Published: 9 November, 2012

A CENTRE of excellence shaping the future of English football. But this is not the FA’s costly new complex that was opened last month – this is a grassroots football school like no other.

Soccerscool, founded by 40-year-old Scot Malcolm Hercus, has beaten the opening of the FA’s multi-million pound project St George’s Park National Football Centre by 12 years.

Boasting a clear coaching vision, it enlightens young children aged 3 to 11 on how to play more like Barcelona and less like the turgid England national team. It’s an impressive set-up where youngsters are not drilled in tedious sessions but take part in inventive practices which recreate in-game situations and encourage rapid decision-making.

The goal is not to win but to play well and enjoy yourself and this philosophy is adopted by the kids with great verve.

“We’re about developing a game style where individualism can flourish within a possession-based game,” said Hercus.

Emphasising that football is about players with the technical ability to exploit time, space and decision-making, he said: “If you can develop those technical skills at a young age it will become part of their DNA. These guys are a blank canvas so if you direct them the right way and put them in the right habit it becomes natural. It’s amazing what they can take in and learn. I think that’s where we go wrong in this country; everything is dumbed down because coaches don’t think the children can actually deal with it. They’re not stupid.”

Hercus and his team of coaches are breaking down years of ingrained bad habits in football which have contributed to fewer English players participating in the Premier League and a decline in standards of the national team.

It is apt he hails Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere as a model footballer as the Emirates Stadium sits only a few streets away from Soccerscool’s training pitch at Highbury Fields.

The youth club’s carefully devised practices hope to produce players in Wilshere’s mould. In one session the youngest players do not even play with a football but run around in a defined box looking for space, which furthers their awareness.

Meanwhile the oldest group, aged 10 and 11, engage in a unique form of finishing practice in which almost all eventualities occur and players learn to be comfortable on the ball under pressure. The senior boys agree they have improved every part of their game thanks to Soccerscool.

Jack Gibbons, 11, from Highbury, said: “I definitely wouldn’t have learnt this at school.”
Club-mate Andrew Ekeledo-Smith, 10, also from Highbury, has been going to Soccerscool for seven years. He mentioned a recent match against a rival team in which he noticed the difference in approach: “They played like a team play in the playground, they all run to the ball. They’ve got skills but there’s no point in using them during a match.”

One of the most memorable moments during training came when a manager returned back from a match with the younger kids and the older boys immediately asked him how they played, not what the result was.

It’s a philos­ophy and discipline that has also impressed parents. Justin Badger, 46, from Finsbury Park, whose son Felix attends the school on Saturdays, said: “What’s amazing is the fact they focus on skills in the long-term.

“This is a good thing. We ­never got that in my generation.”

Compliments like this drive Hercus on but above all else it is watching his ideas in action which provides the real buzz.

On the home page of his website is an example that fills him with pride as one of his teams score a goal worthy of Barcelona.

“The big thing, I think we’re all about, is maximising the kids’ potential as football players, and making them the best that they can be,” he sums up. His vision is working and nearby communities fully appreciate it. If the FA saw it they might start to feel that they are already a decade behind.

• Further details can be found at www.soccerscool.net