How the Street will always overwhelm the Academies

The Street or the Academy? 

with Mario Zagalo at SoccerEx in Rio

In a recent Daniel Abrahams blog, (author of the great book, THE SOCCER BRAIN) Abrahams post thoughts from another Author, Matthew Whitehouse (author of ‘The Way Forward’ Solutions to Englands Football failings). Abrahams and Whitehouse lament the lack of high soccer intelligence of Wayne Rooney.  While I have no opinion as to Rooney's game intelligence  I do have a strong opinion about where Abrahams places the blame:

"For me, Rooney fails to appreciate space and tactical positioning. It is not too surprising when he considers that 95% of his development came from the streets as a kid. For me Rooney is not a modern player in the sense of using his brain, he is a street football who while effective, lacks the intricacies of the mind to achieve further greatness. Effectively he is a raw talent… never materialized... I feel the issue with Rooney and the reason why he is not on the same level of a Messi, Ronaldo or Iniesta is because he lacks the tactical nous and intelligence to dominate games.

and later 

And Van Persie’s development has come from his understanding of reading the game and becoming a thinking player."

This stagnation, he argues, arose from Wayne Rooney’s admission that he is %95 percent a Street player. Because at the appropriate he was not given the syllabus of creating, making, and using space like Iniesta and Van Persie.

His argument is that that lack of polishing produced a player not intelligent enough to understand the game at the highest level. And that the “street” training created a good, but not great players. There needed to be a sound syllabus of movement and tactical work beginning latest at the age of 12.

What to Teach and When?  The ever ongoing question. What was missing? What can we do better? what is it we are doing wrong? 

“Whenever we teach our kids something we prevent them from discovering it and therefore understanding it fully.”  —Piaget

It is more likely that Abrahams has it backwards.  That intelligence--at least how it's described by Piaget--is more likely to be developed on the street where the kids can discover and ultimately show us something new--especially at the early ages (and I will argue until age 16) And the academy, in their efforts to hand teach systems of the past (Spanish possession or the du jour German collectivism)  at ages as early as nine (now much earlier) they actually prevent kids from that discovery and therefore understand the concept fully.

Don't believe me? Let's look at some of the examples used by Abrahams

• Rooney joined Everton at age 9.  They were not doing street play at the Everton academy. In 2008 I attended soccer ex at Wembly Stadium spending the day networking and hobnobbing with Coaches and leaders from around Europe.  The club that everyone wanted to talk to was Everton.  They had just produced and sold a guy named Wayne Rooney.  They were selling something called “The Everton Way,” an online set of Everton academy drills, videos and activities and practice plans from ages 7-19. Mostly small sided space and keep a way games. (And they we dying to talk to me and sell to a club in the USA). My thoughts at the time were that it was too much passing and possession and tactics  for 11 year olds. (At the same conference was Girard Houlier saying that at Clairfountaine they only worked 3 things Skills, skills, skills). 

• Van persie played with friends everyday.  While he did attend a Dutch academy, he was more of a street kid than Rooney. Here is Nourdine Boukhari, a Dutch-Moroccan soccer player who grew up in an immigrant neighborhood of Rotterdam, recalling his childhood in a dutch magazine:

I lived more on the street than at home...And look at Robin Van Persie, Mounir El Hamdaoui and Said Boutahar. And I'm forgetting Youssef El-Akchaoui. [Like the other players Boukhari mentions, El-Akchaoui is a current professional soccer player.] Those boys and I played on the street in Rotterdam together. We never forgot where we came from and that we used to have nothing except for one thing: the ball....  What we have in common is that we were on the street every minute playing soccer, day and night. We were always busy, games, juggling, shooting at the crossbar. The ball was everything for me, for us.

• Iniesta was a dribbling ball hog. At SoccerEX in Rio, Ginez Melendez, one of the leaders of the Spanish soccer armada, sat me down in front of his computer to show videos of Iniesta at age 12, (pre Barca)  at Albacete, where Melendez discovered him—  All the kid did was dribble and shoot (and score).  Looked very street to me.

As coaches we greatly overestimate the academy and our abilities to pass on knowledge. Our systems are built to mold kids into something in the past, something we think we understand. We breakdown game intelligence into good and bad, smart and dumb all based on our experience. 

Again from Piaget:
The role of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

If we define Game intelligence on the above, then it is built on the street, not the academy.  

What is the answer?

1) Believe in Play! Build Free Play in the Culture and Curriculum. Figure out to how get more play at early ages.  Set up support for min neighborhood games.  Build cool mini courts everywhere and let kids play on them. Keep the coaches away. Is Spain great because they have discovered how to coach Dutch style space making? Or because they adopted Futsal and small  sided play in every park and club in the country creating Europe’s most vibrant culture of play?

2)  Let them play until the age of 16. 
The greatest generation of Brazilian players, the 1960's and 70's, When brazil was so much better than everyone. What was going on? They were playing in the street until the age of 16, then transition them to deliberate practice.  It’s the end of adolescence, it is the time for boys to become men. The Brazilians that won three world cups out of 4 (Garrincha, Pele, Nilton Santos, Zagalo, Rivelino) joined the academy at 16 to be techni-fication. How much space training and game intelligence was needed for Carlos Alberto, Rivelino and Pele (all famous street kids)? Garrincha, he made his own space and the smartest brains on the planet were left flummoxed "Russia put a spaceship around earth, put they couldn't stop Garrincha." What our highest level coaches understand is that all the greatest players rise for the street.  As Piaget said they take us to where we have never gone before (Pele, Cruyff).

3) Focus on the person. Small and smart curriculum that builds and grows with the growing creative abilities of the person first, player second and team play third. the role of the coach then changes, from passing on tactical nous to helping kids create a new to environment shaping. To his credit Abrahams gets this right:  

Daniel Abrahams @DanAbrahams77 · Nov 27

The 21st century football coach will be the psycho-social coach. She will put technique & tactics to the back of her playbook & coach people

4) A best practice curriculum.  Play as Kids, work as adults. Each year build the curriculum slowly, but smartly, from the inside out.  The person, the person and the ball, the person, the ball and a friend, etc.  This leads them through technical, cooperative and competitive stages while providing them a tool kit for meeting the rising challenges. Soccer intelligence is a phrase we should use very, very carefully, like the gifted student, the math wiz, we need to be careful about focusing on results. The groundbreaking psychologist, Carol Dweck and her ideas on Mindset asks hard questions about this sort of environment. Are we creating  fixed mindset (intelligent or dumb; talented not talented) vs a mindset of growth (effort, adaptability--and create something new!)).  Her work is exciting because it gives coaches real, substantial ways to help kids of all ages. We should not be limiting Rooney if we feel he is not smart enough.  He is not a fixed finish product, we 

5) Create a growth mindset. Soccer intelligence is a phrase we should use very, very carefully, like the gifted student, the math wiz, we need to be careful about focusing on results. The groundbreaking psychologist, Carol Dweck and her ideas on Mindset asks hard questions about this sort of environment. Are we creating  fixed mindset (intelligent or dumb; talented not talented) vs a mindset of growth (effort, adaptability--and create something new!)).  Her work is exciting because it gives coaches real, substantial ways to help kids of all ages. We should not be limiting Rooney if we feel he is not smart enough.  He is not a fixed finish product, we should focus on building his ability to adapt, and learn and grow.  

When you think about a truly exciting growth mindset do you think of a play environment of the street or the cloistered antiseptic Academy system?



Like Zagalo's third goal in the 1958 final. Flying in against athletic, strong Swedish defenders he striped the ball with the softest touch, leaving the bigger men to flail over as if they swung at a ghost and off to tuck the ball in the net. As another author has  said "I guess the academies have yet to design those drills."

It s because of this play, in the early years, before the coaches limit and take ideas away—where true game intelligence--the ability to adapt, learn and produce something new is created.  It is not the academy—it’s the street, it’s the culture, it’s the community.

One final quote from Piaget:

Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.

The individual is more important than the team

The first page of Jose Morinho's coaching 'bible" is a simple statement:

"The team is more important than the individual"

This is true for adults, but for kids, my statement would be as follows:

"The individual is more important that the team"

While this seems at first almost blasphemous in our modern USA coaching culture--as we look closer we see some truths.

A great team like Barcelona is made up of great players like Messi and Iniesta (among others) both who as indivduals more than team players. (Ginez Melendez, who discovered Iniesta, showed me videos of Iniesta at 12 from his computer--I never saw him pass the ball once --just dribbled score goals). Only the developed individual can contribute to the group--the groups success depends on the highest possible inputs. Without the individual it there is no contribution to the group. Without the group receiving change and evolving there is no growth and the group fails to thrive.

And today we see the outcomes of this misunderstanding by coaches and soccer leaders across the country (and World) as kids drop out, we deal with Relative age effect, poor player development and unentertaining soccer focused on the team value of the win.

Last year I took a year long coaching course with the NSCAA "Advanced Director of Coaching Diploma,"  Led by Matthew Robinson of the University of Delaware it brought together some of the leading practitioners of Player Development in the US.

One of the assignments asked for us to read and review Steven Covey's Seven Habits. If you have not read it--it is an excruciating look at getting to know oneself and personal development.

As I read the book I saw unfolding an outline on personal development--but also a clear curriculum on soccer development. And a fresh look at precisely this problem of collective over the individual.

Personal development and soccer development are intertwined.

One of Covey's tenets is First independence, then interdependence.  This is an interesting idea that flows from the inside out idea.  We focus first on ourselves, sharpening our effectiveness before we seek interdependence of and efficiency of collectiveness. This applies directly to coaching development ideas where the player must first learn to stand on their own, comfortable on the ball, with the dribbling skills to declare independence on the field before they can seek to synergized, building relationships of the passing game of interdependence. 

But, interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. 

So how do we unleash our kids from the collectiveness that can hold them back?

1) Make the Person the Priority
Focus each of them to look inside to be true to themselves and search for excellence.

2) Player second
The best players play--the second best players compete. 'Players' with a more random and varied skill set to call upon--will always overwhelm those who compete (the trained, drilled, athletic, winning mindset, mentally tough--you name it, all of these are adult objectives projected on to young kids).

And if you want to be good at play you had better practice by playing, social, emotional, technical and physical problem solving.  Only Play until the age of 16. Kids who practice this the most will have the most to offer the group.

3) Team comes next
The team and the group become important as the boy or girl become an adult.  The change is overnight--kids at this age--sometime after later puberty--literally "grow up" at this age it is ok for them to lift weights--take on physical challenges. The prefrontal cortex close and executive function decision making is refined. Emotional, socially, holistically it is time for the individual to join the group. Now, at this age the team or group does take on importance.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.--1 Corinthians 13:11

Kids will let you know when that time comes. And if we can wait we can maximize that individual to allow for new and better contributions.  Like the Hunter and Gatherer societies that did not ask boys to  contribute before the age of 16, they were allowed to play explore and create--evolutuoin has taught us that this is the most efficient learning model.