Free Kick Lessons to Learn

Original thread here: https://twitter.com/CoachWilly1875/status/1345380040750604288 

Something I saw in United v Villa last night. We don't teach it enough at most levels of the game. What would the vast majority of teams do, if they were in Villa's situation, and were awarded a free kick here? Thread below.

In USA, Mexico, and England, most teams would have filled the box, taken maybe thirty seconds to restart the game, and would have lumped forward a long and hopeful ball.

When working with new teams, I establish that we don't do this. Immediately. It's one of the first things I address. I explain the logic of it, and they all agree.

What do we need in order to score a goal? The ball? Good. What else? Space? Excellent. If we lump it forward into a congested area without having rehearsed a routine, what's the chances we'll have the ball? Less than 50%. Chance we'll have space? 0% So why hit it?

They get it. They understand. They gave me the answers. Then we'll get into our first match, have a free kick near this area, like Villa, and you can guess what happens. Everyone runs away from the ball, and the donkey defender boots it at a congested defence.

Most of the time, it's taken one kick to go from having an unopposed restart where we can get out team into good positions, to now having to defend a counter attack while being wide open, because everyone went forward.

When I bring it up during the break, what are the excuses? I had no options. So, because there were no options, rather than seeking some way of maintaining possession, you decided that you might as well roll the dice, potentially now sabotaging the team's chances?

The stupidity is self-inflicted. It's punishing. If football is like chess, a free kick allows you to move multiple pieces into favourable positions, without losing your turn. What do defenders want? Organisation, time, predictability. The wait and boot approach gives them that

Waiting allows the defenders to get organised. They can cover the spaces and players they need to. They can get compact, denying us any useful space. They can take away our options, read what we're about to do, and be more likely to win the ball.

What do Villa do here? They get the ball back into play pretty quickly. All the time the ball is dead, you cannot score, and you cannot change the picture of the game. Football is all about problems and solutions. If the ball stays in the same spot, the problem remains the same.

We pass the ball to move the opposition. That means to disorganise them. To move the defence from a state of organisation to a state of disorganisation. The more the ball moves, the more the defence has to move to adjust to the new pictures of the game.

Once the ball is played by the Villa players, the ball is now live. The defence are no longer working off of a fixed reference point. Their job has become harder. The two Villa players nearest to the ball begin to back pedal away from each other, while playing it.

What this does is it creates a 2v1 against the nearest United defender. If the two Villa players stay close, it's easy for the defender to cover them both. Because they move apart, increasing the distance along the same passing lane, the 2v1 becomes more favourable.

Remember that overloads are not just numerical (quantitative) but spatial (positional). More space benefits the attacking team. The cover shadow of the defender covers a smaller percentage of the relevant area, because that area has increased due to Villa dispersal.

It's also hugely important that the two Villa players have kept their body shape open, and have back pedalled rather than turning away. This means their important visual cues of the ball, the teammate, the opponent, the space are all within their vision.

Back pedalling also allows them to pass and receive at any time, thus reducing their predictability, taking away many of the advantages from the defender.

Once the defender has over committed, and enough space has been created, Villa are able to turn out, switch the play, and look to exploit space on the far side. Or they could have just booted it and hoped for the best.

Thread part two here: https://twitter.com/CoachWilly1875/status/1345390126155898880

In this video, note the differences between Villa and United for their FKs. United's took 30 seconds for them to restart the game. This is lost time, as referees rarely add extra for this type of event (mainly goals, subs, injuries).

Both teams used the technique of pretending to go to kick the ball, to throw off the opponent. As you can see in the picture, by pretending to kick the ball to his left, it has made the United player respond to that cue (taking the bait) and thus create space.

It's a way for the player on the ball to make space for the receiver. I call this getting rid of them. It's illegal to actually fake kick the ball. In the eyes of the law, a fake kick counts as having taken the kick, and would mean the ball is now live.

We see it on throws too, where the thrower shapes up as if they are about to throw in a certain direction. The opposition then condense around the perceived receiver, and this creates space in another area of the field. Time and space is football currency.

By making the defender take the bait, move out of position, neglect a passing lane, you have bought the receiver more football currency. If going to take a short free kick, there's no need for a run up. Stand on the ball, be inconspicuous.

It was during this sequence of the game, 2-1 up with ten minutes left, that United began to commit lots of niggly fouls in the middle of the pitch. The fouls were not dangerous, meaning there was a low risk of a yellow card.

Because the fouls took place in the middle third, that further reduced the chances of the fouler receiving a yellow. It breaks up the play, and keeps the ball high up the pitch away from the United goal. Final third free kicks are far more dangerous to defend.

The United player would commit the foul, then run back into position. This bought time for the defence to reorganise and get numbers behind the ball. Villa, with their rhythm disrupted, looked to restart play quickly.

Just like in the other thread, had Villa been slow in their restarts, it would only have benefited United, allowing them more time to reorganise. As United moved closer to a state of optimal organisation, Villa restarted quickly to try to find and exploit any disorganisation.

Without disorganisation in United's structure, Villa's best bet was to then try to create some disorganisation, and that was to be done by moving the ball laterally, to shift the United defence, and then trying to probe the spaces between the lines.

Is the game becoming too much about team collective and passing patterns while individual brilliance is slowly dying?

These are my answers to a thread on Twitter, which you can find here: https://twitter.com/_COACHlife/status/1350819792530321409

I don't think individual brilliance is dying. The game has evolved, and thus what individual brilliance is displayed has evolved too.

For instance, there are now tons of top level keepers who play like this. Sweeper keepers, who dribble out of pressure, who can ping balls, that's a level of individual brilliance that has far surpassed what went before it. 

There are plenty of top level keepers with passing ability that can rival that of outfield players. This is a massive improvement in individual brilliance. 

Some of the passes by De Bruyne are a work of art.

But because humans are complex adaptive systems working in a very dynamic ever changing environment, the brilliance now is much more about the reading of time and space than the skill or flair. Defences are tighter, space is limited, the fame is faster.

Compare these pictures taken in modern football...

...to old football, and there is clearly way more space. Doesn't help that the TV camera is zoomed in. Players have to cover more grass, and be able to execute more skills. There's not many specialists anymore. Players have to be a high level in many areas.

When Pele was playing, the players didn't have analysis, S&C etc. They were not human machines that were pushed to their peak physically in the same way they are now. Pele had a couple more inches of space and a few milliseconds more time. Makes a huge difference at that level.

When you see goals like this from Arsenal, the individual brilliance of several players combines. Each one had to have exceptional timing, vision, awareness, anticipation, and technique. They come together like a dance or a symphony.

Go back only a few years to see how goal of the month competitions have become less bangers and more team moves. Because time and space has reduced, so players are less able to have the time for long shots and volleys.

And also because the analysis now shows that long shots are high risk, and crosses even worse. The turnovers produced lead to more goals conceded from their failed attempts than goals scored from successful attempts. So teams get closer to the goal to score.

This means defences defend deeper and more compact to deny that space. This primes defending teams better for counters. Likewise, teams need to make a lot of passes to move these deep defences to create the necessary space to score.

Due to the defending team being so ready to counter, and the attacking team needing to spread out more to create chances, the attacking team is seriously vulnerable. That leads them to playing more low risk passes to avoid turnovers and counters. 

When the layman watches a genius like Xavi, and I have this problem with soccer parents in the US, they just see a guy make a relatively short pass. They perceive what he does as easy. 

It's easy because he makes it easy. Before the ball arrives, he's gone to a space to receive, he's identified his next movement, he's got his body ready, he's positioned himself ready to perceive and deceive, and this is all before he even takes a touch. 

When he takes a touch, it prepares the ball so well for what he wants to do next. And that touch can even be to bait an opponent, thus creating more space for himself or a teammate. Then he plays a simple pass with the side of the foot to a teammate. Easy, right?

But that pass comes from having analysed space, positioning of teammates and defenders, the movement of everyone around him, and then it is executed to perfection. With each pass, he transmits to his teammate what to do next, with the weight, dip, spin, angle.

 It's all so subtly brilliant. But not always recognised or appreciated. So did Ronaldinho decline or did football evolve around him?

 

Soccer in the USA: How do we fix it?

Where do we start? It's hard to say, as they're all priorities, and we would be fighting on many different fronts. These points will be addressed in no particular order.

Our first stop takes us to Iceland. In the US, there are so many unqualified coaches working with youths. Even many DOCs have low or no licenses. We need to get more licensed coaches, and higher licensed coaches, in front of our kids.

https://trainingground.guru/articles/reasons-for-the-eruption-of-icelandic-football Reasons for the eruption of Icelandic football.

In most countries, a coach cannot work at a particular level without a license. That's a huge barrier in the US, because of the way coaching courses are taught. They are expensive, centralized, costly, time consuming. It prevents coaches getting them.

Spain has about fifteen thousand pro or A licensed coaches. That's simple. Hold more courses, in more convenient locations. And with the advancements in technology, so much more can be done online. Coaches won't have to fly across the country several times.

While we're in Spain, let's take a few ideas from there. First will be their youth league structure. At teenage years, they do something very different than the US, in two ways. And they only work if both done together.

https://gsarakinis.wixsite.com/kidzfutbol/single-post/2018/09/20/scorestandings-promotionrelegation-in-youth-football-in-catalonia-and-how-it-works Score/Standings, Promotion/Relegation in Youth football in Catalonia and how it works.

1. Go to two year age brackets. U16 and U15 play together. U18 and U17 play together.

2. Have no more than three teams per club. Operate as an A, B, C team.

A good U13 player can move into the B or A team, to be challenged by better players, likely a year older.

It also allows for late maturers to play down longer against other kids that are more in their range physically. A short, skinny, slow U14 can be moved to the C team. Likely they will play with slightly smaller kids, so then they can get more time on the ball.

Clubs and coaches will have to work together, unlike the free for all Money Grab clubs in the US, that have six to ten teams per age group, that operate as individual teams that happen to be in the same uniform.

It's not about winning, but placing players in better environments.

These leagues also have promotion and relegation, and no team is allowed more than one team per division. So if you're B team wins Division 2, they stay there. Otherwise, the big clubs will saturate the top division with the A, B, C teams.

Without such a limit, the big clubs would just begin to dominate, and would become the default place for most kids to play. They start to monopolize the market in the area, as all the parents want to take their kids there. Happens all the time in America.

If Rush, GPS, Surf etc. all have three teams in the top division, it destroys other smaller clubs. That destroys competition and accountability. That means the Money Grab clubs don't have to work hard to be good, they simply vacuum up all players in the area.

And if you have enough kids in your club, law of averages state some of them might turn out to be good. Your club then parades them as proof that the system works.

The other thing they do in Spain which we need to do immediately is that they wait longer to go bigger. In the USA, we're in such a rush to get to the adult game. 4 foot tall kids defend eight foot tall goals.

Why?

Because it's not about the kids, but adult entertainment.

Smaller team sizes, smaller pitch dimensions, smaller goals.

U13s playing 11v11 on a full sized adult pitch allows the big kids to shoot from distance with a toe punt and score easily over the keeper's flailing arms. It doesn't teach shooting, it teaches hoofing.

With the massive fields, soccer becomes about speed, size, strength, Get your big kid to boot it into the vast space, get your fast kid to run onto it. Repeat, score, win. And in order to keep winning, those players are valued, those actions are reinforced. Nobody learns.

Belgium also has great ideas in this regard. Particularly at the younger ages, the game has to have a more individualized approach. American kids are already playing dump and chase at U6/7 in 5v5. They're not learning to dribble, pass, or shoot.

https://www.icoachkids.eu/dribbling-football-how-a-children-centred-approach-led-belgian-youth-football-from-11v-1-into-2v2.html 

Dribbling Football: How a child-centred approach led Belgian youth football from 11v11 to 2v2.

My recommendation is always use age minus four as a guideline. A 13 year old should be playing 9v9, for example. Don't go to 11v11 until 15.

@markstkhlm Is a good follow, and asks the question; if we started from scratch and redesigned youth sport with the wants and needs of the kids in mind, would it resemble what we're doing now? In America, definitely not.

What do kids want? @CTGProjectHQ Is another good follow. Here's their article.

They want to play. They want to be with friends. In The US, we keep them on the bench, and separate them from their friends based on perceived levels of "ability."

https://changingthegameproject.com/kids-play-sports/#:~:text=Much%20farther%20down%20the%20list,Those%20things%20bring%20enjoyment 

With those answers in mind, let's consider the pitch dimensions. Kids want to have the ball, they want to be involved in the play, and they want to score goals. The way we play now, some kids go long periods of time without touching the ball.

The constraints of the game mean that the bigger faster kids, the early maturers, dominate. Play 3v3, 5v5, 7v7 until later ages, on smaller pitches, with more appropriate sized goals, and more kids are involved, they get more touches, and everyone scores lots of goals.

This goes hand in hand with kids experiencing more game actions. They interact with the ball, their teammates, and opponents way more frequently in these circumstances. It's even shown with adults, preferring indoor 5v5/6v6 to 11v11. Around 5x as many touches on the ball.

Now we'll go to Germany, and look at the lessons from this book. Mario Gotze, the guy on the cover, scored the winning goal at the 2014 World Cup final. Had Germany not changed their youth soccer system, he would never have been found.

Here's a population density map of Germany. Like in most countries, population isn't evenly spread. Many live close to big cities, few live in rural areas. But when you're competing with Spain, France, Brazil etc. for titles, no talent can be wasted.

If you were to eliminate the most pale areas, you may lose 5-10% of your population. It doesn't sound like much, but at the top level, these marginal gains count. Mario Gotze came from an area that was overlooked and underserved by the DFB. Until they changed things.

Couple this with what they did in Iceland. Get more qualified coaches out there. Give every kid access to a minimum of a B licensed coach. And in the rural areas? Do what the Germans did. Once or twice weekly, hold USSF sanctioned development centers.

You could probably cover 99% of the population, and have those kids within a 30 minute drive of training with a B licensed coach. Make the development centers invite only, make them either free or affordable. Do not run them as a team that competes in leagues.

This gets kids in front of good coaches, which has major benefits. The kids get better coaching, and more soccer sessions. The USSF sanctioned coaches get to keep an eye on the local talent, feedback good players to the USSF, and adjust training to the demands of the kids.

And now we'll go to England. The USA needs to adopt a true soccer pyramid with promotion and relegation. Without this, you'll never get a Hoffenheim or Leipzig promoted to the top division. You'll never get a Blackburn Rovers winning the league.

A closed system such as MLS, USL, and NWSL discriminates against people who don't live close to a big city. They can't invest, support, grow, and develop the team from their town, because there is nowhere for them to go. They win the league and stay there. So what's the point?

The way it's done in the US now also aids the academy monopoly. The only way to go pro is to be near a DA team. Not everybody is, and the ones who aren't cannot earn a DA team. Because their local club, if there is one, cannot get promoted to a national league.

Even in big cities that can handle multiple DA or ECNL teams, the boards can veto other local applicants, handing monopolies in regions to clubs. This makes that designated club the default club. They vacuum all the youth players.

They're the only game in town. Nobody can compete with them, hold them accountable, or hold them to a standard. So they start to do a mediocre job, because they can get away with it. Introduce a local rival to hold their feet to the flame, and watch them rapidly improve.

McDonald's needs Burger King. Coke needs Pepsi. Without them, they can start to offer inferior service, and we will have no alternative.

Another thing we need to introduce from England is their Charter Standard clubs initiative. Youth clubs have to adhere to certain criteria, and are given accolades for doing so.

https://www.thefa.com/get-involved/player/the-fa-charter-standard

It can be about safeguarding, facilities, coaching, parents etc. But if you're looking for a place to take your kids, you can see which clubs have been awarded for practicing what they preach. All US youth clubs talk the same nonsense about development and holistic environment.

Very few actually do it. In England, the Charter Standard allows you to check out and see if a club practices what they preach. I think in America we're just too used to being lied to and let that we don't care anymore.

I would also introduce other quality controls. Clubs can't just be free for alls. A collection of middle aged emotionally stunted dads trying to recapture their youth.

Publish a philosophy, methodology, mission statement etc. Then be audited every couple of years.

There's lots of different ways to play and to develop. What's yours? Let's see if you actually do it, and how good are you at doing it? We need to move away from serving the aspirations of the adults to serving the needs of the kids.

What else is missing? Let's have a look at economically deprived countries that still outperform the USA, even with all the advantages America has.

Their kids play.
They play a lot.
They play with freedom.

The US certainly has enough resources to build plenty of urban and suburban soccer spaces, in parks, streets, and on rooftops. There's many good initiatives already building inner city futsal courts. But the way kids are raised these days, they're taught to fear the outside.

With more places to play, perhaps with some adults around to keep things safe, we can start to create a nationwide pickup culture, rather than simply in the small pockets. Very few American kids play soccer without adult intervention.

They don't play at recess, they don't meet with their friends after school to play in the park, they don't go to the park with their friends on weekends. All their time is scheduled and organized by their parents. They don't get to be kids.

With this, I would also talk about clubs' responsibilities to educate parents. Tell them, show them, include them in what you're doing. Tell them why you're giving equal playing time and playing short from goal kicks. And if they don't like it, be brave enough to cut loose.

Hope this has given some idea into what needs to change, and what can easily be implemented. I'm sure more ideas will come to me over the next few days, which I will add to this thread.

What did I learn from Jose Mourinho's convention session?

To be fair, not a whole lot. What I learned was really about the coaches in attendance, rather than the guest speaker. I don't wish to be mean, and I don't want to be seen as "that guy" so hear me out before coming to that conclusion.

Try not to imagine me sat here typing this in an armchair of my own brain.

For those interested, here's my Twitter thread showing screen shots from the chat of Mourinho's presentation: https://twitter.com/CoachWilly1875/status/1349402257352249345

What first startled me was that three days into the convention, which is being held online this year, people are still saying hello to each other in the chat, much like a bunch of old people using technology for the first time. We've all had to answer repeated questions our elderly relatives on video calls...

"Can you see me?"
"Not yet."
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have answered the question."
"We can hear you!"
"Good. Turn your camera on."
"Turn on the camera?"
"Yes. I can't see you. You need to turn it on."
"How?"
"I don't know. It's your computer."
"I can't see a button."
"Scroll down to the bottom."
"Scroll?"
"Move the mouse down to the button..."
"I'm doing it!"
"Hover over the icons..."
"Hover?"
"Yes, it means place the cursor on top of things..."

And so on. You get the picture. It looks like this. 

Introductions continue in the chat quite some way into the presentation, but now are interspersed by people asking questions to a recording. On day one, I could have forgiven it. It's day three. I've seen the names multiple times throughout the other presentations. They haven't yet figured out it is a recording, after several goes, and I worry about their mental capacities.

The sessions thus far have been inundated with people asking for jobs, brown nosing, and asking really complex sounding questions in an effort to impress. Questions that are largely irrelevant, and would take a whole new presentation to answer. What are you trying to prove, bro? Quite a few accounts post links to stuff they're trying to sell, and many ask the same questions repeatedly such as "Can I watch this session again later?" to which the moderator kindly copies and pastes their answer from before, for the fifteenth time.

The quality of the convention sessions varies greatly. Most are good, many are interesting, but few are in depth, insightful, or thought provoking to the degree that I would like. I guess we're all different, but here is what worries me the most. Mourinho's interview, as interesting as it was, lacked any real depth. There were details, but no depth. And why was that? Can there be?

The best sessions that I have seen through the years are from coaches like Willie McNab and Todd Beane. Emma Hayes' yesterday was good too. Why? Because they go into detail. Their presentations are specific, detailed, and as such, they can go more in depth. A lot of the club presentations aren't that interesting. They provide a generic overview of their philosophy, and the Bayern one I just watched was completely phoned in. They gave us a virtual tour of their training ground from a couple years ago. It's great, but I didn't pay a couple hundred quid for what I can see on YouTube.

While I feel a little short changed, there are some attendees who had their minds absolutely blown. Exhibit A. My new friend Eugene.

It's January 2021, and Eugene has finally had the penny drop moment on how Barcelona play football. Eugene is not alone in his revelations, this is simply a more extreme example. Loads of attendees made public statements in the chat that lead me to believe they were new to football. It reminds me of Jesus' magic trick in Family Guy.

So where have these guys been? What Mourinho said has been said so many times before. There are no secrets for success. They're all out in the open. Many learners are looking for the secret formula or the magic pill. There isn't one. There's obviously more effective techniques, and we should constantly be scrutinising what we do, but success comes down to a mixture of privilege, perseverance, and fortune.

Successful people all echo the same sentiments. They worked hard, they sacrificed, they believed in themselves, they kept going despite the odds. But what about the millions of people that also did those things and didn't achieve great success? It's the availability heuristic. Successful people aren't often aware of the bigger reasons for their success, can only speak from their point of view, and aren't often articulate.

Have a look at Andre Villas Boas. Why was he successful? He worked hard, but so do you. He sacrificed, but so have you. He believed in himself, but so do you. He took risks, and so have you. But did you live next door to Bobby Robson as a kid? And did you happen to be in the minority of people who were able to speak Robson's language? Robson didn't speak Portuguese. How many Portuguese kids in that neighbourhood had an English grandparent, and were able to learn English to such a degree as what AVB did?

Please don't think I'm taking anything away from AVB. It's merely what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in David and Goliath. The Bill Gates one sticks out in my mind. How many computer nerds were there in the US at the time Bill Gates was in college? How many of them were within walking distance of a super computer that was open to the public? Success is biased, and it omits important details when reliving the past.

The points Mourinho made have been stated many times by both himself, his contemporaries, and the greats of yesteryear. Remember, there are no secrets to success. Mourinho's main points were hard work, perseverance, empathy, and communication skills. Ferguson, Klopp, Ancelotti, Pep, Robson, Harry Redknapp, Neil Warnock, Sam Allardyce, all the way back to John Wooden, have made those exact same points. Yet my peers are in the chat, freaking out over the points being made by Mourinho. It's the same stuff he says in any interview, and that he says in his books.

Do you guys not read? Do you not listen to podcasts? Do you not watch football videos on YouTube? Isn't this what most coaches do? Without trying to be mean, there is often more depth in a standard article on Total Football Analysis or the Coaches Voice than what you find in an hour of convention sessions.

I'm going to have seen, by the end of this week, presentations from Bayern, Barcelona, Liverpool, Ajax, Benfica, Rangers, Portland Timbers, Nashville, Columbus Crew, and the Red Bulls. There's going to be a lot of overlap. Here's what they will talk about;

Holistic approach
Long term player development
Developing the person as well as the player
Mental skills
Some generic values that guide their philosophy
What they look for in identifying talent (usually the same attributes)
And that they work on possession, pressing, and counter attack

Years ago, this stuff was ground breaking. Now, that information has flooded out there. We all know it. We've all watched the Barcelona documentary, read the novels and autobiographies, watched the endless YouTube analysis videos, watched Xavi, Iniesta, Messi highlights, watched the Thierry Henry video that talks about Guardiola, and read countless books on rondos and Barcelona style of play. Well... all of us apart from Eugene.

It's like we're beating a dead horse now. We know what top coaches do. We know what top training programmes look like. How much more knowledge can be mined? How much is it now down to our ability to apply it? Are we reaching a limit, and that now our focus should be on the external factors, such as home life, talent ID, societal structures, privilege, demographics, access to education etc. I feel like more and more now I can predict a kid's trajectory from looking at a snapshot of their home life. What area are they growing up in? What opportunities are around locally? What is their school environment like? How much green space do they have in their neighbourhood?

These are the books to read to understand better what I'm waffling on about (if you haven't read them already, which I would imagine most of you have).

There's loads more. Even now, I can think of books on analysis, like The Numbers Game, XG Philosophy, Soccernomics, Football Hackers. Chuck in other classics like The Chimp Paradox, Man's Search for Meaning, and anything by John Wooden. These should be mandatory before coaches are allowed anywhere near kids.

Everything Mourinho touched on today has been discussed and explained in depth in these books. He cares about his players, he learns how to motivate them, he clearly identifies his style of play, he presents his information well. It's actually fairly simple. No golden nuggets, just plain and simple good advice. The difficulty is; how do we do these things well? Again though, for many of my fellow attendees, it just seemed like these simple points were completely blowing their minds. Any half decent coach on a podcast says most of these things.

Does this mean that the other attendees are limiting their coaching education to only the convention? Or are they just being sycophants? Both are bad.

Here's some videos I would have expected all coaches to have watched:

https://youtu.be/AguSHo3CRwg - 8 Xavi Rules

https://youtu.be/3IMhyddT7KQ - How do I know if my child is talented?

https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU - Simon Sinek - Millennials in the workplace 

https://youtu.be/q7a5TIzOmeQ - Building your inner coach

https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY - Do schools kill creativity?

There's loads more. Again, mandatory viewing. And for anyone interested, I have YouTube playlists full of these.

Are my colleagues not hungry for knowledge? Thirsty for attention, sure. What Mourinho said today was not mind blowing. It simply reinforced what we should have already known. So what's going on? Why do many of my colleagues not know this stuff? I can only speak for people I know personally. Football definitely has an element of anti-intellectualism. There are also many fragile egos. We keep our egos intact by avoiding learning.

Can they go in depth during these convention sessions? There is an argument that they don't want to give too much away, as they lose their competitive edge. Agree with the philosophy or not, Beast Mode Soccer is excellent at sharing information and being candid. I think a lot of it has to do with how well the ideas or programmes can be implemented in your area. What's the point of learning what Columbus Crew do, when they have a huge catchment area, lots of resources, great facilities, a staff of highly qualified coaches, train and play multiple times per week, and compete nationally against other academies, when you're a grassroots dad who only gets one hour a week with a bunch of boneheads on quarter of a pitch? That might be part of why many of them keep their presentations fairly generic, to give it mass appeal. Or it might just be that there isn't much depth to go into in some of the topics, therefore, they're all going to make similar points and share the same ideas.