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The other week on SBS, Craig Foster Interviewed Arsene Wenger in Singapore for The World Game. The two professors of football exchanged a mutual droolfest of ideas on the game.
In one particular segment, Arsene said there were four stages of football development:
A-Technical years 5-12
B-Physical years 12-16
C-Tactical years 18-20
D Mental-from 20 years
This was in order to produce creative players.
Arsene said that a player learned technique from the ages of 5-12. After that it was virtually impossible.
He said that football was like a house you build from the bottom upwards and technique from ages 5-12 was where you started. He emphasised that technique was all important because football was not a natural sport due to the usage of the foot.
This rang a bell for me.
Although I was brought up in a football town, Sheffield, I didn’t really play “street football” until I was maybe 11 or so and my real football education started after 12, at the equivalent of high school in Australia with a tennis ball in the schoolyard.
Both (street and school) were learned from playing against a mixture of older kids and ones my own age.
So, although I learned to dribble, shield and run with the ball, I was at the upper limit of Arsene’s technical age. This was normal at that time. This may explain why, then, in English football the physical attributes overwhelm the technical.
I was starting to develop my football in the physical rather than technical stage.
This was very different to when I came here, where kids did actually play “Real Games” from the age of 5.
Trouble is, as far as I could, see nobody was teaching technique.
“Go Son” “Kick Long,” which suited the fastest strongest kid, was my observation when coaching. Not from me, but the sideline and other coaches.
So now we have small sided games here with the emphasis on more touches and, I presume, with better coaches being trained to impart technical knowledge, better more controlled touches by the kids in SSGs.
So I agree with Arsene that the house starts with technique.
If you cant pass, control, dribble, and tackle correctly by the time you’re 12, it will be very difficult to be a creative player. That creativity in football comes from being so comfortable with the ball at your feet that it releaxes the mind to improvise and provide spur of the moment inspirational moves.
Where I perhaps differ from Arsene is after that.
To me, the next three football stages are not so defined. Some kids develop physically earlier or later than others. Also, mentally and tactics can be learned earlier.
Why 18-20?
Surely, like technique, the earlier you learn about tactics, the better for a player in building the ‘football house’.
So do you agree with the “Arsene Formula” or is it a little too black and white?
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