Shakhtar Donetsk youth academy (2):
Almost 3 years ago Henk van Stee and Patrick van Leeuwen – working for the youth academy of Feyenoord Rotterdam at the time – were appointed to take over the youth education at Shakhtar Donetsk. Last summer Henk van Stee joined De Graafschap as head coach, but Van Leeuwen stayed. SoccerCoachingInternational paid a visit to Shakhtar Donetsk to take a closer look on how to start a top education programme in Europe. In this second episode director Patrick van Leeuwen will discuss the education of coaches. Due to the lack of street football in the Ukraine. Shaktar's U11s team plays at a lower level than most other European top clubs. The objective is to catch up by the time they reach U17s. The difference must be made by educating good coaches. By: Paul van Veen
“Good trainers are the foundation for
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No. 34 – August / September 2009
Youth academy “My most important objective here is to set up an academy that does not depend on me. That means that it is important to guide the coaches well. They must understand why we train this way. This is a process that will take years and Henk van Stee and I started this a while ago. In the beginning it was a huge task. We wanted them to start doing new things and because we did not want to offer all the theory at the same time, we split the material up into certain components. We started with the system of play. We developed some PowerPoint presentations to show the coaches how we want to play in possession and with loss of possession against several other systems. After going through everything we gave them the handout and said: `this is the way we want to play from now on'. We then discussed the games by means of video recordings and we noticed improvements every week."
think of the total organization. They prefer to focus their coaching to the player in possession. A Dutch coach will focus more on the bigger picture.”
Exercise overkill Defense when in possession "You start with the basic ideas and by doing so you will automatically notice what the frequent problems are and what we need to focus on the most. We realized all teams where frequently making the same tactical mistakes. When we noticed those mistakes we would take them with us to our next meeting and discuss them thoroughly. We witnessed that they were having problems to allow players to take the initiative, to accept errors and not to punish players every time, so they wouldn't dare to try it again. Another problem was the defense, keeping control when in possession. We often witnessed situations here in which a left wingback takes a run down the flank and the right wingback moves forward also because he wants to attack as well, because the ball may enter his area. In the Netherlands we would think: let’s defend the right flank and also give back cover to the central defenders. The right midfielder controls the midfield and therefore creating good positioning in possession and with loss of possession. These things are very hard to teach coaches from this culture. They will say they understand the concept, but we don't always see them apply this in the games, because they have problems detaching themselves from the player on the ball and to
“We subsequently started to work on the way of training. We try to do this a little like the Dutch way: 7 against 6, 8 against 7 with tasks. This is, however, not common here as most training sessions here would consist of what we call exercise overkill: doing as many exercises as possible in the available training time. This is part of their culture; variation, variation and more variation. So they would spend five minutes on this and then five minutes on that. While in the Netherlands we focus on repetition and applying the same techniques in various exercises. This is something we have spent a lot of time on here.”
Changes in coaches “The first months we worked with the group of coaches who were here when we arrived, but after 3 or 4 months we changed some things around. We let go of some trainers and attracted a couple of new ones, mainly former players, who became assistant trainers and would have the potential to evolve to head coaches. A lot of these new trainers were involved with scouting before and were unable to do anything concrete with their knowledge before. They all had their coaches certifications and most of them played at the top European level, some even for the national team. They therefore have a lot to offer to the development of the players.”
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Youth academy Demonstration Training
New way of training “We also added two new coaches to the staff, both former youth players who were unable to play due to injuries. They were both educated with our vision and therefore had no experience with the 'old' Ukrainian way of training and teaching. I am always watch the coaches and am very critical of how they handle the kids and that they don't fall back to their old habits. You can give the young coaches more information and they will try everything we throw at them. Coaches who have been working at the club longer need a little more convincing and push to try things.”
Time management “All coaches at Shakhtar do well for themselves. They all have full time contracts, even the youth coaches. This means they are available a lot. The football schools only train once a day, meaning they are very busy from 1 to 5. So we use the mornings to give them courses and we have the opportunity to have coaches shadow each other. The youth technique trainer (who works with the Wiel Coerver method) will shadow the adult technique trainer, same things applied to the conditioning trainer and the goalkeeper trainer.”
“Chelsea's Ruud Kaiser provided one of the demonstration training sessions. He did some exercises the coaches had never seen before, but since then they use them in their own sessions. Play 4 against 2 in an area. The moment the ball is won by the team of 2, they will pass the ball to their teammates in the larger area. The game proceeds in the larger area where the teams play 6 against 4. When the team of 4 wins the ball they will continue in the smaller area, where only 2 opponents are allowed.”
Combination “This combination of a group of older coaches, who had been involved with coaching at the club for a longer time, along with the former players proved to be a good mix for most teams. Of course it is not perfect yet and there will be some more staff changes in the future, but so far the changes have been minimal. With the younger teams we really didn't change the staff much. We started with the young, enthusiastic coaches who were here when we arrived. I only changed one coach, because I thought he was too nice, so I made him coordinator of one of our football schools and he is doing a great job and he has the opportunity to develop himself as a coach as well.”
Guest coaches “In order to get through to the trainers more effectively we also use guest coaches. Coaches from big European clubs, who we fly over and ask them to give demo training sessions on a certain subject. We have invited coaches who have given tactical training sessions, technical training sessions (like Ricardo Moniz of HSV Hamburg) and coaches who focus on the physical aspects. This way our coaches can see that other top clubs also work the way we are working. The next step was visiting other academies. We took an 8day trip through Europe with a selective group of coaches. We visited 4 clubs and the KNVB. This gave them a good idea of who other clubs work. From this trip we gathered that 1 day at a club was too little and we therefore decide to go to the Manchester United academy for a week and follow all the training sessions.”
SoccerCoachingInternational asked the U17 coach what he thought about the new way of playing: “This new way of playing is the current way of playing in Europe. If we want to play at the top level it is important to adopt this new way. Because all positions are occupied in a 1-4-3-3 it is easy to use this system in offense as well as defense. Furthermore it allows for the development of all round players, because all players have to think about both offense and defense. Everybody is always doing the same thing, as everybody is defending or attacking.”
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No. 34 – August / September 2009
Youth academy During the coach education all coaches were given exercises to improve in offense. These exercises are coached in two groups,
without defenders. The 3 options are trained separately first, after that the player has to choose what he wants to use.
Attacking from the right flank (1)
Attacking across the right flank (2)
- 3 passes to 2 - 2 passes to 6 - 6 passes to 7, who comes to the ball after a premove - 2 overlaps 7 and receives the ball - 2 crosses, good positioning in front of the goal - Pay attention to the rest defense
- 3 passes to 2 - 2 passes to 6 - 6 passes to 7, who comes to the ball after a premove - 7 wall passes on 10 - 10 passes back to 7 - 7 crosses, good positioning in front of goal - Pay attention to the defense on the attacking team
Attacking from the right flank (3)
Attacking from the right flank (4)
- 3 passes to 2 - 2 passes to 6 - 6 passes to 7, who comes to the ball after a premove - 10 overlaps 7 who dribbles inside - 7 passes to 10 - 10 crosses, good positioning in front of goal - Pay attention to the rest defense
- 3 passes to 2 - 2 passes to 6 - 6 passes to 7, who comes to the ball after a premove - 7 wall passes on 10 - 2 overlaps 7 and receives the ball from 10 - 2 crosses, good positioning in front of goal - Pay attention to the defense of the attacking game
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