Why You Never Made It As A Professional Footballer

Why You Never Made It As A Professional Footballer

Here I’m going to be using myself as an example, not because I am big headed or bitter, even though I am, but because I can tell my story. I want you to read this and as we go along, relate it to your story. Then you can answer why you never made it as a professional footballer.

I have read a few publications that inform the reader of growth and development within sport, and attended many of the FA coaching courses that teach precisely how to create good footballers. I’ve done all three youth modules, and all my course mates agree that we wish we had this level of coaching when we were young. Many are around the same age as me, many are far older, but when I started playing football seventeen years ago, we were in the dark ages compared to now.

An interesting book by the name of Bounce was written by Matthew Syed. He was a former world champion table tennis player and wrote a lot about his journey and the journey of other top sports performers.  The myth has been debunked that you are born with ability. Can you drive? Can you speak French? Can you play piano? Were you born with these skills? No. There is no evolutionary advantage for playing piano, so therefore you are not genetically predisposed to playing. You may have longer or thinner fingers, a slight advantage, but practice accounts for so much, that it is not even worth looking at your genetics. The same goes with football.

All you need in order to play football is a brain. Race, gender, religion, taste in music etc. do not effect this. There are so many different forms of the beautiful game, from wheelchair to blind, from futsal to Scottish, that anyone from all walks of life can find an appropriate code. What we don’t see is any blind, one-legged, deaf or wheelchair bound footballers playing professionally. There are reasons for this, mainly that the unfortunate occurrence would have severely limited not only their mobility, but also their time that they can designate to practice.

So you don’t have a registered or noticeable disability? That’s your first hurdle. The second is circumstances. Do you live in a country that plays football? Do you live in a country that likes football? Do your parents have the money to buy you a ball and a kit? Do you have space to play? Do you have friends to play with? Do you have teams to play against? Are there social stigmas that prevent you from playing? Do you have enough free time to commit to practice and matches? If so, that’s your next hurdle.

Think of a young girl in a poor country that oppresses women. She shouldn’t be playing football anyway, because she’s a girl. Her family does not have the money to buy her a ball, but she doesn’t have the time because she has to walk five miles every day to fetch water. Does she have anyone to play with? No, they’re either too busy dying from disease and starvation, or they’re being made to work. What about space to play? There’s plenty of flat land, but no grass, and while this civil war is going on she may be raped or kidnapped for being out there.

Hope is dissolving fast for many children around the world. Many, many studies have been conducted, and the number being thrown around is ten thousand. This is the number of hours of good practice that a top athlete should have had by the time they are sixteen. Apply the FITT principles to everything you do. Frequency – how often do you practice? Intensity – how difficult and game realistic is the practice? Time – how much time do you devote to the practice? Type – technical, tactical, physical etc. Players also need motivation to play. Is it money? Making friends? Competing? Keeping fit? Learning new skills? Think about FITT, motivation and ten thousand hours throughout this whole article.

Would I have gotten into football without my dad?

So how about your friends and family? Do they like football? Who took you to your first game? Who kicked you your first ball? How old were you? I remember my dad taking me out in the back garden when I was three. That’s a good start. These days there are tons of programmes for young kids, such as Socatots, which we do at Brazilian Soccer Schools.  You need to work on your movement, coordination and awareness. I see some kids get to the age of ten that have appalling motor skills. It turns out no one has ever taken them to the park or in the garden and given them a ball. As a coach it is easy to spot within a group of young players, which ones have been playing the longest. Even at ages five and six, some players have a two or three year advantage on their teammates because some have only just started playing. Can you see who is getting closer to achieving that ten thousand hours target?

If your parents aren’t fond of football, or have other intentions for you like rugby, tennis, guitar or the triangle, that is time that is being eaten up when you could be playing football. Think of The Darkness song ‘Friday Night’. For those of you that don’t know it, the singer is reminiscing about how he took part in so many extracurricular activities just to impress a girl.

Monday cycling,
Tuesday gymnastics,
Dancing on a Friday night.
I got bridge club on Wednesday,
Archery on Thursday,
Dancing on a Friday night.

He’s got a couple of things right. First, he has the motivation to improve. The carrot at the end of his stick is to impress the girl. This means he is going to pay attention and try hard, because if he wasn’t any good, she would not pay him attention. He’s also getting regular practice from a decent instructor. Though nothing is mentioned about the quality of the session, one can only imagine that it is school sanctioned and therefore at the very least it is competent. So he’s got someone there correcting his mistakes and monitoring his progress. But is that good enough? How about if the song went:

Monday dancing,
Tuesday dancing,
Dancing on a Friday night.
I got dancing on Wednesday,
Dancing on Thursday,
Dancing on a Friday night.

Professor Rooney - Head of Particle Physics at United University.

How good would he become? How quickly would he progress? He’s reaching the ten thousand hours target at an increased rate of five times what he was originally. This is why you don’t see many footballers that are grade eight musicians, doctors, or those that even have a degree or A levels. Most footballers appear to be quite thick. That’s because time spent studying is time that could be spent playing football.

From my own experience, I can somewhat relate to this. For years, I trained for an hour on a Wednesday evening, then played a match on a Sunday morning. How much quality practice is that? About three hours a week, which is not good enough. Could I have played more? Well at private school, we had several problems;
Our catchment area was huge, but our numbers were low. My best friends lived very far away from me, and they weren’t that good anyway.
We didn’t get home until around half four, when some of the local kids had already been home for an hour or two, so we’re losing light, meaning we can’t play in the park or garden for many months of the year.
Going to a private school also meant tons of homework, which would greatly limit your time available to play football. All this means we can’t go to the park and play with the other kids who go to state schools. Even if we did, we’d be too posh for them and would get beat up.

At my school, sport wasn’t taken that seriously. It may have been the same at other schools, but if we were in trouble, our punishment would be no P.E. or games lesson. That’s time spent not playing football. What about wet break? The grass being too muddy? Or being called in because you have been naughty (I was an arse, but they were also very strict)? That’s time spent not playing football. We also had to contend with prefect duties, a leather football ban, only being allowed one ball per year, and sometimes not even playing because other kids just didn’t want to.

When it came to matches versus other schools, it would be about three per year. That’s not enough. Our facilities were awful, we didn’t even have our own pitch, so we played all our games away. We rarely had goals to practice with, or an appropriate surface to play on. It was either muddy and long grass, or on a tarmac tennis court. On the former, the ball cannot be used for short passing, and on the latter, it is sometimes too slippery to run or to turn. The games we did play were against other private schools, who shared the same low standards we had. If we played a state school we would have been dicked. Invariably we didn’t have enough good players in our year to fill a team, so we had to borrow from the year below. Now we’re playing with half a team that is younger and crapper.

So we get very little time to play football, and when we do, it’s often not realistic. That ten thousand hours target is getting further and further away. How was your school? Did you play lots of matches? Were you allowed to play at lunch and break? Were you often not picked for teams because there were too many pupils? Was your coach actually an unenthused hockey coach? Did he know what he was talking about?

How about the club team you played for? Did you take any breaks from football? A lot of kids drop out at a young age because they don’t like their parents or the manager. We had a real arsehole in charge when I was young, but my dad took the team and everyone loved him.  He taught us about compassion for your teammates, trying your hardest no matter how good you were, and that if you work really hard for it, you can achieve it. Everyone felt positive, even when we lost. Though we’re all in our twenties, a lot of my friends still remember the good times from back then, and always ask me how my dad is and what he’s up to. Someone like that can have a real positive influence on a young player.

Stubbington Juniors.

After my dad left, our Saturday team and Sunday team were merged. This meant more players in the team, more competition for places, and far less game time. It is my own personal opinion that because I didn’t get on with the sons of our two new coaches I wasn’t selected due to favouritism. There was a clear trend in the team selection that correlated with friends of the coaches, and friends of their sons. This meant that I was unhappy, so I left. I went to a team with far better facilities, but far worse players. I’m now one of the best and most reliable players in the team, whereas before I was in the middle somewhere.

This is where we go a little bit back to circumstances and genes. A lot of coaches back in the day would have selected the team based on size. I was a lot bigger than the other kids when I was younger, which naturally meant I was seen as a central defender. Due to having a goal in my back garden, which was quite large, I was able to spend hours practicing my shooting. So I’m huge and I can boot it. I’m every youth coach’s dream. My instructions were to win the ball and boot it as far forwards as possible. I did this all the time with great success, and so I was praised over and over again. I keep doing it, I keep getting praised, so as a child, I see this as great football. All other aspects of my game are being neglected because I have been typecast.

Other kids didn’t have their own big garden with a big goal and a net to send the ball back. That is why even today, my right leg is referred to as ‘the canon’. What I didn’t do though, was play small sided games at the park against other kids. I did occasionally, but not every day. This meant my dribbling ability, my control, my skills, my turns and my movement to receive were not being worked upon. Because of my superior height, I was never challenged for a header. I can head the ball as well as the next person, but when jumping for it with an opponent, I find it very hard to judge because I have had little practice of jostling and jumping at the same time.

We all see it. The big kids go at the back, the little kids go up front, the fast kids go on the wing, and the crap one goes in goal. At all the best academies at all the best clubs, players will be taught how to play in all sorts of positions. How do you know that the tall kid won’t make a good winger? You’ve never tried him there. He might love it.

What can we do if we get a large kid? With me, I relied so much on my strength and size that it limited me in terms of my ability. I didn’t need to take it past someone when I could push them out the way. Now factor in that at the age of fourteen I came down with glandular fever and stopped growing, everyone else caught up with me and overtook me. I was six foot tall at fourteen, and I’m six foot tall at twenty two. Back then I was a giant, but now I’m only taller than average. In order to develop the skill of a big player, or a player who is more physically developed, put them in with the older age groups. This means they won’t be able to barge players off the ball, and will now have to play with brains rather than brawn.

The philosophy rings true that a lot of coaches will choose a good biggen over a good littlen, and this means that a lot of smaller kids get pushed out of the game. You’re never going to grow, so you’re never going to make it. FA tutors advise academy coaches to look at the parents before discarding a player. Maybe that has happened to you? Were you too small and therefore not given the same chances as the big kids?

The type of praise that a player receives will greatly influence their behaviour. I’m not just talking about me getting praised for only ever booting the ball, but instead how your words as a coach can be seen as positive and negative reinforcement. We all see it with pets. If a dog craps on the carpet, you hit him on the nose with a newspaper. That is a punishment. If a dog craps in the garden, you give him a treat. Now, you’re the dog, you need a crap, where are you going to go? In the house or in the garden? This is fairly simple, and as humans we are the same (though I keep turning up to watch Blackburn despite always having a bad time).

Yay training!

Simple though, right? It goes a bit deeper. Practice is all about repetition. Because you are not born with the ability to do it, you will not get it right first time. You need practice practice practice. When you can do it, do it again. Make it harder. Do it faster. Make it more difficult. Try it with your weaker foot. Never achieve something and just stop. If you’re standing still you’re falling behind. When Barcelona won the Champions League and La Liga in 2011, they were clearly the best club team in the world. Perhaps the best team ever. Does that mean they don’t need to turn up to training anymore? You’ve probably already answered that, but imagine if they did. Who would win the league the next season? The team that continues to practice, the team that improves to their level, and the team that becomes better than them.

This is why nowadays coaching sessions are far more effective. When teaching a technique, there is usually a ball per player or for pairs. Now each player can develop at their own rate, and the crap kids aren’t left behind, and the good players can continue to be pushed and challenged.

The most important thing is to praise effort rather than talent. Rather than saying “You are really good at this” say “You must have worked really hard to be this good”. Praise effort rather than talent. Numerous studies have been conducted showing that effort praised players will continue to push themselves and become better because in their head, they are not yet good enough. They can improve, they can get better, and if they work hard, they will be praised. Talent praised players will often be lazy and will shy away from a challenge. If you are constantly told how good you are, you might not want to risk that reputation by attempting to complete something beyond your ability.

I cannot stand lazy players, and I often remark that if I had their talent I would never stop running. But it is the case that I don’t ever give up. I have always been an effort praised player. Just because you have the skill, doesn’t mean you have the application. Look at the players in your team and you will know the lazy players. Some of them are actually quite good, and they know that. They don’t want to risk being seen as crap, so they don’t try. In their head, if you try and fail, you are no longer good, and therefore you will not receive that talent based praise that you are used to.

It wasn’t until I was sixteen that I truly started to develop as a player. At Warsash, it was the same as it was at Stubbington; “You’re big, so boot it forwards!” I wasn’t bright enough to know any different, and I was constantly being praised for my output, so I carried on doing it. At Warsash we suffered two consecutive relegations, and almost a third, staying up on the last day. We rarely won, we rarely scored, and we hardly developed. I became disillusioned with this. It was around the same time Blackburn were relegated, so I was beginning to wonder what the point was. I gave up playing for a while, though I continued to play as much as I could at school.

When I was fourteen I went along with my cousin to play in his pub team. I was in with men and had no chance of using my strength and size to my advantage here. Although I was limited as a player, they never gave me a chance at Netley. I went along week after week, put on my boots and shinpads, but rarely played. That’s time spent not playing football. I then became ill with glandular fever, and so gave up all physical activity for a very long time. That’s even more time spent not playing football.

We weren't very successful. Going back as a coach, not much had changed.

More woe followed at college as I was rarely picked throughout my first year, which I believe was due to favouritism. I know I’m crap, but some far worse players than me regularly got in the team. Our coach was a media studies teacher anyway, which kind of shows the level of coaching. Playing at Hamble Club in the Hampshire Premier Reserve League for a couple years lead to me running the line most weeks, and hardly ever getting a game. I went to training every week and always gave it 100%. I wasn’t the worst player there, but there were players who I had never seen before coming into the team and taking up spots in the starting eleven. At all the teams I have been to, it has never helped that I have also been a referee. “Oh so you’re a ref? Fancy running the line?”. When we had no referee, it was always me doing it. That’s now more time spent not playing football. That, and favouritism, comes under circumstances. It’s not your fault you’re not in with the ‘in’ crowd, but it is something you have to deal with.

Our manager was also clearly out of his depth. I bumped into him one day in Southampton and he asked me what it was I do. I told him I was a student and that I was soon to do my FA Level One. He found that fascinating. He had no qualifications and no experience. This fact was greatly rammed home during one of his many uplifting half time team talks. We’re at home and we’re losing 3-0. We’re all back in the changing rooms waiting for this Churchillian speech. Here it comes:

“Right guys… second half… yeah… we’re gonna go out there, and first ten minutes… yeah… we’re gonna get a goal”. The other ten players rose to their feet and started shouting “Come on!” as they made their way back to the field filled with a new sense of bravery and enthusiasm. I was left dumfounded, still sat down looking at an emptying changing room, I’m thinking to myself “How?” Why didn’t we think of that? Had we just spent forty five minutes not trying to score? Perhaps it really was that simple. We had been given no advice, no direction and nothing to improve upon. In the end, we lost 6-0.

Recent studies have shown that no matter how bad a person is at a task, they will still imagine themselves to be competent at it. Some of it comes from a defence mechanism that all humans have in order to survive. It’s an irrational kind of confidence. “I may not have ever tried it, but I reckon I might be okay”. The logic goes that ignorance is bliss. Thick people do not know that they are thick because they do not know how much they don’t know. Make sense? An intelligent person is able to understand that there is far more beyond the realms of their understanding, whereas a thick person believes that they know pretty much most of it, and that anything on top of that is unimportant.

By that understanding, do you know how crap you are? Can you see the areas that need improving? If you can’t, do you have a coach that can? Think about what you used to blame when you lost or when things didn’t go well. Or better still, what did your parents or coaches blame when you lost? Was it the ref? The wind? Luck? Aliens? This belief that external forces are in control of your destiny means that there is no point in even trying. If you lose and you blame someone else, what do you learn? If you blame the referee for your loss, how will you ever improve? This comes from a defence mechanism in that we don’t like criticism, but it is time to bring down these walls and look within. What could you have done better? What do you do that isn’t good enough? What areas need improvement?

The Racing Fareham gang.

Critical reflection is so important. Without it, you will not get any better. Even the best players in the world do not believe they are perfect. A lot of them will know they are good, but Ronaldo and Messi recently missed penalties. Who are they going to blame? It was the ball, the grass, interference from radio signals. Did you coach blame the ref? Did he tell you your opponents were cheats? Or how about that today just wasn’t you day? Did your parents tell you in the car on the way home that despite you scoring three own goals, it was in fact everyone else’s fault, and that you are the best player ever? Sometimes blaming others is just a way to cope with the defeat, but when you calm down, have a look at what you did wrong and what you could have done better. Even though the referee gave them a dodgy last minute penalty, look back and try to explain why you were not winning by more goals at that point, or even what they were doing in your box in the first place.

This is where we became gods of football.

As I mentioned before, I didn’t start to become good at football until I was sixteen and began to play five-a-side. On average, in a game of five-a-side, you get six times as many touches as you would in a game of eleven-a-side. Now you are improving at six times the rate you normally would. It’s all about ball touching. Can you improve without the ball? We were guaranteed at least one game per week, sometimes more. This was once a week, all year. Indoor five-a-side games do not get called off. Now I’m learning about short passing, movement, creating space, controlling the ball, effective runs and support play. In five-a-side, your attacking duties increase. I’m at the back, blocking shots and making tackles. All of a sudden, with one pass, I’m in front of goal. That doesn’t happen to me in eleven-a-side.

Something which really opened my eyes was Brazilian Soccer Schools. FA courses have taught me an immense amount. Going back to not knowing what you don’t know, I learnt so much about the intricacies of the game through Level Two, UEFA B, the youth modules and even from the modules on my degree. I currently know things about football I didn’t even know there was to know. I advise you to do these in order to learn about the principles of play. At Brazilian Soccer Schools they teach a lot of technical ball manipulation skills. Your technique, agility and coordination will greatly improve. This is fantastic, though a lot of other companies offer the same sort of thing.

Think of what may have happened if someone told Ronaldinho "Stop dicking around and keep it simple!"

Where Brazilian Soccer Schools stand out is that they also encourage you to be inventive. We teach skills to kids that experienced adults cringe at when you ask them to give it a go. “What, me? Nah, I can’t do none of that stuff”. Remember that you won’t get anywhere without practice. Through coaching alone, I now find myself able to do some of these skills. A couple of them have even crept into my game. Many times in five-a-side I have pulled off a sublime bit of skill that has amazed my teammates. Not because it was out of this world, but more because the player I was several years ago could never have done any of this stuff.

When developing a group of young players, you will often hear phrases such as ‘get rid of it’ and ‘if in doubt, kick it out’. In competitive football, I can understand that. When trying to improve a bunch of kids, encourage them shield the ball, dribble past their opponents, or pass the ball out of trouble. What does it matter if they fail? It’s not a serious game. No harm will be done if they lose.

A world champion ice skater would have to have fallen over twenty thousand times to become that good. The ice skater would constantly try to jump higher or further, pushing themselves, falling down, getting back up and trying again. A talent based praise skater would not have tried something they can’t do. A bad coach would have blamed the ice. Without the motivation of becoming world champion, the skater may have thought “Screw this, it hurts” and given up.

Coaches should challenge their players to do things they can’t do. I always tell my players to give it a go, justifying it by saying “It’s training, it doesn’t matter if you fail, you’re supposed to mess up. This is where you learn how to do it right”. If it comes off, brilliant. If you mess up, now you know how to do it wrong. Knowing how to do it wrong is very important. Rather than just booting the ball up field, can you hold onto it? Can you look for a pass? Can you dribble the ball into midfield? For years as a young player, no one said these things to me. In your position, you will undoubtedly have your equivalents.

Now think some more about your coach when you were younger. Did everyone get equal time on the pitch? Did your coach give good advice to you and the players? Were they happy? Did they make you want to turn up to training? Did they ever make you cry? Did they ever shout and get angry? Did they inspire you and your teammates to try your hardest?

If you stick with a bad coach for too long, you’ve got no chance. The standards of coaching have gotten far better these days. There are still quite a lot of morons out there, but most are giving up their free time to improve a bunch of kids, where only one of them is theirs. Their effort must always be applauded and appreciated. What it comes down to now is repetitions and realism. The biggest one is a shooting practice. Often you have one goal, one keeper, and a few balls. You line up, and the ball is fed to you. You now shoot at the goal, collect your ball, and get to the back of the queue. In a twenty minute practice, how many attempts do you get? How real is it? The ball is coming to you at the same speed and angle every time. Add a defender, add a teammate, affect the decision making, shoot or pass? Encourage your players to try the laces, a chip, inside of the foot, outside of the foot, can you use the defender as a shield so the keeper can’t see the shot? Can you shift the ball quickly to create that space for a shot? Can you disguise the shot by giving the keeper they eyes? Sometimes we are limited by our equipment, but if you have more goals, break your group into smaller groups, and give them a goal each.

Hanging on my every word.

Even with all this, it can again come down to circumstances. There is a statistic floating around that only around 2% of kids are seen by a scout. Much like my trials at St. Vincent, I was not in the right time at the right place. Every time I did something good, the coaches were looking the other way. Other players were telling me they thought I was a shoe in, but I would do something good, look their way, and they were not watching. My P.E. teacher in year six did not like me because I did not get on with his girlfriend, another teacher at the school. I was excluded from the school team for quite some time while he got over it. This was more time spent not playing football. During this time a lot of our players were put forward for trials with Fareham and Gosport. Because he didn’t like me, my name did not get put forward. I was not the best player in the year, but I was better than quite a few who went to the trials. I eventually got my chance, and though I played really well, I still don’t know why I wasn’t called up again. Probably because I thought a good game was just hoofing it forwards and that might have been all I did, but other parents had remarked at how well they thought I had done.

It all remains a mystery, but I remain under no illusions that at the right ages, I was not good enough to be picked up by an academy. That’s not to say that I couldn’t have been, we all could have been good enough. With enough practice you can achieve anything. With the right coaching, the right attitude, enough dedication, you really can do whatever you want. Football is all about pictures from within the game. How many times have you been in this situation? Think of the cues, the anticipation, the awareness and the ability to read a game. All this is heightened as you reach that ten thousand hours target. Please do relate this to your own story, and share this with me. It is very interesting to find out what has happened to other players who didn’t make it.

At the end of the day, if you want to improve and better yourself, you would have most likely received effort based praise. A lot of people would have read this article out of curiosity, perhaps to see what it takes to become a professional footballer, perhaps to see where it went wrong. What type of praise did you receive as a player? Well, if you came here looking to read a couple of paragraphs and find the easy answer, you’re most likely a talent based praise player. If you’ve read all the way down here, you’re an effort based praised player. In order to improve, we need to be like you.