Scotland boss Craig Levein might have managed the Blue Brazil, but as recent events in London highlighted, the real thing still plays in yellow.

The 2-0 defeat was a depressing reminder of the gulf in class that still exists between Scotland and the world's top nations. Whilst we can match teams for effort, commitment, spirit and work rate, we struggle to match their skill levels.

But just as AFC showed our clubs the way in Europe in the 1980s, so we are now at the forefront of trying to address this problem, through the work of Jim Crawford and his team of AFC Community coaches - Scott Anderson, Gavin Levey and Scott Duncan.

Jim has set up Advanced Centres so that youngsters in the North East can spend time working solely on their skills and technique. The community coaches are also working with the youngest teams in the AFC Youth Academy - the U10, U11 and U12s to help improve their skills.

Most important of all, they have also set up a pathway linking the Community Department with AFC Youth Academy. Therefore any youngster entering an AFC coaching course at any age level has a chance to be involved with the Advanced Centres, then an AFC Youth team, before hopefully working his way up to the U19s and eventually the first team.

The Dons had Cameron Smith and Craig Storie involved in the Scotland U16 side that went down narrowly to England in the Victory Shield last night. Due to the work that has already been done by Jim and his team with kids at the younger age group hopefully there will be many more Aberdeen players involved at this level over the next few years. There are four players in the current Scotland U15 squad.

Jim Crawford spoke to RedWeb and explained in detail what is being done to produce more skilful players and how this will impact on the Dons in the years to come.

 

OUR CURRENT GAME

"Our game is on the downward spiral. You can just see by the crowds. They are not getting entertained. We have to train the kids to entertain the fans. We have to produce players that are better, players that will go out and make a difference. You hear time and time again from Scottish managers that the players worked hard but it just broke down in the final third. Now that's where all the technical skills come in, where the game gets tighter and you need players in there that make a difference and can do a turn or a move.

"We keep hearing in the Scottish game, what size is his father? Is he big and strong? That is what is ruining our game. We are not getting football players through.

"Look at Barcelona.

"They are the smallest team in that league and look at the football they play. We have got little kids that come in and they can do the moves as well as anyone.

"Another problem is the kids are not out there playing enough, it is a different culture. Before we used to go out and play for fun. For example kids now might train on a Monday and Thursdays and play Sundays. That is only four and a half hours a week if they were not doing anything else. We were out playing four and half hours a day.

"Also as Scottish players we can't handle 1 v 1 situations. If we are running with a ball and there is a big defender in front of us we will turn back and play it across and play a lot of negative football. We have to encourage the players to be more attack minded. What we are trying to do at AFC is very strongly based on producing attack minded players. We are trying to get over that hurdle and get players to excite the crowd like Sone Aluko. We want to get a new batch of Aluko's coming through if you like.

JIM'S PAST

"My involvement with working on individual skills started years ago when I was running young teams. I did not feel that there was enough going on to develop young players technically. So I got involved with Coerver Coaching which was the skills programme at the time.

The Coerver Method, or the Coerver Coaching Technique, is a global football coaching programme inspired by the teachings of legendry 70s Dutch coach Wiel Coerver, and created in the early 80s by Alfred Galustian and former Aberdeen legend, Charlie Cooke. Charlie played at Pittodrie from 1960 to 1964 and although the Dons were struggling at that time, many would argue that he was one the skillful players ever to pull on a red shirt. The winger also played for Dundee, Chelsea and Crystal Palace before ending his career in the United States.

The central theme of all Coerver Coaching concentrates on the improvement of both individual skills and small team group play, especially in the 6 - 14 age group. The game is divided into a series of movements and plays involving a small number of players (1 on 1, 2 on 2, 3 on 3 etc.) in different parts of the field.

"In the 1970s Coerver realised that the skill factor was rapidly deteriorating throughout the game and what he did was to analyse the best players in the world at that particular time and the specific moves that they did to make them more creative and more exciting to watch than other players. We adopted that programme and we even got Charlie Cooke over a couple of times.

"About 20 years ago whilst working for Aberdeenshire Council as football development officer they saw the work that I was doing and I was asked to do a little skills demonstration one day for some people from the SFA. Funnily enough it was for Craig Brown and Jocky Scott! It is great to be working with Craig again all these years later and I know what a great job he will do for the club.

"So it kind of stemmed from there.

"When I got the job at AFC as an SFA Community Coach I was very keen to carry on the work. Over the years we introduced lots of specific skills and new drills to the kids courses. However over the last three years it has really gone from strength to strength.

"Years ago whilst visiting a club in England I saw that they had what they called 'Advanced Centres'. It was a centre for children to come and develop his or her skills. So what we did with our own community coaches, we have about 700 kids out there at the moment in various football centres, we asked our coaches if they saw anybody with that bit of desire or that bit of ability and if there was any kid that stood out, I wanted to know their names. Eventually that first year I got 58 names so I piloted the programme.

"The first thing I did was invite the parents in because there was a lot of football homework involved. I did a presentation to the parents and out of 58 I thought if we get 20 we will be fine and it will be good for a pilot but out of the 58 parents everyone put their kid forward for it!

"So we started our Advanced Centres. The Centres at the time were specifically for the community department and we current run three of them but with the backing we have had from Lenny Taylor and Willie Miller, they saw the benefits and we have kind of transported it into our youth development programme with our over 10s, 11s and 12s.

 

ADVANCED CENTRES

"The idea of the centres is that kids come to us for 26 weeks of the year for skill and technical drills that I have drawn up. They get resources. They get cones. They have all got all their skill balls, their get markers and their homework sheets and they are regularly monitored and timed.

"If a kid played for a team he might spend about 15 minutes at training specifically on a skill and then maybe go into passing or volleying and developing other skills and then go into small sided games.

"In Advanced Centres they come to us specifically to work on their skill and technique so we spend about an hour on that and then we will do half an hour of small sided games where we will try and integrate the moves that we have been teaching them. We let them play and if we saw someone loose the ball we might say stop and look what you have done there and they are telling us 'I could of done this little turn or I could of done that' so the current Advanced Centres are specifically designed to improve their technique.

"They get specific practices to do. They are timed quite regularly on that. We have names for the moves. For the side by side moves we have got Beckham, McFadden, Carlos, Van Nistelrooy, Owen, Iniesta and so on. They identify them better like that. Rather than me say 'fake it' and 'turn' or 'step over and spin' which is what some of them are I just shout do the Beckham, McFadden or Van Nistelrooy and they will just do it automatically. We have got homework cards for everyone of these moves. So the kids go away with their homework and they will practice every move. We have also got fast feet drills for them to do.

"We actually now see the kids producing the moves on the pitch and it is exciting and refreshing to watch.

"Every move and practise has to be done with their left foot and right foot. We see the benefits of that already as the kids are not so scared to use their weaker foot. We had a kid in last week who scored 3 goals with his left foot and he is right footed. He has got the confidence to use it now where he probably didn't have it before. It is about giving them the confidence and making them comfortable on the ball.

 

ONE ON ONE

"If you have got a ball there are only 4 one on one situations you can encounter.

"One of them is somebody in front of you face to face, one is somebody coming down from the side, one is if there is a defender behind you and the other one is running along the other side of you. We have 4 or 5 different moves for each of those situations. We can show each kid 4 or 5 moves for each of those situations. You might just use 1 or 2 but it will work for them. So we show them these moves and we introduce the moves and introduce them to their homework and then we take it into coaching practices where again there will be a progression in each practice.

"We will maybe add a passive defender and then maybe we will add beating a defender then finishing in goal. We will give them a good picture of where they can use the move.It doesn't matter if they are a defender, a midfielder, a striker we can give them a picture or a scenario or a situation where the move will help them create space to finish on goal or create space for more time. We can see it with the players on the park. They are getting the chance to express themselves.

"We don't expect them to do every move every time but they have got it in their locker to use that move if that situation arises. It makes them more comfortable on the ball. They have got better awareness and better vision already at an early age and we are speaking about kids 7, 8,9, 10 just now coming through. The AFC U11 and U12s are also going through the programme so once we get them into the youth sides we will have even more players coming through. I have no doubt about that.

 

PATHWAY

"We are working with kids as young as 7 in the system. We have developed a pathway from community participation into youth development.In the Advanced Centres it doesn't matter what local side they play for, they come to us specifically one night a week to get into the development 1 v 1 skills programme. They can play for their school or play for their local club no problem. The feedback we are getting back from the coaches is that the kids are going back to them better players and using their skills a lot more. So we are getting a lot of positives from that.

"Every kid that is in the AFC under 10's and most of the under 11's have come through this pathway now. So we have laid a foundation of skills for these kids and they won't lose them. As coaches we have got to go and keep making them practice and pushing them but also let them express themselves on the park.That way we will develop more exciting players.

I don't think there is another club in Scotland that gives the kids a better opportunity at the moment. We want to keep the kids of the North- East involved in this stuff because they are part of our future. We want to give every kid in the North-East a chance to play for AFC and we have got that now with a pathway right through from participation to Youth Development.

"I am also an SFA coach and I deliver the coach education in this area. I have done a few things for the SFA and they have noticed the benefits of it as well. We have got to educate the coaches in The North East on this. Every coach will learn how to do the moves and then they can pass it on to the kids. Then it is up to the kids to learn the moves. We are getting great support from all the local clubs in the area who are recognising what we are trying to do.

 

SPORTS VILLAGE

"The sports village has been a major bonus for AFC. Both for the community coaching and AFC Youth Development. We are in there from the end of September to the end of March. We used to be out on the all weather pitch and no way could we have pushed on through this programme.It is really enhancing the ability of our kids in the North East, it is really encouraging to get a place like that and it has honestly been a huge boost for every player at the club."

 

THE FUTURE

"I am very confident about the future of the club. We are moving to an impressive new stadium and hopefully we will have an impressive team on the pitch. We will be pushing even more players through from the Youth Development. With the kids currently coming through at U13s, U14s, U15s, we have never been so vibrant. We have got a pathway now and before we didn't have that. We have got a programme that takes 7 year olds right through the system.

"And we will be putting players out there who are exciting to watch, players that will light up our game, players that will make a difference."

For more information about the AFC Advanced Centres or any of the AFC Community Coach courses please phone 01224 650432.

RedTV |  For a little glimpse of the work being done by Jim, Gavin and the two Scott's with the U10, U11 and U12s at the AFC Youth Academy please click here