Taken from Spalk Onlinewww.spalkonline.com
TRADING PUNCHES
Director of Birmingham City Academy Mr. Stuart John Hall Anil: I have a guest who has just landed straight from England. I drag him off the plane kicking and screaming he wanted to have dinner, he wanted to go and relax. I tell him no boy too important. We have with us non other than the Director of Birmingham City Academy Mr. Stuart John Hall who just landed about an hour ago. Good evening sir.
Stuart: Good evening.
Anil: And thank you very much, I know you tired, you little jet lag and thanks for coming on Spalk. Alright, tell me a little bit about Stuart John Hall. I read your resume but tell the people about you.
Stuart: Alright, I am in charge of the Birmingham’s City Football Academy. I look at all the boys from the ages 7 – 21 okay. In that we have international players, players who played in the beginning, players who we sold for money also.
Anil: And how did you get into football, you look kind of young to reach up to that high level I mean.
Stuart: I’ll take that as a compliment. (Laughing)
Anil: How did they recognize your ability to coach. Where did you start? You know become to reach so high you know.
Stuart: I played football professionally and then after someone decided that I was not good enough, so I went and played in England. We call it the semi-pro league. And the pay wasn’t enough so I had to go and get another job. So I did that and I worked in construction for a short time and played football. But I decided very, very, very, early that I wanted to be a coach. I coached the game from a very early age.
Anil: So now you are at the Academy. The Premiership League went through a period back like in the late eighties like the Italian and the Spanish were obligating it. Now in the Champions League you have two of the four semi finalists and the quality of players just keep increasing. Is that how much of that is from The Academy System and how much is that from the International Players?
Stuart: I think its about everything. But the Academy has been going in England for about seven years. And in seven years its been an improvement. Long ago people said English players weren’t as good as they were and that was true. But I think now we have crossed that bridge. I think now young English players are now better.
Anil: Now one thing with the English players, in World Cup 2002 England in favour had the fastest team. Now I disagree of course I was supporting England in the game against Brazil although they lost they were the faster team.
Stuart: English football is the fastest league in the world. Some people would say perhaps the Italian league is technically as good as and people would say the Spanish league is technically as good as. But no one could agree that the English League is the hardest league to play in. You have to be able to do all the things that are required of you to do. And that’s why we get sometimes Argentineans players or Brazilian players and they are very good players. You can’t say they are not. We get the same with Spanish players and Italian players but it takes them a long time to settle into English football.
Anil: And so in order to mention that style into the future what do you focus on? Let us say at the beginning of the young age. What’s the earliest age you take them in?
Stuart: Seven
Anil: Seven? And what are you looking for at seven?
Stuart: Athletic ability and something in a seven or eight year old that makes them stand out from the crowd. We only pick about ten boys and to pick those ten boys we see about two and three thousand boys.
Anil: Two or three thousand boys?! To pick ten!!
Stuart: Now to do that you look for something in them because they got a little bit of a devil in them. They got something that makes them stand out. Almost an arrogant even at seven or eight an arrogant. But they have to be good athlete even at seven and eight we are looking for the boys that are nice and lean, athletic looking, they move well. Because at seven and eight if they are in our system for five or six years you can improve their technique but you can’t make them better athletes because that’s what God gives.
Anil: And how many people are you in charge of ? I mean do you are you a director who is hands on? Or do you just allow….
Stuart: No I coach every day. My special responsibility is from sixteen to twenty one. The boys come in full time with us from the age of sixteen. When they leave the education. And the better ones stay right the way through to twenty twenty one and then we pass them on to the senior team or we sell them or release them or whatever. I actually coach every day from the boys from sixteen to twenty.
Anil: And then what is your auxiliary staff like?
Stuart: We have a full time staff. We have an educational facility who looks after the college work of the boys. We have a Fitness Instructor, Fitness Coach, A Nutritionist, we have a Psychologist we have an auxiliary staff of coaches who have a particular responsibilities. One Coach is in charge of twelve to sixteen year olds. One Coach is in charge of seven to eleven year olds and then there are lots of part time Coaches that come in to work around.
Anil: Why are you in Trinidad Mr. Hall? I mean not that we don’t we like have you why you here?
Stuart: To drink the Carib. (Laughing) And eat the chicken.
Anil: The chicken?!! What about doubles and thing. You know about roti and ting?
Stuart: Yeah.
Anil: Alright ya better be careful. So yeah what……
Stuart: Last year I was invited by the Stern John Foundation because Stern is a friend of mine and he was playing at Birmingham last year, so he invited me to come over and I was really well looked after. And I coached the Coaches on the Stern John Project. Yeah the Programme. And this year I am back to coach the Coaches on the Secondary School’s Program.
Anil: Yeah. Well my boy you going to need a lot of help. Good luck to you….
Stuart: And I am looking for talent.
Anil: And ya looking for talent?!
Stuart: And I’m looking for talent.
Anil: Alright so last year. Talk me a little bit about last year first. What was your impression about the Coaches, where they absorbing the information?
Stuart: Yeah very good very good.
Anil: And did they keep in contact with you to as in email asking questions and so on….
Stuart: Yes a couple of them have actually been up to Birmingham.
Anil: Oh okay.
Stuart: And visited our Academy and had a look around at what we do.
Anil: Oh okay well that’s great news. And well when they saw it I mean, how can you compare. We are ways away from getting a good Academy but, in the mean time there are ways that this coaches can sort of institute an Academy atmosphere without actually having it. Have you seen improvements in what they have been doing? And what were the weaknesses that you noticed last year?
Stuart: First of all I think that, I thought that the players over here and the coaches would be very poor on discipline. I thought it would be time keeping would be poor, the attitude would be probably too relax. In England we had a culture of discipline, if the practice starts at ten o’clock and you are not there you don’t practice. You go. Same with Coaches, if your session starts at ten o’clock and you are not there at nine o’clock and you have set up and organize then you get fired. So we have a massive culture of discipline. I’ve been surprised with the discipline in Trinidad is quite good. It’s a lot than I thought. I sent two coaches here at Easter to be at Camp and they came back and said that they thought the discipline with the boys was absolutely phenomenal. You know three hundred boys can be chaos. They said the boys were fantastic their discipline. And I think it’s the same with the Coaches they want to learn so badly they want so much knowledge that it makes their discipline and concentration and focus very very good.
Anil: Yes two of your Coaches were down here they names skipped me.
Stuart: Adam and Jerry.
Anil: Adam and Jerry and they were very impressed with the kids technical ability. I think that they said that they were a little bit behind in the physical ability the agility and the speed…..
Stuart: And the understanding of the game.
Anil: So is that what you are going to focus on? Mainly while you are here. Especially with the Secondary Schools Coaches.
Stuart: Yes we are going to do some game coaching. So what happens you know in the big pitch about tactics and strategy, you know that sort of thing. The reason I think your boys technically are very good and I think the reason for that is you’ve got the same learning cultures as the Brazilians and Argentineans. You play on uneven bumpy hard pitches and you play in the street. You play on pieces of waste ground and because the surfaces are very very poor you have to learn at an early age to master the ball. In England we have gone the other way. The facilities in England are now perfect, but it really doesn’t help technique. I think a great way like in Ajax in Holland they always made sure at Ajax when they had great youth teams and they produced great players. They always made sure that they had one pitch that was really really bad. Really bad. And they made every player practice for so many hours a week on that pitch. Now, the more you play on bad pitches the quicker your technique improves because you have to master the ball and you’ve got that the same way the Brazilians learn, the Argentineans learn you know. They are brought up on bad un-even pitches, bumpy bubbly pitches and so that is a big advantage I think.
Anil: So you see stop complaining about the pitches. It’s an advantage. But I agree with that, because when you come on that nice pitch now
Stuart: Yeah you do everything quicker. Every things quicker you know.
Anil: Okay what’s the schedule like, how long do we have you here?
Stuart: I am doing a coaching clinic every day from one o’clock to six o’clock.
Anil: From one till six.
Stuart: Now it’s all at the Main Stadium.
Anil: Hasley Crawford Stadium.
Stuart: We have some guest speakers on as well as myself. You know people doing things on management, fitness and things like that.
Anil: So it’s a comprehensive course for the Secondary School coaches.
Stuart: Yeah and they are all hand picked. Invitational
Anil: Okay you start at seven. What sort of skills when you move on now to eleven do you take in more every year how do you or do you just go with those ten kids at seven?
Stuart: Yeah. We keep we pick ten or twelve we keep them together till they are nine, when they are nine then they start do extra training. By the time they get to nine they will be doing four training sessions a week probably eight hours a week technical work plus a game. In the game they would play Arsenal, Manchester United.
Anil: And you made an interesting point that you have a specific education officer, or education director to take care of their school work and so on. How important is that, because a lot of people feel hey you play football, you play soccer you feel they good they are going to make lots of money and then they don’t worry with the school.
Stuart: It doesn’t happen we have to tell them all the time that only a small percentage actually make it through. So if we have a boy who is misbehaving at school, the education officer goes into the school sorts it out with the school. We get the parents together, the boy together they have a meeting and they say to the boy if you don’t perform at school you won’t be able to train.
Anil: No matter how good he is?!
Stuart: No matter how good he is!
Anil: Well we kind of do the opposite thing. We say well if you good do what you have to do. So that’s how serious it is?! If they not performing as best as they could at school no football.
Stuart: Yes. You have to have a culture discipline. Without discipline you got nothing.
Anil: How do you teach these boys who are very good and their parents putting pressure on them and expect them to earn large huge amounts of money. How do you teach them what we call ball peong. Which is just love the game or how do you keep them focused on the game rather than what they can get out of the game?
Stuart: I think you have to educate the parents to do that. We do that with the kids but the problem is when you are working with……, when the boys come in at sixteen if you’ve got them all the time, you are a mother or father to them.
Anil: When they have to go home….
Stuart: When they go home the parents are the biggest influence on the kids. They would decide what they eat, when they eat. How they think. So, to get into the kid’s mind you have to get into the parents first. So we do what we call parents education, where we get the parents in, we teach them about how difficult it is to be a professional footballer, how the roads is shortly dangered not many survived. How to keep them focused on their education teach them to enjoy the football but to make sure that the football is never the only thing in their life. We encourage them to do another sport because that helps with all round coordination and you know we see the skills with hand to eye coordination so we like them swim a lot. We like them to play basketball we like them to play cricket or something. They are very good at cricket.
Anil: Well right now you all are very good. Don’t talk to me about cricket.
Stuart: So yeah we try to keep them focused like that. And then when they get to sixteen and they come in and they notches up the ladder. They nearly to it. But we have a saying at Birmingham, we don’t want the boys to have a BMW before they have the Ford Focus. We don’t want them to have big flash end product before you a little one that breaks down every time you get out. Because there you go pushing that car around the block.
Anil: Teaches you to keep ground. I mean we need a lot of that down here. Because you see in this small country it’s easy to be noticed so young players believe that they are better than they are everybody is telling them how good they are and then they not willing to do the work to get to that level. Do you have that problem or has it become engrave in culture through the Academy?
Stuart: It’s engraved in the culture because that’s where people like Sports Psychologist come in. We have a really good Sports Psychologist who will continually sit the boy down and them targeting programs. And he will continually try to refocus the boy and he would say to them one time okay you achieved this well done. Now how are going to get to the next level.
Anil: Right now we need the power of football. Right now no need to hide it the crime rate in Trinidad and Tobago is moving up a little bit too high and we don’t have enough structure. Now with these programs that are starting, the Stern John Skills Program and so on but we need it to go across the country. Birmingham had a problem fifteen years ago with high crime rates and it has come down has football been apart of that?
Stuart: Yes. And also cricket as well. I think Rugby has played its’ part as well. So you’ve got three big sports all trying to get into the big city area all trying to get into the bad areas, breakup the gangs break up the kids give them something to work towards and you know focus give them some practice time so quality time you know. Get them away from the negativity that exists in their environment.
Anil: And expose them to positive things.
