Fābregas Interview in the Times

[pablopicasso_10]

I don't like watching the way Bolton (in the past), Blackburn or Stoke play - personally, I'd rather watch paint dry than sit through a season of that.

However, it does make me laugh to hear Wenger and Fabregas (to a lesser extent) whingeing about it.

What it comes down to is that Wenger's side play great football but they have a major issue when they come up against physical teams, who frequently get the better of them.

The answer is to adapt the way you play to overcome it, not to whinge on about it like the first obligation of all teams is to play against Arsenal in a way which enables them to play to their strengths.

If you play in the English league with a team of players of the physical constitution of Samir Nasri or Rosicky, you will win nothing. I don't know why Wenger seems to have forgotten this in recent years. It's as though he's forgotten how important Patrick Viera was for them.

the thing that amuses me the most when wenger whinges about other teams being overly physical, is he conveniently forgets the likes of dixon, winterburn, adams, keown, petit, vieira, bergkamp, and the likes, kicking lumps out of teams and gaining arsenal under wenger, 90+ red cards...

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

They have a crop of good players and finally do well at a couple of tournaments after decades of failure which would even have embarrassed  England. So Fabregas decides to get all romantic about kids playing football in the streets (paella for goalposts?) and they are going to have a conveyor belt of world class talent coming through. Well listen up Senor Cesc, the streets of Madrid aint like Rio, the streets of Barcelona aint like Sao Paulo. Enjoy your success while it lasts, Spain will fall back just like the French did and you will not have sustained success of decades like the Brazilians.
Frankly, I have little time for the Spaniards and isnt somewhere I would take a holiday. Right through from a fat waiter managing the scousers back to the wrong side winning the civil war, I really dont like them (apart from Carlos Cuellar of course). In fact, I hope my ancestors were there sinking the bloody armada.
Basil Fawlty had the right idea how to treat a spaniard.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

For everything Fabreagas says that may or may not be true, the one stat that screans out at you i the comparison of qualified coaches in England compared to Spain.  Was it something like 250 compared to 3,000?  That's not about the conduct of young men, how the professional clubs play or a reflection of the social situation in the country.  It's about having people who know what they're doing teaching kids the basics of ball control and movement.

I think you were referring to this article in the Guardian:

Football coach shortage paints bleak picture for England's future• Only 2,769 English coaches hold Uefa's B, A and Pro badges
• Spain has 23,995, Italy 29,420 and Germany 34,790
 

England is miles behind leading European countries in turning former professional players into Uefa-quailfied coaches.
 
As England fans grasp for indicators of how their team will perform at the World Cup, Digger can reveal statistics that will lead only to pessimism.

Three years ago an official report concluded that coaching is the "golden thread" leading to international success, but new Uefa data shows that there are only 2,769 English coaches holding Uefa's B, A and Pro badges, its top qualifications. Spain has produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.

Between them those four nations have provided eight of the 12 finalists at all the World Cups and European Championships since 1998. England, meanwhile, have not appeared in a tournament final in 44 years.

There are 2.25 million players in England and only one Uefa-qualified coach for every 812 people playing the game. Spain, the World Cup favourites, have 408,134 players, giving a ratio of 1:17. In Italy, the world champions, the ratio is 1:48, in France it is 1:96, Germany 1:150 and even Greece, the Euro 2004 winners, have only 180,000 registered players for their 1,100 coaches, a ratio of 1:135.

Three years ago Richard Lewis – the Rugby Football League chairman who was commissioned to lead a joint youth-development study for the Football Association, Premier League and Football League – concluded: "It is no coincidence that sports achieving success on the international stage place great store on quality coaching – not just at the highest level but right throughout the athlete and player development pathway."

He recommended that "the system of coaching and player development should be so enhanced that there is an increasing stream of better young players qualified to play for England – players who have been better coached from a very young age, and who have the technical, physical and mental skills to succeed at the very highest international level."

Yet in the two years following Lewis's Review of Young Player Development in Professional Football, comparatively few had progressed on the coaching pathway. Uefa's census in July 2006 found there to be 1,430 Uefa B-qualified coaches in England, 397 with the A badge and only 45 with Pro licences. In the October 2009 study those numbers had crept up to 1,759, to 895 and to 115 respectively.

Spain have almost as many Pro-licensed coaches as there are English coaches of any stripe: 2,140 as against 2,769. Again, the ratios of available Pro-licensed coaches to players show an alarming gulf between England and the top-ranked football nation – 1:190 in Spain, 1:19,565 here.

At the current rate of progress it will take 123 years for England's resource of Pro-licensed coaches to match Spain's today.

Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, told Digger: "There is a link between coaching and quality. The timing of this is really important: the World Cup will bring this to a head, particularly if England do badly. How you do internationally is a proper reflection of your nation's youth development."

Taylor considers it an embarrassment that despite the wealth of the English game there is such a poor resource of qualified coaches. Indeed the PFA grew so frustrated at the lack of leadership shown by the football authorities that it has introduced its own coaching department in an attempt to turn today's players into tomorrow's coaches.

The League Managers' Association has also been forced to go it alone. Its chief executive, Richard Bevan, said: "Historically there has been a significant lack of investment in the provision of management support and training programmes for the development of young coaches and managers. We are embracing the corporate world for funding after recent proposals were declined by the FA and the Professional Game Board, which was immensely disappointing." There are hopes that the proposed National Football Centre at Burton-on-Trent will provide impetus to coaching development. But the funding to develop the site has still not been secured, suggesting English success could still be decades away.

I agree with Toronto about Chelsea. It may not be the sexy football of Arsenal but they have all right ingredients to have the perfect team for the PL. As for Barcelona, they are becoming the most boring side in the world to watch. Millions of passes and scared of shooting, at least Arsenal play a bit more direct and I'd actually thought they'd toughened up this season but typically, when they don't get all three points, they blame the opposition. Wenger, after all these years in the PL should realise you have to win the midfield battle before you can move on to the sexy stuff.

[darren woolley]

Everybody want's to play the the spain way yes easy on the eye and they are successful but the success wont last forever.

[Phil from the upper holte]

I must say though I think Fabregas looks like a greasy pervert, he does touch on a couple of interesting points here.  Nonetheless, I don't agree with the 'Bolton' bashing.  However, I believe the ideas of discipline/etiquette/respect are extremely important.  The reason I border on unrational dislike for most of the England national team - JT/Lamps/Ashley Cole - is because they come across as egotistical smeg heads who do not even know the meaning of the word respect.

That made me laugh out loud at my desk

[PeterWithesShin]

In today's Times Cesc Fābregas criticises the win-at-all-costs mentality in the Premier league and believes that it is of no help to England's international cause. Here are some quotes from the article:
“In Spain we believe in one style of football. The way we play is most important. It’s not just about winning, it’s about how you do it. If you lose, you go again. You will never play the ball long or do things you are not used to. We want to win by playing football.
“No Spanish teams would play like Bolton.

I'm guessing he's never seen a video of the Super Cup 2nd leg.

[taylorsworkrate]

I don't like watching the way Bolton (in the past), Blackburn or Stoke play - personally, I'd rather watch paint dry than sit through a season of that.

However, it does make me laugh to hear Wenger and Fabregas (to a lesser extent) whingeing about it.

What it comes down to is that Wenger's side play great football but they have a major issue when they come up against physical teams, who frequently get the better of them.

The answer is to adapt the way you play to overcome it, not to whinge on about it like the first obligation of all teams is to play against Arsenal in a way which enables them to play to their strengths.

If you play in the English league with a team of players of the physical constitution of Samir Nasri or Rosicky, you will win nothing. I don't know why Wenger seems to have forgotten this in recent years. It's as though he's forgotten how important Patrick Viera was for them.

I don't like Wenger, never have done.  However on the physical argument he definitely has a point.  Two of his players in the last 3 years have had their leg held together only by a sock.  That should not happen under any circumstances.

[Monty]

I don't like Wenger, never have done.  However on the physical argument he definitely has a point.  Two of his players in the last 3 years have had their leg held together only by a sock.  That should not happen under any circumstances.

Spot on. The Premier League has had at least 12 double leg-breaks as a direct result of a challenge from an opposition player, so we're excluding horrible freak accidents like David Busst. Out of the other big 5 leagues of Europe in the same time period, since 1992, the second highest is France with 2. The problem is almost never malice but is almost always stupidity, rashness and a lack of actual tackling technique.

To be fair to Wenger, he always says that he admires the competitiveness of the English game, but it's the mad challenges he doesn't like. We have a very different idea of what is acceptable to the rest of the world, and it's a key reason why we don't produce as many technically good youngsters as the rest of Europe: if they're not certain that their technique and ability to change direction won't be protected from leg-breaking challenges, they're naturally discouraged from doing it. It's changing, thank God, but too gradually for my liking.

[peter w]

Thing is its only now that Spian have all his success, yet their teams have been playing that way for years. before then it was the great Dutch teams that excelled at club level but never won anything at international level. England are always there or thereabouts - save this years poor World Cup - so mourning our death because a freaky good Spanish crop of players is neither her enor there. In anothe rgeneration it could be Portugal, Germany, or us.

10 years ago we were hearing about the brilliant french and their system, now its someone elses turn. Football is cyclical like everything else in lfe. If we play like the Europeans it doesn't mean that we'll suddenly start winning World Cups.

[Monty]

10 years ago we were hearing about the brilliant french and their system, now its someone elses turn. Football is cyclical like everything else in lfe. If we play like the Europeans it doesn't mean that we'll suddenly start winning World Cups.

Funnily enough, the continentals have won quite a few World Cups between them. We've won one, under a particularly good tactician and with three particularly great players in the shape of Banks and the two Bobbys. We've not only not won any major tournaments since, we've almost never played well. Seeing as we're the only ones who play our 'style' and others who play a more technical style tend to win, it's fair to say we're doing something wrong.

[peter w]

10 years ago we were hearing about the brilliant french and their system, now its someone elses turn. Football is cyclical like everything else in lfe. If we play like the Europeans it doesn't mean that we'll suddenly start winning World Cups.

Funnily enough, the continentals have won quite a few World Cups between them. We've won one, under a particularly good tactician and with three particularly great players in the shape of Banks and the two Bobbys. We've not only not won any major tournaments since, we've almost never played well. Seeing as we're the only ones who play our 'style' and others who play a more technical style tend to win, it's fair to say we're doing something wrong.

If you're going to lump the whole continent agaionst us then yes they will have won more World Cups. SAs for our 'style' you telling me that the West gernay team in 1990 played with flair? The West germany of 1974 were not noted for their joie de vivre on the pitch either. in fact they beat the far technically superior French. What about Italy's triumphs in 1982? And again in 2004. Was that substance over the Italian catenaccio style?

Sometimes we are too quick to berate our game and think everyone elses is better. Yes, in periods they are, and the best Europen nations win the most tournaments usually because of their defensive qualities rather than Spanish - or Barcelona - like flair and imagination.

[TheSandman]

England do not play a defensive and stifiling team like the Italians... Indeed they until very recently haven't put much value in a good holding midfielder. So they did play a different style

It's not flair good teams have; it is technical ability.

[peter w]

This 'holding' midfielder is a load of bollocks. Midfielders are midfielders. Some don't compliment others some do. In 80-82 we had bremner doing the donkey work and mortimer trying to get forwrad and Sid pulling the strings. Its a myth that all of a sudden one player sits and one player attacks. That type of midfield would be murdered.

[Monty]

It's not just technique. We've been hugely deficient in two main areas: technique and tactics. And besides, to play catenaccio for instance you need excellent technique in defence, you need good passing to get away on the counter, you need above all else tactical discipline and intelligence. Besides, that Italian side of '82 had wonderful technical players: Bruno Conti, Marco Tardelli and so on - these are excellent players. Same goes for the '06 side - we do not have players anywhere near the brilliance of the technique of Del Piero, Totti or Pirlo. West Germany in '90 weren't a flair team, but then nobody was - and they had slightly better technique than us, and that was a particularly good team we had there.

As for tactics, I think you've just proved me right with this "midfielders are midfielders" comment. So when Ferguson, Mourinho, Wenger, Sacchi, Capello, Houiller even - when they talk about holding midfielders they are wrong, but you are right. I see.

[DB]

The way Spaniards play football reflects thier society in general, extremely respectful and pride in their achievements. They don't tend to have high profile footballers in drugs and cheating on their wives scandals. This is where our football is fundementally wrong. Until footballers get back to respecting everything from the referee to the supporters to the clubs they play for then we will never compete with the likes of Spain.

I dont think it's just our footballers doing it. I just think our red tops report/ sensationalise it a lot more.

Exactly, they don't really care as long as they still do it on the pitch. Blame the papers for build them up, knock them down style of reporting.