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...

like a BAUSSS!!!

Whats the deal with coming on time anyway?! who does that anymore? haven't we evolved enough to do all the work we're supposed to do in twenty minutes less time than usual now? I think we have; maybe even thirty minutes less time.

When i was working in ABB i thought this might be too much site work for my taste, but i really wasn't running the show so i expected things to be different once i got permanent. I didn't get the job there. I kept looking for another job, expecting the average desk job to be one of those pleasures that seemed so distant, and alluring just because of that.

Now i do have a desk job, and apart from the time i'm working,( which is quite frankly, just a little more than half of my office hours) it sucks balls, yes, BALLS!
what, in the name of gillani's left moustache is one supposed to do while not working and still in the office? do you chat? facebook? blog? call someone? something that would make you look significantly busy when you're actually not. Or one could do the "working proactively thing" y'know; that should be something.

i imagine a desk job would only be bearable if one were to be the boss, otherwise...

10 thoughts on England being knocked out of the World Cup

1. This worldcup just came at the wrong time for England. The clubs are in turmoil, there are hardly any English players left in the squads of the major teams. And no Arsene, Walcott doesn't count. And an unfit and off-form Rooney to top it off.
2. For a team that claims to be built from the back, the defensive performance was, simply put, a disgrace.
3. The goal from Upson was fantastic, and had that Lampard goal not been disallowed, the scenario would've been much different. England would've lost on penalties, thats the English way of exiting tournaments, see?
4. The injury to Michael Ballack has been a revelation for Germany because it gave Bastian Schweinsteiger the chance to reveal himself like he did. Ozil and Muller were great too. Muller's first goal; rarely have i seen an assist so selfless! kudo's to Ozil!
5. Beckham looked great didn't he?
6. Contrary to popular belief, there was tactically nothing wrong with England (with the exception of the substitutions made), they just had a very weak squad.
7. After the first three games, Capello should've realised Rooney isn't really working out. He's a great player, but just that he's too out of form right now, and you cant blame him, coming back from injury, its difficult. And thus, he should've given the Crouch-Defoe pairing a chance.
8. The commentator in the England-Germany match made a very insightful comment about the academies in England versus the academies in Germany; clearly, lax spending in that regard in England clubs is showing now. England do have prospects in players like Lennon, Welbeck, Rodwell, Baxter, Gosling etc., but they need to play at the highest level of European football to be as good, and as confident as the German youngsters last night.
9. Capello should NOT be sacked, ever! the formation was sound, the tactics were sound, what wasn't was the squads general fitness and the level of the players involved, none of which were Capello's fault.
10. As a cynic, I have to say: Thank God England's goal was disallowed, because if it were not, we would be looking at widespread riots all across England! Not because England would've won, they would've still lost in all eventuality, but because now the England fan can always say "What if?!..."

blog hop!

Wayne Rooney: Really not all that! (courtesy: football365)

Although I don't agree with all of it, but still its a very well written little mailbox article

Wayne Rooney: It's A Myth
Though it may be unwise to write on the eve of a game where I could well be silenced by the reverberations of a good performance, I thought I'd take this opportunity to ask the media and fellow mail-boxers to stop waxing quite so lyrical about Mr. Rooney.

Aware that my longer and less sensationalist emails are rarely published, I'll try to make this one shorter and unqualified by reasonableness.

1. Wayne Rooney really shouldn't be considered among the best in the world. Certainly he had a good season, but technically it is a little embarrasing to compare him to Ronaldo and Messi, who are just plain vastly better footballers.

2. Wayne Rooney had a good season for Manchester United because the team was built around his strengths. They played a wide 4-5-1 formation that focussed on crossing as often as possible, hence a) he scored an awful lot of headers; and b) Manchester United created an awful lot of own goals. This solution is not applicable to England for several reasons:

i. it would involve having wingers who can cross - and we sent Mr. Johnson home; and
ii. Our other good players don't fit particularly well into it - we'd probably have to drop Lampard, and Steven Gerrard really doesn't have the tactical discipline for any formation which isn't built around him.

Therefore don't expect miracles of him, he'll play for us like a slightly more confident version of the Wayne we saw during the Ronaldo era.

3. Finally, would people please stop advocating a 4-4-1-1 with Gerrard behind Rooney; I'm talking especially to Mr. Shearer. This proposal seems to be built on two flawed presuppositions:

i. this would suit our two most talented players; and
Ii. This has brought the best out of 'Stevie G' at Liverpool.

Erroneous, erroneous on both counts. Gerrard playing just behind a front man requires a front man who actually stays up front all the time, creates space, and finds holes. Mr. Capello tried this formation early on in his tenure, and Steve came off the pitch and said to the media it didn't work because Wayne wouldn't stay high enough. He's a good striker in his own way, but he's not the same type of striker as Fernando Torres.

Furthermore the formation which brings so much out of Gerrard is acutally a 4-2-3-1, not a 4-4-1-1. This may sound trivial, but the former requires two holding players, one of which is a fantastic deep-lying playmaker. Frank Lampard is many things, but a Xabi Alonso type player he is not. Take Mr. Alonso away from that formation and replace him with someone average and/or ill-suited to the role and the end product is a p***-poor season for both Liverpool and Gerrard.

Essentially: leave it to Fabio, there is absolutely no doubt he's already considered your ideas and ruled them out because his appreciation of the finer points of the game are derived from years of footballing experience, not from Championship Manager.

Rant over.
Luke Johnson