Search: ' coaching'

Stephen Wagg offers a revisionist view of Adam Crozier's time in charge at the Football Association

When Adam Crozier left his job as chief executive of the Football Association, I was in­trigued by the language in which this was rendered by the football media. It seemed for all the world as if some tribune of the people, having heroically held the line against “commercialism” in the game, had now de­parted the stage. In his wake the fat cats of the Premier League would now continue to boost their own financial power at the expense of ordinary football folk. When one con­siders the circumstances of Cro­zier’s appointment and the key events of his comparatively short tenure at the FA, this seems more than a little absurd.

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French players and managers are already all the rage in England. Now they are exporting their behind-the-scenes coaches as well. Ben Lyttleton reports

July 14, 1998, was one of Francisco Filho’s most mem­­orable days in his 28 years at the Institut Nat­ional du Football, based at Clairefontaine. “It was two days after France had won the World Cup,” Man­chester United’s new Under-17 coach said. “Gérard Houllier told us he was leaving for Liverpool and Aimé Jacquet’s first words were: “We need to further im­prove our training.” He didn’t even mention what had happened two days earlier. I was taken aback, but that’s an ex­ample which illustrates the success of French training methods.”

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Andy Lyons asks Nottingham Forest manager Paul Hart about the way young players are brought up in England and the pitfalls of blooding them at an early age

With Howard Wilkinson now departing as England’s technical director, how successful would you say his reforms have been?
In terms of getting clubs to focus on producing young players, I think he’s been pretty successful. The criteria laid down to become an academy, including the fact that all players have to live within an hour and half’s travelling time of the club they join, I think was neccesary. It depends which end of the scale you’re at. If you’re one of the bigger clubs, then I don’t know whether they would see it as restrictive for their recruitment. But for me it’s been the right thing. We had three Notts boys last year represent England at different levels.

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Jim McLean has finally quit. Ken Gall says the man who made Dundee United great was right about most things, even if he didn't always put it politely

With all four Scottish entrants for European club competition experiencing varying degrees of dis­ap­point­ment and humiliation, and Arsène Wenger openly scoffing at the notion of ever signing a Scottish player, one might imagine that the game north of the border could do with all the help it can get.

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There is a new management team at Sunderland and Joe Boyle looks at how their coaching qualifications might fair in comparison to findings from a recent book

“Preparation, practice and training.” This is Howard Wilkinson’s way. After that, you’ll get some flair. As the Stadium of Light mustered one final groan at the end of Wilkinson’s first game in charge at Sunderland, the 1-0 defeat against West Ham, it was clear his players were set for a large dose of preparation, practice and training. Give me time, Wilkinson said afterwards. But, as Chris Green’s new book The Sack Race makes clear, time is something man­agers don’t have. Fifteen months is the average ten­ure in a job which, in Green’s account, of­fers long nights, sapping journeys up Britain’s motorways and the inevitable chop from a scapegoat-hunting boardroom.

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