Two football generations apart

Giggs and Welbeck ten years ago. Who would have thought they’d still be playing together today…

Recognising Talent… setting our approach to a different set of lenses

Predicting individual success and potential are highly vexed issues. However, because we all have such powerful instincts about how best to do it, we all do it anyway. “The next Pele/Messi/Maradona” are phrases you hear at least a dozen times a year about different players, however, the harsh reality is only one of the twelve even make it to a World Cup.

Measuring potential and success is something we (as a species) are hugely inconsistent at doing. How do we measure success?

1 Academic success and potential? A Levels, SATs etc

2 Sporting Success? NFL combine or (in association football) clubs consider signing a player the success of trials or a few good seasons at a club in the lower leagues

3 Military leadership tests? Many would argue that we’d be better of picking randomly

None of the above guarantee that the results are parallel with the truth. The majority of our can’t-miss prodigies do, in fact, miss. And the majority of successful people seem, to our eyes, to come out of nowhere. So often or not the highly respected game ‘Football Manager’ gets it so wrong and too football clubs in reality. Where did Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand, Stuart Pearce, John Barnes, Steve Finnan, Ian Dowie, Chris Smalling Alan Pardew, Michael Kightly et al. receive their world class footballing training after presumingly shining at such a young age? The answer – they didn’t. All of these were victims of young players who played non league football before someone realised they’d slipped through the net. How many of those named above have had an impact on not just football in their era but still today? How close we came to not even hearing of any of the above today.

The reason for this is that talent is not linear; it’s complex. It’s not about a number; it’s about an invisible landscape that emerges from the interaction of person and environment — the squishy yet vastly important combination of passion, grit, opportunity, and character that can’t be summed up in a single measure.

Or can it?

A story recently unfolded that may give us a new way to peek inside that landscape. A story about a foundation set up that helps students in the U.S.A, who might not otherwise get into elite colleges. These students are often kids from tough neighbourhoods, low SAT scores and want to attend Stanford, M.I.T and Harvard etc

The way the ‘Posse Foundation’ works is firstly for the students to be put into teams of 10 or so. Throughout college and school the students meet weekly, support for each other and for other students who have already graduated to overcome the many obstacles in life. Despite their relatively low SAT scores, 90% of the Posse Foundation graduate and 50% end up on the exclusive dean’s list. 80% of the students founded or led groups and clubs. This foundation has provided colleges with a tough challenger to the way they currently think about finding talent.

This concept got me thinking, what makes a team a great team: Zambia 2012? Barcelona 2010? or Manchester Utd 1999 through to Manchester Utd today? Compare these to the England’s ‘golden generation’ of 2000 -2012 (see article: 13 March 2012 - The failures of England’s golden generation – what, how and why)

Something that struck me was the real presence of the ‘posse’ relationship found in the more success teams. The Manchester Utd under Sir Alex Ferguson has always, without fail, been built around this concept of ‘posse’ and togetherness – others label it mental strength, but their is much more to it. Something that both Zambia 2012, Swansea 2012 and Barcelona under Pep Guardiola also advocate.

Like any posse, they add a crucial mix of ingredients to the talent landscape: role models, support, identity, constantly renewed ignition. They perform the most crucial function in the talent process: they fill our windshield with versions of our future self.

Putting the posse concept into context – imagine how successful Busquets, Scholes or Yorke-Cole would have been had they not had those around them. Scholes would not have had the movement of the world class players, Busquets wouldn’t have those to release the ball to in perfect positioning,Yorke wouldn’t have had Cole.

That’s not to say that one is only good because of others around them. Think of it another way…the players true potential is only seen when put with the right mix of ingredients around them – on and off the field: i.e. their ‘posse’.

So in identifying a lower league talent who perhaps isn’t at his true potential because of others around, maybe character is a more important aspect of his skill set. Those around him, how he contributes and the typology of personality he portrays are all unmeasured skill sets of present.

Think back through your playing days – is this not true of you at your best? Particular players bring out the best in you and vice versa. But when an entire team has this connection, or an entire posse, then something truly great could happen.

When it comes to identifying talent, the question is not, What’s your score?

Maybe the real question is, Who’s your posse?

FC Magdeburg Fans…We Salute You!

After failing to score in five games, FC Magdeburg fans show their players where the goal is. Fans started the match holding up a large banner that read  ”Don’t
worry, chaps, we will show you where the goal is!”

For the first half of the game the fans behind the goal, due to a lack of attendance were able to run from corner to corner, following the point of play. The fans jumped, sang and certainly made their presence felt.

In the second half however, they joined in with the crowd at the other end along with all the other supporters! And believe it or not, (at 7:10 on the video below) in the second half, the team only went and scored an equaliser! Unfortunately, in the last minute the team conceded another goal and went on to lose 2-1.

However, it was great to see a bunch of fans taking an alternative to boo-ing their own players and really supporting their team.

I hope it’s a trend that catches on!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FuC5BP8db6w

More Images

TPiMBW: Slowly but surely conquering the world!

22,000 world-wide website views Feb 14 – April 05

Tika Taka Football: Set Pieces

Set Pieces

Here are the overall numbers of corners per team in this sample of matches. On average, teams took 5.35 corners per match. This is consistent with the five year league average of 5.52. While Wolves were particularly high at around 8 in this sample (for season as a whole this year, they are at 6.2 – also quite high), the rest of the teams ranged between a low of about 4 (Wigan) and 6 (Chelsea), with the better performing teams this year producing more corners.

(from 10/11 season data, http://www.soccerbythenumbers.com/2011/05/why-goal-value-of-corners-is-almost.html)

While this is not what we’re primarily interested in, it gives us a baseline against which we can compare the shot and goal production from corners. So here is the answer to question one; what are the proportions of corners actually producing shots on goal, according to the StatDNA data?

The data show that, on average, about 20.5% of all corners (that’s 1 in 5) led to a shot by the team that took the corner within three touches of the ball. There also is considerable variation across clubs on this. At the low end, some of the very best clubs in the league managed relatively few shots – about 1 to 1.5 in 10 – relative to the number of corners they produced. In contrast, some of the worst teams in the league produced a relatively high number of shots in the aftermath of corners (Chelsea is the exception), at a rate of 1 in 4 or even 1 in 3 (West Ham and Stoke).

But clearly, there is some slippage; another way to think about this is that most corners did not yield shots (about 80% of them don’t). Think about how different this is likely to be from free kicks. But on to question two. Of the corners that actually led to shots within three touches, what were the odds that the ball crossed the line? Take a look

There is even greater slippage when it comes to turning shots into goals than turning corners into shots. In fact, it’s almost twice as much. On average, about 11% or 1 in 9 shots created from corners produce goals. Incidentally, that’s also right around the average ratio for goals to all shots taken in soccer matches (the Reep ratio). In this sample of matches, Fulham and Arsenal led the league in converting corner-created shots into goals at a rate of over .25, while at the low end, none of the shots created by Sunderland, Man City, Bolton, or Birmingham found the net.

So what do the patterns look like when we put all this together? The graph below of the ratio of corners to goals tells the combined story.

The yield from corners ranges from 0 to .07. On average, the data show that a corner is good for (drumroll ….) 0.022 goals. This means that the average EPL team scores 1 goal from a corner about every 10 games. And this helps to explain the lack of a correlation between the number of corners and goal scoring. The infrequency of the goals from corners combined with a lack of dispersion between teams in corners per game lead conspire to make corners mostly, well, useless when it comes to scoring goals.

Conclusion

From the data above it has become increasingly clear that at top level football, where defenses are well organised, set pieces are a case of improbable chance more often than not. A corner is no longer a regular goal scoring opportunity in reality, therefore, as an alternative approach perhaps a corner should be thought of as opportunities to maintain possession in the final third of the pitch or if you are the defending side, the opportunity to counter attack.

Obviously, if you have a team of giants (Norway/Denmark in previous years) with the combination of an excellent corner taker with a consistency rarely found even in professional football then a corner is by all means a real goal scoring opportunity.

As a regular Cardiff City match attendee I can safely say I have only witnessed a handful of goals scored from corners over the last five years, despite possessing Peter Wittingham, a player considered to have the best technique outside of the premier league and players such as Roger Johnson, Jay Bothroyd, Mark Hudson, Ben Turner amongst others who are all proven threats in the air. Cardiff have found far more success from indirect free kicks and long throw ins over the last five years.

So perhaps a corner needs to be reconsidered entirely and a short ball should be played freeing up the 18 yard box and starting the attack again rather than launching the ball into their goalkeepers hands and allowing the opponents to break.

The implications of this would by and large be huge. With only a handful of players either standing in or around the opponents area, a corner would no longer become the opportunity for hectic movement inside the box but an opponents half with players tactically scattered over the final third. The opportunity to make and create space to then play the chance creation ball in a moment of chance creation opportunity would be asking a different set of questions to your opponents. Perhaps less is more in this sense.

This guide does not suggest that this is the best approach by any means, but questions a part of the game that most professionals at the top end of the game right through to the sunday league footballs take as a given. “we’ve won a corner now send all the big lads forward”…. maybe the complete alternative is a better alternative?

There is however, something about scoring a last minute equaliser from a corner against a team who have outplayed you from start to finish (see Ben Turners last minute equaliser against all odds Cardiff City v Liverpool Caring Cup Final 2012), but perhaps thats all it should be, a desperate chance against a team who you cannot outplay another way.

It is worth noting that (from experience) in youth football and lower league corners have a much higher success rate and quick counter attacking football from one end to the other does not happen so frequently as it does so at the top levels of football.

Of course, there is no right and wrong in football and this handbook should most certainly not be given as a blueprint for how to play. Tactics and football itself are always evolving – Barcelona have changed their set up every year for the last three years despite being labelled as the best team in history.

Do you find a formation that fits the qualities of your players or ask your players to fit the mould of a style of play and play their part in doing so? as with most things football, the answer to this question is a highly subjective one. No one is saying that one method is more successful than another: from Stoke to Barcelona (albeit one club is clearly more successful here), it’s all football. But, if I were to answer the question what football was about for me, as a player, a coach or a fan I know for certain which style of football I’d like to see being used.

However, the objective of the game is to win and with winning you’ll find the secret to the enjoyment of the game. Just ask Greece of 2004 and Italy 2006 whether they’d swap those trophies for the trophy-less but praised history of the Netherlands.

Top 30 paid football managers in the world (March 2012)

Source: http://www.futebolfinance.com/os-30-maiores-salarios-de-treinadores-de-futebol-2012

The failures of England’s golden generation – what, how and why

I’d like to add something to the forever ongoing debate about the failures of the ‘golden generation’ of Gerrard, Terry, Lampard through to Beckham, Neville and Owen et al. for the England team over the last ten to fifteen years.

An interview with David James, before his 900th appearance in football last weekend highlighted another issue pertinent to England’s recent and pass failures

James pointed out that much of the England team over the last decade has been largely made up of players who are not only the best players available but also more often than not play for the best teams in English football. On the surface of this, there doesn’t appear to be anything that shouldn’t be in the mixture within the ‘chemistry of success’. However, James talks about how the Man Utd team of the late 90′s did things differently (while James himself was a Liverpool player) and the same players who played for these two teams were divided in personality within the England camp and rarely mixed with one another before or after training. Even during training there were obvious differences between the players; the only thing gelling them was professionalism. The fierce rivalries between players at club level was simply put to one side for the sake of doing a professional job at international level.

In more recent years the problems seem to have escalated. Capello was never one who was an expert at gelling players together and let players do there own thing outside of training hours, while many players complained about boredom at the World Cup and Euro camps during the competitions. James himself would often spend much of that time alone painting (a very talented painter may I add) or reading to avoid the differences of personalities.

Jon Terry, the England captain up until recently, represents everything that was wrong and right at England level – its worth remembering the manager and much of the public backed him as the captain. Sure, he along with most of the England players were extremely professional on the field, but along with Capello he never was never one for taking players under his wing and forming the necessary team spirit to win titles. Jon Terry is the prime example of a player who hasn’t won many friends within the game over the decade (Wayne Bridge, Anton Ferdinand et al) and even Craig Bellamy commented that he wasn’t surprised about the press’ view on Terry as he commented that “everyone in football knows what Terry is like”.

Here’s where the comparative problem lies: the winnings sides of Spain and Brazil over the years have not had the same problem. Their players play in different leagues and mostly not within any run-deep fierce rivalries as much of the Spanish team is made up of one philosophy and team: Barcelona. Brazil on the other hand has been a collective mix of multi cultural experience and styles of play.

As pointed out, Fabio Capello has always been a tactician who based his approach on professionalism. No England manager over the last ten to fifteen years has really made huge errors in selection responsibilities, but all of them have made the same mistakes in their broken paths to failure. Not one of the managers has found success in merging the players to find that ‘chemistry of success’, in finding full immersion of team spirit (Zambia 2012). Professionalism is no replacement for unity in team spirit and thats why so many lower league clubs and lesser sides often provide the ‘shock of the round’ in cup football.

What England need is a manager who is first and foremost a great man manager, a manager who can find the team spirit, build bridges and relations between the players and uniting what ‘England’ means to each and every one of them. The expert level of tactical knowledge of Capello, the favouritism (towards a select few – Owen, Beckham etc) and experimental style of Sven Göran Eriksson and professional enforcement of McLaren have all failed.

Therefore who is the right man for the job? A man who can not only tick the boxes above but also emphasise the passion of club football in England, eradicate the so called ‘Ego’ of particular players, grounding players and helping players find one and another in times of greatness.

It’s inexorable, all roads lead to one man and one man only. This article almost seems pointlessly long as the answer is so obvious. He is not only the people’s choice but also the player’s choice.

It’s time to step up Harry Redknapp and unite the broken side of the current England side.

The only question that arises is whether or not the current ageing players in the England side have a relationship that is broken beyond repair and offer nothing but bad role models for the younger players breaking through.

Being Welsh myself, I have found myself following the England team over the years because of the failure of my own team – thats not to say I haven’t supported my country through the best and worst of times. I even travelled to watch Wales v Azerbaijan in 2008, while it seems no one else did as the attendance in the Millennium stadium along with the atmosphere hit an all time low compared to the Mark Hughes era.

One man that represented everything Wales needed, like England, was Gary Speed. While Wales started playing a style of football many wouldn’t ever think they’d see (after Toshack’s failure to keep both fans and players happy), I don’t believe for one second that Speed’s tactical approach was what won him his praises but his affectionateness of passion, team spirit and pride in not only putting on a Wales shirt but in turning up to watch the team. I fully believed that within a few years Speed would have had that Millennium stadium in full capacity again a lot sooner than many would believe. A stark contrast to Rooneys “nice to see your own fans booing ya” comments.

Gary Speed, Zambia (Herve Renard went through great lengths to understand the history of the country’s football) and Spain represent what England need. It was never about learning from the french (and then the spanish) about what was wrong with youth football in England (although worldwide, youth football in my opinion needs a wake up. see future article).

Its so easy to analyse in hindsight, but really finding the truth and learning from that truth is hard to come by. If more like David James could come forward and not point fingers at individuals but at wider problems we would find the roots to the problems.

David James is an absolute credit to the sport and I hugely regret ever cursing his name after his many mistakes as Calamity James. His drive and passion for the sport at the age of 41 is undeniable, I for one hope that he gets the opportunity to realise his next career goal of once again appearing in the Premiership and thank him for his useful, honest and level-headed insight on his career.