The heat is on the National Curriculum in Malaysia

Agree with Waz, there are many factors. I’d also add the fees for coaching courses (which then might put pressure on coaches to recoup costs, if not a living). Drop fees to encourage higher education at the grassroots level - should increase quality of coaching availability. Some comparisons in UEFA between availability of educated coaching numbers at youth levels indicates a link between this youth quality from articles read years ago. Another that can easily be overlooked is football culture in the sense that football is just another after-school activity - train once or maybe twice a week plus a game on Saturday. Seeing it this way is not universal but football as a part of life being more widespread and played outside of set hours a week would help. You could go into private academies and their effect in diverting money from families and quality of football education... ...ideally if A-League and National Team stars had skill segments as part of kids TV, this might help. There are apps but the youngest age groups would benefit imo. (Similar to what Tom Byer has done in Japan for years). Good article.

The most bizarre thing was going live without an option to get email notifications when new comments are posted. All sense of a conversation around each article has been lost. That was a key feature of the old format and a glaring omission from the new. Most regular commenters have abandoned ship and the advertisers will soon follow I imagine.

By the way the new format is terrible, what happened to the old one? It should never had changed.

Graham Arnold made an interesting point about the next generation and especially with the effect of the FFA National Curriculum when it first came out in 2009 these kids are now in the Joeys. 5. The stars of the future “I know they will come, it’s a matter of giving them opportunities.” “I went and watched an under-17 camp the other day with the Joeys. I saw 70 kids at the age of 15 or 16 and I saw stuff I’ve never seen before in Australian football. “Those kids that were at North Narrabeen with the Joeys, they were three or four years old when the curriculum started. These kids are now coming. I’m so excited about the future. “I know the FFA have spoken about expansion, expansion is coming. We are doing everything to make opportunities for the kids.” https://www.socceroos.com.au/news/10-things-we-learned-graham-arnolds-first-press-conference This quote was quite interesting if it was anything to go by, but like anything I prefer to judge them how they get older in senior football ranks and ultimately Socceroos. But I would be looking out for them closely to see there technical and tactical abilites on show, you could argue they are the first batch to go through the whole process from SSGs from SAP and upwards although previous youth teams have also experienced going through the curriculum principals and guidelines too.

It will indeed. Throw in South Korea and the Aussie boys will be facing a good range of quality and playing styles. The results will answer a lot of questions about how effective the NC has been (with some caveats, as noted above by Waz). As an aside MF, your comments are as tangentially evocative as great poetry, summoning up thoughts of fingernails dragged across blackboards, milk spontaneously curdling, foetuses self-terminating, whale pods inexplicably beaching etc etc. Is there anyone left in your real life who has not been driven away by your relentless passive-aggressive sarcasm?

Playing the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan will certainly provide us with a good gauge on how the NC is tracking.

Waz -As you are no doubt aware, football history in Australia is often a "no-go" zone when it comes to the articles being written today. Our so called golden generation of players who took us back to World Cup football in 2006 using players, who in the main were playing with "top" clubs overseas, was made up of players who, probably being in an average age span of 27-30 years of age, were probably around 5-8 back when they started their junior football around the early 1980's. There can be little doubt that these self same juniors would have been influenced by the then decision to change junior football to a small sided game on small pitches that was introduced into our game around 1976 with little or no publicity or fancy sounding titles like National Curriculum, a "great leap forward" initiated by an extremely costly "plan" using coaching information that was at least some 20-30 years old. (The Brazilians introduced 4-3-3 in their 1956 World Cup team) and as said, the small sided game on small pitches was at least 30 years old when it appeared on the "National Curriculum". So, have we really advanced or is the same track being played over and over.? cheers jb

Great article. There’s plenty of focuson the NC however it’s only one element - the quality and availability of facilities, the quality and availability of coaches, and the impact pay-for-play has are just as important, if not more so. There has to be some form of NC and it’s often misunderstood that it is a kind of religious-like mantra that is rammed down kids throats which is far from the truth. There are elements that can be improved upon but let’s start with more facilities, better coaches, and ending pay-for-play ... any system will struggle otherwise.

It wouldbe good to be able to see something from the tournament even if it is just a highlights package. With Foxtel running specialized EPL channels I often watch theyouth team games and they are often far more exciting and entertaining than watching the senior teams play. However, it is difficult to engage unless directly involved without some screening of the tournament that isn’t hidden on a secondary channel in the early hours of the morning.