Academy Coach Interview with Huw Jennings, Academy Director at Fulham FC.

SIQ: Please can you prioritize the following in terms of the role of a youth development coach working in an academy. Winning, Fun, Developing the Player and Developing the Person.

HW: Developing a player

Developing the person

Enjoyment

Winning

SIQ: Why have academies not developed talented footballers comparable to Spain, Holland and Brazil. Is this a fair perception?

HW: I think it’s a superficial perception. If you look at Spain; Spain has done very well with developing domestic talent for its national team and also for the top clubs for Spain, particularly Barcelona, and there’s a little bit of an added element there. Barcelona of course is a Catalonian club and the players who play for them are predominantly from Catalonia as opposed to from the whole of Spain, although Iniesta would be an exception to that.

But if you look at development of the game in England, I actually think that the standard of young players being produced in England has improved. I think if you look at the standard of the game professionally in England, it’s improved immeasurably, but what hasn’t happened is two things.

One is we haven’t exported much talent because our talent tends not to travel. We can maybe conjecture about that. I think there’s an island mentality about us. There’s also a financial element to it. You can earn a lot more in the championship probably than in most leagues in Europe.

And lastly, I’d say that of course the correct analysis is to say the number of home grown talented players in the premier league has not been as high as we’d like it to be, and that is where I think we’ve met a major stumbling block which is being addressed, and I would argue, if you look at the performance of the England youth teams in the last five years, they actually match up in comparison pretty well with the rest of Europe.

Now the senior team doesn’t in terms of performance in tournaments, but probably for the under 21s down, games won, performance in tournaments, it’s one final, one semi and one quarter in the 21s, we’ve been in two finals in the 19s, and we’ve won one final in the 17s. I think that’s about right. So actually we compare pretty favourably across Europe in that return.

 

SIQ:   I wondered what your views were on the impact that that the EPPP proposals will have on the UK developing talented footballers.

HW: Well without question, the core principles of the performance plan I agree with. Pitching best with best has got to be right for the individual players, let alone for clubs and for the game nationally. The ability for players to move from club to club in the knowledge of what actually the transparency that that movement will cause.

Clubs haven’t explained the rules on compensation to young players and their families properly. This has meant that if a young player has wanted to leave, his family often haven’t realised that there is compensation to pay in the event that he joins another professional club. This has created a compensation ransom culture which has been unhealthy when you are dealing with minors who are amateur players.

Now we can argue till the cows come home whether the setting of the compensation levels is right, but nobody can convince me that creating transparency is anything other than the right way to go.

I think a couple of other things that will certainly help to improve the opportunities for young players is having more access to players and having more access to those players at the right time of day, the core coaching time. We have to get the balance right here. We mustn’t over coach players, but certainly having more access and more time at the right time is definitely a step forward.

SIQ: If you can change one thing about youth development in football in the UK I wonder what that would be.

HW: If you’d asked me that two years ago, I would have stuck very resolutely to the signing of a professional contract at 18, because I’ve always thought that 17 is too young, you’ve not necessarily proved anything, but arguably that whole area’s moved on because we’re contracting with players for longer at a younger age, so that’s about time as opposed to money, and the same probably would apply to agents.

So what we need is a coherent system for 18 to 21s football that enables the finishing school element of players that puts those players’ development to work, and I think we’re getting closer to that now, but we’ve still not got an agreed coordinated strategy for that area, and we must conclude that. We must have a coherent plan for the final stage development for talented young players.

SIQ: And who should lead that or who should head that up or should that be a partnership, or should that be the clubs in charge of that?

HW: Well I’ve always argued we’re a club culture. The FA’s was always very important in coach development and coach education and in opportunities for players to play in national teams, but for me the clubs are the places where the players will be developed, yeah.

SIQ:  I wonder if you could briefly describe the main and perhaps most important attributes of an excellent youth development coach.

HW: Well certainly an excellent youth development coach has got to be multi skilled, he’s got to be capable to deliver technically excellent sessions, and we’re not being age specific here; we’re thinking across ages yeah?

SIQ: Correct.

HW: Okay, so he’s got to be able to deliver technically good sessions that are pitched at the right level, have the ability to ensure that all of the participants have a chance to learn and develop. From a personality point of view, the coach has got to be able to engage with every player and try to find a means to relate to each player, both individually and as part of a group, and I extend that by saying that the coach’s role as a mentor, (male mentors for lots of young men are few and far between), is pivotal.

And whether you’re running a junior club or whether you’re running a top level youth development programme, you have got to accept your responsibilities in that area, and a massive part of that is appropriate communication with young players, and the ability for the coach to understand how best to communicate with the young players, I think is critical.

I learnt a lot from a talented French coach who we worked with at Southampton, and very often it wasn’t what he did say that mattered. It’s what he didn’t say, and the coach needs to understand that some of their communication, a lot of their communication is non verbal and centres around creating the right environment for the players to be able to express themselves and to be able to demonstrate their learning and their talent, and in my view, far too many coaches talk far too much at players and over the years, and I would describe myself when I started coaching as being one of those who fell into that category, but over the years I’ve learnt that less is very often more in terms of our verbal communication.

So the coach ultimately in conclusion, if the coach creates the right environment for his programme, her programme for that matter, technically and culturally I suppose; if the coach can create that right environment, then it gives the players the opportunity to flourish. If the coach doesn’t create that right environment, then the players won’t flourish.

And I’ll just add one last thing if I may, and that is to say bad coaches won’t make good players better. Good coaching, well actually bad coaches won’t make bad players good and certainly won’t make good players better. Good coaches can enable all young players to improve and to reach their full potential.