How To Build A Perfect Footballer

Posted 24/07/10 13:22
Courtesy: Paul little, Football365

As part of the fallout from England's inept performances at the recent World Cup, I have become concerned that should my two-year-old son one day become a professional footballer in these islands he will become just another one of those useless automatons we saw in South Africa.

To avoid such a sorry fate, I have come up with five strategies to mould him into a gifted, intuitive, creative, visionary livewire. I intend to implement some or all of these steps for the good of my son and the good of football. And as the FA considers the development of National Football Centre, perhaps they could do worse than track the progress of my program when they are planning the structures required to return English football to the summit of the international game.


1 - Instil hunger, drive and ambition
It is often argued that the greatest talents of the game honed their talents in slums where kicking a rolled up sock whilst avoiding state-sponsored death squads was the only diversion from their poverty stricken upbringing. To that end, we will holiday in the slums of Rio over the next few years with a view to a permanent move. Whilst I work on arrangements for that, I will be bringing up my son in a cardboard box in the back garden.


2 - Nurture natural balance
Some years back former Ireland boss Brian Kerr remarked that in his latter years in charge of the Irish youth sides the players coming through the system lacked the natural balance and fluidity of movement of their African and South American counterparts. He blamed this on the fact that kids in Ireland no longer played as actively outdoors as they used too. Over-protective parents, computer games and telly were at the heart of this sorry evolution. Kids no longer climbed trees, rode bikes, and tottered along high walls surrounding electricity sub-stations.

To try and counter this, my boy will be denied technological distraction in his early years. He will also have to traverse a narrow beam over a pit on a unicycle to get his meals of chicken, beans and pasta. When he is older, I will have him hunted by a pack of rabid dogs to encourage him to run and climb.


3 - Low centre of gravity
I have noted that many of the world's great players at the present are short in stature. Xavi, Iniesta and Messi are the obvious examples. Consequently, I am investigating ways of stunting a young man's growth to ensure that critical low centre of gravity. Does smoking still do the job? Or would placing heavy weights on hid head and shoulders be more effective?


4 - Awareness
Watch Xavi, Iniesta, Messi - their peripheral vision is so impressive that surely there is more at play? Have their other senses - hearing or smell, for example - been enhanced in some way?

It is worth investigation. So, I'm considering some drills where family members will throw objects at the young lad as he plays, to try and get him to get his head up and encourage greater awareness. As he develops, we may increase the difficulty with the use of a blindfold, scented rocks and a large cudgel with small bells attached.


5 - A controlled diet of televisual football
Eventually, the boy must see football on the telly and be encouraged to dream. English football will not be allowed - for there lies only ruin, heartbreak and confusion. I am considering a controlled and rigorous immersion diet of Barcelona in full flow. To that end, I have purchased a set of the eyelid clamps used in Clockwork Orange as visual aids.

Paul Little

my blog is carbon neutral... or at least it will be...

I've added a badge and heres a link to the webpage: http://www.kaufda.de/umwelt/carbon-neutral/
its a german initiative by the looks of it, and its great, and heres why:
when we look at it, it doesnt seem like we're harming the environment at all, sitting comfortably at home, on our laptops, watchin tv... all we're doing is using some electricity right? its not like our tv's and laptops run on fossil fuels or anything... but no, at a macro scale, we are quite directly using raw resources... and on that same scale, we are contributing towards destroying a lot of the environment...
its time to give something back i suppose; and i really hope they do plant that tree, and take care of it too, anything to help yknow...
theres this other thing that came to my mind too; we've been using up a lot of paper to write and stuff, and well, paper comes from trees, and we have contributed to a lot of deforestation in lieu of that, i guess... so if these guys plant a tree for every blog, it might actually reverse that process... i suggest you check out the site if you have a blog, or even if you dont... :)

the frog and me

I used to wonder why the frog is considered the closest to humans (in terms of anatomy). Maybe its because we actually descend from frogs and not monkeys, maybe its just a coincidnence, or maybe God thought that this was the only creature He could spare to teach the humans about their bodies, who knows really?

Now I'm not much of a NatGeo person, but i noticed this one thing about frogs that NatGeo didn't notice. Ever happened to you that you're driving along the road after a nice bit of rain, and you notice that frog on the edge of the road just... there, maybe waiting for you to pass by or something. But as you close in on the frog, it does something amazing; it takes a leap of faith and starts crossing the road, knowing full well that anything could happen now. It doesn't stop, it doesn't turn back, it keeps hopping. Hoppity, hop, then... most of the time; splat!, but sometimes, there's this one audacious frog who gets to the other side of the road. You miss the splat, but you give some solid brotha' respect! to the little green guy who got through.

The point is, that the frog is like us, because it thinks like us! Humans always keep trying to destroy themselves, and not only in a negative way. I suppose that last statement is a little blunt, but the statement comes up quite often in most semi-serious conversations with good company. Facts like what the humans are doing to each other and what humans are doing to the earth are common examples of how humans are destructive by nature. The way we're compared to yeast is also a good example; yeast keeps feeding on its own excrement until its ruined, just fyi. Sometimes humans destroy themselves for a cause, for someone else, for love maybe, i don't know, and most of the time they do go splat, rhetorical of course, but sometimes they get to the other side, and many people acknowledge how amazing a feat they've witnessed against appalling odds.

I've written this between 3am and 4am, which is never a good idea, and it felt like it took me forever. I don't know what its going to sound like later, because i forgot most of what i wanted to write, and this is just a theory; I'll need to get my degree in BioPhysics before I can substantiate my hypothesis, yknow...