adminLONDON. — A leading football coach, who believes in “nurturing” children as young as two, has been invited to tell the English Football Association how to develop a successful England national side. Tom Byer, credited for revolutionising youth development in Asia, will advise the FA on creating elite players. He told BBC Sport: “It should be much more about manipulating the ball.
“I believe with children from the ages of two to five, that you can start nurturing and conditioning them.”
American Byer (53) claims that, after 25 years of running coaching schools in his adopted homeland, Manchester United midfielder Shinji Kagawa is among a number of players to benefit from his teachings.
Now Byer, who also advises Chinese football authorities, has been asked to address senior FA executives ahead of the organisation’s England commission publishing its next set of ideas in the autumn on how to increase England’s pool of elite players. “The focus has to be on making the worst players better,” argues Byer.
“People would be amazed at how many children who have been playing for several years cannot dribble straight to ‘point A’, make a turn and go to ‘point B’.
“Kids are not learning the fundamentals of football from a very young age. It’s tantamount to putting your kid into an advanced algebra or geometry class but nobody offered the kid the class for adding or subtracting.” — BBC.
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