Shouting, being a man and more fitness work...and more shouting!

Annoyingly, an ankle injury I picked up (I sometimes think the phrase 'glass ankles' were made for me, I'm always twisting them) didn't allow me to partake in the next training session, but it healed quite quickly and I was almost back to normal by the Thursday evening. We started off with a light jog around the premises. Even to ease into the session, the pace wasn’t particularly challenging and I found myself firmly at the front of the group, whilst some others lagged behind. I have always found the insistence on doing these things together interesting, and would like to find out the reasons behind it. The man taking the run (perhaps an assistant manager, he hadn’t been at my first session…), instead of telling the others to catch up, told the pack at the front to slow down. I did find it puzzling that we were asked to run at a less productive pace so that those having a chat with their mates at the back don’t get left behind, but it's just a warm-up I guess. Where the truly cringeworthy side of football revealed itself was in the stretching exercises conducted following the run. It’s unlikely to escape anyone that the England encountered some very hot weather in July and those doing physical exercise would have wanted to keep their body temperature down. That evening, a handful of team members turned up wearing vests, pretty sensible attire for such weather I would have thought. The bloke leading this decided to make a joke of it, declaring: “right, anyone whose sleeves are missing from their t-shirts, 20 press-ups for looking like a fanny.” This kind of joke based on what players wear isn’t uncommon in football and falls under the term ‘banter’, and such ribbing is fine. However, as a means to attempt to make jokes about masculinity and such bullshit, which is what the joke contains undertones of, I find this idea odd. From my experience in English football, the idea of pure masculinity seems very central among players, managers and fans alike. Funnily enough, idiots call players fairies and other unintelligent insults for wearing gloves in winter, yet the opposite of that – which would better fit the ‘real man’ criteria – is also unacceptable. Maybe someone is only a real man if he plays in gear which isn’t suitable to the weather. So I look forward to the praise I'll get when I turn up to training in 30° heat wearing a sweatshirt, overcoat, woolly hat, scarf and gloves. The next bit was also a bit questionable. Clearly unaware that "Kingfisher" is an Indian beer, the guy asked a players in a vest displaying this logo where he’d acquired it. After giving the appropriate answer, the assistant manager bloke looked momentarily confused before an eventual highly amusing quip of “what happened then? Could they not afford to put the sleeves on it?” Hmm. 

Even though improvements are gradually being made, shouty managers and coaches who motivate in this way are still all too common, even at this level. From my experience, these types are generally known as P.E. teachers. OK, clearly for some raising their voice works better than speaking in a softer tone, and some players rise to being shouted at more than others. The problem is, there often isn't much sense in what's being shouted. In my first session, having heard the first-team manager yell a few random things, I wasn’t surprised when I later discovered he was a P.E. teacher. I'm probably generalising, but I’ve experienced dickheads of P.E. teachers from a very young age throughout my school life and Sunday League managers who shout the same thing – back then I was pretty sensitive and let that kind of shit get to me much more than I should have, but now I just learn to block it out. I would say players would be well advised to learn this, but that they are exposed to it as impressionable children makes things a bit more problematic. On the Thursday evening we were doing various exercises using ladders. I haven't actually used them all that often, and I also hadn’t encountered one in a very long time, so it was bound to confuse the hell out of me and made it a pretty nervous experience. I almost managed to get through it unscathed but there was one blip. A fair few players were struggling on the first run of ‘two jumps forward, one jump back’ through the ladder, myself included. This happened to be noticed by the same guy leading the session: “come on this is the basics, if you can’t even do this then you might as well go home.” It's just important to remember not to take these things at face value, but my history tells me this is easier said than done. The fitness work was very beneficial on the whole, though. The best (or worst) exercise involved 3 separate cones, consisting first of a sprint to one followed by 5 reps of something, also involving a ball, the second cone then ten reps and the third cone then 15. The most tiring was getting down into a press-up position before getting up again and having to jump up and head the ball back. The first five are OK, then when doing the set of ten you start to feel it approaching halfway through, and on the last you feel like giving up after about 2 or 3. But you have to keep going – the coaches shout, personally I find that it doesn’t motivate me, but if it doesn't I guess you just have to ignore it. There's no way of enjoying an exercise like this, I suppose. 

Enough talk...pre-season training begins! - my take on running and fitness

So this was all written in July but I was a bit slow with organising this whole blog and also didn't want to publish anything whilst training with a club in case they came across it somehow. I don't say too much bad stuff, but I felt it best on this occasion to avoid any possibility of a difficult situation arising.

With a new-found confidence, then, I began my attempt to approach football again with an open mind by re-immersing myself in the English game for around a couple of months. Just as a stopgap and a fitness boost. Or at least until I was either offered a job abroad, or scraped together enough money from a domestic job to fly out to somewhere else and look for stuff over there. Anyway, by 'open mind' I mean actually just doing things for myself and my own benefit rather than letting my dislike of a perceived wrongness in a footballing philosophy push me towards petulant behaviour, and using such a dislike as an excuse to lack motivation, worry about some sort of wider agenda and not perform as I should. After all, most people in football play with the primary concern of their own level of performance anyway (if anyone says otherwise, it's a lie). So I began training with a local club well into the non-league pyramid, in fact on the same step as my previous club - not being any more specific than that! 

I was trying to have as good an attitude as possible so it didn’t start brilliantly when I was quite late for my first training session. Having finished university and supposedly taking a break from the ‘wild’ student lifestyle, I’d been trying to knock alcohol on the head for a while. All was going to plan until I got an unexpected call the night before training to come to a housewarming party of a friend who has also just graduated. After trying, and failing, to resist any consumption, going to bed at a slightly unreasonable 3am with a friend crashing over, it was a struggle to get out of bed at 8.30 in the morning and kick my friend out before making breakfast and setting off to train. As it was, I still found myself boarding a bus at 10am, the time training was scheduled to start. I have found, though, that while turning up late for training (at least on multiple occasions) is considered a somewhat serious offence in the upper echelons of football and considered ‘unprofessional’ (I hate that word but that’s what it’s always described as), clubs are far more lenient with this sort of thing lower down the ladder. For example, players will have part-time or full-time jobs and so will work a full day or even a morning on the weekend before training. Delays easily happen; hence the possibility of turning up late is increased. From a personal point of view, though, you're only cheating yourself if you use this as an excuse to not be punctual, or indeed use the possibility of giving work as a reason for lateness as a chance to go and get pissed. 

Thankfully for me when I finally arrived at 10.40 the manager appeared indifferent. There was an initial absence of players as they had been sent off on a timed 5k run as the first installment of the pre-season schedule, so my arrival was timely to say the least. I wasn’t too worried about that as I regularly run this sort of distance around where I live, and one run wasn’t going to define everyone’s fitness. Indeed there were still many more physical drills and indeed many more sessions to go. The problem about 2-hour sessions and latecomers is the reduced capacity to use the already limited time effectively, especially when it starts to get swelteringly hot around midday. Furthermore, with so many fitness exercises to get through – I do not have a problem with this, as clubs everywhere will provide its players with tough pre-season schedules in order to get the players’ fitness up to scratch –, not much room is left for proper ballwork, which has been neglected in the training sessions of almost every club I've played for or trained with. The fitness training, though, was very beneficial. I hate it at the time of going through it and have to fight against questioning the point of it, but once completed and repeated over a stretch of time the benefits become obvious. At my previous club, the Tuesday night training session, instead of being held at the club’s ground or training ground, was dedicated solely to running twice around a lake. While distance runs are tough and beneficial for endurance (not to mention mind-numbingly tedious because of the repetitiveness and monotony of continuous running, but yes they still have to be done), they utterly fail to take into account the variety of paces at which players run during a football match and the high frequency at which a player has to alter his pace. I’m amazed that I’m even writing this as to me it’s an incredibly simple point (I’ve never done any sort of course in sports science, but I think all you need to work this one out is the most basic knowledge of physical exercise and the human body), but it would seem there are even sides playing in the pyramid who have these fundamental flaws in training their players. People can simply go for a run in their spare time – considering the distance you’ll probably run, all you’ll need is about an hour (preparation + run + warm down), unless you’re planning to run a marathon. To devote an entire training session to this when players at this level will usually train for 6 hours per week at best during pre-season (Saturday mornings/afternoons, Tuesday and Thursday evenings) and 4 hours once the season starts (Tuesday and Thursday evenings), is ridiculous. Thankfully, my ‘new’ club seemed to have it right, easing in to sessions with some light running involving cones, ladders and poles etc. just to get the sense of repetition so that the body gets used to dealing with such instruments. What impressed me is that fitness tests in this session were timed and recorded, something I suspect a lot of clubs at this level fail to do (as a youth player at a higher level I was never timed or recorded). Monitoring players’ progress lower down the pyramid is already a challenge as the player doesn’t have daily contact with his club, so it’s good to note down as much as possible just to get at least a rough idea if nothing else. 

There were 2 tests we were timed on, the first was an agility test which involved starting in between two cones from a press-up position, lifting yourself fully before pushing off to weave in and out of vertical poles both to the end and back, before sprinting to another cone at the end and back. The other was a 40m sprint – I feel a sprint over any greater distance wouldn’t be of much significance to a football match, as most sprints won’t be more than 10m bursts. I can’t remember my times for either but they weren’t brilliant as I’m not particularly agile or quick – thankfully it’s possible to get round that on a football pitch, as I’ll allude to later, but nonetheless it’s still beneficial for general endurance. Also done was sprint work with intervals – around the perimeter of a football pitch, we would sprint (in allocated groups, for as much as possible) for 30 seconds before having a recovery period of one minute. This was repeated eight times. It was probably the most intense session I’ve had other than my first ever training session with my previous club which was way back in the summer of 2009, but I think the tiredness I felt from that session was more to do with stepping up from youth to men’s football (although I have trained and played with a men’s Sunday League team on occasions before just to keep things ticking over, pyramid football is a different proposition, even if plenty of Sunday League teams do contain amateur Saturday footballers and even semi-professionals from as high as the Isthmian League). I took pride then in being one of those to handle it best.

Whilst on this topic, I recall certain criticism I used to get (from players, managers, even referees!) for being tired when playing for my friend’s Sunday League side and even when playing youth football before I was taken on by a semi-professional club. It was along the lines of “how can you be tired? You’re a young kid/teenager! When I was your age I came off the pitch wanting to play another 90 minutes!” This criticism is particularly grating because it fails to acknowledge the inexperience a youngster will have in senior football. In turn, it can quite easily knock the confidence of a youngster and he could begin to question why he doesn’t seem to be able to cope with the pace of a senior game, thinking football might not be for him or even drive him onto excessive fitness training which isn’t really necessary and increases the risk of a burnout. Also, when ‘you’ were ‘my age’, football was very different to how it is now. Thirdly, teenagers might be able to run up and down in a straight line for ages but as alluded to earlier, football doesn’t involve that kind of running. As senior players have played more football matches and had more training sessions than youngsters, their bodies are more used to the type of running football entails. More shuttle runs, more shuffling through ladders, more dodging in and out of poles etc. As a case in point, I remember one game watching the team I support where a player emerging from the Youth Team made his debut on the right wing. I think he was 18 years old, around the same age I would have been at the time. He played pretty well but started to fade badly after about an hour, understandable as it was his first ever senior pro game. We were 1-0 up, but he was struggling badly as players seemed to comparatively glide up and down the pitch whereas his body movements were clearly becoming more laboured. On the bench were both a right-back and a senior right-sided midfielder, one of whom should clearly have come on, as pressure was building down this flank as the opposition had clearly noticed a weakness here. Deep into stoppage time, the opposition attacked down his flank again and equalised – only was he actually substituted immediately after they had scored, and play only went on for about another 30 seconds. It staggered me that he was left on so long as he was clearly out on his feet - for me, a substitution based on the condition of a player is the easiest call to make, as it is far less subjective than player performance. Maybe our man in charge was yelling to the player “come on [name], you’re only 18! You should easily be able to keep up with all these experienced professionals!” I’m sure a couple of managers whom I’ve played under probably would have done.

Introduction

A famous quote from Bill Shankly reads: “Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple.” I couldn’t disagree more with these words as they appear; I think the more subtle subtext of the quote is that when all the little cogs which make up the aspects of football are perfectly in place, football appears to be a very simple art. Top teams who comfortably move the ball around are frequently described as “making it look so easy” by commentators and pundits alike, and this is true – to the average eye of the spectator it looks a task that even they would be able to manage. Being available to receive a pass from a team-mate, having options to pass to when in possession, creating options for yourself and making a pass into space which many fail to notice are all things which require extensive tactical practice as a team. Such complete team performances are misinterpreted as football being inherently simple. It is not just supporters who peddle this myth – it has been pointed out before that it begins from pundits, who have played professionally, relaying it to viewers of football in this way, and coaches at grassroots level also pick up on this, and therefore transmit this message to amateur players, including youngsters. In England, where quality coaches are in drastically short supply (this Guardian article here of 2010 says there are only 2,769 English coaches with a UEFA A, B or Pro licence, roughly one tenth of other major footballing nations in Europe – 26,000 odd hold an FA level one according to this BBC article from around the same time), the problem extends all the way up to the mid-reaches of the football pyramid where I play, and beyond. 

This leads me on to what I wish to discuss in this piece. Oversimplifying football, misinterpretations and what causes them, and how they hold players back with the attitude to football which evolves from them. My experience in England is the primary area of study but once I progress in my journey abroad the two will be put together. I shall pick out various instances that I experience from both training sessions and matches, mainly in a sort of diary format but also mentioning unforgettable moments of earlier days in my playing ‘career’, and explain how they can damage (or indeed enhance!) the development of a player and a team. Not only this, but I shall also attempt to clarify somewhat the complexities which make up football from a training session to a match, for example how two things which appear equivalents on the surface aren’t quite so. 

As a bit of background, I have just graduated from University and am attempting to get back on track in football trying to carve out a respectable career for myself in the non-league pyramid. I had been training with a club (who I cannot name for reasons which will become obvious) who play a handful of divisions below the Blue Square Premier (not being any more specific than that for now) but have just moved abroad and wish to get involved in the game, for the reason that the attitude I perceive countries to have in general would fit me better and give me more motivation, and also so that I can compare respective methods – and indeed see if my conceptions are true (indeed, I could turn out to be completely wrong). My years at University, where football most certainly fell well behind socialising, ‘banter’ (including taking control of my friends’ unguarded Facebook accounts and telling all their friends how much they loved cock), getting hammered and going out on the pull in my list of life priorities, certainly hindered my development and I ended up just playing for a mate’s team in one of the organised leagues there. Before that I had enjoyed a brief spell in the world of semi-professional football having trialled with a handful of clubs from Conference to Ryman Division One level but, looking back on it, I don’t think I was good enough to make it last anyway. I tried to combine Uni with teams of the level I am now but this never lasted. This was all after I realised I was too good to continue playing Sunday League football (my then manager would certainly disagree with that!) and if I wanted to make progress then I’d have to do something sooner rather than later. I was a bit of a late starter – I didn’t sign up to a junior club until I was a very nervous 13-year-old with almost no self-confidence, which might also explain my comparatively late development as a footballer. 

My footballing mind really began to develop when I reached the age of 17, I think, and I no longer took any old bloke’s word as gospel. I’d re-signed for my previous Sunday League club after a year out of the game (for reasons I won’t go into) and was surprised at how I stood out as one who would hold the ball and pass it rather than just kick it forward. The manager was playing me up front for the reason that he thought I’d be too risky further back as he didn’t trust me not to make a mistake; even then, he certainly wasn’t pleased by my lack of ability to chase a ball hit 10 yards above my head and 30 yards beyond me and beat the defenders to it, nor was he pleased by my lack of ability to smash into opposition defenders, and one of his unique tips to me to encourage a more aggressive side was to go round picking fights with opponents. Things all came to a head between us during one training session shortly after this – we were about to start a training game and I was about to line up in my preferred position of the centre of midfield. He questioned what I was doing there and suddenly remarked “only good players can play that position you’re in.” He then proceeded in front of the whole squad to go on a rant about how I hadn’t improved at all in three years since knowing him. I think this scathing criticism coupled with his warped idea of aggression gave me the (temporary) motivation to prove him wrong and earn praise at a higher level from better qualified coaches. From my ‘journey’, I now realise I (and many others) have witnessed and been exposed to methods of management and coaching which are tragically lacking in footballing insight. Worst of all, they appear to be pretty harmless at first but as we shall find out, football is a complex game.

Just as a disclaimer, I am not going to pretend that I am whiter than white myself. I realise that some may read this and think I come across as a petulant twat who blames everyone but himself. That’s not the case, there have been times where I’ve failed to prepare properly for a match and it’s been my own fault, such as necking a load of whisky the night before a game and being unceremoniously pulled off in the first half to prevent myself from further embarrassment on the pitch. My point is that there are, in my opinion, glaring deficiencies in our attitude to football which holds back players’ development and even lets plenty of talented players slip through the net, even driving them away from the game. I do NOT, however, profess to be the man with all the answers to the problems, or know anywhere near everything there is to know about football. I also realise that some readers may find this very boring – and that’s fine, I’m a bit geeky and like analysing little things, probably too much.