Wilkinson says that this mentality developed due to the way physical education was taught.
“In the 1990s I recognised that culturally there was a different attitude in England, a fundamentally different culture to that what existed on the continent, in particular France, Italy and Spain.
“Physical education was performed by a teacher, who was supposed to be skilled in a multiplicity of disciplines. On the continent, however, you had education at school, and where there was physical education or sport at school it was theory.
“[Playing] sport was left to clubs, so all towns, all villages, had some form of sports club. Barcelona is a prime example of a sports club that’s become huge. In those clubs, professional coaches were part of a profession, so on the continent, training and education of coaches was recognised as wholly legitimate and essential to the sport.”
The Guardian reports that there are 2,769 English coaches holding UEFA’s three highest coaching badges (B, A and Pro), whilst Spain (23,995), Italy (29,420), Germany (34,970) and France (17,588) have significantly higher numbers.
Although England has fewer UEFA-qualified coaches than these countries, Nick Levett, the FA’s National Development Manager for Youth Football, says there is a perfectly good explanation for this.
“When we joined the UEFA coaching system and our courses fell in line with B licences and A licences, the other European countries had been running their systems along that model for a number of years before us. They’ve probably been doing it ten years longer than us. If you look now, the amount of coaches we train at A licence and B licence level is comparable every year with the other European countries,” he said.
However, Levett, who also coaches at Fulham’s Academy, feels that the coaching pathway is not necessarily tailored towards the best interests of young, developing footballers.
“I think it’s a bit of a paradox to be honest, because in this country we put our beginner coaches with our beginner players, and you could argue that you should put your best coaches with your beginner players. If we could raise the professionalism and respect of younger age appropriate coaches, I think it would be a good thing for the development of young players in this country,” he says.
Another issue, one that is particularly prevalent at grassroots level, is ensuring that coaches have age-appropriate knowledge suited to the children that they are coaching. Stuart Allen, County Development Manager at Middlesex FA, illustrates from his own experiences how beneficial and important coaching qualifications can be.
“I got involved with an under-11s club through a friend. He said his son’s club were losing ten-nil every weekend and I offered to help. I went down and said ‘we’re here for an hour and a half, we’ll do half an hour of physical work, half an hour of technical work and half an hour of a game.’ I thought that was right,” he said.
“Totally wrong. We did shuttle runs with these kids, I used to say ‘faster, faster, I used to do this as a kid.’ But shuttle runs aren’t appropriate for a ten-year-old, because their lungs can’t take in the amount of oxygen needed to keep it going. So my knowledge was completely flawed, and I couldn’t see that until I did my coaching course.”
Role of the FA
The role of the FA within youth development has also been scrutinised. Sir Trevor Brooking, speaking in Chris Green’s book Every Boy’s Dream, opines that the FA is the “only governing body that doesn’t have power over its academy system”. Its influence extends as far as permitting the Premier League and the Football League to award clubs licences for Academies and Centres, and providing coach education courses. Howard Wilkinson explains the role of the FA.
“The FA is mandated by UEFA. The role of the FA is player development and coach education. It’s a different matter with the Rugby Football Union (RFU), and in the case of cricket and so on, where the governing bodies have a much stronger hold over the clubs then the FA does,” he says.
Wilkinson’s reference to the RFU highlights an interesting comparison. With one World Cup triumph and another appearance as beaten finalists in the last 10 years, it could be said that the English rugby team has enjoyed something akin to a golden period over the last decade. The current Six Nations title holders will enter September’s World Cup in New Zealand ranked fourth favourites by most bookmakers and with genuine aspirations of reclaiming the crown they won in 2003.
Gary Henderson, Head of Coach and Player Development at the RFU, believes that the role of the RFU and its relationship with professional clubs has been a key contributor to the quality and depth of elite young players coming through on the English conveyor belt, as well as ensuring that the nation’s best players perform for their country.
The clubs and the RFU signed an eight-year agreement in 2007 which ended long-running club v country disputes. Henderson believes that this deal was essential in order to ensure harmony between the two groups in the long run.