Preparation (Part One)
Neal Ardley is the Director of Cardiff City’s successful academy. It has produced top players, including Aaron Ramsey, but Ardley measures success in other ways as well. Young players are impressionable and need to be prepared for life’s challenges, so how does the club achieve this?
“We have a philosophy with our academy,” Ardley told us exclusively. “We consider the academy to be like a greenhouse where the players can grow. The coaches aren’t just there to teach them football; they are there to teach them a little bit of life-skills away from it and social skills as part of the coaching set up.”
A laudable aim, but how do they do this in practice? “There will be loads of interaction,” he said. “Loads of questions and answers, loads of fun games where players have to take responsibility and be vocal, so there’s a variation of things. I just think that being around people of your own age – enjoying it – that helps your social skills and they do see each other a lot.”
However, they need to be pertmitted to express themselves. That is Cardiff’s philosophy, but young people can be influenced, especially by adults they trust. How does Cardiff's academy teach them to cope with pressure?
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Preparation (Part Two)
Cardiff City’s academy caters for several hopeful professional footballers from the age of eight onwards. The ultimate aim is to produce players for the club. They cast their net wide, so how many youngsters do they have there at any time? “I think in total, all the way round the age groups a rough estimate would be around 140, because we are constantly bringing in new lads on six week trials and trialists,” the Director of their academy, Neal Ardley, told us.
He understands that the vast majority of those boys that pass through Cardiff’s academy will never play professional football. It’s about percentages – most of whom fall by the wayside. What does the club do for them?
“I think for every age group at the end of every season you have a few drop out,” Ardley told us. “We run development centres. We have nine around the area and what we try and do is develop them and if they need it we try and drop them back into our development centre.” So how do they work?
“We’ve got our coaches running the development centres, so we can keep an eye on them and keep tabs on them,” he said. “When they get to Under-16s we support them as much as we can. We help them out to get a look at other clubs, or other clubs look at them and Steve Ellison who runs our education department speaks to them about college – where they can go, how they can take it forward – the links that we’ve got with coaches.” So there are safety nets for players that have talent, but ultimately don’t fit Cardiff’s needs. What about those who won’t make it at any level in in professional football?
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Emphatic:
Gloucestershire took less than half an hour to polish off Middlesex’s tail. Chasing 289 to win in the last innings, Middlesex never got close, falling to a crushing 103 run loss as they were dismissed for just 185. 388 runs for twenty wickets on a Lord’s pitch that is harder to bat on than it once was is still simply not good enough, even in the era of the ban on the use of heavy rollers immediately before and during matches.
Middlesex prop up the the County Championship Division Two. Gloucestershire leap-frogged them after this win and move on to the Oval with confidence. Fresh from his five wicket haul Gemaal Hussain was elated. “This is most special for me because it is at Lord’s and I contributed to the first win of the season for Gloucester, so this is definitely the most special for me,” Hussain told us. “It’s a great feeling – first time I’ve played at Lord’s, so really good to do well and win as well for the first time.”
But what about Gloucestershire? “As a team our aim is for promotion,” said Hussain. “I believe we can get promoted, but at the same time, we’re looking at one game at a time, so we can take the positives out of this game and hopefully move on to the next ones after that. I’ve heard so much about Lord’s and it was great to experience it myself. The greats have played here and it’s a really good feeling to walk out and walk off knowing that we’ve got a win under our belt. It’s very special.”
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Marvellous:
I know a thing or two about miscarriages of justice. My book is about one of the most notorious in British history. Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry helped to make legal history seven years ago, but what has this got to do with a football match? The answer is simple. If Fulham manager Roy Hodgson is not honoured by his peers and fans as well at the end of this remarkable season that saw him take unfancied Fulham to a European Cup final the hard way, it will be a miscarriage of justice.
The greatest night in the club’s history so far has just ended. Fulham alone will fly the flag for Britain in Europe this season, having just eliminated the hosts of the inaugural Europa League from the final with two second half goals from unsung heroes Simon Davies and Zoltán Gera in seven second-half minutes that turned the match on its head.
Hamburger SV’s Opportunity:
Hamburger’ keeper Frank Rost had an eventful night, but on 69 minutes his task was to pick the ball out of the net after Davies brought Fulham back into the game. Rost had thwarted Bobby Zamora within three minutes. Put clear by a sublime flick from Hungarian international Gera, Zamora was denied by a fine save by Rost and put the rebound wide in front of the England manager Fabio Capello. Danny Murphy and Paul Konchesky contributed to the move that gave Zamora with a very presentable opportunity.
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Results:
The ban on the use of heavy rollers just before and during matches worked wonders at the Oval yesterday. Eleven wickets fell for less than 300 runs – 285 to be precise. After the batting practice wickets prepared last year at the Oval, the current pitch is welcome indeed. Bowlers could expect reward for effort rather than toil with little hope of wickets without errors that the pitch had offered last season. A result is a distinct possibility – inevitable even after the eventful morning session today that saw Surrey lose eight wickets for 85 runs before the last wicket partnership put on a welcome 37 more runs.
Fresh from their confidence-boosting victory over Middlesex, Gloucestershire captain Alex Gidman chose to bat against Surrey. Surrey’s attack was led by Chris Tremlett, playing his first four-day match for his new employers. He ripped through the soft under-belly of Gloucestershire’s batting, bowling eighteen overs in five spells, taking four wickets for just 35 runs.
Bad to Worse:
There was no triumphant return for Jonathan Batty to his old stomping ground. The opener failed to last a single over. Two edges went for four, but Iftikhar Anjum had the last laugh, as wicketkeeper Steve Davies took the catch from a loose shot on the leg-side. 8 for 1 quickly became 9 for 2 as Tremlett dispatched Hamish Marshall for a single thanks to Surrey captain Rory Hamilton-Brown’s safe hands. Gidman didn’t last long either, caught by former skipper Usman Afzaal for a single – the second of Tremlet’s victims.
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Trailing:
The teams firmly rooted to the bottom of the County Championship Division Two knew that after two day’s play winning points were available to whichever team wanted it more. Trailing by 65 runs on the first innings Middlesex fought their way back into contention reducing the visitors to 139 for 7 after just over three-and-a-half hours play.
Fight Back:
Following his seven wicket haul in the first innings, Iain O’Brien quickly got into the groove, Abdul-Kadeer Ali took an excellent catch to dismiss Middlesex’s captain and top-scorer Shaun Udal, but he did nothing to stake a claim to open the batting on a regular basis. O’Brien beat him for pace to bowl Ali for the second time in the match – this time for a single.
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Developing Asian Talent (Part Four) |
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Too Little:
There are far too few British-Asian footballers playing professional football, let alone in the top leagues in Britain. Michael Chopra is the most successful of the current crop. He was the first to play in the Premier League and score in it – European football too – while with Newcastle United. He currently plays for Cardiff City and is their most expensive player at £3m.
Meanwhile, Zesh Rehman soon followed him, playing for Fulham before joining Bradford City, which made him the first British-Asian player to ply his trade in all four divisions. He is also the first Pakistani international to play in England, despite having been born here and representing England at youth level. So has football done enough to bring Asian talent through?
“I don’t know if it’s done enough,” Chopra told us. “You’ve got a lot of clubs trying to step it up now. I notice a couple of months ago Chelsea were talking about something like that as well. I think West Ham have been doing a lot in the Asian community as well. I think there are a couple of clubs going over to India to try to help it out and progress it. I think that’s what it needs really just a little push forward now and I think once you see a few more players like myself that are coming through, I think there’ll be a lot more chomping at the bit.”
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