What “F” connects some of English football’s most exciting teenaged talents?
Ask Arsenal’s 18-year-old midfielder Charlie Patino, a debut goalscorer against Sunderland in the Carabao Cup in December, and he’ll tell you right away. So too Archie Gray, the 15-year-old born into Leeds United royalty who has already made the Elland Road bench this season, and Charlie Webster, Chelsea’s highly-rated 18-year-old midfielder.
The answer is futsal, the small-sided, hard-court game whose European Championship is currently taking place in the Netherlands without a single Home Nations representative – but which will soon be benefitting England’s football team according to the man who brought it to these shores 25 years ago, Simon Clifford.
In a recent tweet Clifford, founder of Brazilian Soccer Schools in the late 1990s, noted that each of Patino, Gray and Webster had captained England at one under-age level or another – while displaying to telling effect the traits of years of futsal training. “Believe me, there’s a difference in these players – there’s a grace and a dexterity,” Clifford tells i. “It’s the hips, the speed with which they turn and the speed with which they manipulate the ball, and their creativity and imagination.”
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With Juninho’s guidance, Clifford embarked in the summer of 1997 on a fact-finding trip to Brazil which included encounters with icons such as Zico and Rivelino. “I asked why Brazil played like they did. Among the reasons everyone gave, ‘futebol de salao’ was always there.”
On Clifford’s return to England, John Gorman, then Glenn Hoddle’s No 2 with the England team, asked him to set up a research trip. “The FA later blocked it as they didn’t think it was good for [Hoddle] to be seen to be bowing down to other countries,” Clifford explains. It was not the only obstruction he faced from the FA though Premier League clubs were more open, starting with Everton and Manchester United.
It is more than 10 years now since Clifford sold his Brazilian Soccer Schools business but it was at his old franchise in Harrogate, today called FDS Harrogate, that Leeds teenager Gray played two or three times a week for over a decade.
In the autumn Gray had Leeds’ director of football, Victor Orta, likening him to Sergio Aguero for his debut performance in the EFL Trophy. For his part, Chelsea youngster Webster started playing futsal aged five at Clifford’s old school in Salisbury. Patino, meanwhile, played the game at his first club, Luton Town, and on joining Arsenal at 11 began a four-year period of regular sessions at Escolla Futsal Club in Wembley.
Gilberto Damiano, one of Escolla’s founders, remains in regular contact with Patino and his father Julio, and he tells i: “The biggest thing Charlie benefitted from was his intelligence, the way he makes his decisions, the cognitive ability”.
Damiano asserts that for all Patino’s two-footed mastery of the ball, it is his high-speed problem-solving which is a foremost asset for him at Arsenal given the “speed of transition” in top-class football today. “What makes him different is his final product, what he’ll do when he doesn’t have the ball and what he does when he has the ball,” Damiano explains. “When he was with us, he was improving at a speed like we’ve never seen before.
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“At the highest level you have to be two or three steps ahead. You look at Kevin De Bruyne and what he does with the ball. As the ball is coming, he already knows two or three passes before what needs to be done and Charlie is like that actually. That is what futsal can help players with.”
Now coach of the US Virgin Islands football team, Damiano adds that Patino remains a regular visitor to a club whose alumni also include Patino’s Arsenal U23 colleague Amari Hutchinson, and Michael and Matthew Craig, the twin brothers who sat on the Tottenham Hotspur bench for a Europa Conference match earlier this season. Hence interest in Escolla’s work from various league clubs, including a recent collaboration with Crystal Palace.
Another success story comes from Sala Futsal Club in Manchester – again, a Brazilian Soccer School originally – which tweeted its congratulations to former player Luke Cundle on his Premier League debut for Wolves on 15 January.
None of which surprises Clifford, the man who set the (smaller and heavier) futsal ball rolling. He worked with a young Micah Richards at his first futsal school in Leeds and later with Theo Walcott and Gareth Bale at Southampton, but he sees something different in this new wave of talents.
“They look like they have more time and space, they are that comfortable on the ball,” he explains. “There’s a night and day difference with regular players.” The reason is clear. “In futsal the ball is on the floor and the game is that fast and furious that you have to think quick, play quick and often you can’t get out of trouble with a pass because there’s no space so you have to use your body with the ball to get out of space. It creates this hothouse laboratory of fast and quick decisions, so when you get out on to the 11-a-side pitch things are easier and more relaxed.
“That was what I used to see with Juninho – I used to think to myself, ‘He’s playing a different game to everyone else’.” Not any more.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/TXYQu6bnU
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