EUFA U'19 Championships

I would echo Rags' observations to the rafters!

That game offered a chilling example of the difference between the very best and England I'm afraid. Could this be the reason that some of our leading clubs are so truculant when releasing players to play in this set up? Is England U19's manager Noel Blake on the same wavelength as Liam Brady at Arsenal and Alex Inglethorpe at Spurs in the sort of football he promotes? Would Noel Blake even get a top youth development job at a leading English club? Judging by the sort of crap I saw being purveyed yesterday, I wouldn't want him near my son; full stop.

How can players who spend all their time learning to play "The Arsenal Way" or "The Tottenham Way" suddenly be expected to play the Blake way? Utter rubbish and indicative of the massive sorting out that Fabio Capello and Sir Trevor Brooking need to undertake pronto!

It was the same with the England U19 Schools side I saw play under the tutorship of Phil Nardiello...............another side of jumbo sized, flat footed defenders who belted the ball into the channels all night.

Brooking is right, we have to write off the age groups above the age of 11 and concentrate on cultivating true world Class from those younger.

My son played in a pre-season game at Brentford FC on Monday evening in a team of very talented North London lads and they absolutley mullered the club's existing CoE players. All of them were two footed whereas a lot of the Brentford lads weren't. All had a perfect first touch and the discipline to play the ball backwards if a forward or sideways ball wasn't on. All of them were confident enough to show for, and receive a ball under pressure, there was no launching of the ball into channels and although they all have the ability to take on and beat a man or turn and beat a man; they retained the discipline to take a touch and move the ball to a team mate, or take two or three at most before moving it on. This maximises the chances of retaining possession and is the stark difference between watching a Spanish National side and an English one in my opinion.

Watch Barcelona, Spain, or Arsenal and you will see this practiced all the time. Watch England and it's gone out of the window at the first sign of pressure because so many players can be made to become tense in possession when closed down and start giving the ball away.

We are years away from best practice in our football to an acceptable standard at international level in my opinion.

As a footnote, may I add that virtually the entire coaching set up at Brentford as it relates to the youngest age groups has been dispensed with and replaced this summer. From what I have seen there in the past three weeks, it's no bloody wonder!

Did the Dutch play the game in an aggressive and like thugs as you folks have seen in recent games or did they play the 'proper' way ?

No, this Dutch representative team played the game in the manner which maximises their strengths and technical expertise. Although I felt they got lucky with a scandalously disallowed England goal for a "handball" that simply never occurred, a draw would have been a travesty for them and they fully deserved to win.

I had to send an email in Dutch today to a software supplier. My dutch worked because I got the licence codes back in about 2 minutes. But I was addressed as Mefrouw Hayes instead of Meneer!

You can tell you live a bit too close to Ashburton Grove to fully understanding the need for teams like Stoke to compete with more established and richer teams in the Premiership I think Tony Pulis has done an excellent job at the Britannia but his tactics have got under the nose of certain managers who think football should only be played by smurfs, weaklings and shirkers who can't tackle but can pass, pass and pass! You never heard a moan from Man United and Chelsea when they played them. Just like an FA Cup tie against lower league opposition, you match them physically and then let the extra quality and class shine through.

Having said that, they're Academy and youth setup seems to be coached entirely by ex-defenders (Earl Barrett, Adrian Pennock and Hednesford Town defender Richard Walker who was coach under our very own Dean Edwards, he works for Stoke on a part time basis and coaches there under-11s) and by Ronnie Sinclair who played in goal for Stoke and Bristol City.

Maybe this is where we're going wrong in this country. I was stood next to a bloke at Canvey yesterday who's lad was on the bench for them and he remarked halfway through the second half that he thought the FC Twente side had probably never trained without the ball at their feet. You could see yesterday how well a young side coached by Rene Hake and ex Ipswich player Frans Thijssen kept the ball, were patient in possession, had two disciplined wingers who hugged the touchline and created space time and time again with incisive one touch passing.

There's an interesting article about Rene Hake here..

www.daytondailynews.com/dayton-sports/dayton-soccer-academy-takes-pointers-from-dutch-champions-721425.html?cxtype=ybuzz

But it's quite a good point to make that although Premiership clubs have been spending huge amounts on foreign players and or pinching players from overseas academies they don't seem to have brought in the best coaching from overseas either.

I think you also make a good point about coaches treating youth and under 19 football as a stepping stone to supposedly greater things. If you have a look at Ajax's youth team set up, the head is Bryan Roy and he has ex Ajax Goalkeeper Fred Grim as goalkeeping coach with ex Dutch international Dick Schoenaker to help him. At PSV Eindhoven there's a similar story. Jelle Goes is the academy director (he's only 40 years old and he's coached the Estonian national team, coached for the KNVB at Under 14, under 15 and under 23 level, and was the academy director at CSKA Moscow. His assistants at PSV are Marco Roelofson (who was head coach at 2nd Division FC Zwolle) and ex-internationals Wim Kieft and Patrick Kluivert, who of course have both been developed as players at academies and who probably understand how important they are.

At Chelsea you've got a bloke called Steve Holland who only got his UEFA Pro licence a few years ago but did work under Dario Gradi at Crewe.

Here's a link to the number of UEFA Pro Licenced coaches.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_managers_and_coaches_who_have_qualified_for_the_UEFA_Pro_Licence#Coaching_diplomas

There's quite a number who've failed as managers.

All Noel Blake did yesterday was to conjure up a bit of the old never say die spirit which still isn't a huge part of foreign football. If Arsenal players, managers and supporters showed a tiny bit of Stoke's enthusiam then they would be much more successful rather than turn up at "The Emirates", sit in their ultra comfy seats and expect to be entertained and then howl with derision like spoilt children when the smaller team don't lay down and die. If we could somehow find a way to coach our young players to compete on a technical basis and yet still have room to install some fight and passion into them.

My own personal opinion on this is that at the moment club's academies are full of fantastically skillful players but those who are just happy to sit on reasonably fat contracts.

EDIT - I just found this article from Steve McClaren on the very subject. Quite interesting.

news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8830170.stm

True enough. The problem is though that clubs like Stoke City, Bolton, Hull City, Burnley and West Brom are all trying to develop homegrown and in most cases English talent. Out of the top 8 teams (Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, Aston Villa, Spurs and Everton) you can see that only half of them have a decent amount of English players in their starting match day squads. Chelsea and Man City just go out and buy, Man United and Arsenal do make a concerted effort to blood youngsters, Spurs and Villa have pretty much bought their English players, although they both have young english players on the cusp of the first team squad and Everton have had to develop youngsters out of financial necessity and have benefited from Benitez's complete lack of interest in developing young players from the Liverpool area. After Roy Hodgson's work at Fulham I would imagine that Liverpool's academy might get a bit more attention.

We'll see how Pulis will develop the style of play. Tuncay, Matthew Etherington and Glenn Whelan are decent players with flair.

I guess you have two options available to you when you get promoted from the Championship to the Premiership. You either compete and develop a style which makes you hard to beat or you just take the money, get relegated and pocket the parachute payment as well. Stoke (a bit like Bolton before them) have been quite sensible, have invested wisely and have quite comfortably stayed in the division. West Brom and Burnley both played lovely football but went straight down.

Hull City on the other hand played without fear for half a season and then invested heavily in expensive waged players for the other season and a half and now they're in a panic to get rid of Jimmy Bullard and his £30,000 grand a week wages. It'll be interesting to see how Ian Holloway and Blackpool approach this season. I don't think they'll be able throw their fullbacks forward with quite so much wanton abandon this season.

Christ alone knows what the answer is. Anything to do with salary capping and enforcing a given number of homegrown English players will have to get UEFA, FIFA and EU approval. Maybe we should do a Norway and opt out of the EU completely! It might be a bit drastic but it'll stop this johnny foreigner purchasing.