Croatia won the group with ease to qualify
for a sixth major tournament since 1991, when the nation, formerly part
of Yugoslavia, was born. Only once since then have they failed in
qualifying. On Wednesday, Croatia's fans saw their team defeat a rigid,
one-dimensional England with the same fluid, passing football, headed by
the excellent, Chelsea-bound playmaker Luka Modric, that will be on
display in Austria and Switzerland. Next summer, 10 years on from the
superb side of Davor Suker, Robert Prosinecki and Bilic who reached the
World Cup semi-final at France 98, Croatia will be among the favourites.
'Slaven [Bilic] told us before the match
he was sure that England would play the long ball,' said Mladen Petric,
scorer of the winning goal, who plays in Germany for Borussia Dortmund.
'That's why it was easy for us to deal with their system. They had to
change, but didn't. In our team, we always have the opportunity to
switch tactics and style. The way we play, holding the ball, playing
short passes, you could say it is in our blood.
'Not just since Croatia, but also before
when we were part of Yugoslavia. For us there have always been great
players. Prosinecki was fantastic, as was Suker [both were also capped
for Yugoslavia].'
Croatia produces a stream of good players
despite having far fewer resources than those available in England,
where every Premier League club has an academy and those in the
Championship a centre of excellence.
The Croatian league has two divisions of
12 and 16 clubs respectively. The country has 1,500 clubs and 135,000
registered footballers, of which 90,000 are aged between six and 19.
England's numbers are in the millions. There are 5,000 coaches in
Croatia - recently they have begun taking the Uefa courses recognised
throughout Europe - of whom 3,000 have some contact with young players,
many of them volunteers. The Croatia Football Federation invests £2m in
youth football each year - a fraction of what is spent in Britain - but
only 10 of the country's 21 regions have any official federation
presence.
But money isn't everything. Suker, winner
of the golden boot as top scorer at France 98, who later played for
Arsenal and West Ham, told Observer Sport: 'Money is very important. But
money is not victory.'
Vatroslav Mihacik, a football school
professor and former goalkeeper, said: 'Our nickname is the Brazil of
Europe because of the style we play. Conditions in Croatia are far worse
than in England where you have better facilities, better pitches,
experts on nutrition and physiology and so on. But we are creative.
Creativity is the deciding factor in growing a good player.'
The philosophy for youth development in
Croatia does seem to be based on fundamental beliefs that are more
prevalent in mainland Europe than in England. Until children are 12, any
formal matches are played with smaller teams (six, seven or eight a
side) on mini-sized pitches in shorter matches that often take place on
handball courts or asphalt. Players are able to express themselves - as
most clubs in the Croatian league have two or three No 10s, young
children are inspired to dribble and beat players. Individuality is
encouraged.
'You cannot make a player in a moment - it
is about the long-term,' said Martin Novoselac, Croatia's head of youth
football, who has coached children for 19 years. 'The most important
thing is taking care over technique and making steady progress. Our boys
do not play in real competitions until they are 12 or 13, and even then
the result is not everything. Creativity is what matters. We are always
teaching them to be creative. They will know how to shoot, play one
touch and dribble. But choices are left to them. You can practise for
100 years, but if you don't have the right feeling it's no good.'
That 'right feeling' seems to be what is
missing in England, the only country among Europe's top football nations
where boys as young as 10 play 11-a-side games, with full-size goals on
full-size pitches that must seem as big as a cricket pitch to the
players. A 10-year-old will be nearly two feet shorter than David James,
yet the goal he must protect is the same size as the England player's.
As Observer Sport reported last July in a
story headlined 'Five Years To save English Football', the game played
and coached by and for children around Europe is a world away from the
thump-it-and-yell culture found at most matches between children who
are, potentially, future England stars.
Trevor Brooking, the FA's head of youth
development, is an outspoken critic of the game provided for primary
school children in England.
'There are better players here than
Holland but in my country the coach is a friend,' said Bert-Jans
Heijmans, a former Dutch second division player who now coaches young
players in the North-East, where he also works for the FA. 'That's
constantly what I don't see here. What I do see is children wondering
why their normally lovely mother is shouting and screaming at them when
they are playing.
'Our philosophy is different in Holland.
There we are child-centred when it comes to football - we ensure their
development is enjoyable. We put them in the middle - it is about them,'
said Heijmans of a country that came top of a Unicef league table that
rated the wellbeing of children in the 21 richest industrial countries.
In last place was the UK. 'Here all the time there is pressure on the
children and their enjoyment.'
Arnold Muhren, the former Ipswich Town and
Manchester United star who now coaches at Ajax, believes boys in England
play 11-a-side too soon, but are given 'proper' coaching too late. 'When
I was over there coaching was left to teachers. No disrespect, but that
is no good. You need people with proper football knowledge - which is
why there has been a lack of young talent in England.'
Paul Cooper founded 'Giveusbackourgame' a
year ago with Rick Fenoglio, a sports scientist at Manchester
Metropolitan University who published a study of Manchester United's
football academy that centred on the 4 v 4 games favoured for their
youth sides. United are one of the few Premier League clubs Brooking
credits with taking the correct approach to coaching their youngsters -
4 v 4 allows all players to be involved, the chance to forget almost
immediately and encourages quick and inventive thinking. For the past
five years United's home matchday programme for their under-nines has
been 4 v 4, but other clubs have not yet introduced it.
'We've got to let children work problems
out for themselves and forget about this playing in leagues because that
makes the game immediately about winning,' Cooper says. 'Children are
very creative, but at the moment their football is like an empty
toothpaste tube - all the enjoyment has been squeezed out.'
Croatia's hero Petric, who learned the
game in Switzerland from the age of two, agrees. 'I played my least
enjoyable football growing up when I was put under pressure from my
parents. For young boys football should be just fun.'
Youth football, and the future of coaching
and football culture in England, has been a hot topic in the aftermath
of last Wednesday's result. On Thursday, after sacking Steve McClaren,
the FA board, led by chief executive Brian Barwick, held a briefing with
journalists.
'One person who isn't here is Sir Trevor
Brooking [FA director of youth development] and we'll be listening very
carefully to his view on how we have to increasingly engage youngsters
in improving technical skills,' Barwick said. 'Certainly Trevor believes
age-appropriate coaching with good coaches at younger ages is the way
forward.'
Brooking echoes the views of Muhren. Boys
aged five and six are given poor coaching, and it stays with them for
life, he believes. And while the Croatians value their creativity, the
national 'hoof it' stereotype still persists in England. In the summer
it was Brooking who said there were five years to save the game. Halfway
through the first one, we appear to have gone backwards.
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