DB Sports Tours Bring Braga To Ireland This Week

09 Nov DB Sports Tours Bring Braga To Ireland This Week

SC BRAGA Academy Director Hugo Vicente insists Irish schoolboy coaches are literally passing over the basics with young players ahead of his coaching clinics with them this week.

Vicente will kick-off his five-day coaching roadshow tomorrow (Wednesday) night on front of over 120 coaches North Dublin Schoolboy Coaches at the Oscar Traynor Complex.

The following day (Thursday) he is in Cork – although poor numbers have put Thursday’s clinic in doubt – before Limerick coaches will gain from his experience on Friday.

Tonight (Tuesday) he will work behind closed doors with a local Dublin schoolboy club, while Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning are still available for any club that would like to enlist his advice for their players.

Target covered Vicente’s first visit to Ireland last year when he put on a weekend coaching clinic for coaches and players at West Dublin club St Francis.

He spoke to us with excitement about his upcoming return and insists the direction he will advocating may be strange to Irish coaches who think they have a well-rounded understanding of the European game.

“The first thing I noticed when working with Irish players was they are fast, strong, aggressive and work hard, which are great qualities, but they are not technically good enough,” said Vicente.

“I do not think the weather can be an excuse because there is better grass in Ireland than in Portugal to play on but I think the coaching is the problem.

“The problem for me is that everybody now looks to Barcelona, so all young players are told to pass the ball and keep passing the ball.

“But sometimes the right option is not to pass the ball – it is to run with the ball or try and beat the players, so you actually should be coaching them to think first.

“At early ages, people are more and more focusing in passing and receiving because they are considered to be the basic and most important skills of football – and I agree with that.

“But coaches are forgetting that the main priority when kids start playing is to control their body and after control the body with the ball.

“If you just focus on passing and move, you will forget a lot of things that are important in the kids motricity. ”

*Text courtesy of Ireland’s number one junior soccer supplement, Target, in the Irish Daily Star*