The Key To Better Kids Football for Dayaks

Oni wat main bol otto idoh skia maju?

Hi fellow readers!

Today’s blog is essentially a topic that I’ve tried to write so many times, but have actually failed to simply because I felt like I was never worthy of writing it. But then after holding back for so long I realized, I should be writing it because I doubt that there’s anyone who’s really worthy of writing it and that those who do may not even write about unless I write about it first.

Kids Football!

I have always been a big football fan, although personally, I was never much of a football player. Having said that, I did play a bit football just for the fun of it when I was growing up and I did play between us kampong kids and that time. Grogo Vs. Sibuluh was my common weekly fixture and I’d walk everyday from my house to my kampung’s football pitch just to get a kick on that darn ball. A good friend of mine, Tupuok always told this, “OK bih muu main bol, Soba bih muu main duoh koih lawan kupuok de bokon.”  

I never did and the main reason was that I never had the grit to compete when I play football. I have that when I play hockey, but when it comes to football I just don’t have it. I’ve always wondered why and then when I looked back I realized that I played hokey much earlier than I played football. So is early exposure critical to kids football?

Whether you start early or late playing football, you can still play it. But to make a competitive individual, starting early or late is the biggest difference. Starting football at a late age plants a psychological weight that seemingly says, “Hey, the guys who played earlier than you are much better players than you”.

But this isn’t a universal truth because it’s also based on individual character. If a child grew up with enough self-confidence, even if he starts playing late, he’d still do well competitively, but I think that is a rare attribute in the Asian mindset especially us Dayaks. So it is important that to create competitive and strong footballers, they have got to play at a young age – and they also have to gain that competitive edge at a young age. But I don’t really have to stress that because I think parent who wants their kids involved in sports know that they need to start early. The bigger question is – HOW?

1000 Touches of The Ball

I read a very interesting blog by Gavin Strachan at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/gavinstrachan/2009/02/improving_football_for_kids.html and he reiterates that kids need at least 1,000 touches of the ball each day to gain sufficient technical command over the ball and this is for those in the Under 11 age group. When I was 11, I think I kicked the ball only a few hundred times a month. So if you’re a parent and you’re asking your kids to play football (or even if your not the type of parent that cares if your kids play football or not but coincidentally your kids still play it due to their own interest), try asking them…how often did you have possession? I remember back when I did start to play football in my kampong, us kids would simply mix with the older guys and they’d have more possession of the ball than we did.

You only get a touch of it if you got enough balls to take it from them or, or it was passed to you by the adult players (which sadly, is rare), or it accidentally came your way. But whichever way it went, kampong kids do not have enough touch of the ball. Even when you play with people who are more or less the same age level, those who have more confidence factor will constantly have more possession of the ball. Spread that across the spectrum and you have a situation where there are 3 or 4 ‘starring’ football players in the kampong and the rest of the boys are all average players.

This is theoretical but when I refresh my memory, I do realize that only a handful are good players for a specific age group in each kampong. There is never really that generation where the whole group of boys in the team was equally ‘starring’. If you were an avid football player from a kampong, I think you’d get what I mean.

Now if a district has 100 kampungs and only 3 have visible quality of talent, that means that there are only 300 kids who are competitive players. But does that mean that they are technically good? I don’t think that many are. Technique gets better only through proper awareness of training and what you are doing. In my day, I think the only real technique that kids do make some practice on is taking a free kick. Dribbling and accurate passing is all mashed up during the evening games.

So none of it really processed mentally unless the child has the intelligence to actually think about what he’s doing while he does it, which is something of a package in terms of talent and intelligence. But not many evening players apply intelligence as most people just utilize instinct once they have the ball on their feet.  

Only when they become teenagers will they ever even realize the specifics of certain techniques, but unless they deliberately train it, it would not yield much in an actual game. Remember, it is 1000 touches of the ball per day! Most people only touch the ball when the ball reaches the kampong field at 5.00 pm.

Systematic & Deliberate

I believe that the two words above is the pillar to actually make kids into smart and effective footballers and this request one very important constant – the adult supervision. It doesn’t have to be every parent; it could just be one parent taking a whole bunch of kids to train. The idea is that, the adult is responsible in the training and the games. If you let kids play like how we used to play, then they will be no better than us! If we want them to be better than us, they need to be given that knowledge earlier than us.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive. It could be just like any other evening game, but the adult doesn’t dominate the kids playing; his responsibility is purely to educate. If you let kids play their own way, they’d use up and entire field and chase the ball like ants going after sugar. Then you are going to see those 2 or 3 people who are forced to become defenders just watching the commotion from the other end of the pitch.

So I think the adults should be there to determine the size of pitch suitable if there are only 8 kids or 10 kids, maybe a quarter of a pitch. So that each kid can get more and more touch, possession and kick of the ball. Hopefully it can get to 1000. It doesn’t even have to be serious training session, it just needs to be systematic. If there are 24 kids, then maybe it could be 6 against 6 with only a quarter of the field used.

Every one gets at least more chances to have a feel of the ball. As a 9 year old, I think they’d be happier just to have a chance to have the ball at their feet. If you dump 24 kids for a 12 a side game in a full sized pitch…then most often than not, nearly half will only get glimpses of the ball. They loose a lot of those chances to put a shot at goal, dribble and make quick passes.

Then we got ourselves more kids who are going to love playing football more. I think for now, that’s good enough for us Dayaks to create more Dayak footballers. Not just the petang petang ones (like me last time, hahaha).