Transcript for:
Talent ID Strategies: Overcoming Player Maturation and Relative Age Bias

[Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] two one we're live and welcome to the sunday session my name's steve judge i'm your host for football network world's weekly discussion with football practitioners from around the world this morning i'm joined by three top practitioners to discuss talent id strategies to overcome player maturation and relative age bias before i introduce you to the three guys i'll just share my screen with you give you an overview of today's format so as usual we'll look for you guys to uh feed in your questions to to rick andreas and bob um to help you do that to keep the flow of the conversation going you see we've kind of split the session into two halves so in the first half of today's session uh the guys will each give a presentation around their key topics and that'll lead then into a sort of first discussion around the impact of maturation and relative age um in terms of player selection and and development and in the second half if you want to direct your questions more on the topics of how we're looking at measuring potential against just viewing the performance that we're seeing in front of us so we're not just picking the the biggest and strongest players on the pitch but we're looking at who is going to be the best players in the future and then to help enable that you know the different development pathways that we can have so then we're sort of looking at areas like biobanding um so that we can get deeper into those discussions let me uh start to introduce you to the three guys so first of all i'd like to welcome rick riordvelt as first team sports scientist from asid outmar yeah rick how are you today good thanks steve nice to be here and uh hope it will be an interesting afternoon yes yeah without a doubt um just uh sort of introduce you a little bit deeper i'm sorry if you just share with us a bit of your your football background and your pathway it's allowed you to raise it up yeah so i did the human movement science at the university of amsterdam and then i started working as a as an intern at the razer dogma at the youth academy i did my reaches over there and after my research i started working as a strength and conditioning coach a start working with the data with the biological age the physical testing uh i did it for two years at youth and after that i went to the first team i worked as a as a data scientist sports scientist so yeah i work a lot with the youngsters from monday 11 to the second team speciality is i think the biological age the physical testing and how to make it practical for trainers and and um and coaches and the scouting okay rick yeah thanks for helping us be sort of learning a lot more about your your work at az uh in a moment for the first time i'll move over to our our second palace for today um a late deadline signing from stuttgart andreas schumacher andreas how are you today thanks for having me um steve hi hi to all the guys listening to today my name's andreas i'm 39 years old happily married have a one and one son who's 14 month old i was a former third league player and i've been coaching for over a decade different age groups different levels at stuttgart in hamburg and was assistant coach of the bundesliga team in this 2017. with all my licenses and parallel during the same time and studied sports scientists to the master degrees and i'm now head of the performance phase and head of the individualization at stuttgart nice to take part this afternoon looking forward to having a good conversation and discussion with you all fantastic it's good to have you with us andres um finally the bob braus from the belgium fa bob how are you today fine thank you good afternoon everybody and uh thank you very much steve for this nice invitation it's really a pleasure to be here and to share a little bit my ideas with everybody and of course also to listen to my colleagues to rick and andreas and yeah to see what the questions will be it's always for me about sharing information and from each session i'm also learning a lot so i'm very pleased to uh to be with you here all together fantastic fantastic bob just wondered if you could yeah just quickly share a little bit of your your background and uh your role within the belgium ffa yeah i'm working for the belgian face since 99 um i'm a master physical education student at university of ghent and since 99 i'm involved in code education school as a coordinator then i became the director of the belgian college education school now i'm technical director of the flemish association the the flemish part of the belgian away and also senior manager of youth development it means that i'm responsible for the coordination of the national youth teams under 15 under 17 and also the the future projects and i'm also a national youth coach and 17 working two years with the same players starting from under 16 until the european championship and then we restart again okay brilliant brilliant okay so together is moving um i think we'll toss with the coin and uh we'll sort of uh see that rick probably lost the toss and uh we'll we'll be putting you in in first so uh sort of welcome back rick i'll uh hand the screen over to you and sort of give you your presentation on uh how as uh sports science you're introducing this topic of player maturation to the scouts and coaches at altmo thanks steve i wouldn't say a loss with us maybe you can say i win the dust i will i will kick off with my presentation about the ac dogma now we do it i would use actually biological age and uh enough physical testing in the way of communicating and creating a culture of uh uh in a days logma where everybody speaks the same language and i think that's one of the yeah the key factors which helped our academy to develop such good players so uh yeah thank you guys all for for joining this uh session um so at least at ogmar we uh we do a lot of testing uh and we're starting at uh yeah when the players come in that are under 11 and we use uh biological age to say something about uh about the maturation status of the players and we combine this with this physical physical testings we test about speed agility footwork explosiveness like probably every other clip but the key thing we do is we combine these two and in this way we can say something about yeah which player has the most physical potential so these are two three guys from the on the 14. now under 15 and i'm the guy who has to say something about which guys the most physical potential so i'm going to talk it through uh we use biological age um but what is actually biological age if you look at these three guys they are around age 14. the middle guy is the oldest one the right guy is the youngest one but there's not a big difference maybe yeah it's all of your difference uh but if you take a look at the biological age we're using the merewater formula and the mirrored formula is based on uh on an average yeah normal guy gets his growth spirit around his h14 so the middle guy is the average guy he's got his growth spurt around the age 14. the left guy the tall guy is the early mature and the right guy is the late mature and to calculate the biological age we say okay the the normal guy on age 14 is he's normal so he's get like zero uh his biological h is the same as his normal h the left guy the tall guy he's got his growth spurt around 12.4 so he's 1.6 years ahead so we add his number to his age and the small guy is later so we get his growth spurt around 14.8 so 0.8 behind so that's how we're using the biological age and we're getting the those numbers and if you then take a close look at the difference within a team there's a 2.7 years difference so it's really unfair to uh do a sprint test we destroy with these three guys and say okay this guy's the fastest it's probably the left guy the right guy is the slowest but yeah this is 2.7 years difference in maturation so in physical development so how can we give a fair judgment on the physical performance of these players uh let's for example we take a 30 meter sprint and we get the scores of the guys it's like i told you the left guy is the fastest in this example and the right guy is the slowest um but what does this actually say so if we do this test and we give the scores back to the the trainer the left guy will be the fastest guy so in potential if you say you will be the fastest but this is really true so what we do at az dogma is we we do we're doing the testing for 10 years now and we put it in our database and we could create percentiles so for every biological biological age you can see on the x-axis we have a certain scores and from that scores we create the percentiles so the red line is the worst uh score for that bio-age and the green line on the bottom is the fastest score on that edge so we compare those guys with their biological pairs so we then put the scores in the score of the the tall guy the 15.5 on biowage it will be on the yellow line like average so we say these scores are five so this is how we communicate to the to the coaches and also to the scouting so his score if on a 30 meter sprint is a five so that means that fifty percent is slower and fifty percent is faster take a look at the 14 year old guy he will score around an eight and the 12.7 on bio-h with his 4.4 seconds is actually the fastest if you look at the potential so what we expect these three guys is that they follow their line in uh in their development or even they become faster so this is uh how we talk to trainers and um and scouting about uh physical potential so that's how we talk about speed and that's how we talk about footwork we're giving them a sheet score explosiveness speed footwork agility and we only communicate in these numbers so this is the raw the raw scores of all the testing but these numbers are where the yeah the communication within the whole club so every trainer knows about these scores and talks in these scores so it's really easy to to give someone a score from 0 to 10 and have a discussion about it and say something about his physical potential so what about the development of players this is also the way how we uh make development uh visible this is the uh the kind of movement jump of one of uh of our captain the guy you see in the left picture and the the really nice thing in this picture is his development so when this guy came in he scored like the lowest uh on the scandal movement jump so what you expect he's gonna do is he's also gonna end up like the lowest but it's it's actually it's not true because uh we believe in development and this guy was training his ass off the whole time and yeah he's the example of uh that you can you can you can develop yourself in a certain way that you can end up in the top so with training with a good program there's a lot there's a lot possible so when we do the scouting on a young age we're not focusing on these low scores because we can we believe we can develop these kids but if a kid come in with a good with good scores then we say okay this guy is going to end up with high scores so to summarize it all we have the combination of the biologic ways and the physical testing to have a fair judgment about our players this will create an easy way of communicating within the club and on low age we focus on the good scores and not on the on the bad scores because we believe the players can develop and that's it thank you absolutely love that rick thank you very much no problem steve to uh to uh jump into um but before we do that let me sort of uh sort of uh get your sort of pass over the baton to andrea's shoemaker so andreas uh the floor is yours so hi guys again thank you rick very interesting insight in your work at acid agma and i would like to start with that first slide i just prepared for you is well when we do start by scouting under 10 years olds or under 11 years old we already know that there is a school talent pool in football because on the left hand side you see maybe all the young football players by the age of seven so and looking back or looking three years later all the young football players by the age of 10 there might be the fastest the strongest the tallest and the most powerful ones or maybe the the most skillful ones and there are that that's the left over so all the other kids they're already dropped out going to different sports or we're benched by the village club teams so and by knowing that we have an already school talent pool and football and in our area and we could think about turning everything down and preparing the younger kids by the age of six seven eight nine to make them better movers better ball handlers everything else but we don't have the money put in to to to and to do that so therefore we look at a nice um side or the good effect is following if you see that it's just an easy slide to to get to know the biological age and by watching this live before if we know on the right side we have only these players over it's a natural um we say identification because of the youngest they are born in the fourth quarter and maybe late matured as rick and uh showed up earlier is if they are over we know these already the good guys and the best ones the talented ones of the fourth quarter and maybe late matured because they're still playing soccer on a diff on uh on a specific level so every everybody's talking about that the relative h effect is worse and yes that's true because we are losing a lot of good players with high potential but on the other hand side we know that the late mature and late boring and that's a natural identification but that's the the left the best they're left over and we do have a problem in the older ones and as rick show with the with the oldest kid over there with the biggest kid he might be average but still good enough so we have a lot of kids that are born in the first quarter and the second quarter they might be early matured or average normal matured and they are they still in in the program and still in soccer or in football and but they're only average so what we then tries how to see potential for our scouts is um we for sure what we can see is the chronological age the birthday um is he born late or early in the year then there's some signs even without measuring um about the biological maturity and is is there a lot of muscles on that little kid and is he growing up high and so then um if there's potential that might be late if it's only performance if you look at performance might be early so you give it a different mark for that kid then we try to find out the football age so there's a lot of potential if the football age is young what i do mean is if that kid is 10 or 11 years old but just playing two or three years in soccer he has a young football age compared to the other one they might be an old football age they started by the age of five or his parent his dad was a soccer coach early and he's just playing since six years so that would be a marker for yes it's more performance less potential maybe and we try to find out the amount of training and and then i mean the specific training of soccer has he maybe twice a week training sessions with a quality of training in his village club with um less talented or less good players and that would be an indicator for there's more potential to grow and on the other hand side if the training amount is already high because she comes from a from another performance youth performance center with three or four times training and a good good coach and a good good training group that would be a good quality of training that speaks for he's more on the performance side and it's natural that he performs better than this guy but the potential on this guy might be and higher and the same one is about the specification so if that guy has only been trained in soccer and is kind of like a specialist in soccer already by the age of 9 10 11 or 12. the performance might be high but the potential might be low and the other way around about the diversification of the um the sports if a kid has done not only soccer maybe he is doing um fighting or gymnastics or dancing or whatever he's doing a playing basketball skiing and and he has a high score on that that might be a indicator for for a higher potential than the other way around and what we then tries when we are having them with us not only creating a little games where they're equal numbered and and where the the stronger kids and are just showing off more we do little overload games like two wee ones on the one side three twos on the other side and playing 5v5 7v7 on a wider pitch where even this guy can show his skills can show his game intelligence can show his decision-making making and that's very subjective but it's on on my in my opinions better and to see when to dribble when to pass and on the other hand these guys tend to make it by themselves just to show up because they're faster but they don't see is the past the better option or is the dribbling better option they always choose the dribbling because it's no problem too for them to pass it and then now now that you guys know how we see the potential the performance side we i just brought you a little slide where yeah for sure a guy who's performing well in an early age and has potential that's uh one in a million guy uh we all looking for but we might have this guy where all the clubs are going to the go-to guys and but we have this little section i i just call them the raw diamonds because the performance might be not that high in this moment but the potential is up high so maybe not every scouts has has these guys on the on the map so if you find someone's of these that's quite interesting and i call them the change of perspective and that rick showed this very nicely is if you have this little guy and and he shows some good skills technique wise game intelligence wise this decision making wise fighting wise and you just have to try to put them in a different perspective because um does he play on the on the right game on the right patch size could could he be more effective if he would play with younger teams and that that is hard to compare but here might be you you might have players by the age 9 10 11 12. they still can make it during a good development program yeah on the other hand we have here these guys might want we'll make it at the end these guys maybe as well and then you he have this screaming performer who every scout sees and have on his map and bring it but there's no potential i'd rather go for a raw diamond before i just have too many screaming performs so and if if we have them here and then it's maybe close to that what what rick is doing and we do measure it at stuttgart we have the kids here we have three different types of measurement because we still don't know which is the best one and gives us the the exact outcome so we try to have three different measurings that decrease um that we are wrong but we still could be wrong so after that we have the p1 p2 p3 guys like rickshaw the early mature the normal mature and the late matured and we are mixing age groups they do get a different training and we give this a coach to change their mindset therefore we have rolling uh qualifying dates to put that normal guy a normal matured guy in a group with same aged and see is he still the best one then we put him in a group where he is biological age the youngest to see if he can still compete then we we put him in a group where he's maybe in the one of the oldest if he has some leadership skills and mistaken responsibility so and still we don't know if this gives us just more knowledge that we can talk about but we think we we can put the players then in their comfort zones and we easily can put them out of their comfort zones and just give them different roles during sessions of human games yeah that's a short overview to the very interesting topic i'm looking forward to what bob will show us after and yeah hope you throw some questions at us okay fantastic thanks andres and there's like a nice foundation there for the uh performance versus potential no doubt they're gonna get deeply into uh following uh this presentation from bob browis so bob i'll hand the screen over to you okay thank you steve so um nice presentation rick and andreas um so i think what what you uh explained was really true and um i start with the question what's now the real problem in um in youth football and we spoke about maturation about realty phage effect it's really not the same as sometimes people deconfuse this but um yeah but i call as uh talent contaminators they can increase um yeah the unfair situation the unequal battle and and this is true this is a problem yeah this is a problem when you see their late mature player two years biologically younger than than other players when he is also born at the end of the year you see a real problem and they have to play a football game but for me there is more this is a problem but the real problem is what you also said andreas the mindset of the coaches and for me also the mindset of the directors of the youth academies they often think that is about winning huge games today and then they try to identificate identify the high performers and they focus really on team creation so this is for me not the right way i think it's better and and for me the the point to to look forward and yeah to identify the high potentials um in order to win later football games in the future this means that we need to focus on individual development and not on the team creation so this is um for me a completely different approach and for me this is the real problem in new football so i think we really have to focus on late developers and youth football the most important as a player we are working with the player and um i think the the reason we have to focus on late developers is because we we must give them the same chances to uh the other players um it's a principle of equality and i refer here to a fantastic declaration on ethics and youth sports and it says that late developers will be offered similar chances to practice sports and be given the same professional attention available to early developers and i think this is the first point we need to focus on late developers because it's a question of equality for a federation it's also important and we like belgium we are a small country in the world we cannot lose one talented player and so it means that when you focus only on high performers when you are 14 15 16 years old that's not good so i will start off show you here a video of driss martens who was the inspirator of our future project that we started 12 years ago so dream is 18 years old when you see his face you think that maybe he's 15 16 years he was sent away um by uh on the left by gand and here he is playing in the first team of a third division club housed in uh in belgium but uh you see immediately that um he's very skillful his body on ball control is excellent decision making is excellent he yeah has even speeds explosivity and okay this is for us very important to to find this when we are looking talent identification when you see the career of greece martins you see that um in 2004 he had four selections with the under-70 team i was then coach and i saw grieza as a very very talented player but we prepared also our european championship and it was impossible to to play with risk because with the reason it was impossible he had to uh or for three it was impossible to perform and even to win games and watch he must wait until 24 when he was 24 years old to play for the first time for the belgian 18. so um this means we had to think about to change a little bit our system of your development also and we started then in 2008 with the future project with our national youth teams um we doubled the the teams instead of having under 15 only under 15 under 16 under 17 we also started with future teams under 15 and 16 and 17. it means teams with only late mature players and we started in 2008 you see daryanik ferreira carrasco who is now playing for um for atletico madrid he had also played a lot of times for the belgian national team i think he will start also tonight against england and he was a player born in 93 so what was very important now in our future project um that we offer the same values and uh the same tactical principles as we do with our normal under 15 and the 16 under 17 teams and we are working with these guys with this late developers with the same technical stuff but my assistant coach he is here uh the head coach of the future team but i also follow um of course the these guys and they are very talented but what's first very important is we prepare them also for future national a-teams we gave the the same program uh there are selection trainings there are training camps they are international games they are participating tournaments like for instance we have a fantastic four nation uh tournament between the sixteen you see their player also maxine duker in april 2016. he was there playing against czech republic watch his baby face you think he is maybe under 13 or 14 and then february this year he made his debut against manchester united's so this is our future project that we have and uh two years ago we started also with a big old project the big old project is um a little bit the same is also a project with late mature players but from each age group we we take the 10 biggest potential talents and we are making together another 16 on a 17 b gold team and an under 18 under 19 be gold team this is a project uh was supported by the belgian olympic and federal committee they give us financial support we can invest more on the staff we can give them an additional program and this is also for belgium sports an innovative project and um the the olympic committee sees this project as a good practice for other sports but also biological maturation has an import so what are the targets here of this project we call this be gold because big old we want to prepare them also for the olympic team when the 21 and it's really an individual development program that if we do an individual follow-up we have a coordinator we visit the club we're speaking with the coaches um so we asked also the clubs to give this players this talent for players a minimum playing time of 50 per cent because when the youth coach of an elite club in belgium he wants to win a game he will not play with this player so it's important also to offer this players enough playing time and for us it's very important of course that we really look for late mature players so 90 of the the squads must absolutely be late much for players and there must also be continuity in the selection it means at the end of the season 80 of the players are still the same so what we are doing uh during this project we also we are also working with mental coaches we do also some tests and for us the five important criteria of talent identification is learning ability in self-development winning mindset explosiveness body and ball control inside the game so we are doing some tests we are working with the players we give them some feedback about this five competences here is a game that we played this year against luxembourg and you will immediately see uh how skillful the players the late mature players are so watch here how they are building up one touch two touch um really skillful um very very good um decision making and we are playing against yeah early mature players and you will see here the one we want you will and okay there stopped the yeah the attack so this is for us very important to work with this kind of players so we started in 2008 we tried to improve our future project now we have also our big goal players so what is the effectiveness until today we are very happy uh when we see for instance our under 21 team now and this age group okay they are even powerful as as other players we see we saw four players four future team players um in the under 21 who beat wales um this week with uh with five nil but there are still two uh other players who are even uh with the eighteen now so like yari vaskar and he made his debut against copeland um in 2019 one year ago and he was an under 16 future player in the season 2016 2017 and also alexander marcus this week thursday he started for the first time against ivory coast so these are still players born in 2001 and born in 99 we still can play with the under-21 so we are belgium we are a small country we hope to prepare well our future and this mean for us very important to work with late developers in our national teams pathway until the 18. so this was a little bit the story of belgium future project so i'm happy that i could present this to you and i'm curious if you are if you have some question about this project okay yeah thanks for that bob um i think we have we'll certainly delve deeper into into that project probably uh certainly at the development side of things but um probably sort of go rewind back to the beginning again and sort of look um more in general at the the impact that the kind of relative age and and uh player maturation has in those younger age groups when it comes to to play a selection um i don't know with rick first with the um with the testing you said you're just using you're only using the mirror world test when it comes to to testing the the biological age yeah yeah yeah so we're using the mirror world equation for the biological age uh yeah we're doing that in uh yeah for over more than 10 years now for us it works i know in england they use the gum as rush and uh i don't know how is it in belgium and germany guys yeah in belgium we do the the same we also use both tests but we are we think also that um yeah you can see you can see if the player is late mature you you see this is the baby face you see that um yeah the the muscles are not there when you observe the legs first they are growing in lines and then and okay they start a little bit uh making some muscles so we try to combine this combine this together with our medical stuff because there is no 100 uh correct uh valuable test also what's for me important is to give the same opportunity to this lay developers as to the the early module players and it's not not 100 it's not really 100 about we cannot uh make a mistake in the testing it's about going well with this kind of players yeah that's i think that's that's the same where we're working uh we're working bob so we're using the mirror wallet as a as a first yeah uh first uh how do you say it first test and then we also use our eyes how is this guy moving in the gym the mayor would say he's an early butcher but if you look at him he's not an early mature so so the mayoral is a first assessment and after that we do our own assessment to make a fair judgment so we combine those two and and that's how we say something about biological age andreas i think you mentioned you were using three tests that stood god because i know there's there's been fair amount of research around the merwall test and the standard variation around that which particularly with earlier and late matures that is on its own it's probably not a it's not a great estimator of age we also use the two mentioned and yeah we we ask the the body height of the parents and knew as we do a um ultrasound of the bones in the hand and from that i mean are you all then using the same kind of methods of i think everyone is taking an average of what around 13.9 years for the for the median age for an average mature yeah how is it in uh in belgium bob do uh all the clubs use the same way of measuring uh no no not at all so this is the system um of the national youtubes what i explained bedrock clubs who are really investing also in this and yeah i think it's important to measure of course but i repeat it's more important to work with with the late developers and we still see uh also a big problem uh relative age effect and when you are speaking about the youngest age group under 11 and under 12 you are you are only starting under 12 or under 13 and you you sat three yeah yeah i think in belgium you have to think about this also is this not too early to put yeah players eight nine ten years old in a little youth academy because players who are born in january they are one year older than players born in december so it's that they are also more skillful because they have more hours of practice or this are still for me some challenges in belgium yeah yeah i think that's what andreas also was saying about uh the guy who doesn't have a a high fooba skill and doesn't have a lot of training hours but he still got got a lot of potential and also you mentioned about uh about winning in in the youth with the youth teams it's it's not important in the end it's about uh getting the players to the first team and then and and then it's about winning so about the the playing time uh i think the playing time for all the players from under 11 to up to on the 16 should be equal so all the players should play the same amount of uh minutes minutes and games because you don't know yet who's got the most potential you you can make an estimation uh but if uh if some players don't play any matches yeah they won't develop in the end rick when you're when you're doing those tests those are evaluating i mean what is the youngest stage you're able to start putting players into p1 p2 p3 early mature average matura yeah we're trying to how accurate are the tests so that you can make those clear judgments are you able to do it with 11 year olds that obviously the rest yeah it's difficult to do it with 11 years old because they're uh it shifts a lot so it's uh it's difficult but we still do it to say something about the physical testing we look at the guys and uh at an 11 year old you can see if someone is nearly maturely mature uh so that's that's how we do it and it it becomes more accurate when uh when they coming more to the to the age of 14 so uh yeah we still making uh make an estimation of of the biologic wage when they're coming in so in terms of how you change their physical development pose 14 15 16 it's it gets a lot more accurate but in terms of of understanding yeah who you're bringing into the building predicting whether they're an early or late mature it's it's not an exact science as such no yeah this is what you mentioned there's an error in the in the mirror and it becomes bigger on younger age so uh yeah it's it's it's about uh using the mirror and giving your own interpretation of it and looking at the guys looking at the parents uh and then say something about the maturation of the players and and doing the physical testing and and giving back the the feedback to scouting and [Music] trainers we andres with your your scouts when they're looking at 11 12 13 year olds before it probably becomes a lot more obvious to identify who are the early and late matures i mean what are what is the information that you're passing on to the scouts in terms of the things that they should be looking up for that are cues for who are who are likely you know he's performing better than everyone else because biologically he's older than everyone else or or vice versa he's going to be a late mature so you know you have to sort of measure his performance in a different way still it's hard to say because we are just starting by working like that and we've just thrown this to the scouts and so i can't really say what i can say is i'm speaking about to the coaches they're here if we have players with us they're likely to join the club and we have trials and then the trainers and the coaches and me we are talking about these these kind of things but there are no experiences that we can say the last 10 years we did that to to actually say we're on a good path so we now started implementing this okay and bob i think you sort of touched on there was a few obvious traits that you you can see with the with the eye test um and what would you say would be the key ones when you're looking at that that younger younger age group but what do you mean with the eye test so you so obviously we can test players biological age with the mirror but if you're a scout looking at a player for the first time on the sidelines what are what are the little telltale signs to help you try your judgment around performance and potential yeah um these are the for me it's there are four uh criteria for scouts so i explained at the end you have the expressiveness it's very important this is a little bit also the story of rick so we are looking for players who are yeah fast but when you see a late mature player in the game against an early mature player it's not so easy for a scout if this player is really fast so you have also the winning mentality the winning mindset is first very important but late mature players when they are 14 15 years old often they have a little bit uh a lack of confidence because they they think there is something wrong with my with my body and so uh sometimes you see they are very talented talentful when they are 12 13 years old but once they they are 15 16 years and they have to battle against early mature players they lose a little bit of confidence also difficult for scouts so what we ask our scouters to focus on insights in the game decision making and on the the body under and ball control so how skillful as a player so and the late mature player who is still on the little level in belgium yeah i think he is there is a little bit like surprise survival of the fittest he is there because his decision making and his body and ball control is fantastic so um they have to focus on this but um it's a very difficult job for scouts to do good talent identification in a game when late mature and early mature players are mixed and this is the reason why we organize a little bit our talent days a little bit on another way so we invite all these players we ask the degree the level of maturity of moderation to the clips and then we are playing games only with the late modules uh with the average mature and with the early mature players together in one game so then there is no difference on moderation and that is easier for scouts uh really to to do good talent identification and when we organize this kind of talent days we finish with the game of the late mature players and the quality of this game is much higher than the quality of the game of the early mature players so it's um yeah an unbelievable difference but to make a good talent identification when it's mixed it's very difficult for me and we've sort of looked there a lot on on how we sort of work around the early and late matures but i don't know rick the is there other similar sort of methods of help around i mean i suppose it crosses over as well with the maturity rates but with uh with the relative age when we're then looking at q1 versus q4 i mean particularly if you have a q1 early matura versus a q4 late mature i mean chronological ages maybe a few months but it can be three four years in terms of biological age yeah yeah that's that's why we're using the biological age and also what uh what tells we do training sessions two times a week in the biological age groups so to give those guys uh i think it's really important to give the guys a feeling of success so if you have to compete every week every day to uh early mature as a late mature kid yeah you will feel most of the time so it's really important to also give these guys the feeling of success that's why we shift them uh down to a younger age group to to be successful and to see if they're still successful like andrea's total with the with the rolling dates i think it's it's interesting if uh if this guy is now in his normal age group is he now uh better than the rest or is he still uh is he not not good enough so it doesn't mean that a late mature also will be a professional football player it depends on uh on a lot of things and you have to guide them in a really really good way so so yeah we also shift them down shift them up if you're early mature you have to compete with with all the guys we put them in the in their age group in their biological age group and see how they uh how they perform over there are they still uh the best performance or are they on average so yeah we're working we're not actually working with the q1 and q4 we're just working with biowage and that's uh uh that's that's how we talk within the club uh so every trainer knows the biological age of his group knows which guy is the oldest which guy is the youngest and then make a decision about the performance and potential that um similar with uh your methods that god andreas that you're you know you will just look at players in terms of their biological age and hopefully that then will sort of lessen the impact of a calendar q1 q4 relative age bias i have to say um ricky you are far ahead and if you started 10 or 12 years ago so there i think every everything's sad by the rig and that's that's a very interesting way and that's a good way and just to have those arguments if they say well this guy is fast this guy is maybe too slow but you just put it in perspective and say oh wait a minute yes if we just look at that actual performance yes this guy is faster than this one but if you compare this or set this into perspective you to the bio age you can see might be but watch out given another three years then this guy will be much faster than this one so keep him stick with him trust him given playing time given coaching coaching load help him grow help him shine and and and it changes a lot as bob mentioned like it's a it's it's a shift of thinking of the mindset of the cultures yeah i think i think that's one of the the most important things uh in my role to talk every day to coaches about potential another about performance so which guy has got the most potential okay let this guy play uh let let this guy make uh uh yeah uh guide him to his uh to his career and to the year and uh yeah let him shine it's a nice uh how do you say it andres let him shine because that's uh most of the time what what doesn't happen with andres you had a really nice model of how you're looking to implement um your own sort of methods around identifying potential um yeah i just wanted yeah if you go in to a little bit more detail on that um sort of yeah you're sort of looking not just on these simple physical measures but also looking at players history and understanding you know what's come before which maybe give you a picture of why they're at the level they're at now and how much development you could possibly put into them as a as an elite development uh youth youth club what's the question so yeah sort of yeah looking deeper if you could just not so much a question as uh could you share a little bit more detail on on on the model that you you uh particularly when you're looking at sort of you shared with you is looking at the history of players in terms of their training the clubs they may have been up beforehand which allows you to try and give you an idea of what is the amount of potential in this play yeah and it's always about if you have two maybe similar players and you you don't know which player to choose because you have a spot open in the squad and that then you go for for these um indicators i just mentioned earlier and as as well in these younger ages if there is a kid who is 40 kilometers away and there's a kid 10 kilometers away and the amount of training you can give the kid with 10 kilometers away is much higher than the amount of kid you can give who's 40 kilometers away and is driving an hour to get to the training an hour back and and who will know uh child have who will not have any childhood because he's he's in the car all the time so and and then you're going into that and what happens if you ask those questions and if you go go behind there's only a player and that's the number and he's fast and he's a good striker or whatever and bring him in you dive in deeper the sky the scouts is going to dive in deeper building a connection by asking this question uh the coaches are asking questions about this the history and and you get so much information and the information that just you you increase the facts you know about the player but what actually happens is you increase um the relationship to the player and you build trust with the family because they know you're interesting so you have um the facts on the one hand side but the relation and and building the trust is much higher worth because then you start um working with and training with it with the kids and yeah so so that's just a little insight i can use bob is that kind of hits the nail on the head with what the future product project is like you say you're building that trust you're building that relationship whereas prior to 2008 there was there was a group of players who were not getting anywhere near to playing for the belgium youth team and and so that that motivation wasn't there for them yeah so i think it's it's very important also um to give confidence to the future players so when we organize um an activity with uh this late mature players you you see that the kids they are very happy to come why because in their club they are often on the bench they when they are 15 16 17 years old they think that they are not good enough that they are not talented enough uh their body is not changing they think they will never have muscles even so we we can a little bit yeah do like a mental coach and give the player a lot of confidence when they are together with um yeah also late mature players and then they can play a little bit like they want to play you see that they are growing during the the activity and when you start this process under 15 and then you still continue like we try to do now until under 19 they are coming together the late mature players then okay when they are ready physically they can also uh make the step to the to the other team and even play the european championship uh under 19 under 21. we are very satisfied and we feel that um the players they appreciate this approach a lot sometimes even more than the normal players yeah so we have we get more back from them than sometimes the other players i think confidence is one of the most important things uh bob yeah i think for those guys because that's that's also uh that makes them happy makes them like the the soccer i wanted to play i wanted to train and uh and that's uh yeah if you have to compete with uh with with early matures every day you're losing the confidence and losing the joy in playing soccer yeah there's a question here from simon murphy um i saw the name at you first then rick um as he's mentioned there's a lot of assessment focuses on player physiology but uh what part or how much weight is placed on the psychology of players when looking at maturation and the relative age effect yeah it's a good question it's uh it's it's easier to measure something like a physiology than psychology but it's a i think it's a big deal and in late matures what i see in uh in the late matures we have in the first team is that they uh they have a lot of setbacks in their career but that makes them in the end stronger so the guy uh kelvin stanks who is now in the first team he was he has to do an extra year in under 16 and always his teammates went to the under 17 but he was a really late mature so we placed him another year in the under 16 to give him success so we told him the story about okay uh calvin you're going to stay one extra year and under 16. and for him it was a major setback because all his teammates went to the next next team and he was the only one who has to play another year in under 16 and so but in the end if you ask him now he's he's telling you okay that was the moment uh what was really important for my career because then i was making minutes i was getting confident i was i was liking football again so i think the psychology is is is really important then and in my opinion you have to [Music] also talk to to those players about okay you're a late mature that means this this this and this uh um but keep on going keep on training in the end uh you will be uh you will be even faster than maybe your peers but but now it's it's yeah it's not so make the players aware of of that they're late mature and uh use this to get a nice conversation and [Music] and and keep them motivated i mean on that is uh where they look at sort of very much physical testing and understanding biological age but you're looking also at a player's uh mental maturity yeah a great question by simon murphy thank you simon for throwing this question in and yeah we had the chronological age and we discussed a lot of the biological age but there might be something like a social age and when there's something like the iq of the kid and there there might be a or there is a psychological age um or maybe quality so i think as rick said it's hard to see what you're looking at is is he likely a winning type or is he performing in both directions so is he running with the ball is he running off the ball is he attacking and defending and and we pretend to know something about the psychologically uh thigh side and so what we actually do is even with the youngest in our in our club we have um a psychologically training so the same as they start like training on shooting or passing they actually train at confidence about emotions which emotions do you have how can you handle your emotions and do do you at least recognize that you have emotions and so so if rick said we trust in the development we do trust that psychological skills can develop as well and not only and like a throne if you keep them in an under 16 for two years and then that's kind of obstacle for this guy and yes overcome the obstacle and that's one way but i believe and that we can focus on coaching and training is even with the youngest because they have fun it's about themselves it's about their emotions so what's better for a kid to say oh i'm nervous yes my knees are shaking that's how it feels when i'm nervous and what can i do okay i try this next time and if he feels if i try this when i recognize that i'm nervous and it helps that's a huge benefit and an increase where there is a self-awareness and their self-confidence so and that's that's what rick and bob were talking about so not really looking at scouting and but then as soon as they're in uh they got a load of psychological training and methods yeah we got the same uh andreas so we got a uh a colleague of mice doing the lifestyle program inside the club but it's not only live so it's also about mental training [Music] focus how can you use before a game if you're nervous how you go with it how you cope with the disappointments and stuff like that so there's a whole schedule from the under 11 to the under 21s about dealing with these kinds of problems you're gonna face and bob uh sort of a question here then from stefan vice it's um it's probably a bit more specific but covers a sort of similar sort of area um but um we've spoke a lot about the the late late matures and how good they are with his skills when those showed us on your on your video um and how strong their decision-making is but how do you evaluate that decision-making skill where you're looking for specific reactions and outcomes yeah for me it's a little bit the eye of what we call the master masters eye but we need also to focus for me on decision making on the ball so when the player has the ball he must make for me three decisions will i give a pulse will i shoot or will i dribble so um and and this is what we we need to focus i think positional play how you defend is something that you can learn but they are very quick um yeah decision because they they need to decide very fast because in uh in a normal game against early mature players they yeah they do not have a lot of time so they are looking for the space in between the lines and then they um they are watching um over the shoulder and and they see faster than normal players the solutions yeah so i think it's it's very difficult to measure this in specific test decision making i think you need to develop invest in your scouts and to give some examples of players at the highest level like we had also in yesterday savvy show how fast they they find the solution and but this is something typically for me for late module players because they they need to uh to do this physically they can never win the duel so and this is maybe an advantage also to play against early mature players so it's good for the confidence to to play with also with and against late module players but i'm also for differential learning so to to offer different situations and even a game against an early mature player and this is why we also play like against luxembourg early players a little bit less skillful so they need to find a faster solution so it's an interesting discussion if we we can find some some tasks about decision making i don't know andreas rick do you believe in this i believe in it uh but we don't have the test yet to uh about the decision making it's difficult because football is uh you can make so much so many decisions yeah what is the good one yeah that's that's the the hard thing to to see yeah very complex andreas you sort of mentioned your presentation you're using the um 3b2s and 2v1s um what is the what would you say the advantages of doing that what is the feedback you're getting from that that is allowing you to make sort of better decisions more informed decisions on players and particularly the early versus lake matura argument yeah yeah the benefits are if you if you have or if you let them play an equal number game maybe a 3 3 5 5 7 99 whatever there will be always the stronger one as we saw in the video of bob where he lost that one we won at the end and that will win that one week one that will uh score the goal and if you do the two we wants three twos you just see is the head up high during dribbling is he checking the options does he dribble diagonal to keep to keep both sides open the acceleration and going to dribbling or the the faint the passing faint and going all the past double pass whatever and then you see most of the time the late mature they are smarter because they have to be and the others they don't have to be smart and they they can just pass so therefore i think that's a huge benefit for everything and coming back to seven is great question and the data is going up high and you don't know which decision is to be better you think passing that guy 1v1 or 2v1 and going to the goal is the shortest way is better but they could be by passing back acceleration switching sides could be also end up in a chance so there is no set of data who says who really says this is the better decision than this one and but i think subjective wise there will be a what we think nowadays that would be a better decision than this and by the 2v1s and 32s it's not standard sized but if you give a kid 10 attacking situation with the two wee ones and you could i'm pretty sure you could count how many times that did the two guys pass the defender and even if you flip the tasks there's only this there's every time there's one kid who passes the defender more often in the 2v1 or the 32 than the other ones and for nowadays i think this could be enough to say something about uh it is more likely that this kid is a better decision making because they are passing the defender with them in the attack and they might be scoring as well so therefore i i like this much better than doing the 5v5 and then just see the stronger guys and rick um like with uh with the with the presentation you showed and see the advantage of over time and having you a real strong focus on the data and storing that data and having this marking system that it there's always a danger if you're going okay we have to we have to now look after the uh the late the late mature is that that bias goes too far in in one direction it seems that with your system where it's all laid out you kind of know where everyone is relative and in a very efficient sort of way as well no yes so it's not a so we also have uh early matures who score really good on a physical level and also compared with the biological age so uh so that's that's how we use our system and i think that's the the beneficial of uh of saying something about the player potential because also an early mature uh can make it to the first teams it's not uh for sure that the late matures always make it but we know that late matures have to compete uh with the early matures and make faster decisions and stuff like that like bob bob told uh and andreas and that's why in the end they become better soccer players compared with early matures but yeah by using our system uh yeah we can have a fair judgment about uh about a player comparing uh his biological uh comparing with his biological peers so that's uh yeah i think i think it's working in a really good good way when you you mentioned your your captain who is very low scores yeah um on his jumps yeah it was his kind of movement jump but you see it and always in always testing uh yeah this this guy was training uh yeah he was training his ass off every day he was doing extra uh he was always uh in the gym as first and and as uh he was leaving uh the latest and his development slowly increases so at the beginning he scores like once and then he was scoring twos and then it was it was going up and eventually in under 18 or under 21 is he was going uh to seventh and now he's jumping the highest of the whole group which is uh incredible we haven't seen it before that someone goes from he's coming in at at under 11 scoring at the lowest of all all his peers and now in the end he's scoring the highest so that's that's something for us to see that the program the training program uh if you follow it correctly and do everything yeah we asked you uh to do uh you can achieve a great things and it will help you in the end with your soccer performance so i mean it's it's like it's hard at this young age that every model that you have would predict if he's normally follows this path but if you know you have is it just case you have a belief in put that belief in him a belief in your methods that all right we could get him to improve maybe not to the level that he has or was it something with his maturity levels that he was always going to be at the age of 17 18 when he was fully physically mature that he was going to be able to to reach these levels yeah we didn't expect him to reach these levels but if we get players on young age who score good scores you always see a drop around the growth spurt so there's a really drop in performance the footwork goes goes down uh so the the trainers uh are saying yeah this player cannot play soccer anymore he does he cannot move and then we're looking back at the testing and say yeah but at under 11 under 12 he had really good scores so this will come in under 70 number 18 back so that's also how we're using uh those development of the of the testing so around the growth spurt there there can be a drop in performance and and it's really important to look at the historical data of always test and the performance on a younger age to say something about uh about what what he's gonna achieve so if he scores nine in under 12 i believe he also scores nine in under 18. okay ah andres there's a smile on your face around that um first we'll ask you yeah what's uh uh with rick's description there is is uh yeah is touching you in in such a way yeah i i just like the um the quality of work uh you're doing it i i said i just i just started it's uh lately how many kids you developed into your first team and not only they are from your academy i think most of them or almost ever every kid is is with you since the under on the 12th on the 11th so that's quite an amazing job and so therefore therefore that was a smile he's he's just um um i would say giving me that picture back i had from nasa dogma before so i i like to to come over and see what are you doing guys yeah sure you can visit always yeah now the corona period it's a little bit difficult but uh not always almost all right when this is over you're welcome thanks um with that specific example we were talking about there andreas the the skipper of azet and again using the sort of development pathway a bit of with the bio-banding dropping players up and down age groups um these tactics that you that you're using it at stuttgart um not not exactly yet but we're going to we're up to and what what what puts a smile on my face was actually that that if a player was good by the age of 11 and 12 and then his performance drops by the age of 13 14 15 and that there is a belief that this is as normal and if this kid was good and had a good score they he will come again and he he would arise again so and that's something that gives you gives you something to to argue if someone said oh that that was a bad year this kid we might change it and there's another one from a local club nearby and we'd rather go with him instead of saying no no guys that's what we believe in and that's what he showed and he will show this again so just give him another year or another two years that will come by if he um if he would grow and he was straining like he's doing so that's just um amazing for that for that little kid and in developing talent so on the lines with uh with the biobanding as a as a development technique around player maturation what are what are your thoughts on that what direction do you see your do yourself see yourselves that stop got going in with her yeah that's the direction that rick is um a rich just mentioned so you with it with this additional perspective you just you're going away from subjectives meanings you say this guy will make it this guy won't make it and if you ask why you you think because i think he make it or he won't so so you're just putting you you're adding layer and layer and layer as you mentioned you can't be sure you can't be sure and it doesn't matter how how much you know you'll never know but it makes us safe that we think we know and therefore would rather go with ricks and bob's say and if we stick with those kids and if we trust him and if we see something in him and it is black and white we have that's the biological age and normally this guy goes like this and for sure there could be individual cases that goes like this but um with the captain they could be case it goes like this but um with all this knowledge added and i think we are about to be more fair to the kids more for them so if they're performing good once during a period of time and then which is giving the time to to deal i think that's something good from this discussion we we had with you guys and stick with it and bio edge bio bending is is very cool to know to add layers to our knowledge and to the perspective to talent development i think uh andreas hit on a point there bob which i think is with strong ethos that came through your presentation that we're being fair and we're giving an equal opportunity to to all all here and i wouldn't yeah if you could sort of share a little bit more on that on how that works in practice with with you with with what you're doing with the belgium fa yeah i think this is a starting point it's about giving equal chances so rick mentioned it also um we still need to work also with the early mature players yeah so um yeah for me every child is unique and we need to work with every child equal equal chances is very important so i'm very happy uh when i hear rick saying that until the 16 years for me maybe even later under 18 give the same playing time yeah i i do also the same in the national team national youth teams even with the other team when you are playing a friendly tournament every player at the end plays equal playing time because you you can never learn when you are on the bench the same as when you are on the pitch so for me this approach is is a first step to convince uh coaches uh but what's the problem the coach he thinks about his own career and he wants to be a champion he had even youth coach and then he want to put it on his cv and this is not good your development is about individual development it's not about being champion it's about uh yeah being satisfied when you see your players are making progression and for me when you are a youtube coach you have 80 players at the end of the season try to develop the 18 players in the same way and when at the end of the season every player made twenty percent of progression i think then you did a fantastic job as a as a youth coach and it's not about the first in the ranking or the second in the ranking and this is uh yeah there's a changing mentality i think still in belgium over a lot of youth coaches is a very big challenge that we have i mean in terms of that commitment that club club level you can show to players i mean at the moment it seems that decisions are made on players every two seasons is that fair rick or do you think there's maybe from a younger age where you can say right you're going to be here until you're from 11 to 15 or maybe there's a longer time spread that okay we'll commit to you for this long no matter what yeah i think i think that's that's how it should be so we're bringing in players in under 11 under 12 and if you're bringing if you're in a zed at that age you got a big chance of getting to the first team when you're going to azad at under 16 out of 17 i haven't seen a guy who's made it to the first team i think one goalkeeper has made it to the first team but from under 13 and and down uh a lot of players has made it to the first team so yeah that commitment in my opinion is really important so if a player is brought in under 11 under 12 let them stay until the under 18s and then we can have a judgment about is he going to make it or is he not gonna make it but to leave a player at under 15 on the 16 it's not fair because yeah the potential is not there yet so yeah what you say is steve would be really really nice to say to players okay you're here from under 12 to 18. no matter what and we're going to help you uh to develop the best in the best way but it's not how it goes right now but in my opinion that should be the best oh yes andreas i know you want to pick up on on that what your what your thoughts are about that i think uh almost everything he said and it's great i don't have something to add right now and and sort of then uh then if we then bring in the model that bob has with the national team where you can run two teams together um obviously there's a a lot around that in terms of economics and logistics is that something that could realistically happen in practice is the is there the size for a club like stuttgart to run to concurrent teams of early and late matures i think we see this uh a lot of times happen in portugal even spain i don't know exactly if italian teams of this as well they have more players coming into the club and having more teams a a team a b team a c team to have a more talented talents in the broad program to make it as older they they grow to be sure that what we had and put in more training to more talents more good training to more talents and then later you can see who's who's doing best for whom was this the best program and who developed the most and we we are not able to do this yet even we had thoughts about it and discussions about it yeah yeah but you also have to think about it then you put all the late matures in a group of late matures and all armatures in a group of early matures but then the whole effect of the late matures uh competing with the early matures is gone so i think it's good that they're in the same team but you have to be aware of it and make decisions of it and maybe shift them back once a week twice a week but it's yeah it will be strange if if they train the whole year with only late matures because then the effect of okay i have to be quick uh i have to uh pass faster than uh and when i'm i'm i'm with my own biological age peers so it's uh for the national teams i think it's brilliant to do it so to follow them but to do it every day on club level i'm not sure if it if it will uh it will be effective sort of a last question then with with bob i just wonder with the the with the process you've introduced at the international level what has what has been the impact of that on on on the clubs in belgium have you seen that it has had an impact on an increase in sort of late matures coming through the system the sort of q4 players are you know that differential in terms of q4 players being in the system being given opportunities there's now more q football players in in academies across belgium yeah we see an impact so and also our biggest clubs they are really interesting and late mature players so what was first also very important when we started in 2008 also to organize a course for talent identification so talent schools they are following the courses and it gives us as a feathering football association the opportunity uh how to explain a little bit what is talent identification what is the impact of relative age effect of maturation so every year still today uh i think there are more than 500 uh people following this kind of courses also on the lowest level also on the grassroots level because there it starts so for us what we try to explain is focus on the the high potentials on the future but also the way you're coaching the way you're coaching must be focusing on individual development and not on winning the games so we are for instance at the grassroots level so um we have a system with quarters so the substitutes they must enter after each quarter so when you are on the bench the first quarter you must play the second quarter when you are on the bench on the third quarter you must play the fourth quarter so this is a regulation there is an obligation so that every child is playing at least 50 of the time so for me as a federation it's important to have a future project because we need also yeah to participate at european championships under 17 and 19 but uh for a group and i completely agree with rick for me there is no need to have a second team there is a need to have people like rick and also andreas in the club to have the right mentality the right mindset to focus on individual development to give all the players equal playing time um and to work with them for five six seven years this is this is development so uh fantastic what i hear here today from rick and from andreas very good example also for our belgium clip but also in belgium we have good examples brilliant thanks for bothering us a great place to to wrap it up without simple message of just give the kids the opportunity to shine that's it brilliant told by andreas thanks thank you guys it's great having you perfect summary