Needless to say that the recently concluded FIFA Under 17 Women’s World Cup was unlike any other local or regional eyes have seen before. The young women who came from far and wide to vie for the coveted trophy gave the world a show that we will not soon forget and not the least, our own history making young women, endearingly dubbed, the Soca Princesses.
Team Media Liaison Officer Charisse Broome had the opportunity to sit with the National Team Coach, author, husband, father, teacher and friend soon after T&T bowed out of the international competition, to gain a better understanding of just what it took to create the history making team T&T witnessed in September 2010. Here is the account of that journey from the Coach’s bench.
INTERNATIONAL COACH
TTFF ONLINE: As an international and highly successful coach, you could work anywhere in the world. How did you manage to choose Trinidad and Tobago?
EP: I like new challenges. I’ve worked in Toronto for four years and Vancouver for five. You never know. The more new challenges you take on the more confident you become. I’d not coached young people before and this was a welcome challenge for me.
TTFF ONLINE: What motivated you to take this job? What were you expecting when you got here?
EP: Seeing what could be done in 18 months was quite an interesting challenge. There is much potential for any team if things are done right and with order. If not, we regress to the Stone Age. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge.
T&T
TTFF ONLINE: You of course would have been new to the Caribbean culture of performance. How did you acclimatize to the Trinidad and Tobago culture and attitude towards sport as a profession and work in general?
EP: Very quickly. As for my players, I didn’t accept latecomers or absenteeism. This culture (of the team) changed slowly, very slowly, and finally the team became a progressive, fit and very committed team.
PASSION AND COMMITMENT
TTFF ONLINE: What state did you find the team in when you got here? What canvas did you have to work with at the beginning?
EP: The team was not the most talented. It was like building a house, block by block. You have to be very focused and very patient. These girls are not born competing. I actually don’t think it’s natural for Caribbean girls to compete. There was a lack of intensity of play on the field and a lack of competitiveness at first. After much work, I brought intensity and passion for the game and taught them speed. You have to be very intensive at this game and at this level of competition.
We spent three and a half hours a day in training over the past 18 months increasing that tempo. This came before skills – Passion and Intensity. They were not exposed to that type of football before. We had to bring the tempo up, more tackles, increased speed. We had to foster a desire to win. It took some time, now 18 months after it’s a completely different team with a new outlook. Commitment always beats talent.
SACRIFICE
TTFF ONLINE: You would have had to do a considerable amount of preparation in a condensed period of time to ensure this team was competition ready for September. How did this new schedule affect your family life?
EP: The hard part was being away from home. I have four children; two of them are twin girls. They need a dad. I used to be a teacher and would help them with their homework. I missed that. Still, they are independent and strong women, even without me. They are also football players and my wife, a former international football player is also a coach, so there is a lot of understanding and support.
SUPPORT
TTFF ONLINE:: What were some of the challenges you faced in preparing the National team for international standard of play?
EP: We had good support from the TTFF. We had what we needed although we had to fight for it…Fight for fields to train on, for footballs. I did not make this into a big problem for us. The big problem was not having enough international games to adequately prepare the girls. Between April and July we were without international games. That’s three and a half months out of this year. I think this hurt us the most.
IS THE FUTURE of Football FEMININE?
TTFF ONLINE: So, what is next. Where do we go from here. Are any plans in place for the future of the women’s game?
EP: The signals are clear, the TTFF and the Government will prioritize Women’s football. An Action Plan is needed for this to be sustainable and effective and this was presented following the 2010 World Cup for all Trinidad and Tobago Women’s teams, the U20 and U17 included. It’s up to the TTFF now to put things in place to make success happen again. If we take a break now. We would have unfortunately wasted time.
LEADERSHIP
TTFF ONLINE: What is your philosophy for coaching? How did you keep your technical team on the same page and working together?
EP: You have to present a very clear path to your staff as well. This technical team accepted my plan very quickly and I’m pleased with them. They are good coaches with a bright future. Leadership of course also plays a major role in getting any team adequately prepared to compete at an international level of play. Leadership counts. The right picture must be shown; they have to see what you see. You must have vision and be on the ball all the time. You have to be persistent in coaching.
CHALLENGES
TTFF ONLINE: What were some of the other challenges you faced when training began in serious? How or from where did the girls receive the love and support they would have needed during this journey?
EP: These girls are from different backgrounds. Getting them from school and back home entailed that a concerted team effort had to be made. Some of them came to practice and had not eaten for the day and broke down after fifteen minutes. Others did not have transport to get to practice. That was new for me. I’d not experienced this before. The local staff dealt with this aspect excellently. They gave of themselves where I would not expect them to. They did what they had to do to get the girls to and from training
TTFF ONLINE: Is there any significant difference between working with a women’s team versus working with a men’s team?
EP: I have coached four Premier Men’s League teams in Norway and in Denmark, so I have in fact more experience coaching Men’s top teams than Women’s teams. That being said, you don’t have the ego to deal with, with the girls, so this is always an advantage. I have never experienced any problems going back and forth coaching the two genders. It’s really about “building teams” and creating a competitive environment. If we look at this U17 team, they are very willing to learn and worked quite well together, as a team. They were very supportive of each other, they adapted well to the intensity of the programme and took instructions well and executed them as intended.
So in summary, if you are a swim coach, you are interested in helping the swimmer to swim faster, the same mechanisms for a man or a woman applies and vice versa. Without interfering in domestic politics in this country, I would say that T&T seems to be doing fine with a female Prime Minister. Anyone who sat in the stands during this U17 World Cup will now understand that Women’s football has come an incredibly long way, and so has the Women’s programme, but with that said, we have only just seen the beginning!
FOOTBALL PICASSO
TTFF ONLINE: How did you mold the team you received 18 months ago into the team that presented itself to the T&T public and the world in September?
EP: I didn’t accept excuses. You have to push and not make excuses if you want to be part of this, if you want to be successful. You have to put in the work. In this life, it’s about survival too. It was a compact life experience. You have to be responsible and accountable or you will pay for it.
For the girls, they learnt to be better persons, more organized and healthy; eating, resting, nutrition, hydration, recovery of tired muscles. They learnt how to treat their bodies properly to get the maximum out of it. Focus was important. Understanding that school work had to fit in to your schedule too. Sacrifice was also needed. The boys, the parties, had to take a secondary position. This is also part of life.
A lot of times the girls had to finish school early to get to practice. Depending on where school or home was, that meant a two-hour drive straight into a three and a half hour session, eating on the way home, doing homework in the car, arriving home 10 o’clock at night and then to do it over again the next day while keeping your school marks up. It was an incredible effort. I really admire them for that.
PARENTAL SUPPORT
TTFF ONLINE: With regards to support from home, how did parents accept the news that their children would be part of this international event? How did they react to their girl children being in training for prolonged periods of time?
EP: The girls had a planned workload daily of which their parents were made aware. I would have liked more of the parents to show up to practice more often, especially when the World Cup was drawing closer. Parental support is incredibly important to young people, especially to young girls. I would have liked to see more of that.
THE FINAL CUT
TTFF ONLINE: How did you choose the history making team the world saw in September?
EP: I met 30 players on arrival to Trinidad and decided to cut after two or three months until we had the team of fifteen the Nation saw now. We also looked outside for foreign players who were in and out of the country from time to time. By mid August, the final cut was made due to FIFA regulations. That was hard. Some of them were very committed, but I had to cut. But that was for then, not for ever.
TTFF ONLINE: What’s next then for the girls and for Even Pellerud after this World Cup?
EP: We’ve got thirteen graduates with the potential to be part of the Under 20 squad. Eight of them are eligible for another Under 17 World Cup. Training will start again soon, I hope. It’s best if the U17, U20 and the Senior teams train as one squad. For technical reasons and it is more cost effective.
I would not mind staying on in T&T as Technical Director, that is in a mentoring role. I know where we should go to maintain success. It’s about making those critical decisions now. To have a consistently successful team you need clear goals which are supported and where actions follow through. It’s not complicated. You just have to decide to do the right things. It’s easy to make this programme successful. (Between the time of writing this article and its publishing, Even Pellerud was officially instated by the TTFF as Technical Director of the National Women’s Programme)
THE FUTURE
TTFF ONLINE: Any other comments on the future of the women’s game in T&T?
EP: Women’s football can only have a good and successful future if there is a crystal clear cut commitment from Government to support in the areas most needed. It’s not about coaching now. It is very easy to regress into the Stone Age type of football if we wait until too late.
SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS
TTFF ONLINE: What else do you think must be done to enhance and improve the performance of the National Women’s teams?
EP: Life skills training must be kept up. In a World Cup campaign, the technical part of performance is focused on more, so the life skills need attention even more so now to maintain the balance and the mental and emotional health of the girls. Life skills are necessary to assist them in making the right and smart decisions concerning their lives.
EP: It has been an intense experience for them. Some feel empty now without the intensity of activity and interaction. What now? They must now set new goals for themselves. Whether football or academic. I hope they stay in sports, stay health, fit to maintain that high level of performance.
Even Pellerud began a very interesting and successful career at a considerably young age in his country of birth, Norway under the tutelage of his father, also a football coach.
In 1987 Even became the head coach of the popular club Kongsvinger. He holds teaching degrees in History and Social Studies from the University of Sport and Physical Education in Oslo, and has been involved in Women’s soccer since its inception in 1991.
Even Pellerud is the proud father of four, two of whom are twin girls and, together with Sam Kucey, is the co-author of the successful book Coaching and Leadership in Women’s Soccer.
To find out more about the Women’s Programme journey towards football history, keep logged on to TTFF Online.com for the continuation of this ten part series on T&T’s history making U17 Women’s World Cup Team.
Ms. Charisse J. Broome, National Team Media Liaison Officer during the 2010 U17 Women’s World Cup is currently the Coordinator of two new executive programmes in Sports Management at the Department of Management Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. One of the executive programmes is being offered at the in collaboration with the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES), Switzerland, under the auspices of the International Football Federation (FIFA).