A review of the new UEFA B course
- Jamie Fahey
- 01 May 2017
FA coach mentor, Jamie Fahey, reflects on his recent experience of the new UEFA B course and his continued development as a coach.
Philosophy and red bobble hats weren’t the first five words I expected to write in an article on football coaching, it has to be said. But I wanted it to be quality. So let me explain.
While on one of the pilot courses for the FA’s new Uefa B coaching licence recently, the book I was re-reading at the time kept cropping up in my thinking.
The cult US classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values examines, among other things, whether quality exists and can be defined.
Over six days of challenging debate, stimulating workshops and intentional practices at Chelsea FC’s Cobham training ground, it became clear that the latest staging post on my two and a half decade coaching journey was about this elusive search for quality too.
“If I’m putting on a session wearing a red bobble hat,” explained Ted Dale, the lead tutor, “that doesn’t mean you go out and get one to wear when you’re coaching!”
His colourful analogy came about during a discussion on the bedrock of the game: the principles of play, in possession, out, and in transition.
The reassuring message for candidates was clear: it’s not about being a clone. It’s about you. Your philosophy. The age/ability of the players you are coaching, what they want, what you do, how, when and why you do it? The 'why' dictates the 'what'. The other tutors, Jody Caudwell and Anthony Ferguson, reinforced this message with reminders that the focus on the 'process' was the holy grail.
The parallels with my book were stark.
The author, Robert M Pirsig (who died in April 2017), decides that quality cannot be strictly defined. But to know what it is you have to be acutely aware of the underlying causes, he concludes.
In coaching terms, this equates to establishing your own philosophy/aims and knowledge of the principles of play, practising out on the grass, actually coaching, challenging yourself and your players to improve, and reviewing progress according to the players’ goals and needs using the FA four corner development model.
In truth, I didn’t know exactly what to expect on the course. When I first did it in 1998 (without completing the final assessment), the messages were also clear: absorb the principles of play, the coaching formula (observe, diagnose, intervene, instruct, demonstrate, rehearse, play) and show what you know in a practice by doing it like this. Bingo. Pass or fail.
The new course is not as prescriptive. A flexible rigour is the goal, with coaches expected to carefully select their coaching 'tools' from a burgeoning toolbox.
“It's picking the right thing for the right moment,” explains Tony McCallum, the FA’s national coach development manager.
“The only thing we're telling coaches you have to do is make sense of what the game looks like and apply it in relation to you and your players.”
McCallum explains how the new UEFA B is a merger of the content of the FA Youth Award and the UEFA B licence, all neatly tying in with the uniform messages wrapped up in the The Future Game guide and England DNA.
“A quality coach is someone who understands where they're working - so they haven't just got the latest Real Madrid footage off YouTube and said ‘we're doing this tonight’. It's the thoughts about, well, I've got 13 kids, we're U16s, this is how the opponent likes to play, this is how we play, this is what I believe in, and these are the practices I'm structuring to enable us to play on a Saturday like this... while being planned and creative.”
This enhanced focus on the importance of a coaching philosophy chimes with my experience as an FA coach mentor. The question I find myself asking coaches most often while mentoring is “why?” After all, how can I mentor competently if I don’t know what a coach is thinking?
In terms of my own coaching, fortunately my co-coach at Woodley United U15s in Reading, Stephen Moody, is also on the course. We’re perhaps living proof of the 70:20:10 theory of learning we talked about.
“We’re not here to give you a bucketful of knowledge,” Ted Dale told us. “It’s about you taking the time to practise.”
The idea being that 10% of what we pick up comes in formal classroom environments, 20% from peer discussion/observation while the bulk – 70% – comes from learning on the job: planning, doing and reviewing (often with fellow coaches) what we do out on the grass.
So with a Zen-like calm and sharpened focus, I think I’m ready to continue my coaching journey emboldened enough to be creative as I explore what my own personal 'quality' looks like – all without donning a copycat red bobble hat.
For the record, mine’s very much blue.
