Time well spent with Barcelona…The Escola Methodology!

Once again, I apologize for my lack of posting.  Club soccer is in full gear and it’s been a busy but exciting start to the season.  Just before the club season began, I had the opportunity to work one of the FC Barcelona Escola camps that have been going around the US.  I was a bit skeptical at first as to the how legitimate the opportunity would be, but can say that it was an extremely valuable experience.  The camp itself was far from perfect from the player’s and parent’s perspective, but as a coach it was phenomenal. 

FCB Escola sent two coaches over to oversee and run the camp.  Aleix Gibert the director of the 6-7 year olds at the Escola and Oscar Hernandez the U10 Academy coach were our Barcelona coaches.  Before, I continue, however, let me explain the difference between the Escola and the Academy.  The Escola is aimed at players from 6-12 years old and serves primarily as a mechanism to spread the FC Barcelona philosophy in a broader perspective.  Player’s must try out to gain entrance and pay a nominal monthly fee (they were shocked when I told them how much players in the US must pay. The first words out of their mouths were “that must change”).  In addition, all games are in house.  However, while these players are of some pedigree they are not the cream of the crop.

The Academy or La Masia is composed of the top players Barcelona can find across each age group.  These players are being groomed to play in the first team.  The players are treated as professionals and everything in their daily lives is carefully scheduled and monitored. 

Escola players can, of course, gain entrance to the Academy should they prove good enough, but the coaches were very explicit that the methodologies used by each program, while holding to the same core tenants, were completely different.  They did not go into much detail regarding how the Academy works so I will only offer information that I could glean from them and while I believe I can read between the lines enough to figure out how it works, I do not want to speak out of turn.

Regardless, the information about the Escola will be more relevant to the majority that are reading this blog.

All of the local coaches were required to attend a 2 hour education meeting in which Aleix and Oscar outlined briefly the core philosophy and methodology of the Escola.  They were also gracious enough to spend several lunches with me personally going into more detail.  In addition, I spent as much time as I could around them watching, listening, and learning. 

At the core of the philosophy and methodology is possession (huge shock I know).  Every activity and session was geared around maintaining possession of the ball to create goal scoring opportunities.  Defensive sessions were geared around pressing and winning the ball back as quickly as possible.  Activities were required to be as game like as possible and include each pillar and moment of the game.  In addition, it was important that each activity allowed and included as much as possible everything you can do in a game (dribble, pass, receive, shoot, tackle etc).  There were very few restrictions although each activity had specific manipulations to bring out the topic.  Each session allowed the kids to simply play the game of soccer and let the game be the guide to learning.

Objectives for each session were clear and specific.  Each session included a technical, game, and system objectives.  They were very specific for us to only use 1 or 2 coaching points for each objective.   I found this to be very interesting as I felt there was time and opportunity to teach more.  However, I found it to be very effective.  You end up letting the game flow a lot more as well as leaving room for the players to figure out things on their own.  Certainly, something I’ve always known and practiced. 

I have always felt that coaches show up with too many coaching points which often ruins the practice.  The players never have the opportunity to really focus and try to learn what the coach has just taught because their bombarded with new information.  However, the Escola almost takes this to an extreme.  For instance, in the passing and receiving session they only wanted us to focus on the kids opening their body to the field when receiving.  That was it.  Nothing more.  But what it naturally led to were the players naturally receiving the ball with the foot furthest from pressure and into space.  I didn’t need to say it.  Simply telling them to open their hips led to the next step.

The structure of the session went along with the objectives.  Each session consisted of a 20 minute technical warm up, which included 5′ of skills exercise, 10′ of a technical game and 5′ of stretching.  The main part of the session included 3 sections: technique, tactics/game, and system.  The technical section session usually consisted of a possession game (rondo was very prevalent).  The tactical section was more functional, which added decision making to the technical piece learned earlier, and the system section was a game in which the techniques and tactics learned earlier were implemented within the Escola system (for 7v7 the system is 1-3-2-1).

What I found most interesting, but not wholly surprising, was that every age group followed the exact same session plan.  from 6 years old up to 14.  Expectations for each age group as well as depth of information, of course, varied across each age group but what was actually done remained the same.  I was not a huge fan of the National Youth License when I took it.  While some of the psychology was useful (although Piaget’s psychology is dated and not generally used across other disciplines) the way activities had to be designed made no sense to me.  Why does the ball have to be a squid or a butterfly or treasure and the goal need to be the fish net or an island or whatever else?  If they are old enough to play and enjoy soccer why can they not train and enjoy soccer?  As long as the session looks like soccer, there is no need for the coach to show up wearing Bulwinkle horns.

In my time at lunch with the coaches I was able to ask some more specific questions which they were happy to answer.   One of the questions I was curious to ask was whether they emphasized a particular technique at certain ages.  For instance, several years ago we were told that at 5,6,7,8 the majority of our sessions should focus primarily on dribbling.  They found that a strange idea.  At the Escola, they have technique separated into 8 sections (can’t seem to find my notes as to what the 8 sections specifically were, however).  Each attacking technique is paired with a defensive technique.  So for instance, passing and receiving is paired with intercepting.  Over the course of a month an Escola team will train 8 times, in which 6 of them will be on passing and receiving and 2 will cover the intercepting.  Their answer to me was that they view all of the techniques as equally important. 

One of the other questions I asked was if they used pattern play.  The answer was rather emphatically, no.  Both admitted, that in the past pattern play was used, but based on the current philosophy and style of play they felt it created robots.  Rather they train their players simply to look for and exploit space.  Space is the key term for them.  Movement off  the ball and of the ball should always be into space while maintaining the group’s width and depth. 

I also commented on how much of the session was geared towards decision making rather than specifically on technique.  They commented that for them it is different.  The players they get already have a good technical base usually formed through unstructured play.  So their job is simply to refine technique and focus more on teaching decision making.   For us they would recommend more focus on technique, but emphasized that all technical work should be accompanied with decision making.  Training technique in isolation they felt is useless for young players.

This gave me an opportunity go back to the pattern play question.  We work with different players.  Their players probably already have a natural feel, instinct, or saviness for the game.  Our’s do not. They don’t watch the game, and most of them are probably not training on their own.  Therefore, they do not have any “programmed” responses for certain situations.  So I commented that I felt it was helpful sometimes to give them patterns as a way to recognize options within a game situation.  They agreed as long as I gave each player a couple of options rather than dictating A passes to B who passes to C etc.

Obviously, I cannot do the experience justice by writing about it. While much of what they had to say/teach were things I already practice, the little details I gleaned were invaluable.  And that’s the difference.  They take care of all of the small details from which part of the foot should be used for each situation to making sure the pinnies are the correct side out. 

As for the Academy, while the core philosophy is the same, the methodology is much different.  They were hesitant to go into much detail although I was invited by Oscar to Barcelona to watch whenever I could make the trip.  What I was able to find out is that what is taught and how it is taught is much closer to the first team.  Their soccer age is so far advanced that they are taught team concepts at the youngest ages.  Tactical periodization is the methodology that most resembles what they are doing, and teams are very specifically taught the tactics and system that the first team is playing.  Technique is, of course, a key component but more importantly for them is soccer intelligence. 

Overall, I was very pleased with the opportunity.  Not only from the standpoint of what I learned, but perhaps even more so was that it confirmed that what I am doing is correct.  In fact, Aleix commented that if I spoke Catalan he would offer me a job.  On the to do list: learn Catalan as quickly as possible.