Sunday 3 March 2013
Celtic's Youth Academy
The sight of youth products like Aiden McGeady thriving at Celtic FC could become commonplace as investment in the academy reaps rewards as Champions Matchday discovers.
Jock Stein once said the Celtic FC shirt does not shrink to fit inferior players. "Even at youth level that jersey can be heavy," says Chris McCart, who took over as head of the Glasgow club's youth development from the late Tommy Burns in 2008.
"Our main purpose as an academy is to create UEFA Champions League players for the first team," says the former Motherwell FC defender. "We make sure these boys are exposed to the best coaching, best sports science, best education and best medical attention – to give them every chance of getting through."
In the 1960s, the area was a conveyor belt of talent: Stein's European champions of '67 were all born within a 30-mile radius of Celtic Park. McCart admits that will be hard to replicate, yet the past has a big influence on the academy's plans. "Celtic have a rich history of entertaining supporters and playing attractive football, and we've always got that at the back of our philosophy," he says. "We want to play in a certain style and win in a certain style, and we don't want to win at all costs."
The development centre is split into three components. There is the junior academy, which accepts boys from as young as five, the intermediate academy, and the professional academy, which takes players through to age 20. After that, graduates join the first team or seek employment elsewhere.
In McCart's first year, he and the Scottish champions' chief executive Peter Lawwell visited several top European clubs, including AFC Ajax, SL Benfica and AC Milan, to see what the Bhoys could achieve. "We had to make sure we were getting it right at the bottom level," he says, "because if we don't get it right at the foundation level, then we weren't going to get it right at the top."
What they noticed were the benefits of relationships with local schools: "We came back and set up with St Ninian's High School in Kirkintilloch. It has been absolutely fantastic for us." The partnership allows academy boys from the west of Scotland to join the school – close to the club's training ground at Lennoxtown – to combine football development with full-time education. One pupil, Paul George, has already made the first team.
McCart says the academy's proudest moment in recent years was watching Prestwick-born James Forrest, a former Celtic Park ballboy, make his UEFA Champions League debut this season on matchday one. "James is a role model for the academy. They can now see, with a young player coming through and playing at Champions League level, that there are opportunities. So if they've got the talent, the opportunity comes with it."
With his €11.6m move to FC Spartak Moskva in 2010, Aiden McGeady became Scottish football's most expensive export, and his fee was used to rebuild the Celtic squad. The aim is that the success of a homegrown first team will keep Celtic strong financially. On Wednesday, Spartak's No8, recently back from injury, looks likely to return to the club where he was so influential. "We are delighted for Aiden, but we hope a Celtic player scores the winning goal," says McCart. "It would top it off if it was an academy player as well."
Tuesday 5 June 2012
WITH yet another major championship about to get under way without a Scottish presence, questions are again being asked about the underlying reasons for a run stretching back to France in 1998.
The failure to reach three World Cups and four European Championships is a sad indictment of the Scottish FA's long-running youth initiative, but could recent developments lead to a brighter future?
Lessons, it seems, are being learned from previous mistakes. It is now three years since Celtic started a project combining football and education on a scale never seen before in the British game. It was subsequently adopted at a lower age group by Dundee United, while the SFA will roll out seven performance schools of their own in August.
The footballing aim of the Celtic and Dundee United schools is unambiguous: to produce players of a Champions League calibre. The bigger picture is to nurture better educated, well-rounded citizens who will have decent academic qualifications to fall back on if the many pitfalls of life and professional sport take their toll.
It doesn't need the caricature of the thick, sozzled Scottish footballer, or the reality of teenagers being dumped by their clubs with no prospects ahead of them, to accept that any such initiative needs to be applauded. No matter what emerges in the wake of a second disastrous season for Scottish football, finding new, and better, ways to produce players is the only way the sport can survive in its professional guise.
The concept of football training being based round a school may be novel in Britain, but as Celtic's head of youth development, Chris McCart, discovered it is commonplace elsewhere in Europe. "In the first six months of 2008, myself, Peter Lawwell and John Park went around Europe, benchmarking clubs," he says. "We went to Red Star Belgrade, Partizan, Benfica, Villarreal, PSV Eindhoven – and one thing that struck us was that every club we went to based its youth development around a school. PSV was a great example.
There were about 25-30 buses taking their youth players in and out of the school."
In hugely fortuitous circumstances, St Ninian's High School in Kirkintilloch was chosen for the Celtic project. Not only was it close to the club's training academy at Lennoxtown, but the school itself had just been rebuilt and boasted new sports facilities, including football pitches and a fitness suite.
The headmaster, Paul McLaughlin, had been nominated Scotland's head teacher of the year and embraced the challenge of fitting in 14 new pupils into his S3 classes. This being the west of Scotland, it is sadly necessary to point out that St Ninian's is a Roman Catholic school but, despite the fact that 75% of the new Celtic intake were not of that religious faith, this issue has caused no problems whatsoever according to the head teacher.
This coming August, in the fourth year of the project, both school and club feel confident enough to introduce Celtic youth players at S2 level. Dundee United's project started in 2010, and they plunged in at the deep end, with boys being introduced to St John's High School in the city at S1 level under a very similar scheme sanctioned by Craig Levein when he was director of football at the club.
Two of the third-year pupils who kicked the Celtic project off in 2009, Paul George and Stuart Findlay, have already played for the first team. Findlay, a 16-year-old left-sided central defender, is an outstanding exemplar for the project. So successful was he that his parents and head teacher had a real dilemma when he was offered a full-time contract by Celtic this time last year; he had excelled in his Standard Grades and the school were very keen that he should stay on to sit his Highers. The player, who made his first-team debut in a recent testimonial match against Norwich City, decided to take the contract on offer but study for Highers in his own time at college. He recently sat English and Maths in between marking Grant Holt at Carrow Road and representing Scotland Under-20s in a tournament in Amsterdam.
What's most impressive about St Ninian's is the sacrifices the boys and their parents are making in a day which starts at 6am and usually finishes with an exhausted head hitting the pillow before 10pm. It was a regime familiar to McCart, a promising swimmer, when he himself was at school. But whereas other sports have long recognised there is no gain without early morning pain, Scottish football has been fatally resistant to the rather obvious point that players might actually have to work much harder, and make sacrifices, if they are to emulate the ever-improving standards of other nations.
Instead of the four evening training sessions they would otherwise have done, the boys at St Ninian's are bused in from their homes and are working hard on their skills long before the academic day starts. After school they are given until 5pm to do homework, and then it's more training at Lennoxtown before heading home.
None of this is cheap. It costs Celtic £200,000 a year to run the project, and that will increase with the new S2 age group in August. Transport costs alone are £75,000, including the salaries of two drivers. The club also provides coaches and tutors, as well as sports scientists and welfare officers.
Some boys come from other parts of Scotland and are housed with local families – another big cost for Celtic.
It's all inspiring, though, and this at a school which already provided Celtic with Paul Wilson, Stephen Crainey and Charlie Mulgrew without any such resources in place. McCart, who brings an intense professionalism to youth development, is in no doubt about what he wants the project to achieve.
"Our main purpose is to produce a Champions League player, a player of the very highest standard," he says. "We want to create a world-class academy, excelling in coaching, sports science and education.
"Whereas before these boys were only training for about eight hours a week, now it is up to 20 including a game. They are doing 800-900 hours a season, which is important because there is no magic formula for becoming a great footballer – it's down to hard work, dedication and practice.
"The players' education is improving and each has an individual programme from which we can demonstrate that their stamina, speed and jumping ability has improved dramatically. Now, when they go full time with us they are hitting the ground running. We have 24 players representing Scotland at age-group level, so we think we must be doing something right. We've also had English clubs coming up to look at what we're doing and they will be introducing schools into their elite academy programmes as well."
Not only is the project innovative and exciting, it is also wholesome and a reminder of what sport should be about in these morally bankrupt days when match fixing and repugnant tax avoidance schemes for millionaires have been stealing the headlines.
Saturday 9 July 2011
Premier League teams are making more use of sports scientists and fitness experts as they look to optimise their conditioning work before the new season
Mick McCarthy laughs as he recalls one of his early pre-season memories as a player with Barnsley. "It's a bit of a legendary story this one," the Wolverhampton Wanderers manager says, smiling. "We were doing a road run and we ran so far in Barnsley that a few of us got lost. As we had fallen such a long way behind the others, a small group of us decided to hitch a lift back to the ground. By the time everyone else got back, me and three others were already in the bath."
It is a stunt that a few have tried over the years, although there was no chance of anyone in the Wolves squad repeating the trick during their pre-season training camp in Ireland this week.
The days of gruelling long-distance road runs are a thing of the past because of the growing influence of sports science, while the introduction of state-of-the-art technology, including GPS tracking devices, means that there is no hiding place on the training ground, let alone in the back seat of a passing car.
Read on here -
Highly recommended reading ^
Mick McCarthy laughs as he recalls one of his early pre-season memories as a player with Barnsley. "It's a bit of a legendary story this one," the Wolverhampton Wanderers manager says, smiling. "We were doing a road run and we ran so far in Barnsley that a few of us got lost. As we had fallen such a long way behind the others, a small group of us decided to hitch a lift back to the ground. By the time everyone else got back, me and three others were already in the bath."
It is a stunt that a few have tried over the years, although there was no chance of anyone in the Wolves squad repeating the trick during their pre-season training camp in Ireland this week.
The days of gruelling long-distance road runs are a thing of the past because of the growing influence of sports science, while the introduction of state-of-the-art technology, including GPS tracking devices, means that there is no hiding place on the training ground, let alone in the back seat of a passing car.
Read on here -
Highly recommended reading ^
Friday 27 May 2011
Tuesday 7 December 2010
Total fitness from the land of Total Football
By John Sinnott
Nearly 40 years after Netherlands legends Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff unleashed Total Football on an unexpecting world, along comes a Dutchman espousing a new philosophy - periodisation.
If it is a concept that is unlikely to ever acquire Total Football's sexy cache, Raymond Verheijen believes periodisation - in essence a less is more approach to training - is important in allowing clubs to protect their key asset - players.
The 39-year-old Verheijen has an impressive pedigree.
He worked with Guus Hiddink, Frank Rijkaard, Louis van Gaal and Dick Advocaat at three World Cups and three European Championships with Netherlands, Russia and Korea, as well as with the Korean national team at the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
Rijkaard also used Verheijen when he coached Barcelona, as did Hiddink when he managed Chelsea, while Advocaat used the 39-year-old fitness expert when he was in charge of Zenit St Petersburg.
Former Manchester City boss Mark Hughes also turned to Verheijen at the start of the 2009-2010 season and Craig Bellamy has been so impressed by the Dutchman that he now pays to work with him at his own expense.
The objective of periodisation is to play every game with your best 11 players," Verheijen told BBC Sport during an hour-long interview, following a presentation at the UKSEM sports medicine conference at the end of last month.
"First of all because you want to win and secondly because the fans deserve to see the best players."
The idea that you start every game with your best team sounds like common sense.
But a look at the statistics shows that it does not always happen, even though it is estimated that up to 70% of Premier League clubs are using computer and medical analysis to measure player performance and fatigue levels.
The website physioroom.com's Premier League injury table on the weekend of 4-5 December recorded there were 108 top-flight players out of action.
On average, that is 5.4 players for each Premier League team or a fifth of each club's designated 25-man squad, with Aston Villa and Tottenham each having as many as 11 players on the treatment table over the weekend.
It is not just in England that clubs are having to juggle their resources due to injury. On the weekend of 20-21 November, 124 players were unavailable to play in Italy's Serie A due to injury.
Since former Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez took charge at Inter Milan, the Italian champions have come under particular scrutiny.
Up to 28 November, Inter had 37 injuries this season, it meant that those injured players missed a total of 68 games.
Before Inter played Spurs in the Champions League on 2 November, Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport identified 15 muscle-related injuries that had affected Inter players since the start of the 2009-10 campaign.
"All teams have injuries," Benitez said. "We have a certain amount of muscle-related injuries but 40% of them were picked up on national team duty. Also, 85% of them are recurring from last year."
But for Verheijen, injury clusters demand closer analysis.
He believes as many as 80% of injuries are preventable, arguing that fatigue due to overtraining is the cause, pointing out that 14 of the 23-man 2010 Dutch World Cup have already been injured this season.
"World Cup players start the pre-season fit but fatigued," stated Verheijen, whose football career was cut short by a hip injury. "So there is no need for fitness training in pre-season as this results in even more fatigue and, eventually, injuries due to a loss of coordination and control.
"People make training so important that it is like survival of the fittest and at the end of the week when you have a game you see who is left and say OK we will play with these 11 players."
Verheijen, who has a Uefa A coaching licence, argues that too many fitness coaches are not from a football background and do not fully understand the sport and its relationship to training and preparation.
"Coaches should take the games as a starting point and build training sessions around them so players can fully recover and start the next match fresh," he added.
"They are afraid their team will not be fit enough for the start of the season. However, with this 'high injury-risk' training regime - subconsciously - they make fitness development more important than team development."
Bellamy, who after leaving City continued to work with Verheijen at Cardiff, is a convert.
"Last season at Manchester City I really felt great and Verheijen played a big part in this," Bellamy told a Feyenoord fan magazine in October.
"In the past, I used to train at 100mph until I was exhausted. No wonder I always broke down halfway through the season. I always thought this was a logical consequence of my playing style and I even started training harder when I was not fit."
Periodisation has been around as nearly as long as Total Football.
Developed by Russian researcher Leo Matveev, it is an approach designed to prevent overtraining and result in peak performance.
Most clubs would claim that their fitness regimes are designed to achieve that aim, but Verheijen suspects it is not happening enough.
"If football is an intensity sport, then less is more and you have to focus on the quality of training instead of the quantity," stated Verheijen, whose bête noire is double-training sessions.
"Doing two sessions a day in pre-season...I really I don't understand, because all you are doing is exhausting your players," added Verheijen, who believes different types of players - young players who have just joined the first-team or experienced defenders - should each be following specialised training plans.
"By doing one session a day with maximum intensity, when you come to November and December you're players will be much fitter and fresher than they are normally are with the traditional approach."
Both Bellamy and Carlos Tevez were vocal critics of City manager Roberto Mancini's insistence on weekly double training sessions last season.
Within 10 days of Mancini taking over from Hughes in December 2009, Joleon Lescott, Sylvinho, Roque Santa Cruz, Stephen Ireland, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Micah Richards and Nigel De Jong all picked up injuries.
"That was amateur stuff," said Verheijen.
"You take over a team that has the best statistics in the Premier League in terms of work rate - the most sprints - and you have the best injury record, based on a quality approach: one session a day, with maximum intensity that is no longer than 90 minutes.
"Then you take over and you start doing two sessions, each session two hours long, which is totally the opposite."
City insist those injuries were due to a glut of games over the Christmas period last season.
"Injuries are inevitable in this period for any club," said a City spokesman in a statement.
"Sylvinho, De Jong, Santa Cruz, Wright-Phillips were all fit for the 4-1 win at home to Blackburn on 11 January - Mancini's first league game after the 10-day period mentioned.
"Lescott and Richards had injury problems both before and after Mancini's arrival last December, so attributing those problems to his arrival is also unfair," added the spokesman, pointing out that City have only one player - Emmanuel Adebayor - who is injured at the moment.
When Verheijen worked with Rijkaard at Barcelona and Hughes at Manchester City, his ideas were initially greeted with scepticism by the players.
None more so than Bellamy, who was so distrustful that he kept a training diary over six weeks during pre-season ahead of the 2009-2010 season so he could argue that Verheijen had been wrong.
"He wrote the diary to kill us with it afterwards," said Verheijen. "But after six weeks it was the first pre-season that he did not get injured in his career."
Verheijen, who has also studied exercise physiology and sport psychology as well as taking a one-year Science in Football course, is not without his critics. Craig Duncan, head of human performance at Sydney FC, argues a reduction in training is not always positive.
"A problem is that there needs to be more corrective work to decrease the risk of injury through faulty movement patterns," Duncan commented.
"Specific strength training also needs to be incorporated as does flexibility and I have also had positive results from yoga.
"This is all supplementary work to work completed on the pitch. Recovery strategies also need to be enhanced so we don't necessarily have to train less just train smarter."
Other critics of Verheijen argue that his almost injury-free record is distorted by primarily working with international teams and also as a consultant.
Verheijen admits it is more difficult being a consultant but still firmly believes his methods are better than those employed by most coaches.
"A lot of coaches treat all the players the same way, whatever their age, whatever their body composition, whatever their injury history, whatever their playing position - everybody is doing the same training," Verheijen said.
"The culture in football is you either train or you don't train and there is nothing in between."
It is a culture he has spent his career trying to change and he will continue to preach his gospel to the unconverted.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9239342.stm
By John Sinnott
Nearly 40 years after Netherlands legends Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff unleashed Total Football on an unexpecting world, along comes a Dutchman espousing a new philosophy - periodisation.
If it is a concept that is unlikely to ever acquire Total Football's sexy cache, Raymond Verheijen believes periodisation - in essence a less is more approach to training - is important in allowing clubs to protect their key asset - players.
The 39-year-old Verheijen has an impressive pedigree.
He worked with Guus Hiddink, Frank Rijkaard, Louis van Gaal and Dick Advocaat at three World Cups and three European Championships with Netherlands, Russia and Korea, as well as with the Korean national team at the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
Rijkaard also used Verheijen when he coached Barcelona, as did Hiddink when he managed Chelsea, while Advocaat used the 39-year-old fitness expert when he was in charge of Zenit St Petersburg.
Former Manchester City boss Mark Hughes also turned to Verheijen at the start of the 2009-2010 season and Craig Bellamy has been so impressed by the Dutchman that he now pays to work with him at his own expense.
The objective of periodisation is to play every game with your best 11 players," Verheijen told BBC Sport during an hour-long interview, following a presentation at the UKSEM sports medicine conference at the end of last month.
"First of all because you want to win and secondly because the fans deserve to see the best players."
The idea that you start every game with your best team sounds like common sense.
But a look at the statistics shows that it does not always happen, even though it is estimated that up to 70% of Premier League clubs are using computer and medical analysis to measure player performance and fatigue levels.
The website physioroom.com's Premier League injury table on the weekend of 4-5 December recorded there were 108 top-flight players out of action.
On average, that is 5.4 players for each Premier League team or a fifth of each club's designated 25-man squad, with Aston Villa and Tottenham each having as many as 11 players on the treatment table over the weekend.
It is not just in England that clubs are having to juggle their resources due to injury. On the weekend of 20-21 November, 124 players were unavailable to play in Italy's Serie A due to injury.
Since former Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez took charge at Inter Milan, the Italian champions have come under particular scrutiny.
Up to 28 November, Inter had 37 injuries this season, it meant that those injured players missed a total of 68 games.
Before Inter played Spurs in the Champions League on 2 November, Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport identified 15 muscle-related injuries that had affected Inter players since the start of the 2009-10 campaign.
"All teams have injuries," Benitez said. "We have a certain amount of muscle-related injuries but 40% of them were picked up on national team duty. Also, 85% of them are recurring from last year."
But for Verheijen, injury clusters demand closer analysis.
He believes as many as 80% of injuries are preventable, arguing that fatigue due to overtraining is the cause, pointing out that 14 of the 23-man 2010 Dutch World Cup have already been injured this season.
"World Cup players start the pre-season fit but fatigued," stated Verheijen, whose football career was cut short by a hip injury. "So there is no need for fitness training in pre-season as this results in even more fatigue and, eventually, injuries due to a loss of coordination and control.
"People make training so important that it is like survival of the fittest and at the end of the week when you have a game you see who is left and say OK we will play with these 11 players."
Verheijen, who has a Uefa A coaching licence, argues that too many fitness coaches are not from a football background and do not fully understand the sport and its relationship to training and preparation.
"Coaches should take the games as a starting point and build training sessions around them so players can fully recover and start the next match fresh," he added.
"They are afraid their team will not be fit enough for the start of the season. However, with this 'high injury-risk' training regime - subconsciously - they make fitness development more important than team development."
Bellamy, who after leaving City continued to work with Verheijen at Cardiff, is a convert.
"Last season at Manchester City I really felt great and Verheijen played a big part in this," Bellamy told a Feyenoord fan magazine in October.
"In the past, I used to train at 100mph until I was exhausted. No wonder I always broke down halfway through the season. I always thought this was a logical consequence of my playing style and I even started training harder when I was not fit."
Periodisation has been around as nearly as long as Total Football.
Developed by Russian researcher Leo Matveev, it is an approach designed to prevent overtraining and result in peak performance.
Most clubs would claim that their fitness regimes are designed to achieve that aim, but Verheijen suspects it is not happening enough.
"If football is an intensity sport, then less is more and you have to focus on the quality of training instead of the quantity," stated Verheijen, whose bête noire is double-training sessions.
"Doing two sessions a day in pre-season...I really I don't understand, because all you are doing is exhausting your players," added Verheijen, who believes different types of players - young players who have just joined the first-team or experienced defenders - should each be following specialised training plans.
"By doing one session a day with maximum intensity, when you come to November and December you're players will be much fitter and fresher than they are normally are with the traditional approach."
Both Bellamy and Carlos Tevez were vocal critics of City manager Roberto Mancini's insistence on weekly double training sessions last season.
Within 10 days of Mancini taking over from Hughes in December 2009, Joleon Lescott, Sylvinho, Roque Santa Cruz, Stephen Ireland, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Micah Richards and Nigel De Jong all picked up injuries.
"That was amateur stuff," said Verheijen.
"You take over a team that has the best statistics in the Premier League in terms of work rate - the most sprints - and you have the best injury record, based on a quality approach: one session a day, with maximum intensity that is no longer than 90 minutes.
"Then you take over and you start doing two sessions, each session two hours long, which is totally the opposite."
City insist those injuries were due to a glut of games over the Christmas period last season.
"Injuries are inevitable in this period for any club," said a City spokesman in a statement.
"Sylvinho, De Jong, Santa Cruz, Wright-Phillips were all fit for the 4-1 win at home to Blackburn on 11 January - Mancini's first league game after the 10-day period mentioned.
"Lescott and Richards had injury problems both before and after Mancini's arrival last December, so attributing those problems to his arrival is also unfair," added the spokesman, pointing out that City have only one player - Emmanuel Adebayor - who is injured at the moment.
When Verheijen worked with Rijkaard at Barcelona and Hughes at Manchester City, his ideas were initially greeted with scepticism by the players.
None more so than Bellamy, who was so distrustful that he kept a training diary over six weeks during pre-season ahead of the 2009-2010 season so he could argue that Verheijen had been wrong.
"He wrote the diary to kill us with it afterwards," said Verheijen. "But after six weeks it was the first pre-season that he did not get injured in his career."
Verheijen, who has also studied exercise physiology and sport psychology as well as taking a one-year Science in Football course, is not without his critics. Craig Duncan, head of human performance at Sydney FC, argues a reduction in training is not always positive.
"A problem is that there needs to be more corrective work to decrease the risk of injury through faulty movement patterns," Duncan commented.
"Specific strength training also needs to be incorporated as does flexibility and I have also had positive results from yoga.
"This is all supplementary work to work completed on the pitch. Recovery strategies also need to be enhanced so we don't necessarily have to train less just train smarter."
Other critics of Verheijen argue that his almost injury-free record is distorted by primarily working with international teams and also as a consultant.
Verheijen admits it is more difficult being a consultant but still firmly believes his methods are better than those employed by most coaches.
"A lot of coaches treat all the players the same way, whatever their age, whatever their body composition, whatever their injury history, whatever their playing position - everybody is doing the same training," Verheijen said.
"The culture in football is you either train or you don't train and there is nothing in between."
It is a culture he has spent his career trying to change and he will continue to preach his gospel to the unconverted.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9239342.stm
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Here is another article I came across on Ajax Youth Academy - makes interesting reading.
============================
Terry Michler, CBC Cadets and CBC Dutch Touch CampsTerry Michler, Head Coach of the CBC Cadets boys program in St Louis (current large school state champions) and the CBC Dutch Touch International Soccer Program recently returned from his annual Spring Trip to Holland (March 24 thru April 3). The trip offers an opportunity for a small group of youth players to experience international soccer and culture. As part of the trips, Coach Michler regularly invests in his on-going education. Here are his notes from that trip.
On our most recent trip to Holland (March, 2010), Jan Pruijn arranged a meeting for us with Patrick Ladru, currently the Assistant Director of the Ajax Youth Academy at the Ajax Youth Training Center (Toekomst) in Amsterdam. The meeting lasted 45 minutes and was a very informative session. Following the sit-down session, we followed Patrick out to the training pitch and watched as he conducted a training session for the Ajax U 10s.
Terry Michler, Soccer Coach at CBC High School and Director of the CBC Dutch Touch International Program, Mike Freitag, Technical Director of the Colorado Soccer Association and former coach at Indiana University, and Tom Fairshon, assistant coach at CBC, asked Patrick questions about player development at Ajax and throughout Holland. Patrick provided very detailed answers and we were all very thankful and appreciative of his time, expertise and willingness to share.
Patrick has been a coach at Ajax for 19 years and has been in the Ajax videos, dating back to the Dreaming of Ajax video in the early 1990’s. He is also in the current series, Heroes of the Future.
How do you choose players for selection in the youngest age group for the first time experience at Ajax? How many players do you have in the youngest age group?
Ajax will have players recommended from different sources. Ajax will bring in 20 of the youngest players for a trial. From the 20, they will pick the best 5 players, based on who they rated as the best overall, in all capacities. They will then bring in another 20 trialist and repeat the same procedure. All in all, they will repeat this process 4 times. Then they will bring in the second group of 20 for a final selection. From that group of 20 they will pick 10 players, to include 1 keeper. This will become their F level team (U 9). Ajax currently has only 1 team in the F level.
How many players are in the Ajax Youth Academy at the various levels? What are the various levels of the Youth Academy at Ajax?
From the youngest to the oldest Youth teams:
F level U 9 9 players, 1 keeperE 3 U 10 9 players, 1 keeperE 2 U 10/11 8 player U 10, 3 players U 11, 1 keeperE 1 U 11 14 players, 1 keeperD 2 U 12 15 players. 2 keepersD 1 U 13 15 players, 2 keepers
Patrick did not go into the older ages and levels, but Ajax continues with the following Junior teams:
C 2 U 14C 1 U 15B 2 U 16B 1 U 17A 2 U 18A 1 U 19
The next step is the Senior teams: reserve team (Jong Ajax) and the First Team. Ajax currently has some 60 players on professional contracts.
What do you and Ajax see as a natural developmental progression of activities (competitions) to gain the necessary soccer insight and proper playing experience?
Currently, the Dutch federation endorses 4v4, 7v7 and 11v11.
Patrick gave us his plan of competitive progression.
U 8 4 v 4 30 x 20m field 3 x 1m goal
U 9 6 v 6 (5 + keeper) 40 X 30m 4 X 2m
U 10 8 v 8 50 x 40m 5 x 2m
U 11 9 v 9 60 x 50m 6 x 2m
U 12 11 v 11 full field full size
Why do you think that this is best?
It should always be about what is best for the children. You must take into account the variance in growth development – physical and mental. Growth is never a steady incline, but rather more like steps, with small and gradual progressions. The various levels of competition represent the various developmental stages.
What is Ajax doing to improve soccer in Holland beyond Ajax? What do you do in the same area?
Ajax has just launched a new on-line academy for youth coaches (www.ajaxonlineacademy.nl). The website will be available in English in May of 2010. Ajax recognizes the need to help coaches of youth in general. From Ajax’s point of view, it is also an investment in a better soccer product. The youngest team at Ajax is U 9 – up to that point the players play and develop outside of the Ajax system. From the ages of 5-9, the young players must develop with their local amateur clubs. Ajax now has a solution to improve the product of youth soccer in the Netherlands.
Patrick conducts many coaching education activities for the amateur youth coaches to better help them develop the young players in Holland. When asked if Ajax is getting the same number of top young players as in the past, his response was that yes they are, but maybe not as many.
What exactly does the on-line academy offer the youth coaches?
The Program consists of 7 topic areas – each topic is presented through diagrams, animation, videos and a written explanation. Each activity is presented with the proper set up, objectives, rotations and progressions. The programs are age-appropriate and provide the coaches with all they need to carry out an appropriate training session, in the Ajax way.
The 7 topic areas are:
Pass / ReceiveTechnical TrainingPositional PlayHeadingFinishing on GoalPositional Game Play (functional training)Games – many variations
Player Evaluation
Ajax is constantly evaluating their players and also looking to improve their teams. At different times during the year, usually around school holidays, Ajax will bring in selected players for a trial. They are looking to see if the trialist is better than the last few players on the current teams. Ajax decides on each player if they will be returned or released for the following year. The evaluation process is daily.
Video analysis plays a big part in the evaluation process. Three times a year Ajax will video a tactical session and rate the player’s performance. The first video taping occurs in the first days of the season, the second in January, and the third in May. In addition to training sessions and games, Ajax will tape a particular activity per age group to measure progress and development.
U 9 3 v 1U 10 4 v 2U 11 5 v 3U 12 6 v 4U 13 7 v 5At the end of the season, the coach will pass along all of his player information (reports and videos) to the next coach who will take over the team the following year. The players move to the next level, the coaches stay at the same level – this allows for greater consistency in the evaluation process. So the U 9 coach will send along all the information to the U 10 coach who then will be very informed of his players before they even take to the pitch.
At Ajax, it is very important that the records on player development are accurately taken and maintained. It is the coach’s responsibility to maintain accurate records and to pass them along at the end of the season. Continuity is a big part of the entire operation. Everyone must be working in the same direction.
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Terry Michler, CBC Cadets and CBC Dutch Touch CampsTerry Michler, Head Coach of the CBC Cadets boys program in St Louis (current large school state champions) and the CBC Dutch Touch International Soccer Program recently returned from his annual Spring Trip to Holland (March 24 thru April 3). The trip offers an opportunity for a small group of youth players to experience international soccer and culture. As part of the trips, Coach Michler regularly invests in his on-going education. Here are his notes from that trip.
On our most recent trip to Holland (March, 2010), Jan Pruijn arranged a meeting for us with Patrick Ladru, currently the Assistant Director of the Ajax Youth Academy at the Ajax Youth Training Center (Toekomst) in Amsterdam. The meeting lasted 45 minutes and was a very informative session. Following the sit-down session, we followed Patrick out to the training pitch and watched as he conducted a training session for the Ajax U 10s.
Terry Michler, Soccer Coach at CBC High School and Director of the CBC Dutch Touch International Program, Mike Freitag, Technical Director of the Colorado Soccer Association and former coach at Indiana University, and Tom Fairshon, assistant coach at CBC, asked Patrick questions about player development at Ajax and throughout Holland. Patrick provided very detailed answers and we were all very thankful and appreciative of his time, expertise and willingness to share.
Patrick has been a coach at Ajax for 19 years and has been in the Ajax videos, dating back to the Dreaming of Ajax video in the early 1990’s. He is also in the current series, Heroes of the Future.
How do you choose players for selection in the youngest age group for the first time experience at Ajax? How many players do you have in the youngest age group?
Ajax will have players recommended from different sources. Ajax will bring in 20 of the youngest players for a trial. From the 20, they will pick the best 5 players, based on who they rated as the best overall, in all capacities. They will then bring in another 20 trialist and repeat the same procedure. All in all, they will repeat this process 4 times. Then they will bring in the second group of 20 for a final selection. From that group of 20 they will pick 10 players, to include 1 keeper. This will become their F level team (U 9). Ajax currently has only 1 team in the F level.
How many players are in the Ajax Youth Academy at the various levels? What are the various levels of the Youth Academy at Ajax?
From the youngest to the oldest Youth teams:
F level U 9 9 players, 1 keeperE 3 U 10 9 players, 1 keeperE 2 U 10/11 8 player U 10, 3 players U 11, 1 keeperE 1 U 11 14 players, 1 keeperD 2 U 12 15 players. 2 keepersD 1 U 13 15 players, 2 keepers
Patrick did not go into the older ages and levels, but Ajax continues with the following Junior teams:
C 2 U 14C 1 U 15B 2 U 16B 1 U 17A 2 U 18A 1 U 19
The next step is the Senior teams: reserve team (Jong Ajax) and the First Team. Ajax currently has some 60 players on professional contracts.
What do you and Ajax see as a natural developmental progression of activities (competitions) to gain the necessary soccer insight and proper playing experience?
Currently, the Dutch federation endorses 4v4, 7v7 and 11v11.
Patrick gave us his plan of competitive progression.
U 8 4 v 4 30 x 20m field 3 x 1m goal
U 9 6 v 6 (5 + keeper) 40 X 30m 4 X 2m
U 10 8 v 8 50 x 40m 5 x 2m
U 11 9 v 9 60 x 50m 6 x 2m
U 12 11 v 11 full field full size
Why do you think that this is best?
It should always be about what is best for the children. You must take into account the variance in growth development – physical and mental. Growth is never a steady incline, but rather more like steps, with small and gradual progressions. The various levels of competition represent the various developmental stages.
What is Ajax doing to improve soccer in Holland beyond Ajax? What do you do in the same area?
Ajax has just launched a new on-line academy for youth coaches (www.ajaxonlineacademy.nl). The website will be available in English in May of 2010. Ajax recognizes the need to help coaches of youth in general. From Ajax’s point of view, it is also an investment in a better soccer product. The youngest team at Ajax is U 9 – up to that point the players play and develop outside of the Ajax system. From the ages of 5-9, the young players must develop with their local amateur clubs. Ajax now has a solution to improve the product of youth soccer in the Netherlands.
Patrick conducts many coaching education activities for the amateur youth coaches to better help them develop the young players in Holland. When asked if Ajax is getting the same number of top young players as in the past, his response was that yes they are, but maybe not as many.
What exactly does the on-line academy offer the youth coaches?
The Program consists of 7 topic areas – each topic is presented through diagrams, animation, videos and a written explanation. Each activity is presented with the proper set up, objectives, rotations and progressions. The programs are age-appropriate and provide the coaches with all they need to carry out an appropriate training session, in the Ajax way.
The 7 topic areas are:
Pass / ReceiveTechnical TrainingPositional PlayHeadingFinishing on GoalPositional Game Play (functional training)Games – many variations
Player Evaluation
Ajax is constantly evaluating their players and also looking to improve their teams. At different times during the year, usually around school holidays, Ajax will bring in selected players for a trial. They are looking to see if the trialist is better than the last few players on the current teams. Ajax decides on each player if they will be returned or released for the following year. The evaluation process is daily.
Video analysis plays a big part in the evaluation process. Three times a year Ajax will video a tactical session and rate the player’s performance. The first video taping occurs in the first days of the season, the second in January, and the third in May. In addition to training sessions and games, Ajax will tape a particular activity per age group to measure progress and development.
U 9 3 v 1U 10 4 v 2U 11 5 v 3U 12 6 v 4U 13 7 v 5At the end of the season, the coach will pass along all of his player information (reports and videos) to the next coach who will take over the team the following year. The players move to the next level, the coaches stay at the same level – this allows for greater consistency in the evaluation process. So the U 9 coach will send along all the information to the U 10 coach who then will be very informed of his players before they even take to the pitch.
At Ajax, it is very important that the records on player development are accurately taken and maintained. It is the coach’s responsibility to maintain accurate records and to pass them along at the end of the season. Continuity is a big part of the entire operation. Everyone must be working in the same direction.
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