Trying to catch up on events in Canada - a great weekend coaching the players in Mississauga, mostly from Erin Mills Eagles. It’s a pretty big club with growing aspirations as they move into the semi-pro league in Canada. Toronto is an international city and the coaches and players were true to that. In the three days spent working we covered Hungary, England, Croatia, Ukraine, India, Afghanistan and Canada of course. It’s a melting pot of international soccer know how and some talented players too. The city sounds like it is lucky to have government that makes efforts to provide sporting facilities and keep them available to the community. The Hersey Center is a good example of that. The Erin Mills Eagles are kept on course by Josef Komlodi - a Hungarian by descent and former player in the German League. Josef is pretty well connected with a number of clubs and academies in Europe and has spent time working with and observing coaches at Sporting Lisbon, Manchester United, Dynamo Zagreb and West Ham United. It’s important to keep all the links alive as soccer, both on a club and country level, is dependent upon a network that promotes the development of the game. Read ‘Soccernomics’ by Stefan Szymanski & Simon Kuper you’ll consider the importance.Basically you cannot be insular in the world of soccer. My dad talks about the days when a team from Europe came to play in England - we had no idea how the team would play or who the players were. Josef and I talked about soccer in Hungary in the 50’s when the national team played at fortress ‘Wembley’ and beat an indignant English team 6:3 - with the help of the left foot and genius of Puskas. 2011 - and even Sir Alex Ferguson is acknowledging a need for coaches and players to adapt to the latest evolution of soccer - courtesy of Barcelona.
The camp in Canada was attended well - lots of hard working players keen to pick up as much as possible. It did provide an early scare as the 29 expected for the youngest group walked over to me looking more like 60... 54 players in the end - we ran the session as planned with the help of Paul and the other coaches - also set a record for the highest number of players for a WHUIA Regional Camp warm up.
You can see one of the activities - plus the players themselves. We took them all through the academy expectations and focused on vision and awareness - trying to get player’s heads up as often as possible and ‘see the picture’.
So what else does one do in the great city of Toronto? Get up the world’s highest building, that's what...
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| Camera attached ball during a 'Big Sam' long ball drill |
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| Tried to nick it - out of gas though... |
Best telescope store in the world - plus a surprise outside the hotel one morning. I tried to nick the car and pop back to January - thought I might pay West Ham a visit and tell them to re think coaching changes for last season. Decided not too in fear of changing my own past - imagine the disaster of unknowingly changing my allegiance from the Hammers to Spurs through some mix up at the engineering firm my parents worked at. Could have been named ‘Danny’ instead of Matthew and never know my true destiny. Ah, leave the past alone. Oh, and Spurs, here’s a good idea for you - stay in North London. A move to Stratford for that lot could have caused West Ham and Millwall fans to agree about something at last and get some target practice in before their two scheduled league matches this season.
Final thoughts for the day. If you could go back in time and change something what would it be - oh, and let’s avoid obvious yet stupid stuff like stick a 50 quid on England beating Germany 5-1 in Munich or become best mates with Jason Statham and instantly be guaranteed victory in any mix up with Millwall fans.
Here we go:
Tony Gale does not get sent off by Keith Hackett in the FA Cup semi v Forest.
Paul Ince’s last minute equalizer v West Ham shaves the post an goes wide.
West Ham’s academy stars never leave and the Irons rule Europe
Zola stays, wins the Premier League, Champions League and goes on to become Pope.
West Ham beat Spurs to the Olympic Stadium, oh that happened already. Haha...
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