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14 minutes ago, Cornwall_Saint said:

Yes, part of our revamp was the link up between juvenile clubs and senior sides. The thing that sticks with me is a comment from Pat Nevin mentioning his days on the Motherwell board, where there were concerns the Scottish national side would hit decline in the 2000s. He brought these worries forward but the SFA ignored them and didn't make any changes to the youth system. This was the same period Belgium were hitting decline, but they knew it was coming. A lot of work was put into finding out what was successful and what wasn't across Europe, and a plan was put into place to give us a good future for the national team. They completely overhauled the youth training inside out. They also looked into giving us an exciting national team as we had always been the "defensively organised" team. 12 years of absence followed as we went into our expected decline, but the production line of talent came good in 2012 when qualifying started for 2014. The national league has gained from this too, with Belgium now 9th in the UEFA co-efficient. The worry we have now is the number of players leaving at 16/17 who have unfulfilled potential. Romelu Lukaku was playing in the Belgian league and was the overall top scorer at 16, while gaining Europa experience with Anderlecht. De Bruyne played for Genk. They were getting better experience from this than some players who are leaving young and ending up in the English U23 leagues. This is the next step to negotiate. Back to the SFA, it pains me that the SFA could have acted and didn't. Even now the lack of action is ridiculous, all you have to do is look at Belgium's overhaul of the youth system to see the potential for smaller countries to thrive.

Your point regarding "20 passes along he back line" is spot on. Possession football can be important but has to be utilised correctly.  Again with Belgium, we start off with smaller teams and smaller pitches. As the kids go up in age we increase the size of the team and pitch. Training them in smaller teams means each player is getting more of the ball so they can develop individually. Pitch size encourages them to pass and move and avoid humping the ball forwards. Our national team plays possession football but there's a determination to get forward quickly and heap the pressure on. The players we have have grown up being used to tight spaces and quick passing so it's not issue to them.

Maestro.

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Edited by magnus
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I'm sure Belgium have done a lot to improve their youth system.

But their football team has also benefited from immigration.

Almost 40% of Belgium players capped in 2017 were of African descent. The likes of Lukaku, Kompany, Fellaini, Benteke, Dembele, Origi, Batshuayi, et al.

 

 

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1 hour ago, zico said:

I'm sure Belgium have done a lot to improve their youth system.

But their football team has also benefited from immigration.

Almost 40% of Belgium players capped in 2017 were of African descent. The likes of Lukaku, Kompany, Fellaini, Benteke, Dembele, Origi, Batshuayi, et al.

 

 

Immigration has given us a bigger pool of players to pick from but we still have to train these guys up to become the players they are now.

Incidentally while many are obviously descended from African nations, the only member of our WC 2014 squad born outside of Belgium was Anthony Vanden Borre.

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1 hour ago, zico said:

I'm sure Belgium have done a lot to improve their youth system.

But their football team has also benefited from immigration.

Almost 40% of Belgium players capped in 2017 were of African descent. The likes of Lukaku, Kompany, Fellaini, Benteke, Dembele, Origi, Batshuayi, et al.

 

 

What difference does their ethnicity make to the Belgian coaching system ??? They all went through their system.

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5 minutes ago, Ayrshire Saints said:

What difference does their ethnicity make to the Belgian coaching system ??? They all went through their system.

I didn't say it made any difference to the Belgian coaching system.

I said it had made difference to their football team.

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38 minutes ago, Cornwall_Saint said:

Immigration has given us a bigger pool of players to pick from but we still have to train these guys up to become the players they are now.

Incidentally while many are obviously descended from African nations, the only member of our WC 2014 squad born outside of Belgium was Anthony Vanden Borre.

Yes, its given you a bigger pool of players and yes, they were born in Belgium and went through the coaching system.

But around 40% of Belgian international players are of African descent whilst only around 13% of the population is of African descent. There is obviously something else at play! As Gordon Strachan suggested, genetics!

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16 minutes ago, zico said:

Yes, its given you a bigger pool of players and yes, they were born in Belgium and went through the coaching system.

But around 40% of Belgian international players are of African descent whilst only around 13% of the population is of African descent. There is obviously something else at play! As Gordon Strachan suggested, genetics!

Even Strachan knew he was talking complete shite when he blamed genetics. Embarrassing.

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2 minutes ago, magnus said:

Even Strachan knew he was talking complete shite when he blamed genetics. Embarrassing.

How do you explain the hugely disproportionate representation of players of African descent in the Belgian national side then?

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2 minutes ago, zico said:

How do you explain the hugely disproportionate representation of players of African descent in the Belgian national side then?

I was referring to Strachan deflecting Scotland's crap international performances on our poor genetics as opposed to our broken coaching set up. Strachan's comment was embarrassing and in fairness I think he acknowledged this.

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I was referring to Strachan deflecting Scotland's crap international performances on our poor genetics as opposed to our broken coaching set up. Strachan's comment was embarrassing and in fairness I think he acknowledged this.


But isn’t the huge over representation of players of African descent in the Belgian side down to genetics?

They are all going through the same coaching set up!
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3 minutes ago, zico said:

 


But isn’t the huge over representation of players of African descent in the Belgian side down to genetics?

They are all going through the same coaching set up!

 

If I recall things correctly didn't Arsene Wenger praise the athleticism and ability of footballers of African origin? 

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5 minutes ago, St.Ricky said:

If I recall things correctly didn't Arsene Wenger praise the athleticism and ability of footballers of African origin? 

Not the main attribute imo. My favourites of all time, iniesta, pirlo, gerd muller, Lex Richardson, Dennis Law  and boom boom Yardley all unlikely to pass the "genetics" test

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Just now, magnus said:

Not the main attribute imo. My favourites of all time, iniesta, pirlo, gerd muller, Lex Richardson, Dennis Law  and boom boom Yardley all unlikely to pass the "genetics" test

Magnus...... Got to agree that these guys would get onto my team list.  Add Maradona to that list. 

I think Cornwall made a good point about young players on small scale pitches to encourage control,  quick passing and movement. 

The equivalent of our "Tanner baw" games on tar macadamed school playgrounds where you could play the ball of the wall.

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36 minutes ago, St.Ricky said:

Magnus...... Got to agree that these guys would get onto my team list.  Add Maradona to that list. 

I think Cornwall made a good point about young players on small scale pitches to encourage control,  quick passing and movement. 

The equivalent of our "Tanner baw" games on tar macadamed school playgrounds where you could play the ball of the wall.

We've been doing that in Scotland for 6 or 7 years now with the 4v4 matches the youngest kids play. When my son started off playing at the age of 6 it was 7v7 - there's still a 7v7 level and then they progress to 11v11. There was talk of Elite Development teams doing 9v9 on an 11-a-side pitch, I don't know if anything became of that. 

I'm not a fan of the genetics stereotyping approach to the game. I saw how ridiculous an extent it could be taken to. In Scotland at Juvenile level we had scouts wanting coaches to point out a childs parents so they could see if they were "big enough" and there was one Rangers scout who once told me after a match that he was told only to look for tall kids because Rangers reckoned they could teach anyone to be a good footballer, but they couldn't teach them to be tall. When it comes to race it seems an absurd claim to make too. After all no African side has ever won the World Cup and the two best players in the world over the last ten years at least have been Ronaldo and Messi - both of European parentage. And when C F Pachuca did a study into the 10 fastest footballers in the world they found the fastest to be Gareth Bale, and only one African made the list. 

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I'm sure Belgium have done a lot to improve their youth system.
But their football team has also benefited from immigration.
Almost 40% of Belgium players capped in 2017 were of African descent. The likes of Lukaku, Kompany, Fellaini, Benteke, Dembele, Origi, Batshuayi, et al.
 
 
This... We need to send some old legends over to Stud in africa.

In tomorrows PDE Macca has already put his name forward.
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