The recent poor results of the Swedish men’s national team created quite a debate on social media, eventually extending in to local and national media (TV, newspapers). Once again, arguements displaying a varying level of “infomed” opinion have contributed to a polarised debate. A particular feature of this most recent debate was the amount of reductionist cause-effect arguments. Other countries or clubs do X and they get Y, we need to do the same. If it was only that simple! Further, a basic understanding of math should make it clear that decisons made in recent years (changes in coach education, removing the publication of results and tables before 13 years) have nothing to do with the results of the national team.
Another misguided argument is that we need more individual/isolated training with the younger players. From a Stockholm perspective, I doubt that there is any other country in Europe that has dedicated more time to individual and isolated training in practice and coach education (until 2014) than Sweden has over the last 25 years. Believe me, I have attended these courses!
This idea of more and more individualised/isolated training is a ’sticky’ culturally resilient belief that contributes to an inertia in Swedish youth football. It seems to partly have its roots in the false idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. Indeed, SvFF have themselves contributed to this idea. A UEFA Pro course (highest UEFA coach qualification) held by the Swedish FA (SvFF) in Gothenburg in May 2011, claimed:
Becoming a good player has nothing to do with talent, it’s just about training. Everything is possible to influence through training except its length. There is a more or less accepted belief in the so-called “10-year rule” which states that to become an expert in an area requires a minimum of 10 years of training (Tipselit, 2011).
The message promoted here is associated with Malcolm Gladwell’s (2008) ‘popular’ misinterpretation of Ericsson and colleagues’ (1993) work on deliberate practice. The incredible momentum of this idea of the 10,000-hour rule, generated in Gladwell’s (2008) book, may go some way to explaining why many clubs, parents and coaches have bought in to the unnecessary generalisation that development of expertise has all to do with accumulated volume of practice (Seifert et al. 2018).
These generalized ideas are further confounded by a cultural -histiorical inheritance that has had a cascading influence on the type of practices promoted and appreciated in Swedish youth football (as highlighted in the recent debate). This can be traced back to the 1970s, when the pedagogical legitimacy of SvFF’s ‘Swedish model’ (based on the West German model) was being questioned by the successful sporting results and the seemingly more professional nature projected by the ‘English model’ (introduced to Sweden by professional coaches Bob Houghton and Roy Hodgson). The English model promoted a ‘teacher-centered’ pedagogy, where the coach had the overall picture of how the game should be organised and the players needed to comply, internalising the systematised knowledge that the coach promoted (Peterson,1993). This coach-imposed approach drew parallels with behaviourist (neglecting the players agency in thelearning process) (Lyle & Cushion, 2017) and information processing theories (Fitts & Posner, 1967; Schmidt,1975), that have underpinned traditional ‘drill/skill’ approaches (North et al., 2015). This was exemplified in the intricacies of the ‘technical register’ (coaching folder and video archive of 31 films11), that dominated coach education in Swedish football until 2014.
These type of practices promoted placed an emphasis on instructions and corrective feedback for reproducing forms of movement or predetermined patterns of play.The ‘technique register’ was sold as a ‘gold-standard textbook’ of ideal movements, promoting a reliance on external agency (i.e., high levels of instruction and feedback) in coach education, and a reductionist and mechanistic attitude towards practice and performance. Developed within and across generations, this perspective shaped beliefs, and expectations about coaching and how practice in child youth football should look.
Against this cultural-historical tide, the Swedish FA have in recent years done some serious reflection; and utilising a more evidence-based approach to human learning in development have attempted (it is still ongoing) to implement major changes in the area of coach education. In a recent article in Swedish national newspaper Dagens Nyheter, SvFF Technical Director Perra Widén and his colleague Claes Eriksson (head of development U21 national team), made a valuable contribution to this debate that deserves some analysis.
Here Perra highlights a major recent change in coach education:
– We are moving from a top-down steered leadership (coach centered) to a more involved leadership (player-environment centered)-to help players learn to make decisions themselves.
This is a welcome move towards a more ‘modern’ pedagogy that has the intention of shaking off some rather sticky culturally resilient beliefs and attitudes. For example, the idea of the young player being central to the learning process (not the coach) is something that will require a lot of education and patience, if the recent debate is anything to go by. The coach centered technical register, based on fake fundamentals and a one size fits all approach, has thankfully been shelved. Maybe another blog is needed to highlight how ideas promoted in the technical register may contribute to an excessive number of injuries in young players, having a possible negative effect on well-being.
On analysing the interview with Perra Widén and his colleague Claes Eriksson, a much deeper and more important message, in line with much of the current research into youth player development, is illuminated. Sweden is NOT Germany, Italy or Holland. We can even break it down, Swedish clubs are NOT Ajax, Barcelona or Liverpool. Context is key! To further highlight this point, North et al (2015) in their UEFA study of 7 top football nations warned against the uncritical application of practice ideas from other successful countries and clubs. It was argued that an approach which works in one socio-cultural context may be DISTRACTING or even DETRIMENTAL in another.
This message was central to a podcast discussion I had with the Dutch FA and the Canadian Soccer Association in May 2020 -If you try and copy and paste someone else’s ideas, it just won’t work!
The problem is, when you copy a Dutch model or a Dutch way (e.g.,Ajax) in to another country, it will not work. Our infrastructure is so unique for example. – Jan Verbeek (KNVB)
Jason DeVos, who has revamped coach education in Canada and is assistant coach with the Canadian national team that qualified for their first World Cup since 1986, added:
If I had a dollar for every person that told me that you just need to copy what Germany does, Belgium does, what Iceland does, then I would be able to retire right now – Jason DeVos (Canadian Soccer Association)
You can find a link to the pod here: https://footblogball.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/different-cultures-similar-issues/
In summary, player development frameworks should evolve in, interaction with the socio-cultural context in which individuals are embedded- THERE IS NO COPY and PASTE TEMPLATE! (O’Sullivan et al., 2021)
For a practical example of how to move from a top-down steered leadership (coach centered) to a more involved leadership (player-environment centered)-to help players learn to make decisions themselves.(Sullivan et al., 2021), and place the player at the center of the learning process, please check this link:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1581245601659772930.html
Some music
https://themightyquark.bandcamp.com/album/the-mighty-quark-presents-the-king-syndrome-sound
References
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406.
Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human performance. Brooks/Cole
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little Brown and Company
Lyle, J., & Cushion, C. (2017). Sport coaching concepts: A framework for coaching practice (2nd ed.). Routledge.
North, J., Lara-Bercial, S., Morgan, G., & Rongen, F. (2015). The identification of good practice principles to inform player development and coaching in European youth football. Report commissioned by UEFA’s Research Grant Programme 2013–2014.
O’Sullivan, M., Vaughan, J., Rumbold, J. & Davids, K. (2021a). The Learning in
Development Research Framework for sports organizations. Sport, Education &
Society. https://doi.org/hmcg
Peterson, T. (1993). The Swinglish model. Studentlitteratur.
Seifert, L., Papet, V., Strafford, B. W., Coughlan, E. K., & Davids, K. (2018). Skill transfer, expertise and talent development: An ecological dynamics perspective. Movement & Sport Sciences/Science & Motricité, (102), 39-49. https://doi.org/10.1051/sm/2019010
Schmidt, R. A. (1975). A schema theory of discrete motor skill learning. Psychological Review, 82(4), 225–260. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076770
Sullivan, M. O., Woods, C. T., Vaughan, J., & Davids, K. (2021). Towards a contemporary player learning in development framework for sports practitioners. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(5), 1214-1222. https://doi.org/10.1177/17479541211002335
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