In football you have a National Team Coach. A Club coach for Professional Players & Lastly Academy Coach. Each one of these have their roles.
ACADEMY COACH
This is the most important area of Football Development. Its like a nursery school. This is where young footballers learn all the principal basics of football.
As their brains develop, they learn basic principals of football which can be difficult to impart to an aged player.
- Shooting
- Ball control
- Heading
- Passing
- Dribbling
These basic principals are taught at the Academy.
Like they say you cant teach old dogs new tricks.
JUNIOR NATIONAL TEAM COACHES
Young players that graduate from Academy join junior teams in same cases starting from under 15 or 17. That’s when junior national coaches come in. Coaches there continue with the Development Programme at an advanced level.
Their youth teams start competing in high profile tournaments like the AFCON or World Cup at that level. That’s when players begin to get international exposure. After graduating from those categories they are selected for Senior National duties.
CLUB COACHES
Players graduating from Academies attract Club attention.
At the time young players join Senior Teams they are expected to be familiar with the basic Football Principals mentioned before. Ball control, Passing, heading, shooting & dribbling.
Clubs will continue developing players by deploying a physical fitness trainers, Goalkeeper trainers, & strikers trainers. Club coaches will also continue with basic training of the teams on tactics & skill development.
NATIONAL TEAM COACH
The duties of a National Team Coach may look simple though difficult.
Why simple because most of the donkey work is done by Academy Coaches & Club Coaches.
The National Team Coach is not gonna teach players ball control, passing, heading, shooting or dribbling. Players are expected to be equipped with those abilities.
That’s why National Team Coaches are do not have a long periods of camping.
Clubs stay longer with players as compered to National Team Coaches.
If players cannot execute the mentioned basic principals then the National Coach will find it difficult to deal with that.
The National Team Coach’s duty becomes difficult when he assemblies players exposed to different philosophies. He has to find a common denominator that make players adapt to his own style which is not easy.
He has to enhance team work & discipline.He must be able to teach players easy adaptation of systems & tactics that may change depending on which team they face.
The bottom line is that the National Team Coach will not teach players the basic principals mentioned before which are Ball control, passing,heading, shooting & dribbling.
He is not going to TEACH but TRAIN players. As the saying goes that Training makes perfect. The Coach will only perfect what was already taught.
Unfortunately our players have not gone through that process.
It has always been short cut.
I don’t think that even bringing Guadiola can change our football. Mind you those Man City players were already moulded from their Academies which we don’t have.
The players we compete with Salah, Mane,Drogba they started their football from Academy.
As a matter of fact most of them grow up in Europe.
Let us look at a broader picture.
