The player of tomorrow.pdfVIP

10 The player of tomorrow 1. Tomorrow’s player – shaped from today’s youngsters 1 1.1 Training and education and technical development 6 1.2 Some key tips concerning the physical preparation of young players 12 2. Talent scouting 17 3. Adapting training to individual needs to improve individual skills 22 4. The Academy or “Centre of Excellence” 25 1The player of tomorrow 10 1. Tomorrow’s player – shaped from today’s youngsters Sport in general – and this is particularly the case with football – has an important educative role to play in the learning and development process of youngsters. Football not only has to provide the opportunity for youngsters to develop the skills that are peculiar to the game; it also has to help them develop their person- ality and their psychological and social skills. Specialist football schools, academies and other training centres have to gear their education and training programmes to the concept of all-round education and to playing an educative role, while still respecting the various stages of development and the learning objectives of those stages. While children’s football covers basic training and initiation of youngsters to the game, primarily through games and co-ordination exercises, a substantial amount of work still has to be achieved with the develop- ment and education of tomorrow’s youth players while they are at their “building” stage, the age of pre- training/pre-development, i.e. 11 or 12 to 15 years of age. This is the “golden age” for developing technical skills, as well as the technical/tactical rudiments of the game and even basic psychology skills. All of the basics of technique, individual tactical awareness and the fundamental principles of the game are trained at this age, as are mental attitudes, such as concentration, self-confi dence, perseverance, willpower, etc. The work done at this pre-training/pre-development stage therefore has to be optimised, and the coaches/educators who work with the p