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Paying dearly for football ignorance

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Joseph Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, says he has been analysing African football more that the football from other continents and the problems facing African football are a matter of technical nature. In his recent interview published in the New African magazine, Blatter reiterates the chronic issue of insufficient technical competency at the level of African national associations that would generate performances at the level of world’s best.
Surely, this is something that many other foreign experts and in few occasions Africa’s native football technicians have, for decades now, repeatedly spoke of. However, Blatter’s remark carry renewed significance and a serious warning as it comes at a very critical time when the game at the top level of international performance is fast changing while, traditionally, the leaders of African football show reluctance or denial in recognizing such technical novelties.
Since 9 out of 10 problems affecting performance in today’s football are rooted in the technical domain of the game – from superior knowledge of early age talent discovery and systematic long-term youth development to sophisticated youth elite and high performance programs – the impact of football science is decisive.

African children playing football are denied training methods that recognize their natural abilities and the advantages of their accelerated rate of movement and skill improvement, creativity and higher dynamism

One of the most important aspects discussed at the recent Soccerex African Forum in Durban by the ‘Coaching in Africa’ panel was the ignorant attitude of African national football associations and the CAF concerning the Continent failure to produce coaching expertise that can take the exceptional African talent to the level of world’s best performances. Already still having this topic debated at this stage of advanced knowledge, it demonstrates African football’s anachronism. The absolute necessity of developing native coaches and how to develop them was comprehensively clarified in several technical reports compiled by FIFA more than half of century ago.
With just basic technical understanding and a bit of effort to acquire vital information for improving football in their respective countries the current and previous generations of African administrators would have learned the following:
‘Only native coaches would know how to adapt inborn qualities such as talent for skill, temperament, constitution, etc., to the elements of technique, tactics and fitness. Only a native coach can be familiar with his players’ character, speaks their language and share the same background. Officials and coaches should expect improved performance when contemplating one’s own strengths. Their players’ conduct as well as reactions and forms of expression conditioned by mentality are reflected in the teams’ style of play and organization on the field of play. Imitating a style or coaching ideas even if is done successfully by foreign coaches is rejected by most players on the basis of mentality and past experiences. This conclusion demands courage and patience to develop one’s own specific style’ (1978, FIFA’s Technical Study)

Instead and in ignorance, African football has been victimized and traumatized by contrasting foreign coaching mentalities, completely wrong training methodologies and incredible talent waste. All these have been happening at huge financial costs.
In the same FIFA’s analyses and now reinforced by new scientific evidence, African football administrators should have discovered the fact that ‘there is uniqueness in the mentality and approach to football by African players that has to be recognized in the continental coaching philosophy’.
In Africa, as in any other continent or region of the football world, there are significant differences in players’ physical constitution, predispositions for sport performance, maturity rate, behaviour, temperament, culture and traditions that differ from the assumptions used in coaching or training concept designed for global application. It is essential that such differences are objectively recognized in the context of each population group’s distinctiveness whenever the aim is to maximize performance.
African children playing football are denied training methods that recognize their natural abilities and the advantages of their accelerated rate of movement and skill improvement, creativity and higher dynamism. Irrationally, as the case of several youth development programs in South Africa, some of country’s most talented young players are nurtured by youth coaches from Europe in the mentality that hinders youngsters’ nature and actual strengths.

Paradoxically, at the SAFA Technical Symposium held in January 2012, all foreign experts who were invited to share their experiences in the technical aspects of football development gave a stern warning to local football leaders by stating that South Africa should find its own model of technical development as the examples used from their respective countries cannot work with the same success in other football environments. Yet, the warning is completely ignored.

Without acknowledging the complexity, specialized expertise and time factor required in developing high quality players, – an estimated 10.000 hours of training in 10 years cycle of continuous development – African football administrators regard natural talent as a ‘developed’ product. While successful experiences in Spain, South America and Asia show that the recipe for international success is to establish national special programs to develop talent from the age of 3-4, in Africa the huge majority of national teams’ players have only started their ‘development’ very late and only for 2-3 years. Also, it has become evident that school football cannot be a substituted for modern youth development academies.
Missing their golden years of basic development the South African players struggle to perform under the pressure of tight marking, restricted space and speed. In average, in a competitive match 7 out of 10 situations where a player losses the ball, poor technique is the reason (incomplete development of ball technique) while wrong decisions are responsible for 6 out of 10 tactical errors (limited development of the football brain). These abnormal flaws contribute to a drastic standard degradation of South African professional football. The rate of possession lost in matches can reach record figures – 160 -180 per team! Whenever ball possession is lost in average every ten seconds or so during the game, it becomes impossible for any game plan to be implemented. Winning in such cases is purely accidental. Match statistics and analyses serve no purpose as tactics and strategies are nullified by players who are technically unable to control play, even at its very basic level. Coaches – locals and foreigners alike – cannot therefore succeed in attaining their objectives and achieve positive results.

The conflict between underdeveloped players and coaches who unrealistically aspire at producing ‘modern’ football leads to more coaches being fired than any other place in the football world. Those few lucky ones would benefit from teams that consist of some quality players or had learned to better use players’ natural qualities eventually mange to survive for, let’s say, two or three seasons. Invariably, club and national association officials persist in their utopian idea that ‘we have quality players and it is up to coaches to deliver results’.
The African football associations were made aware of the pre-requisite of developing youth coaches as a top priority and the highly successful example of Spain’s coach education policy where all 28.000 qualified coaches in the country have to first have youth and elite youth licence before becoming professional coaches. No consideration, whatsoever, was shown to this crucial need.
Instead of introducing coaching syllabuses based on African specificity with multi-disciplinary knowledge and rich generic content so essential for developing relevant indigenous expertise the administrators of African football decided to import, appallingly expensive, foreign coaches and coaches’ educators from game environments where the attributes and limitations of African players are not even identified!
In South Africa, out of approximately 6900 trained coaches only 11 are youth qualified coaches. Those who reach level 3 professional coaching courses learned extensively about Hi-Tec procedures and interpretation of match analysis and play systems, but nothing about elite youth coaching, multi-factor training complexity, creative coaching or new trends of playing philosophies.
When at the UEFA technical conferences, for example, the importance of national football cultures being reflected in the countries’ style of play as a competitive identity, in the case of South African football the ‘national’ playing identity comprises….Dutch, German, Spanish and other foreign coaches’ mentalities and the local mixture of similar foreign influences which are propagated through the football association’ coaching education program!
With plenty information provided by new studies on genetics, bio-kinetics and players’ individual performance parameters it was expected that the issue of players’ size be put to rest. Evidence indicates that players of average or smaller constitution have the advantage over the tall players in key aspects of performance related to diversity of passing and dribbling techniques, intricate movement, reaction speed, rapid direction change, endurance, agility, mobility, etc. How shocking can then be the public statement made by the CEO of SAFA, Robin Petersen when indicated that since taller and powerful players cannot be found in the demographics of football, the alternative for recruiting such tall and fast players could come from the demographics of rugby. Rarely one can find such cases of football’s technical illiteracy at the level of national football administrators.
African nations – yet to embark in the process of developing their own distinct national football identity – are divided in their approach to competitive football according to strong influences and sub-traditions derived from European cultures. Of major significance and impact is the group of French speaking African countries that to a large extent reflect the mentality, character and play feature of French football. Currently, 13 countries from this group form a powerful majority in the top 20 football nations in the continent. Added the fact that this French-African ‘connection’ is now vastly dominating the export of African players to Europe and other parts of the world, the case exposes far reaching implications in regard to the progress of African football.
The key disclosure here is that despite many aspects in the mentality and concept of French football that may contrast with the specificity of African players, there are some coaching components that are more compelling to African players than English, German, Dutch, etc. approaches. This important point should be viewed in the context of Latin football where alongside Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, etc., French football show greater recognition and respect for skill, creativity and attractiveness than other football philosophies. Exposed to these particular conceptual values, the talent of Africans has been largely responsible for increasingly dominant Latin football in global football -13 out of top 20 countries in the FIFA rankings are representative of the Latin football. With the development of new trends based on superior technique, high tactical intelligence and spectacular styles the potential of African players will gain even more prominence.
To what extent is the amalgamation of football ideologies such as the English, German or Dutch reflected in South African football detrimental to the country’s quest for international success? This question was posed by a well-known local youth coach at the recent Soccerex African Forum. The answer rests with the complete and unconditional acceptance of the fact that approx. 90% of talented black football players in this country have very specific and similar genetic profiles that are not recognized in the game concepts and coaching doctrines designed in Europe. Even a more relevant approach such as the Latin football mentality is not sufficient in today’ scenario because the bio-environmental profile of players must be strictly matched by training and coaching methodologies governed by the national football identity. That’s the number one pre-requisite for maximizing football potential. It could be fatal for South African football if this condition will be further ignored.
There are unacceptable and harmful cases of ignorance where the football leadership of both SAFA and the PSL continues to snub or even discredit those few South African progressive individuals who proved locally and internationally their excellent technical competency. They have delivered outstanding results by Africanizing the concept of youth development, producing advanced technical materials and successfully promoting local talent in international youth tournaments. Such valuable native intellect must not be ignored or discredited!
The growing number of complains pointing at football media’s technical ignorance cannot be refuted. It does not serve the game or the public if TV commentaries and newspaper reports falsely label those scrappy matches as ‘exciting’, ‘fantastic’, ‘exhilarating’ or ‘captivating’. How can TV presenters and match analysts be so dishonest to say ‘we had an excellent match’ when it exposed players’ hundreds of technical errors; the goals scored resulted from embarrassing defensive blunders; there were dozens of dirty tackles; the ball possession was lost every 10 seconds and the referee made some calls that were shocking? Praising this kind of technical ignorance is appalling.
It is difficult to foresee how calls or interventions, including FIFA’s president warning, concerning the issue of insufficient technical competency at the level of African football associations would change the situation as long as perpetual ignorance plagues African football. Today’s football world is teemed with technical information that is vast and complex. The acknowledgement and application of this expertise makes the difference between winners and loser. Perpetual ignorance leads to perpetual failure and it should not anymore be accepted as the case of South African football. There are two things worse than ignorance: unintelligence and indifference and, in football, the price to pay for it is unaffordable.
Ted Dumitru is a former Kaizer Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, Mamelodi Sundowns Bafana Bafana mentor. He’s currently a member of the SAFA Technical Committee. Click onthe following facebook link to have your say:https://www.facebook.com/SABCNewsOnline?fref=ts

– By Analysis: Ted Dumitru

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