Play the Brazilian way
According
to ex-Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, no one is quite sure why so many
wonderful players and great teams come from his beautiful country:
"Sociologists
and psychologists have tried to explain, but nobody can find one reason,"
he says. "The national football team is the symbol of national identity,
the only time the nation gets together."
Journalist
Lito Cavalcanti suggests that the answer lies in the grinding poverty that
afflicts so many young people in Brazil:
"Many
of Brazil's greatest footballers grew up in favelas – the shanty towns in its
sprawling cities. Here, life is hard and... there is no effective schooling.
Drug dealers control their lives. Sport is the only way out and in Brazil,
football is the only sport people care about.
"What makes them so good? Necessity. It's the only life they
have ahead of them. That is their drive."
It may
also be significant that there are no leagues or competitive matches for young
children in Brazil.
"The
children play a lot but it's always very free," says
Brazil 1994 World Cup winner Leonardo. "We don't tell eight year olds
you have to play right back."
Parreira
agrees:
"We don't
put [young players] in a cage, say 'you have to be like this'. We give them
some freedom until they are ready to be coached."1
It's
impossible to recreate the cultural importance given to football in the favelas
and it's difficult (although not impossible) for our children to play football
without having their development slowed by playing in leagues run for the
benefit of adults.
But we
can give our players more freedom. We don't, for example, have to put players
into positions at such an early age and risk taking can be positively
encouraged. Players with good ball skills should be applauded for taking on the
opposition, not instructed to pass the ball on pain of being labelled
"selfish".
If we are
to produce a home-grown Ronaldo, more emphasis also needs to be given to
learning how to control the ball with all the surfaces of both feet, not just
the inside of one foot. A lot of coaches forget that there are six surfaces
children can use to control a ball – instep, heel, inside, outside, sole and toes
– and that we have two feet. So let's encourage our players to use them!
There is
another difference between our young players and most young Brazilian players.
Young Brazilians don't play six, seven or eight-a-side on park pitches because
there aren't many open spaces in the cities. So they commonly play a version of
soccer – futebol – in a small hall – a salao – with a small, low-bounce ball:
futebol de salao.
"I played Futebol de Salão for many years and it helped me to
become the player I am today. There you don't have time to think, you are
always tightly marked and you develop a sense for performing in small
spaces." Robinho
Training
with a small, low bounce ball will discourage your players from kicking the
ball aimlessly. It will also improve their ball control skills as it
"sticks" to their feet instead of bouncing away.
Ball
control exercises such as First
Touch and Dribble Races can be enhanced by asking players to use all the
surfaces of their feet when they're moving a small, low bounce ball.
Dribble Races
Set up: divide
your players into teams of four or five. Mark the starting place for each team
with a flat cone and place another flat cone – the turning cone – about 20
yards away. One futebol de salao ball per team.
If you
find it hard to get hold of a futebol de salao ball, you can use a size two
football or a futsal but both have drawbacks. Futsals are too big and small
footballs are too bouncy.
How to
play: the first player in each team dribbles the ball to the turning
cone, turns, and passes back to the next player in line who repeats the run and
pass.
The
winning team is the first team to complete the exercise.
Progression: the
first run will probably see players standing next to the turning cone as they
pass and waiting by the starting cone for the ball to arrive. Some passes will
be inaccurate and some will be struck too hard or too softly.
Ask your
players if they can think of a quicker way to complete the game.
They
should say (maybe with a bit of prompting) that passes must be of good quality
and the player waiting to receive a pass should move towards the ball, not wait
for it to arrive.
Repeat the
game and you should see a big improvement.
Now make
it a condition that player 1 should use their sole of their right foot to
dribble, player 2 the inside of their left foot, player 3 the outside of their
right foot etc. until they've used all six surfaces of both feet.
Coaching
note: you don't have to cover all the possible combinations of
foot/surface in one session! Work on two or three different combinations every
week and your players will soon begin to play with a little Brazilian flair!
References
Andrew
Benson and John Sinnott, Why
are Brazil so good?, BBC SPORT, [16 Jan 2011]
FIFA/Coca
Cola World Rankings
How would
you like a session dedicated to improving individual skills on the ball?
This
week's Smart Sessions
Core Skills, is a perfect compliment to playing the
Brazilian way. It is titled "Fancy feet" and focuses on teaching
skills on the ball.
|
News 
