The Jags Meet Marta!

The Jags played a bunch of friendlies with the Scott Galleger Club in St. Louis and got to meet the great Marta at the hotel. She was exceptionally nice to take the time to talk with us and let us get a team picture. Who knows which of our Jaguars might be the next Marta in the making!

Valentine Day Tourney Champs!!!

The Jags participated in the Darien Dynamo's 2010 Valentine's Day Tournament at The Max in McCook, IL, finished 3-0-1 and won the Championship (See all the Final Standings)!  Check our Movie Gallery for highlights and cool moves the team made from all 4 games!

Jaguars Ranked #4 in the Nation!

National Soccer Ranking.com has released their Spring 2010 rankings with Team Chicago Jaguars ranked #1 in Region II and #4 in the nation!  See the complete listing on the NSR Girls U11 National & Regional Rankings website.

Phil Nielsen's Week Tour at Ajax!

Team Chicago's own Phil Nielsen spent a week in Amsterdam learning the secrets of one of the world's best soccer development clubs. Read his five-day daily diary of the experience here! 

Day I

Over the next week I will share some of my experiences here in Holland as I follow the youth development scheme at Ajax - arguably one of the top 5 clubs in the world when it comes to developing elite players.

Today's schedule included watching all the youth teams (U9-U18) train, and then finishing off by watching the U19s play against Den Haag and having a great soccer conversation over dinner with two of the Ajax youth coaches.

The hightlights and the food for thought were:

1) All U9-U13s get equal playing time balanced out over the season. "Winning is never as important as the responsiblity to develop these young boys"

2) Watching Dennis Bergkamp, Frank de Boer, and Wim Jonk run U13 and U15 practice sessions it was clear how important youth development is to Ajax. They are 3 of the 10 best Dutch players over the past 20 years, and they are now coaching the young boys instead of professional teams. "The best coaches should be coaching the youth players"

3) Currently the main focus of improvement at Ajax is to get the boys to ping (with lots of pace) passes onto the feet of teammates who are already moving when they receive the ball. "The modern game requires incredibly fast ball movement to isolate defenders, so passes must be crisp, and delicate first touches must be moving the ball away from pressure"

Tomorrow brings more practice sessions and watching the U13s (coached by Dennis Bergkamp) play a league game.

Ajax Study Tour Day II

It was another wonderful day at the Ajax academy.

It started by watching Brian Roy (a former stand-out winger on the Dutch World Cup team) teach the U15 attackers who to draw out the wide defender and then attack the space behind him and delivering a perfect cross.

Then it was onto watching Wim Jonk working with the top U16 strikers on pulling away from the defender, receiving the ball on one touch towards goal, and finishing with the composed second touch.

After these sessions I spent an hour talking to the Chinese Men's National Team Coach Gao Hongbo. He is spending the week here at Ajax doing the same as me - trying to pick up as much information about player development as possible. Of course, he's looking to use it to make sure that China qualifies for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, while my goal is slightly less ambitious :-)

Then we watched a terric match between the Ajax U13s and the U14 Regional ODP team. The level of play was just superb, and the speed of play was incredibly high. It was without a doubt the best U13-14 game I've ever seen.

Finally, I watched a bit of an Old Boys which included Aron Winter who won the 1988 European Championship and played in the 1994 & 1998 World Cups for Holland and Shota Arveladze who was the leading goal scored in both Holland and Turkey in the past decade. It was fantastic to watch the skills they still possess. Shota scored a cracker of a goal from 30 yards out that bent around a defender and into the upper-90.

The main thoughts to ponder for today were:

1) "In the attacking 3rd you should always let your best player take throw-ins, since the thrower is usually the only unmarked player in the attacking 3rd" Johan Cruyff (One of the greatest players and coaches of all time)

2) "When defending on top of their own penalty box the two center backs should position themselves just inside of the two post to help cut the size of the goal down" Frank de Boer (FIFA World Cup 1998 All-Star team)

3) There is a plethora of extremely talented players in this academy, what is the difference between those who make it as a professional and those who don't? "The amount of extra work they are willing to do outside of practice. Simply coming to practice and working hard is never enough - they must train on their own and in special sessions" Eddie van Schaick (U12 Ajax coach)

Ajax Academy Day III

Day 3 of my tour brought several interesting experiences. First, I watched 36 U8s & U9s try out for the Ajax Academy. The quality of these players was phenomenal. They had already been scouted by one of Ajax 80 scouts who cover a 40-mile radius of Ajax, so this wasn’t an open try-out, but I was still impressed by the technical and tactical ability of these youngsters. Interestingly enough, the only testing was having the boys play 8v8 for 2 hours. They solely get judged by what they can do in a real soccer environment.

Then it was onto the eye-opener of the day as I was introduced to the Ajax Judo coach. 3 years ago they hired Ronald Joorse (the Dutch Olympic Judo coach) to work with the young boys, and the results have been magnificent. Based on just one session Ronald can predict with 80% certainty which boys won’t be asked back to the program the following year. He has no say in the matter – only the soccer coaches do – but based on the attitude and physical attributes of the boys in that first session he can predict who won’t make it. This was an eye opener for the Ajax staff, so now his program covers all the boys from U8 to U19.
Ronald is a firm believer in “multi-skills” which focuses on creating a strong body and mind through U11, and only then do you truly specialize in your chosen sport. This allows the boys do develop all the core physical and mental competencies needed to succeed in any sport before committing fully to one sport. And it also prevents burn-out, as the kids aren’t locked into one sport for too long.

It was clear the Ajax boys loved the Judo training. And because Judo focuses on the whole body, rather than just the lower body which most soccer training does, it also strengthens the players awareness of opponents on the field, and their ability to “control” their immediate opponent through simple touches or a gently push - using their momentum against them.

Ronald also trains the top Dutch golfers who have realized that his expertise can help their stance and swing – especially in windy and rainy conditions.
Finally, it was onto watching the U11 team play against a U13 opponent. While the boys were totally outmatched in size they more than held their own. Superior ball-handling and passing beat out the greater size and strength. However, the quality of play was far below the U13s who played the day before. It was clear that the development between U11 and U13 is quite significant - especially, when it comes to field vision, and passing in one or two touches.
The thoughts of the day were:

1) Maybe we should partner with a Judo program to offer this type of training to our players? I’ve already thought about partnering with a Bikram Yoga studio, but after seeing the Ajax Judo program, it seems that this would be another great addition.

2) In talking to Johan Neeskens: “Why did you choose to play 4-4-2”? “We play 3-5-2”! “But you had a 4-back defense”? “We play 3-5-2”!!! “But you defended with 4 players”??? “When we have the ball, we play 3-5-2”!!!
So he defines his formation by what it looks like when his team has the ball. Everywhere else in the world we define our formation based on the opponents having the ball. A very interesting subtle difference.

3) “Here at Ajax we want our players to face the opponent’s goal when they receive the ball and we want them to be moving the ball on their first touch. We also push them to be moving as they receive the ball. Quick ball and player movement are key to the Ajax way”

4) My buddy Eddie told me that an older brother of one of his U12 players punched him in the face last fall because he thought his kid brother should be getting more playing time. Moral of the story – there are crazy parents/family members all over the world. (Needless to say the boy is no longer with Ajax)

Ajax Day 4 & 5!

The past couple of days have been packed with watching and discussing soccer.

I watched the Ajax First Team practice yesterday. It was a closed session so we were the only spectators other than the Chinese National Team Coach and Frank de Boer who coaches the U19s and is the Assistant Coach for the Dutch World Cup team.

Ajax is coached by Martin Jol who previously coached at Tottenham Hotspurs in the Premiership and at Hamburger Sports Verein in Germany. His assistant is Danny Blind who captained Ajax to a Champions League win in 1995. So two extremely experienced coaches.

It was interesting to see that the pros run the same training exercises as we do - except at a much higher pace and intensity. The technical ability was outstanding and the repetition required in their exercises was remarkable.

Then we had a conversation with Sonny Silooy who played for Ajax for 14 years and 25 games for the Dutch National Team. He then coached in the Ajax Academy for a number of year, but now he's moving to Dayton, OH to run the Dayton Dutch Lions program. We had a great conversation about Dutch Soccer and American Soccer, and it was nice to be able to lend some expertise to such an experienced player and coach. We've already made plans for our Academy teams to play each other in the future.

I also got to watch Arnold Muhren coach the U14 boys. Arnold revolutionized English soccer when he came to first Ipswich and then Manchester United in the 1980s. Up until that point the English game had been kick and rush, but with Arnold's skillful passing game Ipswhich and ManU started to keep the ball on the ground, and slowly but surely the English game changed. And of course the number of foreign players in Englad exploded.

Arnold is a very quiet and introspective person, and it was nice to see his training and hear a few ideas from him about youth development and the future of soccer.

Then we spent some time chatting with a long-time team manager for the Academy. The team managers function much like our team managers except they have to be former Ajax Academy players, and they have to understand and buy into the Ajax system. Hans told some great stories about taking Wesley Sneijder (Inter), Raphael van der Waart (Real Madrid), and Ryan Babel (Liverpool) to international tournaments and having to get them back into their rooms at night when they had snuck out to visit the local disco.

He also shared stories about Zlatan Ibrahimovic from his time at Ajax, as well as about the American John O'Brien who came to Ajax Academy when he was 14 and ended up being a First Team player at Ajax and a U.S. World Cup player.

Finally, I watched the speed & fitness coach run the kids through the paces, and Bryan Roy do another very good wing-play & crossing activity.

Thoughts for the day were:

1) The key to mastery is repetition. Our kids do not enjoy repetition, but if they want to master the skills they must have plenty of opportunities for repetitive training of those skills. Even the top pros have to do repetitive skill exercises.

2) Another Johan Cruyff thought:"When you match up on defensive corner-kicks you shouldn't match your tallest player against the opponent's tallest player and your smallest player against their smallest player. If you do so you run the risk of losing both battles. Instead you should match your tallest player up against their smallest to make sure you win that battle, and then teach your smaller players how to beat a taller player to the ball". I don't know if I agree with this, but it certainly makes you think?????

3) Frank de Boer about the Holland game plan against the U.S. earlier this month: "We knew we only had to worry about Landon Donovan, and that we would have trouble defending against him, so we decided to work on denying him the service. The plan worked to perfection, and Donovan wasn't threat and we had control of the match".

4) An observation from talking to the Ajax staff: On the sports science side (nutrition, recovery, testing etc.) we are light-years ahead in the U.S. Most Division I programs in the U.S. have more advanced programs based on the newest research in sports science than Ajax does. Here soccer - and youth development - is still almost exclusively an art, where in the U.S. soccer is almost exclusively a science. We need to learn from each other.