We should all listen to Maurizio Viscidi
Maurizio Viscidi, coordinator of the FIGC national youth teams and a very influential (and respected) person in Italian football, gave a very interesting interview to La Stampa. Here he spoke of the development of the talent of our young people, starting from an assumption: «We only train young players in possession, but that’s how we do it We’re losing quality in attack».
Already slimy time before insists that “some youth coaches They see themselves as Serie A coaches and do the same training as Guardiola, Conte and Ancelotti without thinking that they need to develop players and not build teams“, While “the boys only learn a collective football, which is made up of a lot of passes and departmental work». And the “Football that lacks all that is individual, i.e. the ability to “jump” at the opponent and defend individually. in summary, the ability to be protagonists instead of being caged in a thousand movements and patterns», and in those
«Man is no longer taught to jump andone to onehas been deleted”.
Today the national youth coordinator reiterated: “What needs to be corrected is the training methodology at the age the player shows up. At 15, 16 we see youngsters who promise, but then it’s like they stop their growth process for lack of knowledge: the midfielders get to the finish line, it gets complicated for the strikers». It still is: “The youth coaches train the first 70 meters, not the last 30. They think about teamwork, not the specificity of the role: I hear them say “I’ll do the 3-5-2” or “No, the 4-3-3 is better”but at that age you have to train the player».
Finally! Words that refresh us and give us (at least) hope. Then the analysis of the tips: «I’ve been calling forwards “walls” or “benches” for a while now: that’s what coaches want them to talk to their team-mates about when they approach the ball. And the depth? The perception of what happens before you touch the ball? I’ll tell you what we find out in our analyses: young center forwards are afraid of injuring themselves, they don’t do a power kick because they always prefer to use the “mezzocollo”, They’re not having fun, the foot is weak, the header is non-existentwith spontaneous conclusions have space-time problems».
An approach that punishes offensive players and the development of their talent, which has always been based on creativity, protagonism and individual play. A talent that can not only be regulated in patterns, modules and tasks; more generally in the suffocating and self-referential doctrine (but for the technicians) of the collective game: «We give too much weight to possession, which favors the growth of midfielders at the expense of forwards: attacks on the pitch towards the opponent’s goal are a rarity. The technicians scream her boys just play dare notto look at the partner nearby».
“THEour strikers are like drivers in the opposite direction for the movements they don’t make”.
Maurizio Viscidi
The inevitable question of comparison with other European countries, to which Viscidi replies: «Elsewhere they know how to promote and enrich talent: in Europe they are going in the right direction. Once upon a time we played on the street and learned the art of dribbling on the street or cultivated the virtue of scoring: we could not respond to socio-economic change, Off the road we got lost in non-specific tactics».
Amen. A topic that we have often dealt with here, also with a bit of irony: because it is not so much about the nostalgic rhetoric of (street) football that no longer exists, but about the role it had in talent development; a role that the football schools and youth sector could not play. Much has been lost in the transition, to. It is certain that we must focus on investments and infrastructures, but in this particular aspect the question is relative whether, as our CT Mancini also notes, the talent continues to come from South America or at least from practice (and culture) from potreros: from bad footballfrom the suburbs, from the street.
In this article we explain why and how street football develops talent beyond rhetoric
Arguments that Maurizio Viscidi explored a few months ago in an interview with the Gazzetta dello Sport: «The difference is that in Spain or France children still play in the streets, the ideal place to develop creativity and imagination. In Italy we no longer play in courts or parishes and it’s a great loss that we won’t be able to repay if we don’t convince youth coaches to revive this type of football». More than rhetoric. The solution is (unfortunately) not to go back on the streets, which is not possible for many reasons, but to transfer this mentality (also) to football schools and the youth sector. That is the essence of everything.
For example, if we had two like Osimhen (stayed in Nigeria until he was 18) and Kvaratskhelia in our pseudo academies, what do you think would have happened? How do you think it would end? In a nice interview, the youth coach of Kvara said: “He had them dribble, was a bit of an obsession for him. And we never told him to stop». Here, think what they would have said to him here: “Play with the team”, “Don’t risk the game”, “Don’t be stubborn”, “Let’s not catch the break”. A few days ago, an old fox of Italian football like Perinetti also repeated it:
«Kvaratskhelia enchants with his ability and speed in jumping. The dribbling in Italy we haven’t seen him in years, in the youth sectionsit is considered a mistake».
And he continued: “We always have to improve to get back to the levels of the past. We are too victims of the result already from the youth teams. From there, if you prefer tactics to technique, it’s normal for certain things to happen. I think we must first of all Put the technical side back at the heart of a boy’s worththen there’s the physical, then the tactical». It all seems so obvious, but when many need to stress it, starting with the coordinator of national youth teams in the FIGC, who feels the need to turn to national newspapers to launch (desperate) appeals, there is obviously a problem. And it’s more urgent and deeper than you think.
