Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023
/38 First of all, let’s talk about creativity. It’s in extinction in Portugal and probably in other clubs in in the world. 20 years ago when the ball goes to the winger the instruction was go ahead dribble, but if we compare to today, the instruction is keep the ball possession. We prefer the defensive way. We don’t take the risks. So the football is predictable, we have a lot of strategies to combat this, to promote creativity. We have an internal league that we call the Benfica League. We mix the players fromdifferent ages. For example, wemix under 8 to under 9, and the best under 9 to under 10, under 10 to under 11. And we play normally three games per Benfica League. We have two halves of 30 minutes per game and during a half, the coach goes out after 15 minutes, so the kids should be autonomous and work out the solutions. They should have the creativity to solve the problems. In a normal week, they play at Saturday for example and in Sunday a parent has time to spend one hour with the kid in the club, then they warm up, talk to the coach and play one 30 minutes and then returns home. The parent invests four hours in the morning to put the kid in the club. So with that time, we do different things. For example, we have a dance class, we have a futsal class or a cage. And for us, with same four hours, we invest three hours in practice, in athletic practice. In Portugal, if you go to a top game or in a top tournament with under 12, you see 100 agents in the stands. And everyone talks to the players. If you aren’t happy in Club A, I put you in Club B. We see some of them attract the parents telling them that in future we put your kid in England or put your kid in Spain or in Italy. If my coach doesn’t want me, I call with my agent. I go to other club. If my club doesn’t give me transportation for games or for training sessions, no problem because my agent talked Club A, Club B, Club C and put me in in another place. If you look for some guys that won UEFA Youth League with us. We don’t have a chance to be with those players in the club all the time. So we need our social department to promote Educational sessions with parents and with our players and talk about media and money management. We talk about the agents. We talk about the career after football, how to invest the money. We start with the sessions after 13, 14 years old, sometimes earlier. And I think it’s very important for us because it’s difficult when you look after a kid. Rodrigo Magalhaes S.L. Benfica:Youth Technical Coordinator
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