Oct 6th, 2008
CESAR TORO, SCSA U9 BOYS COACH, VISITS BAYERN MUNICH FOOTBALL CLUB
Spent day watching training and seeing the inner workings of the club
On September 24th, 2008 Cesar had the pleasure of visiting the FC Bayern Munich training location. The facility located on Säbener Straße is located one of Munich’s more established neighborhoods. Soon after his arrivial it was very obvious and easy to realize that the team is completely embraced by the community.. Modest homes surround the facilities, and players and coaches walk freely around the neighborhood before and after practices chatting with the locals.. Cesar commented, ’It was very impressive to see a sport complex for a club with 4-5 buildings that included dormitories, a team store, offices, a gym, sauna, swimming pools, and anything imaginable that a professional club could have. In addition, the complex had ’Top of the line’ soccer fields for every occasion: small sided games, 11v11 games, snow and rain. It was really great to see. However, my focus and ultimate goal was to see how FC Bayern works with their youth program (aka. Junior Team).’ What follws is Cesar’s report on his stay.
Youth Program/Junior Team:
Although they have always had a youth program, Bayern Munich restructured their youth teams in the mid 1990s to become The Junior Team. Top Executives in the club were not happy with the effectiveness of their youth system and decided to find new ways to bring new talent and better ways to train their players. The ultimate goal for the team was to promote players within their organization rather than always acquiring players from other teams. I asked them if this was because of financial reasons, and they were very quick to respond ’No’. The main reason for doing this was to develop players that were not only technically and tactically good, but also players that understood and follow the Bayern Munich mentality and way of doing things.
The Vision:
The vision for the Junior team was direct and to the point. They technically want to be able to control the global position of club soccer in the world. They want to develop players with talent and an aggressive style of play.
The idea is based on providing youth talent with the best coaches, best age oriented challenges, and best environment for optimal training conditions. Therefore, they decided to turn their training facility into a soccer heaven for players of all ages within their club.
Finding players:
Every Spring FC Bayern holds a Talent Day with a tryout format that brings approximately 600 kids to their training facility. These kids are between 6 and 10 years old. The tryout was not that much different than the one ran by SCSA earlier this year. The kids are set up in various fields in which they play small sided games while the coaching staff watches from the sidelines. After it’s all done, they would select 1 new team for FC Bayern. So technically, all 600 kids are trying out for a spot on a U9/10 team with about 8 spots available.
What do they look for? Simply put: ’Heart and Soul for soccer’. They look for players that love to play soccer and that obviously also show good movement and coordination. During the tryouts they just want to see the boys and girls in game conditions that represent soccer the way that is done on the streets. They want to look at the energy and willingness that each player demonstrates on the field.
Structure:
There are 12 teams with players between 6 and 18 in the Bayern Junior teams. All roster are set for a full year of play, and they can only change once a year. Each player is trained for 1 or 2 positions only regardless of the age group. About half of the teams play up regularly against opponents that are sometimes 2-3 years older.
A1 Team: South Regional League (ages 17-18)
B1 Team: South Bavarian League (ages 15-16)
B2 Team (ages 15-16): County League A Teams (ages 17-18)
C1 Team (age 14): County League B Teams (ages 15-16)
C2 Team (age 13): District League C1 Teams (age 14)
D1 Team (age 12): County League C Teams (ages 13-14)
D2 Team (age 11): County League D Teams (ages 12-13)
E1 Team (age 10): E1 Teams (age 10)
E2 Team (age 9): E1 Teams (age 10)
F1 & F2 Teams: F1 & F2 Teams (ages 7-8)
Teams practice 4 times per week including a speed and agility session plus games, and all team also get to wear the same uniform as the professional team that plays in the Bundesliga.
Close Look:
One of my favorite things during this trip was to see what the players go thru from the moment they arrive to Säbener Straße . They come into the facility and immediately go into their team’s training room. The players relax and laugh while they change into their training gear (all wearing exactly the same uniform from head to toe). Then they wait for their coach while finding ways to concentrate about their upcoming practice. When the coach shows up, he reviews the training program for the day (which by the way, was already sent to me about 3 weeks ago). While the coach was talking, you could hear nothing but the coach given the players the instruction. It wasn’t only a level of respect, but you could tell that the kids wanted to understand every direction that the coach was giving before going onto the fields. Then the coach sent the players to their assigned field for the day to start practice.
Once on the field, the first thing I saw from the kids was a high level of confidence. It was almost like they were a lot of little Clark Kents in the dressing room, and stepped into the field being soccer Supermen. They had this look to them that felt like they knew what they were doing, and they were going to do it right. There was no messing around while on the field, but you could still see smiles on their face when a player beat another on a 1v1 or when a player would lose a ball on a 3v1 situation.
Their training mentality is to give the players as many touches on the ball as possible. There is not much running around without a ball. The players warm up with a ball and do most of their training with a ball on their feet. There are a lot of small sided games, specially 3v1 and 4v2. There is also a lot of training exercises to show the players the idea of transitioning between offense and defense.
One thing to be noted was that the exercises were not that much different that some of the exercises that I’ve seen here, but it seems like they are very into the idea that small sided games is what has helped them developed their players. After looking at their U9s and U10s it is tough to argue with what they are doing. The other thing that was very noticeable was the intensity for practice. It’s high speed from beginning to end. The kids are expected to perform at a high level and they do.
Conclusion:
While I left the facility feeling like I have probably just witnessed the next big soccer star without knowing it, I also left with the feeling of seeing that structure and discipline can still be fun. These kids love soccer, and they probably want to do nothing but play soccer all day. The kids are very well educated, very happy, and very humbled about the great opportunity that they have of being part of a team that has won the Champions League multiple times. It was great being able to sit down and had young players from various age groups come up to me and shake my hand while trying to speak as much English as they could. It was great seeing young players asking me about Disney World, and older players asking me about the College ’American’ Football season. It shows that while these players are fully dedicated, they still enjoy other parts of life. It was a great experience that I will never forget.
Cesar Toro
