The League of Ireland u19s will be represented at a UEFA Study Group seminar in Greece this week as Shelbourne’s Marin Murray and Derry City’s John Quigg form part of an 11-strong FAI delegation.
As well as the FAI, the Hellenic Football Association (HFF) will play host to delegations from both the English and Italian FAs – which include coaches from Oldham Athletic and Atalanta BC and Padova respectively – in Athens over the next four days, with elite youth football the topic up for discussion and study.
The Study Group initiative was implemented by Michel Platini soon after he became UEFA president in an attempt to raise pan-standards, and since it came into being in September 2008 it has administered over 250 seminars across Europe – involving thousands of football technicians each year – on key topics such as coach education and grassroots, women’s and elite youth football.
The process involves one FA playing host to groups of usually no more than 12 people from visiting associations for a four day period. In that time, the hosts demonstrate to their visitors their methods in approaching whichever key topic is up for study, with practical sessions at local clubs crucial to the process.
In the past five years, 77 seminars have been hosted on elite youth football alone, and Shelbourne u19 boss Martin Murray is looking forward to seeing the youth structures of Greek giants Panathinaikos FC and Olympiakos FC, with visits to both clubs scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday alongside trips to Atromitos FC and AEK Athens.
“It’s Greece we’re going to, so we’ll be having a look, really, at how their top clubs – Panathinaikos, Olympiakos – do things and how their youth set-up is. Each day we’ve got two practical sessions, so it’s about looking at their sessions and seeing how they do it at under-17s and under-20s. Hopefully we’ll get a lot of ideas to bring back,” Murray told loi19.com.
“I think the ability to exchange ideas is extremely important, especially in Ireland as for too long we were tied into the English way of football. Not as many of our players are going to England anymore, so home is where we’ve got to educate our players. We all keeping using the term ‘technical players’, but if we want our players to be technically better they’ve got to be trained and coached to be technically better.”
Continue reading my interview with Martin Murray on loi19.com.
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