The Godfather of Greenery

Chapter 684 Stepped youth training

At the end of the No.17 round of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur beat Chelsea 4-0 at home and won 67 unbeaten games, which caused a lot of movement in the entire Premier League and European football, but soon , With the end of this round of competition, many media have 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 bi-annual talent day selection event is also held on the 23rd, which is the third day after the end of the [-]th round of the league. held.

Tottenham Hotspur's youth training camp has developed rapidly in the past few years. The strength of the youth team has undergone earth-shaking changes compared to when Ye Qiu first took over. At present, the first team is full of players including Ramsey , Eriksson, Hazard and other youth training players, if they follow the youth training rules, including Neymar, Coutinho and others are counted.

In addition to being well-known in the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur's youth team performed the same as the first team in the group stage of the first European Youth Champions League held this season. , won all six games, and they scored more goals than the first team. They scored 26 goals in six games, averaging more than four goals per game.

This is indeed a statistic that surprised many people, and the Tottenham Hotspur youth team includes Coutinho, Lucas Moura, Pogba, Eriksson, Nick Powell , Varane, Nastasic, Luke? Shaw and Chambers and other young rookies have performed very eye-catching.

In addition to these rookie players who are already well-known and well-known in the forums and fan groups, three young players with good strength have emerged this season, namely the talented Belgian star Januzaj, and the native English midfielder. Field Will? Hughes and Croatia defender Jedvic.

Tottenham Hotspur has always been known for its technology, and the youth team has always respected technology very much. Therefore, the young players emerging in the Tottenham Hotspur team are more likely to win with technology and spirituality, and do not occupy physical aspects. Advantage.

Even Varane, Nastasic and Jedvic, these three central defenders do not have much advantage in physical confrontation, they can only guarantee that they will not suffer, but their skills are quite good, especially Jedvich, this player's skills at the feet are not lost to the technical midfielder at all, and he is very good at taking and delivering the ball in the backcourt.

And there is another good advantage that his defense is more based on consciousness and skills to win, but his body is at a disadvantage. This is also a distinctive 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 they are, the less ideal their results are. On the contrary, the performances of the youth teams of the special city team, Coventry City, Fulham, Reading and other teams are more satisfactory.

But in the age group around U19, Tottenham Hotspur's overall strength has been greatly improved.

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

And if you look further down, in the U18 national team, a group of young rookies such as Patrick Roberts, Ryan Ladson, and Dan Crowley also occupy the main position of this national team, especially Dan? Crawley, regarded as a future rookie, the player's skills are very good, and Patrick? Roberts is known as Messi II.

An obvious phenomenon is that almost all Tottenham Hotspur players are of different age groups. Nick Powell and Luke Shaw were originally supposed to play U18, but they were transferred to U21. Jones entered the national team and occupied an important seat, while Dan Crowley and others who were around 15 years old or a little over 14 years old entered the U18 national team. These are leapfrog challenges.

Of course, like many players who leapfrog the challenge, many players are unable to become the main players in the age group of the national team, but this is a kind of training process for them. They are one or two years older than themselves early Player confrontation, plus Tottenham Hotspur attaches great importance to technical details, so they sculpt and exercise their skills and awareness desperately.

In the past few years, Tottenham Hotspur's youth training camp has also produced many players, but almost none of them can enter the first team. If you count according to the age cycle, you can count two batches, but the tragedy is that, They were more of a transitional product after Ye Qiu's reform of the youth training camp, so naturally they couldn't enter the first team.

Even at the beginning, many people were dissatisfied with Ye Qiu's leapfrog promotion, including young rookies such as Hazzard, Ramsey, Nastasic, and Varane. After the introduction of Phil Jones, many people also felt that Ye Qiu's superficial Pay attention to youth training, but do not reuse youth training.

But Ye Qiu's attitude is very clear. The youth training camp he wants is the same as the top youth training system in continental Europe such as Ajax, which is modern and in line with future tactical trends and trends. Not the original British style.

Some people may have doubts again, so why did you bring in Phil Jones?

This is an attempt by Ye Qiu, just like Wenger is now doing everything he can to reuse Wilshere, and he 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 the requirements of Tottenham Hotspur?
If there is such a person in the Tottenham Hotspur youth team, he does not need to be introduced, but unfortunately, there is not.

Putting it on the current youth team that won all six matches in the European Youth Champions League group stage, Ye Qiu's tactical thinking is fully reflected, because there is less physical confrontation, more technical content, and a clearer tactical thinking.

Active running and coverage, high-intensity oppression and pressing, pass control and cutting are excellent, and the cooperation is also tacit. There are a lot of multi-angle pass and catch cooperation, and most of them send the ball into the opponent's 30-meter area or the big penalty area to complete an attack. , rather than long-range and irresponsible indiscriminate shooting.

This is the overall tactical concept, but the key problem is that this team seems to be very integrated, and everyone in the team is fighting 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 talent and freedom of the players.

An obvious feature is that they have almost no restrictions on positions and responsibilities. Players can do whatever they like when they play, and take on responsibilities wherever they play.

Just like Nick Powell, he is a playmaker, but you can often see him go forward behind the striker, or even move to the wing to be a winger, or even drop back to be a central defender, the same And Will Hughes, this is a very comprehensive England native player, you can't even tell where he plays on the court.

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

In this framework of advocating running, advocating oppression, and advocating pressing, the running and endurance of this group of young players in Tottenham Hotspur have maintained quite good, and Mauro Tassotti, who led the team to play in the Youth Champions League Also actively carry out a large-scale rotation system, so the overall combat effectiveness of the team is ensured.

It can be said that in a few months, this youth team of Tottenham Hotspur has won a lot of media attention, coupled with the low ticket price, they have received crazy support from Tottenham Hotspur fans, even Even Martin Samuel spoke highly of it in his column, thinking that the tactical concept of this youth team is very advanced, playing the concept closest to total defense.

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

First of all, a very important and unavoidable factor is that the adult team has higher physical requirements and consumes more energy.

Just like when the youth team played against Valencia, Valencia was pulled away by ball possession and running. , If you can't run, if you can't grab, you can't grab, and the rhythm is also pulled away by the opponent. You have no way to stop him.

It doesn’t matter if I’m in the senior team, I’m a bit more brutal, I have more physical confrontation, and even many professional players have minor problems such as small movements, or relatively secret harassment and foul language. These are things that everyone takes for granted on professional courts and can be effective contain the opponent.

But it is rare in the youth team.

From another perspective, although the performance of Tottenham Hotspur's youth team in England is good, it is not amazing, mainly because most of the youth team players in England are very good in physical fitness. A misunderstanding that always occurs when selecting talents, or in other words, such a misunderstanding exists in youth training throughout Europe.

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

The reason is simple. The opponents in the group stage are relatively weak, and they are not very targeted. But in the knockout round, all the teams that advance to the knockout round basically belong to the team with stronger strength and better tactical targeting. At this time You still want to continue to play in the loose environment in the group stage, that's impossible!
At this time, you have to face two choices, one, you want to achieve results, and two, stick to your original style of play and thinking.

One case that deserves attention is Chelsea.

During Ye Qiu's time, he had created a youth training system tailored for Chelsea, but later with the arrival of Arnesen, Ye Qiu left the team early, this system was completely disrupted, and he became very eager for quick success.

Looking at the so-called rookies that Chelsea has launched in the past few years, of course, there are also good embryos such as Kakuta, but more of them are some precocious players. Not too big, they can use their bodies to suppress their opponents, and then make themselves perform very well and crush their peers.

But all scouts know that this is an illusion!
You can crush your opponent with your body at the age of 16, and you can do it at the age of 19, but the gap is not that big anymore. What if you are 20 and 21?The opponent's body is up, what advantage do you have?You're only exposing your technical flaws, that's all!

There are a lot of people who were crazy when they were young, but they look mediocre when they are adults, that's how it is!
The growth of all young players is a step-by-step model, step by step, and slowly climb forward.

The reason why it is said that Chelsea’s youth academy is 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 ravage their peers and achieve outstanding results.

But Ye Qiu chose the latter option. When he founded Theobald Research Center, there was a so-called player training practice center, where a group of young players headed by Bobby Harms gathered. Excellent professionals with rich experience and excellent theory. Their existence is to establish and maintain a rigorous ladder player training system for Tottenham Hotspur.

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

So many people say that Tottenham Hotspur's youth training rate is very high, Ramsey is firmly established as the main force, Hazard is eye-catching, Neymar, Coutinho, Eriksson and others are very good. Excellent, Phil Jones seems to have started to take the technical route. In fact, this player training practice center is playing a role behind it.

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

Sky TV specially produced a special episode for this purpose, and broadcast it on the sports channel, which aroused widespread attention from the outside world and the media. Only then did everyone surprised to find that Tottenham Hotspur actually had some departments like this.

For example, what they have never heard before is the tactical library where a group of tactical masters gather to discuss and study future football tactical trends, and the player training practice center for the purpose of training players, as well as the specialized analysis and research of opponents. The head coach's game analysis team...

With the broadcast of Sky TV, this program quickly spread all over the world, and was reproduced and reported on major newspapers, magazines and TV stations. Everyone is surprised to find that behind the success of Tottenham Hotspur, It turns out that there is such a large and meticulous operation team.

According to Tottenham Hotspur CEO Peter Kenyon at the end of the TV show, operating these departments costs at least 1000 million euros more than other teams a year, but this amount of money can be obtained from players. The cost recovery in terms of transfers and reduced injuries is still a huge profit.

This is undoubtedly Tottenham Hotspur's promotion of talent day player selection activities.

In fact, it has become an event that all fans and journalists around the world are eager to pay attention to, not only because of the Christmas carnival, but also because they all want to know who will get Tottenham Hotspur Favor?Who can become another genius selected by Ye Qiu?
But Tottenham Hotspur broadcast an interview with Ye Qiu on the official website and app.

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

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

As for what Ye Qiu said in the interview, Rick Link also mentioned it on the Sky TV program. The Dutchman mentioned a Belgian player, Youri Thielemans, who is only 14 years old now. The player was rejected in the talent selection activity because he performed very unsatisfactorily, but his character made the team like it very much and recommended him.

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

In addition, like Will Hughes, when he participated in the talent day selection event for the first time, his performance was not good, but his attitude in training and confrontation made the scouts of Tottenham hotspur think He rated it highly and invited him to try out again, and he ended up at Tottenham Hotspur, where he did 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, This has made Tottenham Hotspur's talent day selection event once again highly respected by many young players and players' parents all over the world.

However, with the restrictions imposed by FIFA and UEFA rules, players must be over the age of international transfers, and transfers within the European Union must reach the age of 16, so the talent day selection activities are still mainly in England. Supplemented by the EU countries, except for those outstanding players who can be classified as geniuses by De Vissel, they are basically not considered outside of Europe, because the procedures for introducing such players are very troublesome, and there are many follow-up problems , The pressure on the club is very high.

Even a little carelessness may cause transfer disputes.

But even so, the first day of the talent day selection event was still overcrowded.

Ye Qiu arrived in Theobald with his two children. When he entered the youth team, he found that many people gathered in one of the fields. There were crowds of people there, as if they were watching a very surprising thing.

(End of this chapter)