I was listening to the BBC the other day while driving back from Triabunna and they had a fascinating item on their “World Football” program.
It was about Sporting Lisbon’s state-of-the-art football academy, situated just outside Lisbon.
It made me think about some of the recent threads on this blog about our own Tasmanian Institute of Sport and about the two players who are on offer to local clubs. This issue has caused quite some debate.
The Sporting Lisbon Football Academy has produced the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani.
But, the staff at the academy are realists, and they indicated as much in the interviews with the BBC journalist presenting the program.
The young players at the academy also had their feet on the ground and knew exactly what lay ahead of them - 40 hours of schooling per week at the local school down the road, in addition to their footballing education.
They lived in dormitories on the second floor of the main academy building, while classrooms, gyms and treatment rooms were located on the ground floor.
Any damage occurring in the dormitories had to be paid for by the young players attending the academy.
Anyone who skipped classes was punished with a week spent helping in the laundry, or other such chores.
Anyone sent off in an academy game was docked 30 per cent of their pay.
The head coach said the task of the academy was to produce well-rounded individuals who were prepared for life in football and in the outside world.
He said of a class of 20 players, only two or three would make it as professionals at the highest level. It was important, therefore, to give the kids a foundation for life outside the sport.
He recounted a couple of stories to the journalist which really put things into perspective.
He showed him a team photo of a decade or more ago and pointed out the 12-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo in the line-up.
Then he pointed out the youngster standing next to Ronaldo and said that this boy had been a much better player than Ronaldo at the time and showed much more promise.
And where is that youngster now, while Ronaldo is earning millions with Real Madrid? He is a waiter in a restaurant in the south of Portugal.
The other story was about three of the academy’s most promising youngsters who were coveted by Chelsea some years ago. Two of them went to Chelsea and the other refused to move.
The one who refused to move is now playing with Hapoel Tel Aviv in the Israeli top flight, which is quite a respectable level of football and includes European Championship football.
The two who went to Chelsea are now playing in Portugal’s third division.
Salutary lessons all, don’t you think, about modern football?
There is no emphasis on winning at the Sporting Lisbon Academy of Football. The aim, as stated earlier, is to produce well-rounded individuals, some of whom will be top footballers.
Some of the youngsters interviewed said that when they returned to the academy after a game, none of the staff asked whether they had won.
They asked questions such as: “Did you play well?” “How did the team play?”
Only after that did they sometimes ask about whether the game was won.
The head coach at the academy said that no 11-a-side games were ever played in training. Eleven-a-side was strictly confined to competitive matches, and a 4-3-3 system was employed because he felt that was the best system to teach the requirements of the game.
The reason he gave for not playing any 11-a-side matches in training was that even the best players were only in contact with the ball in a 90-minute game for 2 minutes. In a 5-a-side match, there was much more ball contact by every player and therefore it was a far more valuable learning experience.
The next time you watch Cristiano Ronaldo or Nani in action for Real Madrid or Manchester United, respectively, or indeed, for Portugal, spare a thought for their former class mates at the Sporting Lisbon Football Academy.
They may well be watching them, too, and asking themselves what went wrong.
6 comments:
Walter, long been a silent reader of your great blog,thought id share something i wrote some time ago. Tony .
As a lad I learnt;to do as I was told,to respect and obey my coach.I learnt to practice with a team & on my own, to listen to instructions and follow a plan. To put the teams goals ahead of my own; and work with the team to achieve them.I learnt "you only get out of it what you put into it", the more imput the more rewards. I learnt to share and take turns. I learnt the value of teamwork- to play my part in the team & that teamwork works for me too. I learnt to lose & take losing well, I learnt to accept dissapointment, picking myself UP again & again.I learnt you cant win all the time, that winning isnt everything, its not everything we try to achieve. I learnt to win, & what it takes to win, the practice,devotion,dedication & patience. I learnt to win well, but win fair; that cheats never prosper, they fall in the end. I learnt to celebrate a goal and a win, I learnt to have fun & play fair, to enjoy a good game.I learnt theres always someone taller, faster, better & bigger, that "the bigger they are the harder they fall"; that bigger isnt always better. I learnt that effort is never wasted. I learnt I can be a loser on a winning team, but a winner even if the team loses. I learnt that it doesnt matter if you win or lose, its how you play the game that counts. I learnt that everyone sees the game differently, but my trueth is how i feel, when Im walking off the ground- at the end of a good game, knowing I gave all I could, WIN, LOSE or DRAW & that I could "always look on the bright side of life".
Nice article Walter...it is also is a reminder to some of the 'big fish' in the game here in Tassie; they have no right to act as something 'special' for just as the two team mates of Ronaldo discovered, they have not proved themselves on a much bigger stage so they are merely big fish in a little pond. Move them to a big pond and they become fodder until they can hold their own...and there is always a bigger pond.
The reason he gave for not playing any 11-a-side matches in training was that even the best players were only in contact with the ball in a 90-minute game for 2 minutes. "In a 5-a-side match, there was much more ball contact by every player and therefore it was a far more valuable learning experience.
The next time you watch Cristiano Ronaldo or Nani in action for Real Madrid or Manchester United, respectively, or indeed, for Portugal, spare a thought for their former class mates at the Sporting Lisbon Football Academy."
ok now walter is even pushing the futsal bandwagon of the benefit of 5-a-side, where is corey on the forum when these sorts of calls are being made?
Anonymous 12.26pm, I am certainly not pushing the futsal bandwagon. There's a difference between futsal and 5-a-side. The Lisbon Academy plays 5-a-side outdoors and it's not futsal (which is 'salon football').
I do believe in 5-a-side outdoors for all primary school aged children. In fact, when I was teaching back in the 70s and coaching school sides, I conducted an experiment with my students. We took statistics of both 11-a-side games and 5-a-side and the latter was way ahead when it came to the number of touches players had, even though the games were much shorter.
I published the results in an article I wrote for "Panorama", the journal of the Tasmanian Education Department, and lobbied for changes in primary school soccer to accommodate 5-a-side and actually replace 11-a-side games. The idea received much opposition and provoked much hostility by some of the people who ran primary soccer at the time, but was adopted in part eventually. The current small-sided games push is, in a way, reinventing the wheel. We've been down the path before, but it all fell by the wayside at some stage and is now back in vogue.
I am happy to place that journal article on the blog as evidence.
I would love to see that article Walter. I also love the way you verbally 'slap' some of these smart Alecs who want to preach (from a very ricketty pulpit). Keep up the good work mate.
tell me how futsal is different to 5-a-side and also tell me how futsal is not beneficial? proof is in the pudding as far as the benefits of futsal goes and all players mentioned in this article played at a young age.
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