Brenning: When the gut feeling comes, the understanding disappears
The image of the national team players in their parent club shirts is beautiful.
But it lies.
No, I’m not just talking about animal keeper Jesper Karlstrom’s refusal to wear his old Hammarby jersey. Rather, the misinterpretation of the image easily creates (and has already been created).
Because at first glance it is easy to think that the Swedish Football Association should go straight to the club in the red and black shirts of Bromma and copy everything they do. Because BP has four players in the team picture.
They must do the right thing!
Should we make sure all the promising 11-year-olds in Sweden get an apartment in Bromma (and hopefully all stay on the ground when we uproot them from their safety)?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that that team picture requires more perspectives.
He must have 13 players in the national team
There are 4,000 children and youth players in Brommapojkarna. IK Sleipner has just over 300.
BP must train 13 national team players for every Sleipner they raise, if they want to be equally successful football coaches in percentage terms.
Is it IK Sleipner, the parent club of Christopher Olsson, the Swedish Football Association, in other words, should he copy? Or Västra Frölunda, which has one team per group but still two players from the national team (Aiham Ousou and Joel Andersson) in the team photo?
Or that the answer is not so simple. That the path that was right for Isaac Hen doesn’t have to work for Diane Kulusevsky.
Despite this uncertainty, the professional players’ picture of the development of Swedish football is often taken as the truth. “Listen to Dejan,” I heard in the podcast and read on social media after Kulusevski saw the development of Swedish talent.
Diane thinks there is very little competition in Sweden and we are very kind.
It’s an opinion worth discussing, but should it be considered fact? Does Dejan Kulusevski know all about Swedish talent development when he left the country when he was 15 years old?
He shouldn’t have reasonably insight into what happens next (when elite investment ramps up) and what he’s experienced before has proven to work well.
After all, he plays in the best league in the world.
Dejan Kulusevski is an expert on the kind of talent development he himself has undergone and we should learn from him. But does he really know anything about other paths to follow as well?
Because if there’s one thing the best footballers in the world have in common, it’s that their backgrounds looked completely different. You can grow up in Argentina, Portugal, Sweden, France, Belgium, Egypt or Senegal and still reach the absolute global elite. No country alone has cracked the code.
They must hate tables
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an expert in talent development. But what amazes me is the certainty with which others shout out their opinions (and actually create a very strong opinion).
The national team’s poor international result added to the winds.
“We’re not getting any talent!” They were cheered on social media, despite the fact that the players they must support now won the European Under-21 Championship when they were just talents. Did their upbringing really cause this gold – or did their ongoing career choices cause it?
“Children should be allowed to compete!” , say those who appear to have been in a state of dissolution since the introduction of the rule forbidding children and youth under the age of 13 from counting the tables in Swedish football. . This is despite the fact that players today judge them as very poorly calculated tables when they were growing up (the rule was introduced in 2017).
Shouldn’t they hate tables then? They seem to make very bad players.
Some want to do like Belgium (although the legend of their golden generation is torn and assembled), others demand German discipline (but how could Brazil have won more World Cup then?) and some are demanding that we copy Denmark. With kind of the idea that she climaxes early and hard.
However, the truth is that the great Danish club Copenhagen completely lacks a pre-U14 team and instead is deliberately investing money in building 47 smaller clubs.
why? Because they can then ensure that 33,000 players have a good football education – they can pick the gems when it finally comes time to bet.
Then much cheaper too.
So what should we take away from that picture and this tireless debate then?
First, we can say that Swedish youth football is doing well (if it is really important to be special at a young age).
The 17-year-old national team ranks 10th in Europe while the 19-year-olds are 15th.
The U21 team took off against Italy, P17 beat Denmark and both P16 and P15 defeated Belgium. All 2022, like Offsides Anders Bengtsson Company was founded.
But is it important to be outstanding at this age? Is this evidence that something big is afoot – or does focusing on it instead risks alienating players who could have subsequently thrived and become even better?
I also wish I had a definitive answer. So who knows?
What I see – and what actually bothers me – is that the only people who don’t seem to get a place in the debate are the ones who actually know something. It can be backed up.
Those who advocate multisports, as wide a talent base as possible, late selection, lots of spontaneous sports, a lot of time in your home environment and slow learning (rather than winning fast tournaments).
Those gray, boring scientists who can back up their conclusions with facts but hide them in requisite documents instead of easy-to-understand tweets.
They know it, but almost all articles on Swedish talent development still lack proven knowledge and clear observations.
Because that’s where the gut feeling comes from, the mind seems to disappear just as quickly.