Fantastic piece written by Rafa Benitez about the English game. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...e-talent--but-not-the-philosophy-7881158.html That was a very good experience for the young English players, however disheartened they may have been as they came home yesterday. Going into extra time and penalties in a tournament quarter-final like that will serve them well. But the Italians had more quality â we can't ignore that â and though the Football Association is trying to change things, we cannot disguise that it is still a long way off creating a system which enables England's players to compete with the very best in Europe, or the world. I think Italy had an incentive to prove on Sunday night that their football is good, because they are no longer on top in the Champions League competitions now, and they really did demonstrate the technical distance between the two nations. There are many changes required in the way this country develops its young players. To make them more competitive, England above all need the clubs to decide on the style of football they want to play, from academy right through to first team. They must then coach the coaches in that style and then coach the players. For me, there is a very big weakness in the system when the players reach 18. At that age, a player in England who is not quite at the required level to play in the Premier League has to go off on loan to a League One or Two team, where it is very difficult for him to develop the basic skills in the way he would at his club. The style and standard of coaching will probably just not be the same. Those players who are of a slightly better standard but still not quite good enough to play in the Premier League will end up sitting on the first-team bench, and could be stuck there for years. Take Scott Carson, for example. He was the best player at Leeds United and then joined us at Liverpool, but he hardly played a game for three years. When I arrived at Liverpool, this problem struck me and I said that our reserve team should play in the Football League pyramid. I wanted to use the experience of my years as a player and manager of the Real Madrid reserve team, which played in the Spanish second division. Joining the pyramid was important, but nobody wanted to hear or listen and I was told that I was going against an English tradition by suggesting this. I think people can see the problem a little clearer now. If we assume the English reserve teams will not be allowed to compete in the pyramid, the only way to create matches for these young players is by making the Reserve League a proper Under-21 national competition, which allows teams to select a limited number of first-team players to help them recover from injury or keep match-fit. I know the Premier League is working on this for next season. It must be a competitive Under-21 league in spirit. But it is the introduction of the same style of play throughout a club â and seriously investing in the coaching system to make that happen â which underpins the creation of more technically equipped players, and it was in the final year at Liverpool that we linked the academy and club more closely to make that possible. There are plenty of myths about this idea of one style of football running throughout the club. For example, just because Barcelona have become such a successful club, everybody now talks about wanting to play "like Barcelona". But we were talking about having a consistent style throughout the club at Real Madrid over 15 years ago. How can you play "the Barcelona way" if you don't have Xavi, Iniesta and Messi? It is more realistic to decide on a system; deciding, for instance, that you want to play the ball on the floor, not in the air, and then you need to create a philosophy at your club where everyone has the same one. You stick to it, no matter who is manager, and you appoint a manager with that vision. (If it's a non-football person who decides on the vision, it could be a problem.) At Liverpool, we created this link between the academy and the first team by appointing Pep Segura, who had been at Barcelona, as the academy's technical director, with Rodolfo Borrell as Under-18s coach. We agreed which systems we would use and which style. In England, the individuals who are asked to coach the coaches and help spread the playing philosophy are very, very important. You can't just work with computers and databases of young footballers. I have also been advocating for several years that clubs should be allowed to recruit young players from anywhere and that change, now allowed for in the Premier League EPPP document, cannot come soon enough. At Real Madrid, we trialled hundreds of boys a year from Madrid and all over Spain. If the best cannot work with the best, they will not progress. I don't think England should be too worried about the number of overseas players in the Premier League. The country's young footballers can learn from those players, their different styles and ideas. And I don't think that the 4-4-2 system which Roy Hodgson used at the European Championship will prevent technically talented players being put to best use for the national side. The 4-4-2 style can become 4-2-3-1 when a team attacks. It's the football philosophy that counts, not the system. It is a question of what you want to do when you are in possession and what you want to do when you are not in possession. It is about people having more ambition, more confidence in their game to try things out and to get into the box. The improvement in basic technical skill that we are talking about and the confidence in a philosophy which is instilled into players will solve the problems. I have been saying this for a number of years but it is very hard to be heard sometimes! England have to look forward. Finding top players is not the problem. The potential is out there, all around. It is how to develop it which people should be talking about.
Love reading what Rafa has to say! Infact was on his site just the other day; his knowledge and intelligence are really second to none. What an unbelievable waste of management ability! Must admit I am slightly suprised he has not mentioned the mentality of English players though; for me behind technical ability obviously its the main reason we struggle to compete against some of the other top nations.
Liverpool destroyed Europe with pass and move. English players can pass but pass and move is built on one or two touches, not ten. English audiences would never stand for it any other way. Once again Roy appears to be getting a soft ride by his media chums because it's perceived we don't have skillful players. The same was said of us. Rafa left a poor squad, only good enough to slip to 19th under Roy and at best fluke it to 12th. That squad was built on Rafa's style and no matter how defensive some claim Rafa was (mistakenly in my never-humble opinion) it was light years ahead of Hodgson's style. When Kenny returned to something closer to Rafa's style, something the players we had were used to, we got the form of 2nd. (Arguments about last season's transitionary nature are for another day.) We might not have done any better without Roy's quaint English antiquity but as long as Lampard was injured we couldn't have done much worse by having a go. If only they'd given the England job to Rafa. Roy's media chums, such as Henry Winter and Paddy Barclay, seem to hate Rafa, which is surely an omen if ever there was one.
this is grand and all... but how can i judge if rafa was a) just talking bolllox b) hamstrung by owners who prevented this "style" thing happening cos i can clearly remember how he had to learn a lot about talent and fix a lot of mistakes he made like morientes and bellamy, pennet etc. c)lost it for a while cos he was bringing in the likes of jovanovic on mad money (don't give me rubbish about parry or whomever) and simply didn't have this "style" maintained through the whole club at any point... i never once say a 4-2-3-1 at u18 level... did he need "time" or is this revisionist writing on rafa's part. cos frankly he's right, he might be talking himself up in parts but he's certainly got it right about English football and how big clubs now are merely a knocking shop for english talent to rot in while forgien players flood in... the kids playing league football would be great... the english style in theory was precisely what hodgson delivered and it was badly out of sync with modern day football at the highest standard.... In many ways cheslea played the worst football they'd down since 2004 to win a CL and one might argue that they got really lucky in not one, not two, not three but no fewer than 6 games in europe to scrape by time after time and finally got to penalties which non english players buried.
Nobody needs to give you any rubbish cos you can spew it enough on your todd with your rubbish thinking. Parry wasn't even with the club when Jova signed. And it wasn't rubbish when Jova, a freebie because that's all the money we had, actually started having second thoughts after Rafa was sacked. So he actually thought your club was rubbish and being handled rubbishly and likely to get even more rubbish. How would that have gone down in our rubbish media? "Liverpool snubbed by rubbish freebie, ho ho ho!" He was given the wage to stop making us look rubbish. And why, when he was about to sack him, would Purslow (the 'whomever' you allude to) allow Rafa to be giving out big wages? Did Rafa or 'whomever' sign Joe Cole and give him a humungous wage?
Lets not get into a, b and c - not in this thread, anyway. Rafa was right in his assessment. Woy's English fry-up was an appalling mix of the worst tactics since '66. No width to speak of, no big target man to hump the ball up to to relieve the immense pressure heaped on the team conceding possession for extended periods, and guaranteeing a starting place to a player who looked out-of-touch and off-the-pace, and whose presence in the starting XI simply smacked in the teeth those players who performed admirably in the first two matches, yet were dropped for the 'talisman'. 'Talisman' - something worn around the neck. In this case, not unlike a millstone...
One thing I've read a few times recently is that Hodgson 'got the best out of a limited group of players.' That's bollocks. As Rafa says, it's precisely the opposite. Sure, some in that England squad are limited, but it's pushing it to claim they all are. Roy's system and tactics have an uncanny ability to make **** players look average-good, and to make brilliant players look average-good also. Whether he's managing West Brom or England, the team is set up exactly the same and play at almost exactly the same level. He doesn't have the managerial prowess to produce anything beyond 'organised' and 'disciplined'. To say he took England 'as far as they could go' is also another myth floating about. He took England as far as he could take them, if not further. Without copious amounts of poor finishing, we;d have been out at the group stage. The Euros this year, aside from Germany and Spain, is a very poor standard. We should have been looking at the semis at least. That Italy team was nothing like as good as we allowed them to be.
And most of the pundits and media believe that Roy did a good job in such a short space of time. They seem to value hard work and spirit over technique, skill and a desire to score goals.
But going back to the article, what do people think about introducing reserve teams into the football league structure? I can understand the argument against it as it would devalue the leagues and favour the bigger teams. However, it could be the revolutionary change required to improve the national game as the youth players from the bigger clubs are playing competitive matches but are playing with the same team mates, same attacking style and philisophy. We tend to think that youngsters going out on loan will instantly make them better players but does it really help the likes of (e.g.) Suso being sent out to some team that delpoy defensive tactics and rely less on the technical side and more on the physical side? Of course, the parent club would ideally arrange loans to the better sides that will suit the individual. But either way, the player then has to learn and adapt to a new style.
