By Daily Sports on March 29, 2018

Recently a top class grassroots coach (and member of the coaching crew of Nigeria’s bronze winning team at the Rio Olympics in Brazil in 2015) Nnamdi Onuigbo of Dreams Soccer Academy shared a video of German giants Bayern Munich’s scouting program in Abuja, Nigeria.

The programme which took the form of a tournament tagged ‘Bayern Munich Youth Cup’ took place in several cities in Nigeria. The idea is to sew if Bayern can snap up any promising youngster into the club’s youth team.

The National Finals was an 8 team knockout tournament with Ablaze FC of Lagos (who beat Dreams Academy 1-0 in the final match) being crowned FC Bayern Youth Cup Nigeria 2018 Champions and.

10 best players from the tournament have been selected to represent Team Nigeria at the international FC Bayern Youth Cup 2018 which kicks off in May in Germany.

Just before each game the Bayern coaches addressed players and coaches of the grassroots clubs in order to give them helpful clues on how to pass the screening test and become better footballers.

Coach Onuigbo was generous enough to share one video on Facebook where the coaches were addressing some teams just before kick-off.

One of the coaches and legendary ex-German national team defender) Kaus Augenthaler said (through an interpreter to the players): 

“We are looking for talents. The results of the matches are not so important. We don’t want to see the best dribbler. Football is team play. Play together, help each other (and) talk to each other. Those are the basic elements we are looking for.”

Now this sounds like a short and straightforward message and gives an insight into the minds of top class European football experts in selecting young players. But it is exactly in these areas I think many grassroots players and coaches in Nigeria have to work on in order for us to have a more rounded football culture with deep roots in the correct way of playing.

In my experience many grassroots coaches in Nigeria are too obsessed about winning to the point of putting so much pressure on young players with the resultant effect of stifling the creativity of the youngsters. What is then mostly served up are games played at a frenetic and physically demanding pace without the necessary technique and teamwork that make football a beauty to watch.

On the other hand many players, when playing in a big stage like in front of scouts or coaches who are casting a keen eye on spotting talents for a professional career, are too individualistic. In trying to stand out they hang on too much to the ball or begin to try some fancy tricks and flicks to the detriment of cohesive team football.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger gave a quote some years ago. He said: “I believe in work, in connections between the players, I think what makes football great is that it is a team sport. You can win in different ways, by being more of a team, or by having better individual players. It is the team ethic that interests me, always.”

Man City Manager Pep Guardiola also once said: “I don’t like it when a player says, ‘I like freedom; I want to play for myself’. Because the player has to understand he is part of a team with 10 other players. If everyone wants to be a jazz musician, it will be chaos. They will not be a team, and nothing will be possible.”

What we can glimpse from these two great football minds is their obsession with team work.

This obsession with creating brands of football that involve the whole team contributing in graceful rhythms of enthralling passing play has been a gift to football over the years, and their development of players into being more than selfish individuals but part of something subliminally beautiful has been worthy of our admiration for years.

Grassroots coaches should work hard to improve the fluidity of their boys in preparation for such trials as the Bayern one.

When the Bayern coaches asked the players to play with each other, the challenge then is for their coaches to teach them how.

Stuffs like how to develop passing triangles, how a player should position himself to receive and give a pass, and when to pass or take on an opponent are important aspects of the game that coaches would do well to research on and mould into their playing philosophy to increase the chances of their players making it to the professional level.

There’s also a benefit of encouraging good team play that goes beyond producing good football. By encouraging players to pass the ball to one another and help each other in the field, coaches are helping to instill an important value of unselfishness in the players and gives everyone a shared sense of success. 

This value of sharing could prove pivotal in the life of a player within and outside the game.

Source Daily Sports

Posted March 29, 2018

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