These pricey football academies with names like Barcelona, AC Milan and Arsenal that are popping up all over Cairo: have they really produced soccer players worthy of their names? So far they haven’t, not necessarily because they can’t but because they haven’t been around long enough.
But why wait to see the finished product? Why not try to emulate from the beginning what the very best country in the football world does to produce so many great teams and wonderful players. Brazil has given us Pele, canary yellow jerseys and buoyant blondes for a supporting cast. The country stands for artistry, inspiration and genius, for the combination of sublime individual skill and collective fluidity to create a whole that is both beautiful to watch and devastatingly effective.
What makes Brazil so good?
So many ingredients go into the mix. As soon as Brazilian tots can walk they are given a football for a present. They play pickup games on the street, in small spaces which helps develop close control and dribbling ability which Brazilians are famous for. Look at Ronaldinho; he could dribble in a closet.
Football is also the only sport Brazilians really care about. Their success is dictated by raw numbers. There are 180 million Brazilians. America, for instance, has 300 million people but they divide their attention into half a dozen mainstream sports. In Brazil, they live and breathe soccer and nothing else.
Many of Brazil’s greatest footballers grew up in favelas, the shanty towns in its sprawling cities. There, life is hard, and football offers an escape from the crippling poverty.
It helps tremendously that Brazilians love the beach and have plenty of it, the Copacabana being one of the longest stretches of sand and sea in the world.
We’ve all played on sand and know how trying it is. Your legs feel as heavy as an elephant’s. But then go play on grass and you feel you can fly.
Brazilians used to beach football, when they transfer to the field, play as if they have rockets in their shoes.
For all the beach football image of the Brazilian game, the youth structure in Brazil is sophisticated. Club recruitment is early so that children can be schooled in accentuating the flair and broadening awareness. When a player is nine, he is already being evolved in a club. At 19, he has already had 10 years’ organized football and playing in the first division.
Over there, they don’t tell them you have to play this way. They don’t tell eight-year-olds you have to play right-back. Such a concept is seen as likely to hinder a player’s creative impulses. They give them some freedom until they are ready to be coached. That sense of creativity is never lost.
Brazil’s success, though, stems not just from talent and the freedom to express it – there are hours of hard work, a concentration on physical training beyond that in Europe. Our academy system is one where players train for around six hours a week. Compare that to 16-year-old Brazilians, who train for up to 20 hours a week.
The Brazilian talent factory is thus laden and shows no sign of running out of steam. The conveyor belt churns out more than 1,000 Brazilians transferred abroad every year. When they move on, others move in. Talent is given a chance.
One more very important point: Brazil has a long winning history that stimulates and inspires the entire populace. The country has produced 50 years’ worth of great players — Garrincha, Pele, Jairzinho, Tostao, Socrates, Zico, Ronaldo and Romario, to the present-day Kaka and Ronaldinho, to name a few.
The names and history are a source of national pride, and instills a belief in Brazilians that they are indeed the best. A team is nothing without belief.
Brazilians have conviction that they will shine on the greatest stages. They have a deep faith in the superiority of their technique and that their nation’s destiny is irrevocably tied up with the biggest prize in the sport, the World Cup. There is always pressure on them but the players thrive on it.
So, if our fancy academies are listening, the ABC guidelines are there.
Brazil. That single word has come to sum up the very best of football.
As the world’s most exciting team prepare for their friendly with England on Friday, BBC Sport asks some of the biggest names in Brazil’s football history what makes them so good.
Look at basketball players or “street ball players. These basketball players are out all day playing pickup basketball against good opposition. Almost all NBA stars can probably relate to playing pickup games in local courts. This is how these players developed. Soccer players in america should be the same way.
Because that’s what they play since they are born. Their first gift is a soccer ball.
The tradition in the country is soccer, soccer, soccer. There is nothing else to do, but to play soccer.
Don’t have the money to play anything else. All you need is a ball of any kind.
They live for football (futebol) their whole culture practically revolves around it. From the richest kids who play in fancy clubs to the poorest who play in a field or on the street, its what they love. Any small town could provide a decent professional team from kids off the street.
In Brazil soccer is a cultural and scoring goals and winning is now natural to them.
They had a disappointing World Cup in 2006. But with outstanding individual talents such as Ronaldinho and Kaka orchestrating the team, expectations that they will produce more moments to live on in football legend remain as high as ever.
Allied to detailed planning and not to forget the sheer quality of players – Brazil’s plan met with unprecedented success. The story of Brazil’s domination of world football starts with the sport’s uniquely important position in national life.
“The national football team, says its former coach Carlos Alberto Parreira, “is the symbol of national identity, the only time the nation gets together.
“Football in Brazil is like a religion, 24 hours a day.
Brazil is a big country – 183m people – and that is a lot of potential footballers, especially when, as Parreira says, “the whole of Brazil is playing the game.
But for some in Brazil football is more than just a game.
It is, says journalist Lito Cavalcanti, a “life solution.
“The lower classes have no effective schooling. They live in favelas where drug dealers control their lives. Sport is the only way out, In Brazil children learn football in a very different way from their European counterparts.
The favelas are a natural breeding ground for youngsters burning with hunger, yet Parreira stressed football’s appeal to all walks of life; smart boulevard as well as potholed alley. “Everybody wants to be a footballer, not only poor people, but kids from rich families want to be a Kaka or Ronaldinho as well, Parreira adds. Kaka himself hails from a wealthy background (his father is an engineer).
“There are no street players in Brazil any more. Players are built in clubs.
This is the strength of Brazilian football. It is not about Pele, Kaka, Ronaldinho – it is about the system that produces them. This year we will transfer 1,300 players abroad. Ronaldinho at Barcelona and Kaka at Milan are role models for young Brazilian players to follow.
In Brazil, a prospect like Theo Walcott would not be sitting on the bench, he would be starting regularly, Parreira, 64, is so confident about Brazil’s conveyor belt Parreira claimed there was an indomitability in the psyche of the Brazilian player
In such areas of mental strength, first touch and the nurturing of youngsters, particularly playmakers such as Kaka, England could learn so much from Parreira’s nation.
The reason is the establishment of soccer academies which, if reports of their activities are accurate, will produce an abundance of technically accomplished players. The first to be formed in Egypt was four years ago, on the outskirts of Cairo, and is run by AC Milan, who provide all the coaches.
That the European champions are making this effort is an indication of the raw talent they believe to be
in the country. Perhaps what is most telling, though, is that some 450 boys between the ages of seven and 12 are receiving two hour training sessions four times a week.
Significantly, Barcelona are also involved in two academies in the country, opening the first one in September last year. Although not as hands-on as the Milan equivalent, the coaching direction nevertheless comes from Spain while being delivered by Egyptians.
However, the most successful school of the lot, if its track record is anything to go by, could be the one which former French internationalist Jean-Marc Guillou is setting up. The JMG Academy, for which there is already a staggering 5000 applicants, first opened its doors in the Ivory Coast in the 1990s and has an outstanding record of developing players. Among its graduates are Kolo Toure, Salomon Kalou, Yaka Toure, Didier Zokora and Emmanual Eboue; some 60 per cent of the Ivory Coast World Cup side passed through the JMG doors.
It will provide the country with a lucrative export trade. Or, to be more accurate, it will give the agents who must already be circling the academies a revenue stream.
Most of the schools take money off the boys’ parents, but the prices are reasonable and no doubt there are middle men willing to take a chance on the fees if families can’t afford it.
Just in case you still think the Egyptians might be playing at it, the JMG Academy will have boarding facilities for its pupils. The boys will be allowed to go home at weekends, but for five days a week their education, upbringing and football training will be entirely taken care of by the academy.
For those who succeed the price of leaving their families and friends will no doubt be worth it, Given its fees, the school is far from all-inclusive – only those with the financial means can afford to join. The Wadi Degla Club in the Cairene suburb of Maadi has a soccer school that is affiliated with England’s famed Arsenal football squad.
