AUSTRALIA'S FOOTBALL REVOLUTION * Skills program (1500 drills) to be used as foundation training at age six. * Elite development pathway to start with eight-year-olds. * Stricter implementation of youth coaching licences at junior levels; compulsory qualifications for all senior levels. * 4-3-3 mandated as preferred formation for all teams, once 11-a-side football starts at age 13. http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/fo...all-master-plan/2009/05/01/1240982406760.html
Although some of these ideas are great- ie the small sided games, skills training, coaches requiring licences etc, I'm not sure about the encouragement of the 4-3-3 system as THE formation to play with. Its fine if you have someone to lead it up the top, but what if you don't? What if your two best strikers are small little fellas who are quick and nippy, do they get forced onto the wings as they don't suit the mould of the 1 up top? I'm well aware of the current trend to have only one sriker as such. usually a stronger player who can hold up the ball, head the ball well, bring others into play running off him. But what if you want to play with two legitimate strikers? Is this considered the devil's work- or would I just be palmed off as a Pom? Thoughts?
To do this is definitely throwing the nation in the deep end of the pool. It's a huge ask that might not pay off for a couple of decades. It's more of a strain on the current youth coaching, really. Implementing 1500 drills will be a massive task, and while it could easily help speed up development, it could greatly hinder, considering the current skills and experience (or lack thereof) of a lot of youth coaches. Will be interesting to see how this effects the next year or two. Seems to make grassroots coaching sort of redundant (more like a refresher course). I hear that the FFA will be trying to reduce course costs as much as possible, though, which should ease the pressure, and encourage more people to become better-qualified. Continual development of coaching education is key to our future situation. We want to ensure we're on par with - or ahead of - most of the top-level European coaching countries. Providing as many resources as possible (more course dates across states, more component courses, et cetera) will play a large part in this. The formation idea is an interesting one. It's only encouraging teams to use this formation - probably understanding some limitations - but to enforce it on all levels of national team is an odd decision. Being only the platform, however, means it's not the be all and end all for the Socceroos. It's probably a foundation idea, loosely based on the 'Total Football' revolution, allowing players to move freely between positions, which also helps develop their skill set to adapt in various situations.
I think the idea is that all are taught how to play 4-3-3. I don't believe that you can mandate that everyone must play 4-3-3 all the time. The circumstances in matches change and teams need to change systems. A good coach will ensure that his team understands different systems and can play to them. Whether its the best system or not is debatable, as the best system will depend on what players a team has and how the opponents play. I suppose its a start. When I was a young junior player in the late 60's and early seventies we were taught the old WM system (3-4-3), and gradually moved on to a 1-4-3-3 system, although we sometimes played 1-4-2-4. I can't ever remember playing 4-4-2. Obviously our coach came from eastern Europe rather than England, although it was the coach of English background that had us playing WM.
I understand the hestiation of using 4-3-3. But this is about Youth development not senior elite. However the benefits of this apporach is that it forces the best of the players to specialise thier skills more and be more attacking and eventually stronger player for it. It's about development because having 4-3-3 can be easily turn to 4-4-2 or 3-4-3 or even the fancy 4-3-1-2 or defensive 4-3-2-1 simply by shift only one player in the formation. Sure it seems to out of touch to have one team with 4-3-3 formations but if you have several teams with 4-3-3 you should be able to find players to suit any of the above formations according to the coaches and players compability. It will stimulate players competitiveness. Sure the pressure is on the CM and the CF to perform with the Wide midfielders and wingers being more specialised and there is a bit of space on the midfield width rather than the compact midfield depth, but it is for the specialised development. They really do get more utilisation of space. When they get to A-league, they will find it easiler to adapt in the different formations. You will find that having 4-3-3 changing to 3-4-3 or 4-4-2 later on in development will bring out the best of the better players so they will freely move between the three blocks of defence, midfield and attack. If youth development is 4-4-2 you have players to set in their ways and not really getting to move between the block as well as they should. They will lazy in learning positional movements. Thereas 4-3-3 is easy to learn where the positions are but also flexible to learning the movements because of the lateral movements and passing angles will open up. Having 4-4-2 in youth developmemt will strife the lateral movements and you will get the same long pass, small angles and plenty of interceptions and so a messly unskillful development. Specialising the wingers and the centre forward provides good developmental challenges in attack and teach them good attacking combinations. You will find that a soild CF combining with either one of the two wingers will establish the combination foundations for the two forward up front in the 4-4-2 as well as developing the third forward as a supporting option. This will establish understanding of using the three man movement will break down most defences. You need your Riggs and Rolando types players and encourage them combinations and awareness. The 4-3-3 is the best foundation to work off. Again it helps having a third forward that knows how to combine with the other two forwards up front. It is generally easy to combine two forwards up front but the introduction of a third forward is very tricky to learn. The combinations of three forwards are usually difficult to pull because there is not enough forwards that understands how to play with three forwards upfront and so the third forward is rendered useless and inflexible. By having three forwards in a youth development, this will not be a problem later on and at the end of the day, the combinations of three forwards will potentially overwhelm four in defence by having the intitative of the ball attack. It will test and lift up the defence combination as well. We don't see enough of three forward attacks because there is a lack of development. If you play three forwards upfront, those forwards can switch to a two forward up front. However, if you play with only two forwards upfront, don't except them to know what to do if you switch to a three forward attack in the dying stage of the game if you are desparate for the win of draw being on the backfoot. 4-3-3 will also developing the central forward as well because there will be times that there no support in the centre form the other wingers or midfielders so they are forced to adapt in the game situation. Eventually you will have a forward that is able to do many things and not the one thing. By having a second forward in a 4-4-2, there is too much dependence with a second forward and actually too much lateral movement making those forwards doing too much winger roles where they should learn to shoot/finish and have a better box forward and go forward finishing with lesser lateral space to worry about. They need to learn to met the crosses and not make the crosses. It's about the long term development and if more people follow this, your football will improve greatly.
Now this is bloody interesting. For big news I don't really have much to say on it except that any change can probably be a good change. In all fairness, though, it's going to take a number of years to see where this will lead us - hopefully in the right direction, of course.
What is about this Dutch thing? Why are they trying to make all coaches & teams play the same? I agree that to get a junior Lic is easy but why cant coaches implament their own judgment & ideas. If we go down the path of this "new curriculum" we might as well invent robots to coach juniors because at the end of the day they will all be the same. Do we realy want players from all over the world to play with the same idea? The beuty of this game at the moment & in the past is that most all countries play their game differently with their own ideas. This I am sorry to say has come about because of the World cup Australia is trying to host. Australia has been never ale to compete at a level of Europe with skill but we are tough & never give up. Besides with the other 2 codes we have it will never happen & soccer will allways take a backseat, the powers that be will make sure of it.
You're taking a misconstrued idea of what the national curriculum is doing. It is improving the grass roots level by implementing technical and tactical training from the Dutch. And who said these coaches will be the same? They may be taught the same thing but it does not mean they will teach the exact same thing. Humans aren't dogs so give us some credit here, each coach will have their own style and tactical ideologies. Regardless if they are taught from the Dutch school of thought, you will still find coaches playing various formations, though the key difference is that the standard of playing will rise. So no, realistically junior coaches will not become robots, but I would love to see that, ha. What does that have to do with anything? Improving grass roots football has no direct correlation to the outcome of the Australian World Cup bid. Tell me where you see this link, I would love to hear your thinking on this. But to me, you seem to put more incoherent rambling than actual constructive comments. If you haven't noticed, we put up some competitive fights against the likes of Ireland, Croatia, old enemies England, Netherlands, and Italy to name a few. Of course, you wouldn't know that since its your first day here and only here to merely disrupt the good nature of this forum by attempting to invoke a flame war. Soon enough you will disappear to oblivion thinking that rugby and AFL reign supreme but deep down you know that the real football is here and it is here to stay. Its a jingle out there, bro.
They don't actually play the same as Barcelona. They actually play quite different. Playing like Barcelona wouldn't work for the national team. Is this guy blind? Teaching like Barcelona is different to playing like Barcelona, and we're thankfully only trying to achieve the former.
