Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
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Breaking the Line: The ECNL Podcast
Youth Soccer Evolution: Embracing Individual Growth Over Team Success | Ep. 106
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Join us for an eye-opening conversation with ECNL Technical Advisor Ceri Bowley as we uncover the shifting paradigms in youth soccer development. Ever wondered how playing younger athletes against older opponents could radically enhance their skills? Ceri shares innovative strategies from Europe that focus on individual growth over team success, challenging traditional norms. We also dissect the intricacies of coach education, exploring why individualized learning and real-world application are crucial for effective coach development. Ceri offers his insights into the essential role parents play in aligning expectations and supporting their children's athletic journey. We discuss how a "golden thread" in training can ensure consistent learning, drawing parallels between the soccer environments in the UK and the U.S.
Welcome to Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast, a bi-weekly look at all things ECNL, covering topics that you care about and topics that make a difference. I am Dean Linke, your behind-the-scenes editor of the show. As always, leading the discussion today is ECNL President and CEO Christian Lavers, along with ECNL Vice President and Chief of Staff, doug Bracken, and Ashley Willis, ecnl's Partnership Activation and Alumni Relations Manager. Today, all three of them get to ask the super talented ECNL Technical Advisor, kerry Boley, about many of the hard-hitting topics we have covered in the past few weeks. Kerry just has a way about him that makes you feel part of the discussion while you are learning and growing. I think you will feel that it's a wonderful addition of Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast and Supercharged by Kerry Boley, capping off with Doug Bracken's Brain Buster. And we'll get things started after this message from ECNL corporate partner Nike.
Speaker 2:Nike is a proud sponsor of ECNL's. Nothing Can Stop what we Can Do together to bring positive change to our communities. You can't stop sport because hashtag. You can't stop our voices. Follow Nike on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1:Thank you, nike, and, as promised, I turn the show over to Christian Lavers, the president and CEO of the ECNL.
Speaker 3:Thanks, dan, appreciate that here we have the crew. Regular crew Ashley Willis Hi guys. Doug Bracken, how are you? Nice to see you. Reid is joining us. Reid Sellers, videographer, extraordinaire. Hi everyone, happy to be here and special guest, probably number one in terms of quantity of appearances on the ECNL podcast, which puts you probably in line for some type of award at some point.
Speaker 5:Drew Watson might have something to say about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think you gave that title to Drew Watson, like two weeks ago, I know.
Speaker 5:I feel like you're handing out left and right.
Speaker 4:We're doing participation trophies for the podcast.
Speaker 3:I think Kerry might have just clipped Drew with this appearance today. We didn't even get to say your name.
Speaker 5:Sorry, good to be back.
Speaker 3:We've talked about a lot of stuff over the last couple of weeks and we've brought the American perspective on that good, bad and indifferent. And so now we're going to bring the Kerry Boley perspective.
Speaker 5:We should Christian tell the people who Kerry is, in case we have some new listeners. And why should we listen to him? Why should we have his opinions on this podcast?
Speaker 3:Well, besides being a PhD of some sort, which I'm sure he can tell us about, he's also got practical experience which is worth way more than a PhD, in my opinion. Go ahead, kerry. Why don't you give a little bit of background for those who don't know you?
Speaker 6:Thank you for that. Yeah, so obviously technical advisor to the league, which is the most important bit. I try to help support challenge thinking as much as I can. Also consultant with different companies and clubs around the world. At the moment soon to change, but we'll announce that in due course when, uh when the role changes and prior to that some experience with english fa. So welshman working abroad. Also city football group well looked after kind of methodology, coach development, coach recruitment and then in first team football at rangers as assistant to giovanni van bronckhorst for a short period of time all right.
Speaker 3:Well, you've done some stuff, kerry.
Speaker 5:I guess we will listen to you and have your opinion based on that.
Speaker 6:You can listen to opinion. You don't have to take it on board. I do that all the time. We'll see how good the opinion is.
Speaker 3:I'm a big fan of the strong opinions, weakly held approach. Believe what I believe, but I'm open to change when proven wrong. Yeah, we'll go with that, all right. So on that note, we've had the American perspective on a variety of topics related to player development, coach education, things that impact the players in the environment. So now we're going to get the Welsh slash, british slash, english slash. You've been all over the world doing actually coach education no joke side on that. So you've seen all over the world doing actually coach education no joke side on that. So you've seen it done in places as diverse and different as Turkey and Asia and obviously across Europe. So we're going to get your opinion on as somebody who's actually been there and done that and work with coaches and do it on a variety of topics, and we'll just see where it goes.
Speaker 3:So first one, because this is the hottest topic ever in America is birth year. We're not going to go back and rehash all the arguments that we've had for and against, which are almost all leaning in the direction of change in terms of where the youth space is. But maybe, kerry, you know the difference between school year and birth year. But maybe, kerry, you know the difference between school year and birth year. You have kids in the UK. Maybe give us first. What does the UK and the Premier League academies? What age group cutoffs do they use for their professional development and youth soccer?
Speaker 6:Okay, yeah, it's a contentious debate. I think actually the UK are one of the only countries where it's still run by school year as opposed to birth year. At the minute, at club level, most of Europe changed and went by year of birth as well, so we kind of stand out a little bit in that way on our own. It's all I've ever known, really coming through the system as a young player in the academy and then obviously into being a coach and things is is kind of year year of school as opposed to year of birth. And I think one of the big things for it is keeping school years together, knowing that youth soccer one of the biggest things for youth soccer is the social element and the personal development, personal growth, and so when you talk about connections and the importance of being able to connect with your peers, then I think that was a major major reason for it.
Speaker 6:And then obviously when you look at the European season, the European season runs more similarly to what the school year runs as opposed to birth years. So it kind of made sense in that way. And I guess when you look at professional development phase being being, if you say, under 23s and 18s in the UK, then if they align to the first team, then it makes sense for the 16s to align to the 18s and, as a result of it, the knock-on effect through the whole academy ecosystems. Particularly when you then talk about presenting some players with challenges of playing up in age groups to be able to challenge them a little bit more in their development, then if you have two different systems it just doesn't really work, despite the fact that it gets a bit complicated with international football because international football runs to year of birth. So that's where it gets a little bit tricky in the UK with some of our kids in academies.
Speaker 3:So just to put a point on that, I mean because a lot of the listeners of this podcast are probably watching the EPL on Saturday and Sunday and so if you're a player with the man City or man United or pick your club and you're a youth player, you're put in an age group based on your school year to play with the premier academies. You are, yeah. Are there people that have pushed to try and change that or is that just given everybody's happy with it?
Speaker 6:because of all the reasons you've mentioned? Yeah, good question. I guess it probably will have been people that have pushed um. It probably suits national governing bodies in some ways to align to international calendars. So I'm sure there's been that discussion. I haven't been part of those discussions before, but I'm sure they have had those types of discussions. There'll be some, depending on where they're born in a year. We'll probably prefer it to be one way rather than the other because we already know about the birth buyer stuff. So depending on where you sit, there might be some arguments that way. Um are. Is everybody happy with it? I don't know, but the fact that we've remained that way, despite the rest of europe even changing, tells me that there's obviously a strong kind of consensus with the. When did europe change.
Speaker 6:um, I mean, most of Europe have been sort of four or five years now in that kind of model, so it's been a while. I think Turkey were actually one of the last ones to change. They changed maybe two, two, three years ago. So that was news to me when I arrived there to start working with them a couple of years ago, that they'd gone to that approach as well. But yeah, most of them maybe four or five years now have been operating in that way.
Speaker 3:If Liverpool's U16 team goes to play in European competition knowing there's different. Was it September 1? Is that the cutoff?
Speaker 6:Yeah, september 1, generally yeah.
Speaker 3:So if they're September 1, they go to play Ajax. Ajax is January 1, how do they do that?
Speaker 6:Yeah, good question. So they'll do. Ajax will just have a mix of the two, I guess, in terms of years, years of birth, mixed into the age group, because they'll have some that are kind of early part of one year and late part of the other year, and then for Liverpool they would just operate as normal in terms of their approach. But I think where you get a lot of the bigger European clubs and a lot of the bigger Premier League clubs will already be playing younger players up anyway, because that's just the way that they're operating in their academies. In the 16s, for example, liverpool will probably have I'm just guessing here but probably a 60-40 split between under-16 players. The 60, and 40% will probably be 15s players playing up anyway.
Speaker 6:So you always get that little bit of a disparity between clubs anyway and I think Ajax will be similar in that kind of sense and then some others maybe will operate solely with the older players in the year for that tournament.
Speaker 6:But it'll be defined by whoever's running that tournament what the kind of cut off point is in terms of under 16 at this state and then you work back from that in terms of what players you have available. But a lot easier to do in a system where you have so many kids in an academy that are fairly close in level anyway that it doesn't make a huge amount of difference Usually when it's one year difference. The bigger change came if it was a two year gap right, because that's massive at youth development age, but generally a one year is not huge and they would only put the right ones for the right level of challenge into that squad for that tournament. And that's again where they're blessed, because they pick their tournaments around the world and then they pick which ones suit which players at which time. And that's where they're probably fortunate because of the nature of Premier League academies and Cat 1 academies in the UK.
Speaker 5:Since you've been around the world so much and, I guess, pivoting a little bit away from the birth year specifically and you've been here enough now, obviously the money in the Premier League and the academies, that it's a little bit of a different model. But when you look at player development, youth development, what are some of the key differences you've seen around the world versus here?
Speaker 6:Yeah, great question. I think, as you'd expect, a massive range even within some countries between the practices of certain clubs and others. In terms of philosophy, it's a philosophical kind of stance on things. But if I was to generalize around some of the stuff in europe particularly like the stronger academy nations, if you like I think the biggest shift for me and it's it's increased in the last sort of four or five years is the focus on individual development, individual development within the team as opposed to team development, and being okay that that means we're going to lose quite a few games on times, um, particularly if we're going to put the 15s to play against 16s and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:So can I? Can I ask a question on that, terry, because I what you just said is individual development within the team or individual development over the team development. One example of that is what you just mentioned is playing players up where they're going to have less success, but they're challenged. So that's one specific example of how developing the individual is prioritized above the team. Can you give a couple of other examples of what does that mean exactly? Because I think there's probably people listening. They hear individual development all the time, but to see what would be an example of somebody who's putting team development ahead of individual development or vice versa.
Speaker 6:Okay.
Speaker 6:So for us, if we look at it in terms of and I can't speak for every academy, but I'll just speak for my own experiences in the clubs that I've been involved in when we talk about individual development, we will literally profile every player. So that profile some of that, will be around what are the, the generic principles of things that are required to be a player? So nothing specific to game style yet, and then, as they get older, there'll be more specific nature in terms of how do we want to play, what's our philosophy, what's our methodology and and then, as a result of it, position by position, what does it look like? So you have two templates, if you like. You have the player profile and then you have the position profile. That come together and then, over a kind of six week period, we will have individual goals, targets, objectives for players over over that period of time, and it's just my personal preference we work to a maximum of three in terms of objectives for any six-week period that we're trying to improve, and then comes a decision as part of that discussion, and we always try to work to the overall principle that every player needs a home, and what we mean by that is that for the social interaction, for the social development, personal development, there needs to be an age group that they spend the majority of their time in over the course of a season, because when it's just up and down, up and down, it doesn't give them any opportunity to really build meaningful relationships, neither with their peers or with the coaching staff, to really support their development over a season.
Speaker 6:But then in each six weeks we can look at each individual player based upon the games programme, because we know that games programme is one of the biggest challenges. That's already there, that we don't really have to do anything to create the level of challenge because the opposition will create that for us. So there could be a period of six weeks where it's going to be really really challenging physically because of the nature of the teams we play against, or technically it's going to be a real challenge. But what we can then do is match the challenge, based upon their individual targets, with what type of game we need them to have over that six weeks and if we know that the player is really really small and they're going to get no success and the three things they're working on at the minute are technical related but they're not going to be physical enough to compete in a game, then we don't put them in a game that's going to be really physical, because there's never going to be an opportunity for them to develop their super strength, which is the technical element that we're focusing on.
Speaker 6:But every six weeks, then is a decision to make which players need to play where, who needs to stay in their age group, who needs that additional challenge because they're ready for it. So, as a result, we push people up. And what happens if a 16s, if five of the 16s go and play in the 18s, then we need to fill the gap and we need five from the 15s to go and play in the 16s. But we have to decide who the best five are based upon, not who the best players are, but what suits the needs for that player.
Speaker 3:Let me ask a different question then, because that's helpful and it makes me think. If I'm thinking about a Saturday to Saturday, so I play a game this Saturday and I'd say I'm U16. Next Saturday I got a different game. You just highlighted some of the roster creation may be dependent upon the style of play of the opponent and things being worked on individually with players, and it's tough. I know averages are tough questions, but how much of the team will change week to week based on that? Because you also said which I thought was really interesting the need for a player to have a home, because I think people can forget about that. You can go so far down the development track that you make a player feel like they just don't belong anywhere because they're constantly being moved around. But how much will a roster change from week to week?
Speaker 3:And I know there's probably a range here between you know, if you're playing two very, very different levels and styles week to week. It know there's probably a range here between you. Know, if you're playing two very, very different levels and and styles.
Speaker 6:Week to week, it might be bigger than if not. But yeah, yeah, no. That's another good question, a good observation, I think. When it comes to how much will it change? The only reason we put them up on a match day is if they're going to play. There's very little point putting them up to be part of a squad, to stand on the touchline and watch the game. It doesn't serve a purpose. So it's only if they're going to play and as a result of that, you're looking at maybe two or three players, any more than that. It's like anything.
Speaker 6:When you start to tip the balance too much, nobody really learns because it just becomes too chaotic. And there needs to be an element of this core know what this game is going to be, because they played it to be able to help the ones that are coming up for that level of challenge. Otherwise, you're just chucking a group together and nobody really benefits from it. Your leaders don't get a chance to lead properly because there's nothing really to hang on to in terms of the foundations of what our game needs to look like. And then the players that are coming up for that level of challenge it just overwhelms them and there's no, no opportunity for them to really achieve anything within that challenge. It just becomes lots of adversity, if you like. And the big thing is, the higher the challenge, the more support the player needs there's. There's all often a myth around just put them in the environment and see what they do, but actually if you read through any of the literature around stress and adversity, the higher the level of challenge, the more support that's required from the coach. Now that doesn't mean commentating and telling them where to go, but there needs to be more attention on those players in terms of meaningful, purposeful questioning, meaningful and purposeful observation and more and more specific feedback that can help them consolidate learning and connect their learning.
Speaker 6:Um. But the other part to it and we don't just go game day it might be that there's stages to it. Right that you go. Let's say we start 80 20, so we'll go under 14s, be playing up to under 15s. 80 percent of the week might be training with the under 14s and the other 20 might be training with um, the 15s, and we might do that for a couple of weeks and see how they cope.
Speaker 6:Then we might shift the dial to 60 40 in the training environment and then we might add in now there's a game within that process as well. So they're still their main home is still their 14s age group, but then they move from having one session a week maybe to two sessions a week with the older age group and then two sessions plus a game with the older age group, and then we can observe over that six-week period how well they've done in relation to what their target is and then what we might need as a result of it. But what we don't do and I know this is hard, particularly in the culture of American youth sport and American sport in general is we don't prioritize how am I going to score the next goal and how am I going to make sure I win this game over what that young kid needs. Because we always try and I don't say we do it all perfect, but we always try to prioritize what's the individual need for every player.
Speaker 1:We'll be back with more. Kerry Boley, the technical advisor for the ECNL. This is Breaking the Line. The ECNL podcast.
Speaker 2:Soccercom is proud to partner with the ECNL to support the continued development of soccer in the US at the highest levels. We've been delivering quality soccer equipment and apparel to players, fans and coaches since 1984. Living and breathing the beautiful game ourselves. Our goal at Soccercom is to inspire you to play better, cheer louder and have more fun. Visit Soccercom today to check out our unmatched selection of gear, expert advice and stories of greatness at every level of the game.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast featuring Kerry Boley, the technical advisor for the ECNL, who is joined by Ashley Willis Doug Bracken and driving the discussion Christian Labors. I turn it back over to Christian.
Speaker 3:We had a podcast a couple weeks ago where we brought out some coaches that had had success in the league coaches of of the year and they were talking about playing time philosophies within their clubs and when is there some sort of guarantee and when does that go away? Again, when I think about most parents or coaches, when they think about where does winning fit in, in that one of the first metrics of where winning fits is going to be based on what is the playing time commitment for a player. So and I'm sure that varies again by club, but if you can speak just generally about the youth side of these professional academies with respect to playing time and matches for young players, yeah, that's another one.
Speaker 6:That's a huge contention. That's another one, that's a huge contention. But I think the better academies around Europe will work towards an equal playing time over a period of time, over a block. So let's work to six weeks again, because I mentioned that as the kind of individual development plan window. Every six weeks they'd be striving towards an equal amount of playing time across that period. For what ages? Anything up to kind of 16s, up to 16s.
Speaker 6:Would be a priority and I think, if not equal across every player, because that's quite difficult to do based upon positions and other things and what you have in your squad. If not, then commit to a minimum Then there needs to be a minimum game time that they get over that period, because if they don't, then, quite frankly, I haven't seen any player develop by sitting and watching the game more. Very rarely do they. They might increase knowledge, but how can they increase competence by watching the game? They have to be put in there at some point and guess what? They have to fail, because that gives us the opportunity to help them to grow.
Speaker 6:It's the same old debate that we have with the older age group going into the first team and you're often your head coach is saying, yeah, but they're not a Premier League player yet. Well, they're never going to be a Premier League player until they play. Nobody is player yet. Well, they're never going to be a premier league player until they play. Nobody is. You're not a senior player until you play senior minutes. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 6:But someone's got to be brave enough to put them in, knowing that I've got the group around them that's going to support them and that's where the objectives start to shift right, because you can focus on some of the other players in even in your youth squads to be able to help the ones stepping up and give them a specific role, give them a buddy within the team that is there to support their development, because then that's proper leadership, that's not just leadership on paper or things being thrown out there.
Speaker 6:That's proper leadership in practice. Can you recognize what he needs? Can you recognize when to give him or her encouragement, can you recognize when you might need to motivate them a little bit? And there is that part around skull that I like the word skull, but there is that part as well where you need to really wake them up a bit, because that's what they need to get used to. But can you recognize that? And then, as a result of it, you're developing beyond just the football bit as well, which becomes more contextual and real, and that's the bit that I always focus on most. What does the context look like?
Speaker 5:Given, what you've seen here in the realities of the greater majority of our setup is pay to play right. So how do you take those parts and thinking about the realities of the environment here, how do you balance that?
Speaker 6:For me it becomes even more important, that minimum playing time is even more important.
Speaker 6:Probably I would push, if it was my club, even towards more equal playing time as much as possible, because when someone's paying for the service then surely they kind of should expect equal opportunity to be able to develop.
Speaker 6:And if they're not playing then you could argue if I was a parent I could argue that actually they're not getting the same opportunity to develop because they're not playing, whatever the minimum standard of minutes is. So I think that's what I would kind of be cautious of if I was coaching in the US in one of the clubs in the ECNL is making sure that the value that I give to each player is fair, based upon the fact that they're paying to be at my club. And if they pay to be at my club then they deserve an opportunity and I need to facilitate that. And then that becomes a conversation around whether it's equal playing time or whether it's minimum minutes over the course of a six-week period, Because sometimes you might go less minutes in one game or more in the other maybe, and the other bit is not having them always on the bench.
Speaker 3:When you look at minimum minutes, are you looking only at formal competition at that point? Or are you looking also like, hey, I might have a couple of kids that are really struggling, but we're going to have called a friendly game or whatever it may be? But a game that is 11 a side it is proper, but it's not in the formal league, but the level of the demand of it is more appropriate. Maybe for that player is right now. Do you include informal?
Speaker 6:competitions in that? Yeah, it can be that, and I think that becomes a key part for us across a lot of academies here. So when there's players that might be struggling with different reasons, they go through maturation and things, so physically they become a little bit clumsy and not quite there, or confidence has been lost over a period of time, and sometimes the worst thing you can do is continue to put them in to those environments because all that's going to do over a period of time is make them succumb to what the circumstances. So then the informal opportunities, or less formal opportunities, become part of that process. But it just means that if it's not going to be within the formal, you have to do, do more to create those opportunities. Right, and it's not for me to say, oh, it should be league games or cup games or whatever. It's not that. But at some point they need to practice playing the game, because if they don't play the game, then what are we preparing them for in training each week if they don't get that opportunity at the end of it? So that's yeah, I would say all of it in its entirety.
Speaker 6:But that's why the six-week planning block works fairly well for us, because it doesn't let things get too out of hand in terms of they haven't played enough minutes over 8, 10, 11 weeks. That becomes a lot. That becomes a lot of game time lost. But it also allows us, based upon the individual challenge required, to plan for the next six weeks. So we already know the formal games and then we might say right, we'll put two informal ones in here at week three and week five, for example, because we need to make sure that these players get maximum minutes and that'll be the opportunity for that um. So that's how we manage it.
Speaker 6:Or we might manage it in the club. So you might play the um the really young 15s against the 14s, the stronger 14s because that is the right level of physical challenge that they need at this moment in time and, as a result, that becomes a good. Or we mix them and we have a 14s and 15s game and we just mix the teams and then we maximize minutes in that way. So it creates a different dynamic and different, and you have lots of different challenges all over the pitch then in terms of, uh, individual development. So some might be working on a psych perspective, some from a physical, some from a technical and tactical, some from a social, but we make that really explicit in terms of what each individual is trying to achieve each week and we literally take that to games on a simple table and we have it up there. All the players listed what's your focus for today's game and then they can self-evaluate against that individual focus every single week and it doesn't take too much organization.
Speaker 3:One of the things I'm hearing here I don't know about Ashley or Doug, but is a very clear focus on a match as a tool for development versus a match as a measurement of development. When you talk about individual goals and intentions and planning rosters for opponents not based on how do I beat this opponent, but how do I deal with what they're going to present and use that within a development plan, that to me seems a very different mentality than you see, even from a parent perspective as well.
Speaker 5:At what point, kerry, do you think the opposite happens where you're more in a results-driven environment? Where is that line?
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's an interesting one because I don't think with the best academies there is a line I think they try and win anyway, even when they play. So I'll give an example from City, because that's obviously where a lot of my experience came from, when there was three years in a row that the first team won the Premier League, the 23s won their league, the EDS league, and the 18s also won the 18s league three years in a row the Premier League, no-transcript. So in that competition we might have averaged around 16 and a half playing under 18s football and then the average age of the EDS would have been like 17 and a half, 18 probably, when the likes of Liam De Lappe, tommy Doyle and them guys were playing in it and won it. The first year was with Maraska, who's obviously now at Chelsea, but they were playing young players up but they expected to win it. Now you could say that's an extreme example because it's man City, but they were playing against the rest of the Premier League, so it's not so extreme then when you think about they're playing young, young players above their age against some Premier League clubs that would play players of age in there. So the level of competition then is probably not too dissimilar to having a really strong club in one of your or team in one of your age groups in one of your regions play against some of the other guys in the age group. So they always want to win. But I think where does it become even more important?
Speaker 6:18s and 23s. Probably the one competition that I'll just take England as an example that every club tries to win is the FA Youth Cup. They'll usually, if they're going to go for players of the right age, they'll put them in that, and City did too. So the years when they were all playing in the under 23s, they then went and put up their strongest team in the FA Youth Cup because they wanted to go and win that and they treated that as the kind of one where this is it, this is us going and winning the trophy.
Speaker 6:And then the other ones that the European clubs will prioritise is the Youth League, the UEFA Youth League, because that's like the youth version of the Champions League. So that's best for best, if you like. So they'll put them in there as well, um, but aside from that yeah, I even see it now at EDS age under 23 is Reserve Leagues. They don't don't necessarily. There's obviously a part of winning, because that's what you're out there to do, but they still want to focus on the individual development within it, as opposed to solely focusing on the winning part that brings another.
Speaker 3:I know one of your common statements is coach education is not the same as coach development or something similar to that. But what I also hear in that I think about that is when I think about typical coach education, it's not addressing how you do those things you're talking about longitudinally. How do you manage a roster of players, moving them in and out, addressing the individual needs in the ways that you've just outlined over the last 10 minutes? That seems to me an area where you really need almost like apprenticeship mentorship of somebody with you on a regular basis to help teach those skills. That is very different than what's covered in a typical coach education platform. That is very different than what's covered in a typical coach education platform. So I'll kind of give you that stage to talk about your opinion on the difference between coach education and coach development.
Speaker 6:Yeah, this one, I think, is growing with kind of opinions and probably coach development's importance is starting to come to the fore across the whole of the game really globally. Because for me, how I see it at the moment is coach education is a part of coach development, but it's not the be all and end all. It's a process and I listened to the podcast last week obviously, and I mean you guys discussed it at quite a bit of length in terms of what Coach Ed is, what it does, what it doesn't do, maybe some of the good things around it, maybe some of the shortfalls, but the big one there's three things that I kind of group things into. There's, if you think about context and transferability, there's kind of direct in terms of transferability, so really contextually specific, which means there's direct transfer into what you're learning. Then you get the middle bit, which is more indirect because you're losing the actual context, which means that to transfer that learning it's much more difficult, which then, when you think about coach education, that's probably where that sits for me. And then the bottom one is like this inspirational additional knowledge bit that is just like nice to know kind of stuff, but actually very difficult to transfer to anything. So how would I kind of explain and characterize those If we did leadership, non-soccer specific? That for me would be more inspirational type stuff in the main, because it's like if you get someone from the sas and they talk to you about what leadership looks like for them and they tell you some stories which are really inspirational about the work they do, incredible people, um, and. But actually doesn't relate to my context and is very difficult to take something from a battlefield and apply it to youth soccer coaching. So what I would tend to do is try and keep them at 10% of any sort of learning, because nice to know, but value for my actual development probably very limited.
Speaker 6:Then you get to the next one, which is the coach ed bit, if you like, which is decontextualized because it's delivered to a full group, maybe a cohort of 20, 25, and the teaching is generic. It's generic concepts, generic thoughts, generic principles. So as a result of it, maybe 20 of my learning. But what I try to strive for is to make 70 of anything I do, and, and this is why I I try to strive for is to make 70% of anything I do and and this is why I used to try and hold myself to and the guys with double pass and others when we went around the world was 70% of it needs to be things that they can directly transfer to their environment, because we've got the context right now. That, as you'll know, is not easy to do right, because when it becomes the coach ed bit, our job is to join the dots for the transfer. When it becomes the contextual bit high contextual 70% of the time it should be a lot easier for them to be able to take things away. This is what it means for me as a coach, but that means the further you move up that kind of list, if you like, from inspirational to indirect to direct it has to become individualized. So individualize as possible, specific as possible, as often as possible.
Speaker 6:Every one of us on this call is learning something different, even when the concept's exactly the same. Every one of us will watch a game and we'll see some similar things, of course, but the way that we look to the game will be slightly different because it comes based upon our previous experiences, maybe our previous influences, education, philosophy and what we believe the game should look like. All those things play a part and it's impossible if you get a group of 20 people to be able to produce highly effective education that will be directly transferable to their environment. There'll be some things in there that hopefully they can take away and you try your best for the interactions, but actually when there's 20 different versions of things going on in a room, it's very difficult to make as much of that content as possible directly transferable. So that's where the coach development bit comes in for me, and that's what we miss. We that in the game?
Speaker 5:um so much it's kind of based, in a lot of ways at our level, on just experience. The contextual piece of it is kind of just down to our experience and gathering what we gathered through our experience, because normally we don't, from a coaching perspective, we don't have that kind of one-on-one mentorship or someone to bring that context to exactly what we're doing at that moment. That's what I started thinking about when you said that it's like oh, the contextual part is probably just down to experience.
Speaker 3:We call that trial and error.
Speaker 6:I know right, you just have to sort it out right and there's a place for that. Of course, you learn most when you start to do it, when you start having to go yourself. The biggest thing and I remember I go back to my time at the English FA with this because there started to be a step change and that's why it frustrates me a bit where the level or the numbers of British coaches at the moment operating in the top five leagues are. It frustrates me a bit because we started to make a step change in this. That's because they're all over here, Kerry.
Speaker 6:Yeah, maybe. Yeah, they're in Florida, probably about eight years ago, maybe a little bit more, where there was a recognition that actually coach education plays a part in the journey. But the retention effect is relatively low because what generally will happen is you learn something on a course, you go and try it and it works Great, I'll do it again. And then we hit a stumbling block and it's like I don't really know how to work this out now. So what I'm going to do is go back to what I did before, because I don't know how to solve the problem, and what we then did was implemented a coach mentoring program across the whole country. Implemented a coach mentoring program across the whole country and there was 300 plus mentors that were then managed by us as regional staff that would then go into these clubs and work with coaches on an individual basis. So part of it was to transfer learning from your b licenses or c certificates, or maybe an a license, depending on the club, into your environment to hopefully increase the level of retention, but also to be with you, solving problems, asking questions, challenging, supporting. And then the other part of it was for those who have almost completed their coach education journey, as far as they want to complete it are also continually getting challenged, because the other part we were finding in the UK was that, unless you went on another course, there was little that was continually challenging your thinking and helping you to grow as a coach, unless you went and sought those stuff out yourself. Which is another key part for me in terms of coach development is you need to be curious as learners and you need to own your own development, and I know these are the lots of the things that you're trying to strive for with encouraging coaches across the league and all the different things that we're doing at the minute is to need to take ownership of that themselves the coaches, but, at the same time, the people in the clubs that are supporting them. It's how do you make that as individual as possible for them so that it is this direct transfer into their practice, day to day, week to week?
Speaker 6:And it's not easy because it takes time and it's not easy because it's not as easy to measure. It's easy to put out. We had 600 coaches come through a B license this year. Yeah, great, but actually what does that tell us? It just means that they've completed the course. It doesn't tell us that they've got better as a coach, because coach education is not a marker of coach effectiveness. It's a marker of competence, to a certain level, to achieve certain outcomes that the course wants you to achieve. So it's not always as easy, but Was that, kerry?
Speaker 3:you said 300, was it 300 full-time people?
Speaker 6:No, they were part-time.
Speaker 3:Part-time hourly contracts in England. I mean, if you think about that, I mean 300 in England.
Speaker 5:It hasn't helped their national team staff or the head coaches of the Premier League teams. I mean just saying.
Speaker 3:It would require like 10,000 people in America to do that. Oh God, based on the size, they will have 100-hour contracts.
Speaker 6:They will and 100 hour contracts.
Speaker 5:And ask yourself this Christian? Are there 10,000 people out there that are capable of doing this?
Speaker 3:No, no there is not.
Speaker 5:So, carrie, if I Ashley's?
Speaker 3:laughing right now. Ashley, did you disagree with that? Come on.
Speaker 5:You can't just laugh on me. Ashley is trying to figure out if she's one of the 10,000. I'm definitely not is trying to figure out if she's one of the 10,000 or not definitely not, but you will be short, you will be.
Speaker 4:I mean, yeah, I would agree with christian. There's definitely not 10 000 coaches out here that are, and I also agree with what carrie said of like, coaching education is not coaching competence, because we talked about it on the last podcast. There's many, many coaches with high level coaching licenses that can't coach their way out of a paper bag and there's some people who haven't had the opportunity to go through coaching education and they're absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 3:So I suppose the equivalent is there's a lot of MBAs who've driven companies into bankruptcy.
Speaker 5:Right, I think, to Carrie's point. It only proves that you're able to complete a course, not that you're necessary, or a degree or whatever it is. Here's a question for you, carrie. I run a youth soccer club in the UCNL and I want to hire Carrie as my consultant. What's the first thing you would tell me I need to do?
Speaker 4:you can't afford him yes, I stumped him.
Speaker 5:No, I definitely can't afford him. But then I'm living in this hypothetical utopia, right yeah?
Speaker 6:no, I think my first one is always what? What is it that your club believe in? Because that becomes a frame of reference for me to help develop these coaches. So and there's two things right and this is how we approached it when I went to City Football Group there's two elements there's the coach bit and there's the methodology bit, and what we can't get confused with is that we develop the coach to the methodology, because the coach needs to become their own person. That delivers the methodology.
Speaker 6:So there needs to be an element of consistency in how we coach, but as individuals, we are all different, and the role for me of head of coaching, director of coaching, whatever you want to call it, is to develop each of those coaches to be the best they can be, just like we try to develop players to be the best they can be. And my start point with it throughout the whole group is super strengths. I needed to work out what are the things throughout the whole group as super strengths and you did a workout what are the things that you're best at? So we had a profile that had lots of different characteristics on it and it's impossible for everyone to be a four or a five on all of those characteristics. So, as a result, what are the three or four things that you're really good at, and they're going to be the difference if we can make you even better at those things. Of course, there's that element where, if you don't have a level of competence in something, it's going to come back to to bite you, and you need to be able to be competent, um to a level. But we have to decide what that is. So I would then develop a coaching line with that, and it's all based upon what effective coaching is, um, underpinned by academic literature and everything else, as you'd imagine, but also continually challenging that by speaking to people in the game and as the game changes and more things come to light, we change a little bit of the focus on that coach profile.
Speaker 6:And then the second thing is what does your strengths and how you operate? How do you best bring out the methodology of this club in the way that's going to help the players to develop, to be competent people, young people and also competent players in the end? So they're my two kind of streams of work, if you like, in the way that I would operate. But the most difficult thing, I think, is it takes time and you have to invest serious amounts of time in individual people, and it's not just simply stand in front of them in a classroom and teach. It's individual conversations. It's continually trying to find ways to provoke thought and the way that they operate.
Speaker 6:And for me and I say this everywhere I go my job is to make you think. My job's not to give you the answer and unfortunately, lots of coaches want the answer. Lots of coaches look for the golden ticket or the golden session or the golden solution and actually and I do it everywhere some coaches get frustrated by it initially, but I think, hopefully, they see the value in the end of the journey. I don't have the session, I don't have the answer for every situation, because your context, everyone's context, is different. Everyone's got different types of players, they're in different parts of the country, they've got different facilities, even that in terms of the surface that they're playing on, the size of the area that they've got to train. All those things play a massive part in your environment and, as a result of it, I can't give you a session that is going to solve all your problems, and I would much rather work with you to develop those sessions based upon the needs of your players, the individual needs of your players, your club's methodology.
Speaker 6:And then, more importantly and this is probably my big one at the moment that I'm going after is coaching craft.
Speaker 6:I don't think we focus enough on craft.
Speaker 6:I think we focus too much on practices and, as a result of that, we put the practice on and we stand on the side, and actually I think the coaching craft is the most important thing.
Speaker 6:The best coaches I've seen work in the world is not because of where they put the cones, it's because of the information they give and the challenges they set for players. And the one and I've just been doing this in Sweden and in Turkey as well is for every coaching point there needs to be a question, because then you've got an option you can either go and instruct or show or demo, whatever you want to do, or you just drop the question and go, but don't drop the question and answer it and don't look for an answer immediately, because they need the opportunity to think about what the question is. You just asked them, go and try it to your point around trial and error, experience and whatever and then come back for that further conversation, and that's one of my favorite things to do in coach development Ask a question and walk off, because then the coach has to think about it, rather than just throw out the first answer that they can think of.
Speaker 3:It's like the George Costanza Leave them wanting more. Kerry, Leave them wanting more.
Speaker 6:I don't know if it does that, but maybe that's part of it somewhere I'm sick of this guy asking me so many questions, questions and walking off.
Speaker 5:I want the answers, knowing what you know about what's going on here. What role do the parents play and how do we manage that aspect of it, because it's probably more of a reality in our setup.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I think you're right. They play a massive active role, and probably more so in your kind of environments and some academies. But, believe it or not, it's a constant one. That comes up, even in some of the biggest clubs when I've been in Turkey and Norway. All those they still bring up the thing around parents and academies how do we manage parents and expectations and that kind of stuff? So it's always there. I don't think it ever goes away For me, and this is just my own philosophy.
Speaker 6:I would try to involve them as much as I can, um, and some people say, oh, you make a rod for your own back. But that's what I try to do. I try to involve them, um, because I think I've yet to see a parent want anything bad for their child. I think they just they go into it with good intentions for their own child. The problem is they're that and we have to be that in terms of our thinking they're very narrow because all they see is their child. We have to think about every, every child that comes to our sessions, um, and as a result, that makes it a little bit difficult, but involve them in it. So some practices we've done, anytime we've gone through in. So we'll go back to that six-week period of individual development if we review it at the end of six weeks. We've had the parents sit in in some clubs but they don't speak, they listen and the conversation is still between if it's me as a coach and the player, but the parents present, so they hear it, which then means that they've got a little bit more knowledge about what we're trying to do and by having more knowledge what we're trying to do, hopefully they can start to see things closer to us in the games.
Speaker 6:Um, I think that that's a key one and again, this is really tough, right, because you've got so many parents in your club. But the old like meeting at the beginning of the year. Everyone does that Nearly everyone I know in every club does that. But it's like anything else. How do you reinforce it? It's impossible to continually meet with them, but those types of practices where every six weeks you're reviewing with a player, or every 12 weeks if that's more manageable, however you want to do it, you have the parent present.
Speaker 6:Then it's another opportunity to influence the parent around what you're trying to see. So hopefully it helps them a little bit. And then some more education around, like the five minute car journey home. What are the things that can help, what are the things that hinder, and trying to make them aware in that way. And then I've seen various campaigns we ran loads of them when I was at the FA as well In terms of like noise from the touchline, what players actually hear Playing that back to them, so that we have more silent touchlines. So it's more coach orientated in terms of the approach. But those are the things that we.
Speaker 6:We try to do is involve them, because, at the end of the day, without the parents, you don't get the children at the sessions most of the time and you don't get children paying for sessions in a pay-to-play model if the parents don't buy into what it is that you're trying to do. So I think it's fair that they have a part to play, but obviously there needs to be boundaries within that as well in terms of you know they can't just dominate everything that happens because of their little child that needs to be a superstar. There's got to be boundaries as well, but I always try to include them. I always try to include them. That's just the way I work, not saying it's the only way, but that's how I would do it.
Speaker 3:Most clubs are probably pretty good at generally talking to parents in that sort of season opening meeting and general expectations and whatever. But if we're being honest, probably most clubs are not very good at specifically talking to parents about where their son or daughter is and what they're working on and what they need to do. There's too much generic stuff in that, which if you're going to get somebody to trust you generally, you probably got to show that you know what you're talking about specifically about their child.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and I think the other one I don't want to be creating more work for coaches that are already absolutely flat out in terms of their level of commitment that they're giving to you in soccer, already absolutely flat out in terms of their level of commitment that they're giving to you soccer. But some of the other things are when we do the free match briefing, we do it but with appearance around the outside so they can listen to it, and we purposely address the players but address appearance at the same time, so they're hearing exactly the same message as what I'm giving to the players at the start. They're hearing that well. And then if we group things in threes because I always work in threes, as you know the three key messages at the start of the game, then everyone gets to hear what the three key messages that we're trying to get from that game are. And then for me it's important that I stick to those three in the way that I debrief and talk at halftime and also post-game, because then that's a way of taking the players and the parents on a journey together and you don't have to do that every week.
Speaker 6:Of course I wouldn't say you always have to address the players in front of the parents, because that that doesn't work either. It becomes too uh, too generic when you do it that way too many times. But every so often do that because it re-engages them. And then it's not asking a coach to do additional, to engage with appearance, it's just manipulating a little bit the way that you address things so that it involves them. And then a little bit more knowledge hopefully helps and it helps us on our on our journey.
Speaker 5:Somebody you've been around or worked with that really you feel like had a really strong influence over you. Is there one person that you felt like really was somebody that you took a lot from?
Speaker 6:Yeah, I think it's difficult to say one person. I probably take different things from different people just because of my interest in like multidisciplinary stuff. So more of a physical type coach, a psych one. But if I was to put two names out there, one would be Dick Bate, who I'm sure most people would have seen deliver at conventions and things around. His messaging and the level of detail that he went into in coaching, but also the simplicity with the detail. Just yeah, it used to blow me away. I'd watch him do the same session four times and learn so much every time, even the fourth time. So him from a more coach development perspective, I think he was way, way, way before his time and unfortunately not one that I think we built the system around enough in the UK to really capture his knowledge and his experiences to continue that work. I think he was a huge loss to us and obviously no longer with us, but yeah, massive loss to the system and he would have influenced many coaches. Probably the ones the British ones in the Premier League now will have come from underneath Dick a lot.
Speaker 6:And then, from a psych perspective, dr Ian Mitchell, who's now working at Newcastle, works with the first team at Newcastle and heads up psychology for what's going to become their multi-club group.
Speaker 6:But Mitch was my supervisor undergrad, postgrad and PhD, then left to go to Swansea City and worked with Gary Monk when he first became a manager, went with the Welsh national team on the run to 2016, and more recently was working with the England national team when they were reaching the latter stages of tournaments, working with Gareth Southgate before his move to Newcastle.
Speaker 6:For me with him it was because he's not just a psychologist, he knows the game, he's played the game, he's educated through the game in terms of the coach education stuff as well. But it's the way that he worked with people and a lot of my individual work with if I work with coaches one-to-one or players one-to-one or practitioners has come from and been shaped by him and the way that he operates and I'm still striving to try and get to his level in the way that he does it. But that striving to try and get to his level in the way that he does it, but that might be a that might be a long time yet, but yeah, he's one that's influenced me a lot around that stuff and why I believe in individual as as possible my final point here is to your point about the contextual and how important it is, how 70 of of everything.
Speaker 5:That's why I I always think about that, because I think it's so important to have mentors and so important to lean on, because sometimes the contextual part maybe doesn't happen in a formal way, but it can happen in an informal way with people who you respect or who you've seen do things or you run things by. I know Christian and I have lots of conversations about different stuff, but I don't want him to walk right away thinking he's a mentor of mine or anything, don't worry.
Speaker 6:I think to that, to that point when I think about the word mentor, I just think that, yeah, everyone that I speak to frequently and Christian's also one of them that I speak to frequently you continually learn from, if, if, you're meaningful in the kind of relationships that you build. So you know, every time I come out and I spend time around you guys from a league perspective or coaches within the clubs I'm constantly learning, because there's so much from a contextual piece that you have to learn right, and there are so many clubs in the league that it's almost impossible to be able to contextualize specifically for each club unless you spend considerable time with them. But that, for me, is something I'm always hopefully. Curious is to continually learn, and I think that's one of the most important things for longevity in this game is remaining curious, even once you've completed X course or X coach education, education that there's still more to learn and there always will be more to learn. And then to the contextual piece make sure I get this one in there, because it's one of my bug beers as well at the moment is, even within practice, how much of it does 70 of your session look like their game, the game that your players are playing at the moment? And if it doesn't, why and I'm constantly asking that everywhere I go as well Can you show me where in the game on the weekend this happened or will happen in your game? So, as a result, get the right numbers in the right area of the pitch in the right sizes 70% of the time. Then you can still do and I heard the Ronda one last week and the debate around that you can still do those things because they have a place. But you just have to know that the trade-off is you're not going to get a direct context, specific context related to it, because it's multidirectional, but there are some.
Speaker 6:I would put that in the second group in terms of indirect transfer from those things. And then when you get to passing drills, where does it link? So if you do an unopposed passing drill, it's not a problem, but are you stressing and are you reinforcing the key messages that you want to see in the opposed bit later? Because what I see a lot is you do a passing exercise here that never, ever comes out in the next part when it's opposed, and I'm like, well, what have they been learning there? Then they're not learning something that you want to happen in the game. So at opposed or versus and opposed for me it doesn't matter everything. I think you all said last week everything's got a place. But actually are you continually reinforcing the same messages through your practice design?
Speaker 6:If there's three stages or four stages to your practice, that there's a golden thread, and that's the one for me that would make a huge difference to so many coaches is if they made sure that was there and then divide the time 70, this, 20, that, and if there's other things I want to do, like a rondo for a first team. It's social. It's not even that indirect transferability bit because no one coaches it at first team level. It's just literally just social. That's fine, that's what the purpose of it is there. But just making sure you you continually align that stuff I think is is important on the pitch as well I just contextualized that part of training is fun.
Speaker 5:That's what I call it fun yeah, fun, inspirational yeah right, yeah right. When you talk to christian, you need a dictionary because you'll use a lot of big words that I have no idea what he's saying.
Speaker 3:I did I didn't this time, although I did I did google the derivation of the word mentor, as you. You said that and it's actually from the term mentor came from the character that was the guardian and teacher for Odysseus' son, telemachus, in the Odyssey. Okay, so there you go.
Speaker 5:Wow, telemachus, I'm not sure how you say it. Great mythology for you.
Speaker 3:So it's guardian advisor, teacher and friend, so we can all mentor each other.
Speaker 1:Is she okay? All right, absolutely, there you have it. We'll be back with Doug Bracken's Brain Buster after this.
Speaker 2:From athletes just starting to turn heads to some of the best athletes to ever play their games, gatorade shows that they are the proven fuel of the best. For the athletes who give everything, nothing beats Gatorade, the studied, tested and proven fuel of the ECNL.
Speaker 1:We wrap up this week's edition of Breaking the Line, the ECNL podcast, with Doug Bracken's Brain Buster. It's time for my.
Speaker 5:Bracken's Brain Busters. I've thought a lot about this.
Speaker 3:with Terry coming on, we're going to also have to have a new rule that Ashley can't be muted the whole time Just laughing and making not you know what she was doing.
Speaker 5:She was taking it all in, so she can take this is coaching development for her, if you're I mean seriously, is it not Ash?
Speaker 4:No, I probably wrote the most notes that I have yet to on any podcast, and that's not to say that you guys don't say brilliant things, but that is what I'm saying.
Speaker 5:That's sort of passively aggressively, what you're just saying Just because he has an accent. He uses it with an accent. I feel like that I wrote 10, 20, 70 down.
Speaker 3:I did write that Inspirational, generic and individual. Yes, I did write that Inspirational, generic and individual.
Speaker 4:Yes, I did write that you write exactly like I thought you were going to write, Christian, seeing your handwriting just now.
Speaker 5:Sloppy, here's mine.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to figure out what that means though.
Speaker 4:I don't know what it means either.
Speaker 5:That is not the Bracken's Brain Busters. What is handwriting? What can be derived from handwriting? Today, I'm going to ask everybody who is their Mount Rushmore of soccer. I'm going to explain to Kerry that Mount Rushmore is a very famous monument here in Americas, with the heads of four presidents it's like our Trafalgar Square.
Speaker 3:That's right. Okay, is that what I just did there?
Speaker 6:It's like our Trafalgar Square. That's right, is that what I just did there? Very good, thank you. And actually, if you've ever, been Christian.
Speaker 5:Have you ever been to Mount Rushmore? I have not. No, it's pretty interesting. The crazy horse piece of it, which is another bit to it, is actually the cooler of the two parts.
Speaker 3:That's still in construction right now, I believe.
Speaker 5:I don't know. I think they might have finished that all right, but thank you. All right, that was a tangent. So now that our british friend knows what mount rushmore is, we will start today with with carrie, because you're our guest.
Speaker 6:You're mount rushmore of soccer or football I'd probably have to say probably Pep Guardiola, and the reason is not simply what man City do. It's how countries literally change what soccer looks like. When he's coaching in the country, everybody wants to play the way that he plays, and I think when you listen to players talk about how much they thought they knew the game before they worked under him or played under him, that literally tells me exactly where he is.
Speaker 3:Now I think, kerry, our Mount Rushmore has four heads. Your Mount Rushmore is just going to have one large head.
Speaker 6:For sure.
Speaker 5:That's it. He's going one-headed, mount Rushmore. If you want me to add the second, I'd put Dick Bate in there as well. All right, that's it.
Speaker 6:He's going one-headed, mount Rushmore, if you want me to add the second, I'd put Dick Bate in there as well.
Speaker 5:Alright there we go.
Speaker 3:We got two heads.
Speaker 5:Two heads.
Speaker 3:Hey, they need to mentor each other. We've learned that.
Speaker 5:We're going to mentor Kerry for the next time. He'll have four heads, but we won't push him here, reed. This is a tough one, reed, but that we won't. We won't push him here, reed. This is a tough one. Reed is kind of only tangentially soccer. What do you got?
Speaker 7:based off, I mean, what I just saw. I mean I can choose, like say two, and then say keep the change, but I'll go with four. So Ronaldo, messi, pele, and for that fourth one, I mean could go some different ways. Could go, ashley, you know I like that.
Speaker 4:I didn't even want him to say that, guys.
Speaker 5:I mean, could be that fourth spot's hard, but she's cooking up a box midfield that could really listen you know, actually I. I think you can fill that fourth spot.
Speaker 4:Just me and messy, I mean, who would have like over?
Speaker 5:on the right side you're not totally attached, you're just kind of over there.
Speaker 7:Yeah, yeah, like there's still up there, so still there, love it, love it.
Speaker 5:All right, ashley, again, I don't know how you follow that, but good luck yeah, thanks for that again, reed.
Speaker 4:All right, I'm going strictly women's us soccer on this. I'm gonna go tony to chico coach of the 99ers ecnl, ecnl guy, ecnl ties yeah, now that you've said that I'm probably gonna go, all 99ers, even though there's probably like a 2015 or 19, that would no. You know what? I'm gonna go? Mia ham, because you have to. Christine lily, because without her head we would not be where we are to this day. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go look it up. And anson dorrance okay, two coaches, two players and Anson Dorrance.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 4:Two coaches, two players.
Speaker 5:Christian, what do you got?
Speaker 3:I'm going to go with some coaching legends, guys who have changed the way the game's played. Going to do Arrigo Saki. All right, I'm going to go with Cruyff. Definitely Bielsa, bielsa, bielsa, bielsa, bielsa.
Speaker 5:And Pep. I love that.
Speaker 4:That's a great shout out Pep doesn't rush more than I am at this point.
Speaker 5:So if you want to throw me on yours, doug, to even it out, feel free. I thought about it, but then I thought about some other people instead. That's fair. Thought about it, but then I thought about some other people instead. That's fair. I'm gonna go with players that I feel like just completely changed the game. I call them like force of nature. Pele has to be mia ham. You can't say she didn't completely change women's football. Uh, massey the goat.
Speaker 4:And I'm gonna go Cristiano Ronaldo are we not putting Maradona on Mount Rushmore?
Speaker 5:I don't. I wouldn't put him above Cristiano Ronaldo. That I will say the original Brazilian Ronaldo. Had he not gotten injured, he could be on there because he was when he was, those few years before he got hurt. He was crazy, but that's what I'm doing Now.
Speaker 6:I know how this works better. I'm going to go for the four. So I'll go Pep, I'll go Dick Bate, I'll go Paul Gascoigne, because he was my hero growing up Gaza and was never appreciated in the UK for what he was at that time. He would have been better off playing now than what he did at that moment. And the fourth one is John Charles, a Welsh legend.
Speaker 5:You got to put a Welsh guy in there.
Speaker 4:You got to put a Welsh guy in there, but not Maradona guys. We are.
Speaker 6:And he's also my dad's first coach at senior level.
Speaker 3:So there you go. There it is Personal connection to Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 5:That's it. We learned what Mount Rushmore is. We did. And we learned a lot today, Christian. We did.
Speaker 1:We did indeed. I want to thank Christian Lavers, doug Bracken, ashley Willis and Kerry Bowley for another great edition of Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast. For all four of them, I'm Dean Linke. We'll see you in two weeks. Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast and remember, if you have a question that you want answered on Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast, email us at info at the ECNLcom.