Indian football - An outside view

Thursday, 10. December 2009 - Horst Wein (GW)

The future of Indian football relies on restructuring its youth football competitions.

Horst Wein, one of the foremost mentors of youth football coaches in the world, was a critical observer of the friendly matches that the Indian national team played in August 2009 in Cataluñya against various Spanish third division teams

The FIH Master Coach in hockey has schooled coaches in 54 countries and has written 33 sport-related textbooks, some of them related to football like his bestseller: "DEVELOPING YOUTH FOOTBALL PLAYERS".

Commenting on the performance of the Indian National Team to the Editor-in-Chief of IndianFootball.Com Horst believed that the level shown in August was a direct reflection of the way the Indian players were approached in the past 20 years to the complexity and difficulty of the game of football.


How to restructure our youth football

But not only India faces a dilemma in developing young football players. Many other countries do have the same problem without having resolved it yet. As a first solution to cure Indian football and to improve its performance levels on the long run youth football has to look out for a new road instead of using without much thoughts the bumpy roads of the past where the progress is limited. Restructuring grass-root football (which actually is a copy of senior football) is a must, scrapping especially the eleven a side competition for the younger children!

The full game played by children of less than 14 years of age is the cancer of Indian football and that of around the world. For too long the rush to play the full game has obstructed the natural development of young players in India. No money is needed for scrapping the 11-a-side game completely from the competition calendar, only a different philosophy of developing the game from the grass root level. Instead of 11 against 11 Mini Football with only 3 players in each team should be introduced first. 10 year old players should play 5-a-side Football (like it happens in Brazil) and for 11 and 12 years old players the 7-a-side is the best game for learning to master the game. Finally with 13 years the 8-a-side Football should become the master (instead of the instructors) with the kids discovering the secrets and objectives of this simplified modification of Football...

India should re-think the way children are approached step by step to the complexity and difficulty of the game. Actually the schools and clubs follow the same model of teaching the game as 60 years ago! India has to learn that youth coaching is a specialized affair and that football urgently needs specialists to deal with the developing child. It's quite reasonable to conceive that young children cannot be taught and coached to play the game in a manner that is meant for adults. Knowing the problem is the first step to resolve it. Indian's Youth Football competitions should become like the shoes of the kids - they should fit them perfectly. But unfortunately this has never been the case in India.

An optimal teaching and learning model should be used as a base in all academies to help to unlock and develop best the innate potential of the Indian youth. But as long as India continues to oblige the 10 to 13 year old kids to play the full game on the big field no progress will be made as seen in the past 30 years.

The secret behind the strength of Brazil's fine football players is that none of them ever played before 11 years on the big fields which are reserved for the adults only. Playing on a much smaller field (20 x 40 metres) with 4 players and one goalkeeper just for fun and without coaches allows the youngsters to develop their ability naturally. The final product is the unparalleled creativity and skill of the kids which amaze the football world.

When actually the Football Association of India does what it has done always in the past it will never reach any further. The traditional way of thinking prevents India from using the most efficient ways available in these days in approaching kids to the complexity and difficulty of the game - a natural step-by-step approach. Indians traditional coaching methods are hindering the child's learning in expressing their creativity. There is too much control by the coaches, too much drill work which is killing the imagination and fantasy of the kids, no time to experiment to do something different, not being allowed to be different and too much correction by the coaches. All these are obstacles that inhibit the expression of the creative potential within each child.

Learning in football must be extended, more frequently offering the possibility to think and to learn incidentally and in divergent ways - until the coaches agree that the well structured simplified game of football should become the teacher and not the coach.

All over and also in Asia many coaches think for their players, instead of stimulating them to think for themselves. Instead of presenting fishes to the young players, their parents, teachers or coaches should teach them how to fish.

Teenage children should never play the same game as the adults. They must be exposed in each evolutional stage to a tailor-made competition which makes sure they perceive competence whilst playing the game. Thus when playing first Mini Football, then 5-,7- and finally 8-a side Football at different age levels the children will have by far more successful actions than playing only the traditional 11 a-side game, which has created for too long wrong habits to children.

Being aware of the success when playing these tailor-made football competitions is a great motivator for the youth to progress even further. Each child should feel at any time a certain degree of capacity and competence. But that is not the case when the child is obliged to play the same game as the adults. It fails more often than it succeeds.

Besides investing heavily in the National Team, India shouldn't forget the real roots of its problem: making sure a brighter future for Indian football through the use of a Football Development Model with an age-orientated coaching of the younger generations in youth academies which are spread out all over the continent.