Football / Coaching at the Crossroads: Players at odds with coaching's new path: The FA Council approved Charles Hughes' plan for youth football this week - a decision that angered the PFA's Gordon Taylor. He told Phil Shaw why

Phil Shaw
Friday 10 December 1993 00:02 GMT
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MUCH as Tony Benn once decreed that politics was too important to be left to politicians, Gordon Taylor maintains that coaching the footballers of tomorrow is far too vital a concern to be the exclusive domain of coaches.

Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, acknowledges the work of 'top-quality' youth coaches such as Eric Harrison at Manchester United, Charlton's John Cartwright and Steve Heighway of Liverpool. He concedes, too, that some good work is carried out at the centres of excellence.

To say, however, that he has reservations about the so- called coaching revolution ushered in by the FA Council's decision to give clubs 'unrestricted access' to the best schoolboy players would be a severe understatement. 'By agreeing to that, the English Schools FA have given up their heritage,' Taylor said. 'That wouldn't be so bad if the quality of the coaching gave any cause for optimism.'

He also remains angry that Charles Hughes, the FA's director of coaching, has 'consistently rebuffed' offers from the players to help in moulding the next generation by passing on their own skills and experience.

Taylor, whose union had a week earlier set up a commission to investigate the whole area of coaching - headed by the former Manchester City captain Paul Power and with a brief to study methods all over the world - sees the new scheme as a cynical bid by the FA to extend its power.

Some of Hughes's plans, notably preventing 'overplay' by restricting the number of competitive, 11-a-side games to a maximum of 60 per season, meet with PFA approval. 'That's self-evidently right,' Taylor said. 'No one could oppose better coaching either, but it's a matter of how you define that.

'When you look at the small print of what they approved on Monday, every centre of excellence will have to be sanctioned by the FA. Every boy attending will have to registered with the FA. All staff working there will have to be approved by the FA.

''And, crucially, a curriculum and syllabus which does not place due emphasis on skills and technique will be dictated by an FA coaching department which is amateur-driven. It's run by someone who doesn't relate to professional football, who admits he doesn't even watch it.

'Coaches will say: 'We'll ignore the long-ball stuff.' But they can't, because there are going to be what the FA calls 'itinerant monitors' going round checking up.'

The centres are, Taylor submits, a smokescreen. 'The FA is trying to crystallise the debate around 'centres of excellence: yes or no?', but the real issue is that what's being laid down by the FA is not producing the goods. The system, their whole ethos, has failed us for 40 years and was criticised by the chief executive of Fifa for being 30 years out of date.

'No one likes to praise our players more than me, but when no UK teams reach the World Cup finals you can't ignore the fact that we're not at the races. We're not even in the starting stalls. There are other factors, but it's mainly the standard of the coaching that's brought us to this point.

'When our members go on the FA's full-badge course they're expected to go along with things like 'direct play' that they simply don't agree with. They don't even discuss the sweeper system. So the PFA spends pounds 50,000 a year to help our members get a qualification that's getting increasingly discredited. Since I said that, a number of coaches and centre managers have said they agree.'

Taylor claims that some of those teaching young players receive only a week's instruction, while to coach at the top level requires only a fortnight-long course. In Germany and Italy it takes a year to qualify. Would-be golf coaches train for three years and have to have played professionally.

'Of course it's not the only answer to say you need to have played, but surely it's better than having nobody from the professional side? Charles Hughes says playing at the highest level is all very well but no substitute for teaching. In fact, we've got players who are better qualified academically than he'll ever be.

'They're willing to contribute, and could easily be taught how to pass on skills, as well as factors such as fitness and diet. Instead we've got a former schoolmaster and amateur footballer in charge of teaching skills which, with respect, he has never practised. But still the FA is playing the class system, saying we can't have a union involved.'

The biggest indictment of the present regime, according to Taylor, is that 75 per cent of boys joining clubs as youth trainees have left the game by the time they are 21. 'That must raise question marks about the coaching, yet we're going to have more of the same. The legacy will be a lot of embittered kids and parents. Who's going to pick up the tab for that . . . Charles Hughes?'

(Photograph omitted)

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