The Technician
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technician No. 58 | June 2015 EDITORIAL RESPECT A few days ago, I was looking at UEFA.org, to be played – but in some cases the financial where there is a lot of material dedicated to rewards were several zeros beyond single figures coaching and coach education. As so often if the objective of avoiding relegation was happens, something caught my eye. It was near achieved. This trend seems to apply right the the beginning of an article about the UEFA way across Europe, no matter how big the Coaching Convention – which has since been country or the clubs. It was surprising, for given a thorough overhaul and made a lot easier example, that a club in the Spanish championship to read. The part that caught my eye was at the recruited a coach for just the last four matches end of a paragraph that set out the basic aims of of the season. the UEFA Coaching Convention, almost as a This situation provokes re flections on the mission statement. One of those aims was to definition of ‘coaching’. Traditionally, team buil establish coaching as “a reco ding and player devel op ment gnised profession”. I have to have been considered impor admit that, if I were given a tant components of the job chance to rewrite that state descrip tion. How do we recon ment, I would make it “a reco cile these longterm tasks with gnised and respected pro fes the tendency to require quick sion”. fixes? What can coaches do to This reflection about respect command respect from the is inspired by information recei people who hire and fire? For ved from various parts of the coaching profession, it is Europe. It is disheartening a worrying fact that a high when a member association percentage of technicians who tells us that there have been are dismissed from their first more than 30 changes to the job are never given a second coaching teams of the top chance. division clubs in a single season. There is no easy solution to Enquiries about the situation in the situation. UEFA has been other leagues produce equally – and still is – encouraging disqui eting replies, about 50% The UEFA Coaching Convention, revised national associations to offer of the division teams having to improve standards even further coaches a level of education changed their head coach during which makes them highly qua the season. Many clubs ended their domestic li fied to do the job. In other words, we need to cham pionship with their third boss of the season. ‘educate the educators’ so that the coaches of Some of the coaches’ contracts dealt with only the future are prepared in the best possible way single figures in terms of the number of games for the realities of a very demanding profession. While the top coaches take the limelight, the coach educators perform crucial backstage tasks that often go largely unnoticed. It is with no apologies that this issue of The Technician puts the spotlight on a range of topics related to coach education and all the hard work and IN THIS ISSUE dedication that goes into the training of coaches who, through their level of knowledge and competence, will hopefully help to earn coaching INTERVIEW – HOWARD WILKINSON 2-5 the respect that the profession deserves. l RAISING THE BAR 6-7 Ioan Lupescu HANDLING GOALKEEPERS; UEFA Chief Technical Officer KICK-STARTING FUTSAL 8-10 ‘B’ HAPPY 10-11 PUTTING SMILES BACK ON FACES 12 UEFA • technician | 06.15 | 1 THE INTERVIEW Describing coach education as a marriage between coaching and education might be the ultimate truism. But statements of the obvious sometimes serve to provoke reflection, in this case about the profile of the coach educator and the importance of a generally unsung role. This interview is with a man who, despite his strong individuality, epitomises the ideal blend of the coaching and education ingredients of the profession. As a player, he accumulated experience at Sheffield Wednesday FC (the club he supported as a child), Brighton and Hove Albion FC and Boston United FC, where he started his managerial career. After five successful years, he joined the English Football Association as one of its staff coaches and resumed club management in 1979 at Notts County FC, and then at Sheffield Wednesday in 1983. He joined Leeds United AFC in 1988, and after a successful era at the club is still in the record books as the last English manager to win the top English league title. His appointment as The FA’s technical director in 1997 involved – in addition to spells as head coach of the senior and Under-21 teams – a thorough review of coaching programmes and youth development, resulting in the Charter for Quality and the launch of a project for a national football centre, which has now come to visible fruition in the form of the impressive complex at St George’s Park. His dedication to the coaching profession has seen him serve as chairman of England’s League Managers Association since its formation in 1992. It has also led him into long-term cooperation with UEFA as a member of the Jira Panel, which has played – and still plays – a key role in the pan-European development of coach education. He is: HOWARD WILKINSON Can you describe the sort of coach developing the education of coaches over education that you received at the start of the years? your career? UEFA’s work in coach education over the past When I was transferred to Brighton as a 15 years has been enormous yet sometimes player, I had to live in ‘digs’ – the word we used unnoticed, a bit like the swan that’s gliding for a sort of boarding house – with two other gracefully across the lake but pedalling like mad UEFA via Getty Images UEFA players. We completed preseason training and below the water. Since I joined UEFA I’ve seen an started the league in August. By September, enormous change. But it’s not a change that’s I was becoming increasingly bored with all the been perceptible month on month. The reason spare time we had. One morning, the reserve for that is quite simple: what UEFA set about team coach, Steve Burtenshaw, pinned a note doing was basically to try to raise standards right on the board advertising an FA preliminary across Europe. And that is a very, very painstaking, coaching course every Thursday night and arduous, feetontheground process. Some of Sunday morning. I went to the first session the newer national associations can’t see it, purely for something to do. But by the end of because they don’t know what it was like before. that session I was convinced that coaching was But I can look back over quite a number of years for me. A new door had suddenly been opened and see the advances that have been made. I can in terms of structure, tactics, technique and how remember going to Turkey, Portugal, Cyprus, I looked at the game. Before, it had been a game Malta, Ukraine, Iceland, Romania, Hungary with no real logic to it: you just played and you and other countries when the UEFA Coaching did well or you didn’t do well. I realised that Convention was in its infancy. The difference there was far more to the game and from then now across the whole of Europe is huge. I would on I was fascinated. I started to do a lot of honestly argue that, if it weren’t for UEFA, reading. There wasn’t that much [in the way of coaching in many parts of Europe would still be books] at the time, but enough to get you struggling to find its feet. interested. I remember one by the athletics coach Percy Wells Cerutty, an eccentric Australian On a personal level, you always stress that who produced an amazing batch of worldclass you have enjoyed the role that you’ve longdistance runners. What fascinated me was played. Have any special moments stuck in that he, like most great coaches, was an your mind? innovator: he changed things, he saw the need I have enjoyed it. That’s true. Firstly because to do things differently, he made a difference. it’s about football and secondly because it’s And that’s what I like about coaching: it can about education. I really believe that teaching is make a difference. the most important profession in the world. I think that without teachers, without educators, You have been deeply involved in UEFA’s we’d still be trying to light a fire. So that part of coaching and coach education programmes. it is very fulfilling. It’s fascinating to go to work in How would you assess UEFA’s role in different places and experience different cultures. 2 | UEFA • technician | 06.15 Howard Wilkinson on stage at one of his many UEFA coaching events Sportsfile Because I have visited countries on working missions, I’ve been able to see the real Greece, the real Turkey, the real Hungary. I remember going to Ukraine one winter. One of my early coaching heroes was Valeriy Lobanovskyi. So I’m there at the Dynamo [Kyiv] training ground and seeing the room where Lobanovskyi developed his statistical models and profiles. And I’m in their own operating theatre … Many clubs have got one now but in Ukraine they’d had one for years. I’ve been very fortunate in meeting different people, experiencing and absorbing Getty Images different cultures, hearing different points of view … It has been an ongoing learning pro On the touchline with the late gram me.