News: Dutch players at home and abroad worthy to be tracked in connection with the Dutch NT - Part 4

IMO, this is the hardest position in the world to train for. I think some players are just born strikers with the necessary mindset and skills. If you look across all NTs, really good strikers are few and far between. I'm not sure why this is the case but it just is.

 

@DRB & Puck - I'm not going to complicate this post by quoting a lot of what has been said in the past 10 or so posts. Here is my perspective on things. A lot of years ago when I was in graduate school pursuing my PhD in chemistry I sat in on James Counsilman's course in biomechanics and kinesiology. Counsilman was one of the best swimming coaches in history and many US Olympic gold medal winning swimmers came from his program at Indiana University. He took a scientific approach to breaking down all of the particular muscle groups and actions and then tailored the program to improve those. As a young graduate student, I was teaching a first year chemistry lab and had three of the swimmers in my lab. I engaged them in a discussion of training methods and was surprised to hear that they spent the first 20 minutes using a kick board and just going back and forth using only their kick as propulsion (breaststrokers would use their kick and butterfliers theirs). Councilman felt from observing swimers that their kick was often underdeveloped and they were not swimming optimally as a result. A good part of the course was focused on the biomechanics of sports with particular emphasis on swimming and track. I found these lectures quite stimulating and I started looking at sports of all kinds with a different eye from that point on.

From a football perspective the two biggest things a player needs to become excellent are quickness (and associated reflex action) and field awareness. Quickness is mainly genetic and while it can be improved on, if you don't have some high baseline of quickness you aren't going to be helped by exercises (this is primarily why Messi is so great). Field awareness on the other hand can be improved and I like some DRB's ideas about drills that can be used to improve this area of the game. Now some players acquire this naturally (Clasie) but unlike quickness the chances for improvement here are quite good. The idea of introducing this to young players is especially appealing since one can create 'games' that keep their interest while at the same time improving their awareness.

 

Do you have a peer reviewed scientific reference for this claim? I think this is just bogus. We know that there isn't a really good definition for autism and there is a whole spectrum of indications which cumulatively lead to different severities. I put this one in the same category as vaccines causing autism.

 

My daughter teaches at a school for children with various disabilities and autism among the conditions that some of her students have. They demonstrate a whole variety of different abilities and it's not just a simple case of saying that someone is autistic or they are not. If what you said was really true that we should see enormous numbers of autistic children in China and India where there is large amounts of air pollution. Now maybe there are lots, we just don't know. One of the things we do know is that the definition of autism has expanded in the last 40 years and more children are being labeled as autistic as a result.

I don't think we are going to get anywhere in relation to the original topic of this thread so we probably should just focus on football. My only point was to try to see what factors are genetic in nature (speed, quickness, etc.) where only marginal improvements can be made and those that are acquired where larger improvements can be made.

 

Looks like Jeffery Bruma is no longer in favor at Hamburg. He's been sitting on the bench in recent matches only coming on late.

 

I think Sneijder is a risky transfer target. He's now 28 years old with a recent history of troubling injuries. Internazionale are going to want a lot of money for him and I personally don't think it's worth the investment (and I really like him as a player). He will really get punished physically if he moves to England.

 

Exactly, he's not the fastest player in the world in terms of linear speed from point A to point B (I think Afellay might be faster in that regard) but he can see spaces that few other players can and then react to those spaces. A player like this comes along once in a generation.

 

Yes, somewhere over 90% is genetic in nature (we cannot all be as fast as Usain Bolt) and it's the ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers. This ratio can determine whether one is better suited to sports that require quickness versus those that require endurance. One can marginally improve performance through training to a certain limit but there is a boundary. When I was a lot younger and used to run for fitness I was able to get my 800 meter time down to about 2 minutes 20 seconds but no lower, that was my boundary and of even if I had the best coach in the world it's unlikely that I could get this lower. There are other football skills that can be greatly improved through practice such as dribbling, passing, and ball control. Some of this is related to the physical tools that are inherited but not all. Look at a player like Van der Vaart who we would all agree is not particularly quick or fast but is really good with the ball (Cruijff is an example of a player who combined both the physical skills and ball skills).

What we have also discussed is the mental aspect of the game which is how fast do players process information. There is great room for improvement in this through training and I think some of what DRB has written about in terms of training exercises can really improve this aspect of the game. This is what a team like Barcelona excel at. If we exclude their two most physically gifted players: Messi and Iniesta; the rest are largely ordinary in terms of speed and quickness. However, they can process game information really fast and when you look at their passing it's amazing. A lot of what they do is within very close spaces where there is a small margin for error (opponents intercepting the pass). they very rarely make the wrong pass.

Now contrast what I said just above with how Ajax play which is evolving to this same model (I pick them as a fan and observer of Eredivisie football who sees them as the closest team to this model). Ajax don't have the quality of player (obviously) but what's more they don't have players at this point in time who can process information quickly enough. I think that this has to be instilled in players during their academy development since there is a lot of repetition needed to reach this point.

It's been said that one needs to have 10,000 hours of practice to excel at something (playing a violin or other instrument in a symphony orchestra) and I think this translates to football as well. You can do the math and see how much time should be spent to get to the elite level of play.