So buy your son a pair of boots...........................
What must your boy have if he to stand a chance of making it to the top?
Skill, Courage and Character, WHAT no PACE? Well I suppose this was 1971 and the game was played a bit slower and the tactics and everything else were that bit different.
I spent most of yesterday trying to achieve just that..................buy Anthony
TWO pairs of boots to replace the ones that he's fast growing out of, even though he only got them at the start of the season.
One pair (moldies) are in almost pristine condition as he hardly ever plays on real turf and the other "Astro" ones are certainly looking war torn and battle scarred and getting a little too tight around the foot. Even though they might have to do when his mid season break ends after the weekend with training on Tuesday and Thursday nights followed by quickfire games on Friday evening and Saturday morning. We went through the usual pantomime of anything he likes not being available in his size, half the stock being no good as they're "pretty boys" gear rather than good, foot supportive and ball friction friendly. Then there's the staff at one mega place who haven't a single brain cell between them when it comes to product knowledge, so we'll be starting the whole process again on Saturday morning
It beats me incidentally, how someone like
Nike can promote a patent plastic shoe that is so light and shiny it offers no purchase on a ball surface, and so little support and protection as to be bloody useless. Of course the selling point is that they come in all colours and the only interest Anthony has ever shown in these came when he spied a pair of "Zebroskis" in Wycombe light blue and navy, but thankfully quickly became scornful of the "feel" of them declaring them to be "pants"
So the 1971 pre-requisites were
skill, courage and character; no mention of pace (as Dave says), none of two footedness, perfect first touch, great balance, superb awareness, clear knowledge of how to position one's body and address the ball, clear evidence of quickness of thinking and the ability to pre-determine where the ball is going
before being in receipt of it. Or was that all "skill" as far as 1971 was concerned?
Of course this
was 1971 and we were already light years behind the true world powers by then and these attributes were not even looked for as even a bench mark from which to extract potential as they were in Holland, Germany, Spain and France.
Not so long afterwards a young full back from that Lincoln programme ~
Graham Taylor ~ even further exacerbated the drop of skill and technique down the pecking order by picking the most mind numbingly bereft and poorly tactically aware England sides I have ever had misfortune to clap eyes on.
Our so called "top" stars didn't display all of that and boy didn't it show when exposed alongside the first foreign influx of players like Arnold Muhren, Ossie Ardlies, Ricky Villa and later Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola and Ruud Gullett.
Last night's
Sky game only served to underline the massive gulf between a largly patiently assembled and intensely developed Arsenal team of the present day and a Portsmouth side of mainly imported dross who's first touch was poor, awareness non existent and application scandalously absent on a night which should ensure
they be thoroughly ashamed to open their pay advice at the end of the month.
I see enough on a thrice weekly basis to convince me that we are now on the right tracks in this country, and certainly from my perspective; the Arsenal production line is functioning in marvelous fashion at the very young intake age of seven and eight whereas the nineteen seventies observation was being made form the point of sixteen year olds at youngest and in whom a lot could be overlooked as long as they looked and sounded like their rather bucholic and technique challenged peers in the First Team.
As the emergence of
Jake Thomson and
Adam Smith are proving to you all, the raw material
is there (and it always was) it's just now that even the ones who possibly stand not to make it or need a little more time to blossom at their parent clubs, can filter down to League 2 level and provide excellent entertainment for us all.
