Chapter 684: Step-by-step Youth Training

After the 17th round of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur defeated Chelsea 4-0 at home and won a 67-game unbeaten record, which caused quite a stir in the entire Premier League and European football. However, soon after this round of games, many media shifted their focus to Tottenham Hotspur's Christmas carnival.

This has become an important annual festival in North London. At the same time, Tottenham Hotspur's twice-a-year talent day selection event was also held on the 23rd, which is the third day after the end of the 17th round of the league.

Tottenham Hotspur's youth training camp has developed rapidly in the past few years. The strength of the youth team has changed dramatically compared to when Ye Qiu just took over. At present, the first team is full of youth training players including Ramsey, Eriksen, Hazard, etc. If the youth training rules are followed, Neymar, Coutinho and others are also counted.

In addition to being well-known in the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur's youth team performed just like the first team in the group stage of the first European Youth Champions League held this season, winning all six games, and scoring more goals than the first team, with 26 goals in six games, an average of more than four goals per game.

This is indeed a data that surprised many people, and the young rookies in the Tottenham Hotspur youth team, including Coutinho, Lucas Moura, Pogba, Eriksson, Nick Powell, Varane, Nastasic, Luke Shaw and Chambers, all performed very well.

In addition to these rookie players who are already well-known and well-known in forums and fan groups, three young players with good strength have emerged this season, namely the Belgian genius star Januzaj, England's native midfielder Will Hughes and Croatian central defender Jedvic.

Tottenham Hotspur has always been known for its technology, and the youth team has always been very fond of technology, so the young players emerging in Tottenham Hotspur are more likely to win with technology and spirituality, and do not have an advantage in physical aspects.

Even Varane, Nastasic and Jedvic, these three central defenders do not have much advantage in physical confrontation, but can only ensure that they will not suffer losses, but their technology is quite good, especially Jedvic. The footwork of this player is not inferior to that of a technical midfielder, and the backcourt ball and the ball are very standard.

And another good advantage is that his defense is more about consciousness and skills to win, and the body is at a disadvantage, which is also a significant feature of Tottenham Hotspur's entire youth system.

If you watch Tottenham Hotspur's youth training camp in the past few years, it is not difficult to find a very interesting phenomenon, that is, the younger the age, the worse their results are, but the youth teams of teams like Aston Villa, Leicester City, Coventry, Fulham, Reading and others have better results.

But when it comes to the age group of around U19, Tottenham's overall strength has greatly improved.

In England's U21 national team, four players including Nick Powell, Will Hughes, Luke Shaw and Callum Chambers were selected. Among them, Nick Powell is only 17 years old, but he is already the core of the team. In addition, if Kyle Walker, Phil Jones and Beckham are counted, Tottenham's international players' contribution is not bad.

And if you look down, in the U18 national team, a group of young rookies such as Patrick Roberts, Ryan Ledson and Dan Crowley also occupy the main position of this national team, especially Dan Crowley, who is regarded as a future rookie. This player has excellent footwork, and Patrick Roberts is called Messi II.

An obvious phenomenon is that almost all Tottenham players are cross-age groups. Nick Powell and Luke Shaw were supposed to play for the U18 team, but were selected for the U21 team. Phil Jones entered the national team and occupied an important position. Dan Crowley, who was about 15 years old or more than 14 years old, entered the U18 national team. These are all cross-level challenges.

Of course, like many cross-level challenge players, many players cannot play as the main force in the age group of the national team, but this is a training process for them. They have been competing with players who are one or two years older than themselves early on. In addition, Tottenham attaches great importance to technical details, so they work hard to carve and train their skills and consciousness.

In the past few years, Tottenham's youth training camp has also produced many players, but almost none of them can enter the first team. If calculated according to the age cycle, they can be counted as two batches, but the tragedy is that they are more of a transitional product after Ye Qiu's reform of the youth training camp, and naturally cannot enter the first team.

Many people were even dissatisfied with Ye Qiu's promotion of young rookies including Hazard, Ramsey, Nastasic and Varane. After introducing Phil Jones, many people also felt that Ye Qiu attached importance to youth training on the surface, but did not use it.

But Ye Qiu's attitude was very clear. The youth training camp he wanted was the same as the top youth training system in Europe such as Ajax, which was modern and in line with future tactical trends and trends, rather than the original British style.

Perhaps someone will be confused again, why introduce Phil Jones?

This can be regarded as an attempt by Ye Qiu. Just like Wenger is now doing everything he can to reuse Wilshere, and spent so long in the past to transform Vieira, Alexander Song and other players, Ye Qiu is also trying to see , what if Phil Jones' skills can be improved to meet Tottenham Hotspur's requirements?

If there was such a person in Tottenham's youth team, he would not need to be brought in, but unfortunately, there is not.

Looking at the current youth team that has won six games in the European Youth Champions League group stage, Ye Qiu's tactical ideas are clearly reflected, because there is less physical confrontation, more technical content, and more clear tactical ideas.

Actively running and covering, high-intensity pressure and pressing, passing, controlling and cutting are all very good, and the cooperation is relatively tacit. There is a lot of coordination in passing and receiving from multiple angles. Most of them are completed by sending the ball into the opponent's 30-meter area or the penalty area. Attack, not long shots and irresponsible shots.

This is the overall tactical concept, but the key issue is that this team seems to be very integrated. Everyone on the team is working together, but if you analyze and observe carefully, you will It is found that while this team is fighting as a whole, it is more pursuing the talents and freedom of the players.

An obvious feature is that they have almost no restrictions on positions and responsibilities. Players come on the court, do whatever they want, and take on whatever responsibilities they play wherever they play.

Just like Nick Powell, he is an organizing midfielder, but you can often see him moving forward behind the striker, or even moving to the wing to be a winger, or even dropping back to be a central defender. The same thing And Will Hughes, this is a very comprehensive English player, you can't even tell what position he plays on the court.

Some people say that Will Hughes is like Ballack during the Leverkusen period. On the surface, he is a defensive midfielder, but in fact he actively rushes forward. His running and physical fitness are very good in the team. And when he rushed to the front, as soon as he lost the ball, he immediately jumped into the counterattack. He looked like a ball-grabbing machine, grabbing from the front court to the backcourt.

Within this framework of advocating running, advocating oppression, and advocating pressing, the running and endurance of Tottenham Hotspur's group of young players have been maintained quite well, and Mauro Tassotti led the team in the UEFA Youth League. We also actively carry out a large-scale rotation system, thus ensuring the overall combat effectiveness of the team.

It can be said that in a few months, Tottenham Hotspur's youth team has won a lot of media attention. Coupled with the low ticket prices, they have received crazy support from Tottenham Hotspur fans, and even Even Martin Samuel spoke highly of it in his column, saying that the youth team's tactical concept is very advanced and it plays the concept closest to total offense and total defense.

Regarding such remarks, Ye Qiu also feels that the concept of the youth team is indeed very advanced, but it is not suitable for the adult team.

First of all, a very important and unavoidable factor is that the adult team has higher requirements for physical confrontation and greater physical exertion.

Just like when the youth team played against Valencia, the whole game used ball control and running to pull Valencia away. The young players of the Bat Corps were unable to restrict Tottenham Hotspur's youth team. , You can't run, you can't grab, and the opponent's rhythm is also dragged away. You have no way to contain him.

If you get to the adult team, it doesn't matter. I will be more brutal and have more physical confrontations. Even many of the minor problems of professional players, such as small movements, or more subtle harassment and foul language. These are things that everyone is accustomed to on the professional court, and they can also be effective. to contain the opponent.

But it’s rare in youth teams.

From another perspective, although the performance of Tottenham Hotspur's youth team in England is good, it is not amazing. This is mainly because most of the players in England's youth team have very good physical fitness. This was the case for English teams in the past. There is a misunderstanding that occurs when selecting talents, or in other words, this misunderstanding exists in youth training all over Europe.

To be honest, the media asked Ye Qiu before whether the youth team could win the European Youth Champions League. Ye Qiu expressed his confidence, but in private analysis with the coaching staff, he said that he was not optimistic.

The reason is very simple. The opponents in the group stage are relatively weak and not very targeted. But in the knockout rounds, all the teams that advance to the knockout rounds are basically teams that are stronger and have better tactical targeting. At this time You still want to maintain the same style of playing in a relaxed environment as in the group stage, it's impossible!

At this time, you have to face two choices. One, you want results, and two, you stick to your original style of play and ideas.

One case worthy of attention is Chelsea.

Ye Qiu once built a youth training system for Chelsea, but with the arrival of Arnesen, Ye Qiu left the team early. This system was completely disrupted and became very eager for quick success.

Looking at the so-called rookies launched by Chelsea in recent years, of course, there are also good embryos such as Kakuta, but more of them are players with precocious bodies. These players have physical advantages over their peers, so as long as the technical gap is At a young age, they can use their bodies to suppress their opponents, allowing them to perform extremely well and crush their peers.

But all scouts know that this is an illusion!

You can use your body to crush your opponent at the age of sixteen. You can still do it at the age of eighteen or nineteen, but the difference is not that big anymore. What if you are twenty or twenty-one? The opponent's body is up, what advantage do you have? You will only expose your technical flaws, nothing more!

Many people who were awesome when they were young turn out to be mediocre as adults. That’s how it is!

The growth of all young players is a step-by-step model, slowly climbing forward.

The reason why Chelsea's youth training camp is said to be eager for quick success is because it is filled with a group of players with very precocious bodies, including Michael Woods. Their precocious bodies allow them to easily trample their opponents of the same age and achieve outstanding results.

But Ye Qiu chose the latter option. When he founded Theobald's research center, there was a so-called player training and practice center in it. There was a group of players headed by Bobby Harms who had great youth training capabilities. Excellent, experienced and theoretically excellent professionals, their existence is to establish and maintain a rigorous ladder-based player development system for Tottenham Hotspur.

This group of people will specifically track the detailed data of every player in the Tottenham Hotspur team, and focus on several players that the coaching staff is optimistic about, and tailor a set of progress and development plans for them to help They climbed up one step at a time.

Therefore, many people say that Tottenham Hotspur’s youth training has a high success rate, Ramsey has firmly established himself as the main force, Hazard has performed well, and Neymar, Coutinho, Eriksen and others are very good. Excellent, Phil Jones seems to be taking a technical route. In fact, this player training and practice center is working behind the scenes.

In order to cooperate with the talent day selection activities, Ye Qiu made an exception and allowed Sky TV to enter Theobald's youth training camp. He successively interviewed youth training director Rick Link, youth training consultant Bobby Harms, and grand It introduces the youth training system that has been thoroughly formed and operates stably, as well as the mysterious player training practice center.

Sky TV produced a special episode specifically for this and broadcast it on the sports channel, which attracted widespread attention from the outside world and the media. Only then did everyone find out to their surprise that there was actually someone inside Tottenham Hotspur. some departments like this.

For example, they have never heard of a tactical library that gathers a group of tactical masters to discuss and study future football tactical trends, a player training practice center that specializes in training players, and a player training center that specializes in analyzing and studying opponents. A game analysis team where the head coach provides advice...

With the broadcast of Sky TV, this program quickly spread all over the world, and was reprinted and reported in major newspapers, magazines and TV stations. It was only now that everyone was surprised to discover that behind Tottenham Hotspur's success, It turns out there is such a large and meticulous operation team.

At the end of the TV show, Tottenham Hotspur CEO Peter Kenyon said that operating these departments costs at least 10 million euros more a year than other teams, but this amount of money can be obtained from The cost is recovered in terms of player transfers and reduced injuries, which is still a huge profit.

This is undoubtedly Tottenham Hotspur's way of building momentum for the Talent Day player selection event.

In fact, this has become an event that all fans and reporters around the world are scrambling to pay attention to, not only because of the Christmas carnival, but also because they all want to know who can get Tottenham Hotspur's Favor? Who can become another genius chosen by Ye Qiu?

However, Tottenham Hotspur broadcast an interview with Ye Qiu on their official website and APP.

In this interview, Ye Qiu said that Tottenham Hotspur’s so-called genius day selection does not necessarily select talents. When the team selects players, they often do not necessarily value the players’ existing talents. Ability, but more potential, and potential includes the player's attitude.

"Football is like all industries in the world. It is easy to get started. Anyone who can run and jump can play football. But it is very, very difficult for anyone to become the best and most outstanding superstar in the football industry. It Not only do you have to have outstanding skills and talents, but more importantly, you have to have a great personality, and you also have to have a strong learning ability.”

As for what Ye Qiu said in the interview, Rick Link also mentioned it on the Sky TV program. The Dutch mentioned a Belgian player, Youri Tielemans, who is now only fourteen years old. The young player was initially rejected in the talent selection event because his performance was unsatisfactory, but his character made the team like him and recommended him.

Today, he has become the main force of Tottenham Hotspur's U16 age group and is also the captain of the team, performing very well.

Also like Will Hughes, when he participated in the talent day selection activity for the first time, his performance was not good, but his attitude in training and competition made Tottenham Hotspur scouts He rated him highly and invited him to try again, and he eventually made it to Tottenham Hotspur, where he performed well.

With the previous round of publicity and promotion of Tottenham Hotspur, coupled with the achievements and influence of Tottenham Hotspur in the past few years, and the good reputation won by the North London team in the field of youth training, Tottenham Hotspur's Talent Day selection activity has once again been highly praised by many young players and parents around the world.

However, with the restrictions of FIFA and UEFA rules, players must be over 18 years old for international transfers, and must be 16 years old for transfers within the EU, so the Talent Day selection activity is still mainly based in England, supplemented by EU countries. Except for those outstanding players who can be identified as genius level by De Visser, players outside Europe are basically not considered, because the procedures for introducing such players are very troublesome, and there are many subsequent problems, and the club is under great pressure.

Even if you are not careful, it may cause transfer disputes.

But even so, the first day of the Talent Day selection activity was still crowded.

Ye Qiu arrived at Theobald with his two children. When he entered the youth team, he found that many people were gathered in one of the venues. The place was crowded with people, and they seemed to be watching something amazing.