Kris Boyd - 'Football is now a Middle Class sport'

[Malky3]

1 hour ago, DA Baracus said:

The Iceland, German and Belgium models, to name but some, are/were all based on one simple principle, which is participation. Obviously you need things beyond that but participation is the foundation.

We need to get more kids involved. The 'no ball games signs' stuff is bollocks. I haven't seen one in years. What we need is places for kids to play. Iceland have pitches (usually artificial so that they can be used in most weathers) at almost every school. They have a substantially smaller population than us but massively more pitches. We need to hugely increase access.

Our coaching courses cost too much. We also have significantly less coaches than other countries. We need massively more qualified coaches. We need to remove well meaning but horrendous parent coaches who yell dreadful nonsense.

We appoint shite to important roles (Malky Mackay, Brian McClair etc). We have no consistent message throughout our system. What is our aim? Do our players play the same formation from under 16s to the full team? 

Our stuff seems prehistoric. Smash the ball up the park. Guys are one footed. Gamble in the box. Win knock downs. Take it to the corner. All horrible shite.

We need to focus on developing players who can use both feet, who can play more than position, who can move off the ball, who understands the work away from training required to be at the top, who can pass, who can understand possession.

All of the above is irrelevant until we totally change the coaching methods, and most importantly focus on mentality. We need to stop being shitebags at international level.

I read the stuff about 'old firm' (Rangers, who died, Celtic and Sevco) fans being an issue. Agree completely and have talked about it with a friend for years. Basically the type who associates with them is a bit of a coward who has no heart for a struggle with teams ranked lower than them. Also so many of our thicko players see playing for Celtic ot Sevco (even though it's a different club from the one that died) as the pinnacle, and don't see beyond. Such a limited ambition will never translate to international success.

If you want to talk about participation - in Scotland right now we have record numbers of registered footballers playing organised football. That's a fact. We've got more boys playing organised football than ever before and the growth in the girls game is absolutely incredible. Many juvenile football clubs are being approached by parents whose kids are 3 and 4 years old asking if they can be put on a list to join the club in their entry level teams. Seriously the demand for places is quite incredible. 

You don't see kids playing football in the parks or on grass areas any more because parents are generally more protective of their kids. Can you imagine your 8, 9 or 10 year old telling you they were away off to play football on a disused waste ground with a group of their mates with no responsible adult in charge these days? 

As for coaches - how do you know we have significantly fewer coaches than other countries? The SYFA demand a minimum of two coaches per registered football team. Many juvenile teams I can think off have more than that. One of the teams my son played for a few years back actually had SEVEN qualified coaches including a specialist goalkeeping coach and a specialist sprint coach who also coached the local athletics club. Two of the seven were young lads who were keen to be put through their coaching courses which were being paid for by the club. The rest were players parents - who you'd remove from the sport without identifying the long line of adults that are desperate to give up their spare time, for free, taking abuse and hassle from parents of the players for not giving their precious child enough game time. 

"We appoint shite to important roles" - really? Personally I thought Brian McClair's initial report into the games failings was right on the money. Too much money being wasted by the sport on too many "elite level" pro youth clubs packed with "elite level" players who were never going to make it in the game. The problem McClair had was resistance from senior football clubs who were worried that the flow of money into their club that provided them with staff and equipment that could be "multi-purposed" might stop. MacKay too has faced road block after road block from people who are desperate to protect their self interests in the sport. 

"Our stuff is.....smash the ball up the park" - rubbish! If anything we've gone the opposite way. Watch a game in the Scottish Premiership today and you'll see loads of examples of defenders passing the ball around seemingly building up their possession stats. We've become absolutely adept at burning up time at football matches with two centre backs passing the ball back and forward to each other regardless of the score or of how urgent it has become for their team to score a goal. For some reason our players, coaches and managers at the very top level seem to think this is tiki taka possession football and they don't like to vary it no matter how much more prudent it would be to go more direct and to play with far more urgency. 

Where we do fall down badly in this country is in: 

• facilities - I think they are improving but we need more, and many of the parks we do have need urgent maintenance. 
• in scouting - far too many clubs stop scouting juvenile football around the Under 11's age group. I'm not sure how anyone knows at that age that a lad is going to have the attributes to be a top quality centre half! 
• in elite football where we have too many clubs and as a result too many players who are only there to fill a shirt and who have no chance of making it. 
• we need to find a way of limiting the number of non Scottish players playing in our senior leagues. There is little benefit to our game in signing the 50th best English right back in the Under 28's age group from Gateshead, or from Nuneaton and bringing them to Scotland when we should instead be turning to our own youth.
• we're also really poor at retention. The sport spends a lot to get parents qualified as coaches but then fails to provide an incentive for those same parents to stay involved in coaching beyond their own sons participation. And we are dreadful at keeping players who fail to make it at pro youth level involved in the game just incase the club that released them got it wrong.  

 

 

Edited September 15, 2019 by Malky3

[HibeeJibee]

SFA vice Mulraney in today's paper also alluding to cutbacks, and suggesting focus is coach qualifications + facilities.


Interesting piece on youth football:

Aidan Smith: why are some youth coaches still behaving like complete and utter bampots?

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/opinion/aidan-smith-why-are-some-youth-coaches-still-behaving-like-complete-and-utter-bampots-1-5004355

Edited September 15, 2019 by HibeeJibee

[forameus]

On 15/09/2019 at 02:43, DA Baracus said:

We need to get more kids involved. The 'no ball games signs' stuff is bollocks. I haven't seen one in years. What we need is places for kids to play. Iceland have pitches (usually artificial so that they can be used in most weathers) at almost every school. They have a substantially smaller population than us but massively more pitches. We need to hugely increase access.

I'm not going to act like this is the norm, but I grew up right across the road from the primary school I went to, and it sported one of those absolute health hazard red ash pitches.  Despite the surface, and the usually crumbling fencing around it that almost everyone had stabbed into them at some point, I remember spending most evenings up there.  Get at least 3 people, get up there, and kick a ball about.  We were all shite, but it was just what you did, and it was fun.

Fast forward to me heading over to where I used to live, with a 2 year old in tow, and the red ash pitch has been replaced by what looks like an absolutely wonderful 4G surface.  But whenever I'm at my parents' there's very rarely anyone playing there.  Ever.  The access is the same (they very rarely stop you going in, at least in term time) but despite the facilities being a lot better, there doesn't seem to be much appetite to go out and play anymore.

Which is probably down to...

On 15/09/2019 at 03:51, Malky3 said:

You don't see kids playing football in the parks or on grass areas any more because parents are generally more protective of their kids. Can you imagine your 8, 9 or 10 year old telling you they were away off to play football on a disused waste ground with a group of their mates with no responsible adult in charge these days? 

This.  Which, while I obviously understand, as a new parent myself, I really, really hate.  I don't think any of the dangers to children are recent inventions, and the same things existed probably when everyone who visits here were kids.  There were a few guys who used to turn up at the pitches we played at who were suspiciously older than the 14/15 year olds we were.  Nothing sinister, maybe early 20s, maybe felt their egos needed a boost of getting to body some literal children at football.  But they played, it was fine, and it was just the way of it.  Granted I probably lived in an area where you weren't going to get stabbed, but I think this generation of kids are going to lose a lot because of the "well you can't just do that" attitude that a lot of parents have.  Particularly when for a lot of them, the alternative is probably to sit in the house, probably on the internet.  Because nothing bad ever happens there.

[ICTChris]

My son is too wee to be playing organised sprout but I’ve got other relatives who do have kids playing and they’ve told me much the same as that article, that every weekend they see coaches and parents bursting blood vessels at the side of the pitch.

[Savage Henry]

49 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

My son is too wee to be playing organised sprout but I’ve got other relatives who do have kids playing and they’ve told me much the same as that article, that every weekend they see coaches and parents bursting blood vessels at the side of the pitch.

He likes his vegetables a bit like his football, all mushed up and much of a mess.

[forameus]

48 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

My son is too wee to be playing organised sprout but I’ve got other relatives who do have kids playing and they’ve told me much the same as that article, that every weekend they see coaches and parents bursting blood vessels at the side of the pitch.

Mine's two and a half, and as we speak he's off at "mini-kickers" with his Mum.  I went to the first week (unfortunately can't make it usually due to work) and I was quite impressed with the coach there.  Guess it's a different thing, but they were really engaged with the kids, particularly when none of them are going to be remotely interested in anything organised.  They had a few wee games loosely related to football, even if mine just wanted to run around like a madman.  So in that, I was quite impressed.

But then contrast that with when kids get older.  I was waiting on a work game of 11s starting out in Drumoyne.  There stupidly early as I wasn't driving at the time, but there was a kids age group game on.  No idea what age group, one of the ones where there's wee tiny guys chasing after hulking great kids with beards who had clearly hit their growth spurt early.  Nippy wee b*****ds too.  Half-time came, and the moment after the whistle the manager screamed to the players to get over to the sideline.  He then proceeded to scream at them for the entire break before sending them back out.  Within five minutes, one guy had been "sent off" (ref asked manager to sub him so he didn't have to), and a second one then sarcastically clapped and got wide with the referee for the decision, leading to him getting asked to leave to.  None of which seemed to bother the bright red over-compensating w****r of a coach in his sad wee monogrammed jacket.

I don't doubt that there's good coaches out there.  There will be guys doing a fucking power of work, giving kids the sort of opportunities they would never have otherwise, and probably keeping some away from a generally shitty life.  But for every one saint, you'll get multiple wee fannies who think bellowing at a kid is the way forward. 

[ShaggysBeard]

I have a 6 year old who is absolutely football daft.

He plays football how you would remember it being played 20+ years ago, everywhere and anywhere. If he's walking past you without a ball he stills drops a shoulder to get round you, even when we are walking round Asda I've to put an imaginary pass into him and he'll give me some stick if he deems I've misplaced it. When I was 6 I went to Dunfermline games with my dad I would stand and play with my toy cars on the red barriers in the terracing that is now the Norrie, my son works out the formations that they are playing, who is playing where and what he'd do instead while speaking in FIFA language calling Paul Paton a CDM and trying to work out with if Josh Edwards is a LB or LWB.

At the minute the cost for him to play football I would call substantial. He's around £300 for the year at a mini academy at Livingston paid in 3 installments. That covers two hourly sessions a week. there's a couple of other benefits that we don't use. My wife drops him off and I pick him work as it coincides to when I finish work so I don't have an opinion on the quality but it is his highlight of the week. He does use any space he can, grass, concrete, wherever, to kick a ball around whenever he can. I definitely don't need to pay that money for him to play football.

Looking to get him into one of the local 2013 teams, I don't know the cost of these nowadays. £2 or £3 a week subs when it was me 20/25 years ago.

[Malky3]

1 hour ago, ShaggysBeard said:

I have a 6 year old who is absolutely football daft.

He plays football how you would remember it being played 20+ years ago, everywhere and anywhere. If he's walking past you without a ball he stills drops a shoulder to get round you, even when we are walking round Asda I've to put an imaginary pass into him and he'll give me some stick if he deems I've misplaced it. When I was 6 I went to Dunfermline games with my dad I would stand and play with my toy cars on the red barriers in the terracing that is now the Norrie, my son works out the formations that they are playing, who is playing where and what he'd do instead while speaking in FIFA language calling Paul Paton a CDM and trying to work out with if Josh Edwards is a LB or LWB.

At the minute the cost for him to play football I would call substantial. He's around £300 for the year at a mini academy at Livingston paid in 3 installments. That covers two hourly sessions a week. there's a couple of other benefits that we don't use. My wife drops him off and I pick him work as it coincides to when I finish work so I don't have an opinion on the quality but it is his highlight of the week. He does use any space he can, grass, concrete, wherever, to kick a ball around whenever he can. I definitely don't need to pay that money for him to play football.

Looking to get him into one of the local 2013 teams, I don't know the cost of these nowadays. £2 or £3 a week subs when it was me 20/25 years ago.

Usually around £5 - £10 these days I think. If you're from West Lothian there are a lot of well run clubs around. The SFA runs a Club Mark programme which will indicate which ones are properly set up and well run although that's not always a guarantee that you get a good coach or a great team - just that the club has the appropriate number of qualified coaches that are all police checked and that they have a qualified first aider for each team and that the money being brought into the club isn't being misappropriated. 

[Malky3]

21 hours ago, HibeeJibee said:

SFA vice Mulraney in today's paper also alluding to cutbacks, and suggesting focus is coach qualifications + facilities.


Interesting piece on youth football:

Aidan Smith: why are some youth coaches still behaving like complete and utter bampots?

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/opinion/aidan-smith-why-are-some-youth-coaches-still-behaving-like-complete-and-utter-bampots-1-5004355

I've watched juvenile and amateur football for over 20 years now - watching my kids go through the various levels - and I obviously recognise some of the behaviours that are mentioned in the article. It definitely does happen and it never looks clever but what I do very often notice is that when you see these accounts being told it always seems to be an opposition coach that is the "bampot" and never the coach of their own childs team. Yet if you ask the parents of the lads playing for that team why they are still taking their boys there the answer often seems to be because their son loves it, or because the "bampot" is an excellent coach. 

Remember that Sir Alex Ferguson would have been described as one of these "bampots" in his heyday. At St Mirren he told his young players he'd look after them. When they were getting bullied in a pre season friendly he brought himself on as a sub and booted lumps out the opposition hatchet man before getting sent off. At Aberdeen when his side had just beaten Rangers in a Scottish Cup Final he went on TV to slate his side for not playing to a high enough standard. He threw cups of tea in the dressing room at players like Gordon Strachan, Frank McGarvey and Tony Fitzpatrick and he reportedly kicked a football boot that hit David Beckham on the head. 

Not that I'm saying that these "bampots" are all as good as Sir Alex - or that all "bampots" know or understand the game, it's just that onlookers sometimes don't know the full story. One of my youngest sons best coaches would have been regarded as a "bampot" I'm sure. He'd rant and rave on the touchline always demanding more effort, harder work, better play, etc - and some of his team talks were absolutely out of order, no question about that at all. But the boys in the team loved it. Training was always hard but challenging. Sessions were varied and I can't think of a single player that didn't improve massively playing for him. 4 of the kids in that team are currently playing senior football in Scotland - and there were another 8 that went pro youth - 2 of them who played for Scotland at various Under levels but haven't made it as senior footballers.