Suspenseful whispers of “what sort of brain has that lad got?” from fellow candidates are followed by an eruption of congratulatory cheers and the 19-year-old is welcomed into the dressing room through a pasillo – a guard of honour. He has completed his final practical assessment and has been given feedback from the course tutors. Like the rest of us, he is now a Uefa A licenced football coach. Once he completes his 160 hours of assessed coaching hours, that is.
The young coach has just completed the last of his 12 practical assessment days, including a 40-minute on-pitch exam. As the sweltering Mediterranean sun beat down on the parched turf, endless instructions were thrown at him. “OK, now what if this player hasn’t turned up or got injured in the warm-up?” bellowed one tutor, signalling for one of the players to leave the session. The young coach threw a bib at another player immediately, telling him that he was now the neutral and should play for whichever team is in possession.
“Good. But now you’ve created an overload in every zone for the team with the ball, which isn’t loyal to the topic as they don’t have to think or work to create the superiority in numbers where you want,” said the tutor. The aspiring coach reacted by adjusting two of the cones and telling the players: “Now you can only score after creating and using an overload in these wide areas!” The tutors nodded in approval.
While the session was paused for a quick drinks break, the tutors told the coach that the players were tired and the level of quality was dropping. Desperate to maintain his innovative standards, he added flat discs to the pitch, with goalkeepers becoming “acting neutrals” and teams now playing out from the back from the goal they score in, which allowed them to preserve their shape, structure and principles without consuming as much energy. “What a little bastard,” muttered one of the tutors, failing to disguise his impressed smirk as the session develops.
Three whistles blew to the tune of the full-time whistle and one of the two tutors asked the relieved looking young coach: “Did this look like what you had on your session plan?” Following a shake of the head and an apprehensive smile, the assessor said: “Good. That’s football. That’s coaching. That’s life. Fantastic work, young man.” He is one of thousands of young coaches in Spain who will hold a Uefa coaching qualification before he turns 20.
In 2017, Spain boasted a whopping 15,089 coaches who held either the Uefa Pro or Uefa A qualification. The numbers are extraordinary, especially when compared to the 1,796 qualified coaches in England. The prices tell their own story. Whereas the Spanish A licence costs a mere £960 and the Pro licence costs £1,070, enrolling on the A licence in England costs £3,645 and a staggering £9,890 to complete the Pro licence – if there are any places available on the handful of courses at St George’s Park.
After applying for the Uefa B course in England nine times and receiving a rejection letter every time, I made a decision. I had grown up on the physical English game, which prioritised guts and grit over style and guile, but I had become mesmerised by the football produced by Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola, Marcelo Bielsa, Luis Aragonés and Vicente del Bosque. Spanish football was unrivalled both technically and tactically, and its coaches were climbing up the ladder. I wanted to do the same. So I started taking Spanish language classes and uprooted in the summer of 2014.
Within 10 days of arriving in Catalonia – each of which I spent visiting clubs – I was invited to join the coaching staff of an Under-15s team. I coached in the evenings and taught English in the day to fund my own studies. Two seasons later – after the lows of losing in the Spanish Cup final (played live on national TV), the highs of away days at Barcelona’s famous La Masia academy and hundreds of hours spent learning about the exhilarating language, culture and structure of the Spanish game (and following three more rejected applications to enrol on the English course) – I felt ready to take on Spain’s Uefa B course. Truthfully, I could not have been further from it.
To my consternation, pedagogy was the subject of the first module, with psychology, sociology and biology quickly following. Specialised lecturers delivered each subject and I was told to leave my boots and tactics board at home until these areas were covered and examined. If my mind wasn’t already frazzled by the academic nature of the course, by the time we got on to the methodology, technical and tactical work on the pitch, I was perplexed by the meticulous details and minutiae that exist in this game.
Coaches were free to develop their own approach and concepts, providing they could defend their methods to the group and persuade fellow students and tutors of their beliefs, both in the classroom and on the pitch. One student explored Paco Seirul-lo’s idea of structured training and another researched Bielsa’s five ways to lose your marker.
With area dimensions, timed workloads, timed resting periods, the number of players and the varying conditions all affecting the tactical complexity of sessions, principles, sub-principles and sub-sub-principles were implemented during the morning by one tutor (a first-team coach at a La Liga club) who then delivered the afternoon session on the pitch with such painstaking technical and tactical detail that I had to skip the game on TV later that day so I could take a siesta and allow my brain to recover. After 14 written exams, 12 assignments and 10 practical assessments, I was awarded the Uefa B coaching licence at the age of 27 in 2017.
I completed the 12-week intensive Uefa A course in the summer of 2018. I made friends with like-minded peers and was given a role with the Under-19 team at Getafe, alongside a study placement at the Atlético Madrid academy. Courses are just a small part of learning but, with doors open to anybody – regardless of their background, nationality, age, gender or footballing beliefs – connections are constructed, and ideas are born. It’s no coincidence that Spanish football consistently moulds young coaches into global stars. Coaches from the Spanish system have won the Champions League in seven of the last 12 seasons.
Seven years after starting my adventure into the Spanish pathway, I have started the Uefa Pro course. I am looking forward to the next opportunity in this beautifully complex game.
• This article is from Caño Football
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