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Marc Van Geersom Belgium FA Head of National Teams
“ It’s about recognising potential. I’m always talking about our late-developers. It’s a project we’ve had for four years now.”
What is the player development philosophy in Belgium? Ten years ago we started a philosophy which had many pillars. As well as the technical pillars we also used the idea of a ‘bridge’ between the young players and the senior players. The pillars for that bridge are fun and formation. If it’s not fun the boys don’t learn; you need to explain something with fun. Another pillar is the formation; you call it the ‘four corners’, we have something very similar, but with something called the ‘philosophy’ corner. We’ve worked with universities and psychologists to develop that domain.
But of course the most important thing is the players. If they are not open enough to learn or don’t understand what it takes to become a professional then they will never reach the other side of the bridge. It’s about learning and giving them the opportunity to develop.
What technical/tactical aspects are including in the philosophy? It’s about playing through the zones in a 4-3-3 and developing an understanding of the game. We are not looking only for technical skills but looking for players who have an insight into the game. Even if they were late developers we work with them.
How do you know which players have ‘insight’ into the game? It’s not so difficult to see. If you have a situation on the pitch the player will show if he knows when to keep the ball or if he has to dribble. He is the decision-maker. You have to educate your coaches so that they can see what we are looking for. It’s the same with the scouts, if the scouts don’t know what we’re looking for then we will never bring the best players together. So now we have courses for scouts.
At what age do the federation start to identify talented players? In Belgium we start to identify players aged U14. We want to bring them into the top sport schools at U14, where they have a higher number of training sessions. We want to go from six to, eight to, twenty hours of practice time for a youngster at that age. But it’s so difficult to say who is talented and who will become at a later age a [Thomas] Vermaelen, [Vincent] Kompany or [Marouane] Fellaini. Sometimes the later you start the better it is.
How do you cater for late-developers? It’s about recognising potential. I’m always talking about our late-developers. It’s a project we’ve had four years now. We didn’t have the late developers at first, they would come [to the national youth teams] once or twice a year and we would think they don’t have the body or the physique and believed we couldn’t work with them in the national teams.
Now, as part of our ‘Future’ project we have two teams for every age-group [one group for the late-developers]. We are, of course, talking about many players who will not make it, but I’m sure maybe 50% of the ‘Future Project’ will make it to the end of the bridge.
Do you tell the players that that they are late- developers? When we split them and tell them they are in the late-developers group they tell us ‘no I am not a late developer, I can be in the other team, I can play for my country.’ So you need to tell them that they are late- developers. You can be a physical late-developer, you can mentally be a late-developer so there can be lots of problems. You must tell the player that they will get all of the same chances, the same programme and the same experience. We hope we can get more boys to the other side of the bridge.
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