodate both the precocious talent and late developer is extremely important. This issue cannot be overemphasized because the players being targeted are not small adults. In each of the areas of physical, mental and social any particular area being as much as 36 months for players chronologically the same age. Attempts to predict who the top level players will be at these young ages are misguided and often spectacularly inaccurate.
My understanding of the focus in the Professional Football Academy Program is that each club chooses eight to 10 players at 7 years old, with similar numbers at eight and so on, with slightly larger numbers at each successive year. The numbers should be increased significantly to accomplish effective “street soccer” and place less emphasis on results; doing so is more important for developmental reasons.
Trying to identify players when they are too young flies in the face of what child development experts universally espouse, especially for children 7 to 15. There is tremendous diversity in the rates of maturation – physically, mentally and emotionally – in players of these ages. When only a few players are selected at these ages, the chances of choosing correctly and developing a higher general level of play are dramatically limited.
Furthermore, the most likely result, even for the few selected, will be the development of solid and efficient (but not artful and creative) players at the professional level. This truth has played itself out repeatedly in places such as China and the former East Germany as well as in Canada with hockey players, where for many years attempts have been made to identify and develop top-level athletes at early ages. The main problem is that adult selectors, knowing what it takes physically, mentally and socially to play the game at the highest adult levels, tend to focus on those attributes in players who still have many years to mature in these areas.
The Late Physical Developer
The result often is that both the players selected and those not selected are harmed by this early selection process. Most players are excluded because they may not be as advanced physically as others. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning ignores the well documented fact that the majority of physically precocious players ultimately become only mediocre athletes.
More often it is the late developers, whose muscles have grown and adapted over a longer period, who develop the sustained strength, coordination and speed required of top-level athletes. Yet in our quest to predict future players, we often mistakenly focus most of our resources on the precocious developers, who, we believe, exhibit the physical qualities of future high-level players.
The late developers most certainly will develop these attributes as they mature, but with our current process they are relegated to a track where they are not being offered the opportunities to participate in a better environment with better coaching during these formative years for development. Unfortunately, their early exclusion often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Later, when they do mature physically, they may no longer be interested or may consider themselves too far behind to catch up. Paul Scholes comes to mind as a player who easily could have been left behind based on early physical development.
The Precocious Physical Developer
Most of the physically precocious players who are selected early face equally negative effects for different reasons. First, as noted above, their early physical development may not portend future development at the same rate. More important, perhaps, many of them will be on track to becoming cookie-cutter players who solve problems in efficient, prescribed ways but lack novelty, flair and artistry. The reasons for this are numerous. First, because their physical advancement initially warranted attention, it often is the quality that both they and their coaches tend to develop. It is natural to do so because it brings immediate success. This natural emphasis, along with the flawed perception that because of their early physical ability they really are playing at a higher level, often means that players will be encouraged to do what they naturally do best rather than experiment with new ideas (as they did and would do in street soccer) for fear of failure.
For example, a player with exceptional running speed often is put into areas of the field that are more open, where physical speed offers an immediate advantage. Such players seldom are allowed to play in areas or positions where they must develop and rely on qualities other than speed to succeed. This is especially true when the players have been selected to participate with a small group of highly competitive players who also have been identified for certain precocious “strengths.” The increased competitive environment, regardless of the adult’s intent to place less emphasis on results, requires players to rely more heavily development, players may mature at different rates, with differences in on their particular strength just to survive rather than feel free to experiment, as might be done in street soccer.
The difficulty with the concept of not focusing on results is that it runs counter to everything else that is organized in society. When things are organized, there is a constant tendency to seek measurement of success by comparison. By selecting a few players at too young an age, we unconsciously feed this because the pool for comparison is so small.
It is not surprising that in such an environment, young players confine their efforts to their particular precocious qualities simply to stay with the elite program. They should be experimenting freely with many different ways to solve the game’s problems. Later, at age 16 or 17, the particular quality or qualities may no longer be special. Then, when results are considered more important, and the pressure to succeed is more intense, the player often finds it difficult to discover new ways to solve the game’s problems.
Cognitive Development
The physical differences between the precocious and late developer often are more readily apparent than a player’s precocious or late cognitive development. These differences do not necessarily occur simultaneously in the same player.
The very nature of the game itself, as a free-flowing, ever-changing environment, demands that the highest-level players quickly assimilate what is happening around them and make split-second decisions concerning different solutions to problems the game presents, with and without the ball, i.e., the ability to think abstractly. Therefore it is crucial that we understand and accommodate how children learn and their built-in cognitive limitations at certain stages or we will be doomed to devise development programs that continue to make relatively little progress.
Perhaps the leading authority on the stages of cognitive development is Jean Piaget. He described four stages of development, three of which should concern us when considering players aged 7 and up. Piaget noted that people must pass through each stage at their own speed (no one can be forced to skip a stage).
Of central importance for Piaget is the participation of the learner. Knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally, but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. Thus, children learn in active learning environments, where they explore, experiment and search out answers for themselves to the problems presented – the very environment the street soccer of old provided.
But creating the environment for active participation is not enough. Piaget stated that, in addition to participating, children must be “ready” to learn, i.e., their ability to learn cognitive content always is related to their stage of intellectual development. Simply put, children who are at a certain stage of development cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage.
So what does this mean for developing prospective soccer players?
Pre-Operational Stage of Development
Some of the younger players between the ages of 7 and 11 still are in Piaget’s Pre-Operational Stage, which means that they cannot think logically in the adult sense. They are also ego-centric, meaning that they consider things only from their own point of view and imagine that others share this point of view because it is the only one possible. A late developer in this area will not be able to understand the concept of sharing the toy (the ball) so they will not cognitively be able to understand the concept of, or see the opportunities for, passing. Yet, in a system that selects only 10 7-year-olds, a late developer probably will not be considered because it appears that he or she is just a ball-hog who is not interested in passing. By opening up the program to larger numbers, there is much less likelihood of making this mistake.
Concrete Operations Stage
Most players between the ages of 7 and 11 are at this stage. They have the ability to develop logical thought about an object, such as the ball or another player, but they can do so only if they are able to see, and, in the case of the ball, touch it. Even though at this stage players may have developed a point of view beyond themselves, it is “concretely” related to objects. They cannot think abstractly. So, even though they may dribble around players or can learn to pass a ball to another player, they do not see the space behind and beside players and they cannot understand or visualize passing a ball or running into empty space to receive a pass, or even the basic concept of a wall pass, because such ideas involve abstract thinking.
Formal Operations Stage
Most adolescents develop this stage of thinking between the ages of 11 and 16. It is only at this stage that the structures of development become the abstract, logically organized system of adult intelligence the game demands. When faced with complex problems, the adolescent speculates about all the possible solutions before trying them out in the real world. As discussed above, the game itself involves a myriad of decisions and problem-solving, and it is really at this stage of cognitive development that players can fully develop as players. Yet, how many players have we missed because we limited our selection before the age of 16?
For the same reasons that we must be careful not to ignore a late physical developer, we also must not do so with a late cognitive developer. In these preadolescent and early adolescent years, the fact that a particular player may not have yet matured in this cognitive stage does not mean that he will not develop into a future soccer genius. Once again, in this area, as well as the physical arena, developmental maturity is not uniform, and one cannot reliably select future stars. Therefore, increasing the numbers dramatically improve the predictions.
CONCLUSION
The concepts you have raised are extremely important for improving the development of young players. The linchpin, however, for such efforts to coalesce into a leap forward will require that many more players be involved at each age level – say, for example, 50 per club in each age bracket rather than the current 10. There is a saying: “The cream always rises to the top.” The point is that though you are concerned with finding and developing the cream for the Premier League, you must first take care, in the early ages, of raising the general level, above which the cream must rise. This can be accomplished only through providing an environment that reaches and affects more, rather than fewer, young players.
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