Give a little respect

By IAIN KING, Toronto, November 9, 2017

RESPECT, a vital commodity every soccer coach must EARN from their players yet one that is all too often not GIVEN to them.

Last night I coached my usual three hour stint inside the Downsview Park dome that hosts North Toronto Nitros' winter training sessions.

The club has instilled a culture where before each practice every player is taught to greet the coach. High fives, fist-bumps, handshakes. Respect.

Before we walk from the field after the debrief on what they have learned that night each and every player - no matter their standing in the squad - shakes your hand and thanks you for the session. Respect.

I looked around the field and saw coaches like Marko Milanovic, Ilya Orlov, Hermann Kingue and Marc Maunder working with the Nitros boys and girls squads fuelling their dreams to make Ontario provincial and Canadian national squads.

All men like me who are now full-time coaches, given the luxury by a not-for-profit soccer club of dedicating themselves to bettering the players under their guidance. Respect.

Contrast this to the British culture, ask yourself the question as a fan, a player or a parent. Do I show the coach the respect he or she deserves?

I reckon that at a conservative estimate I have invested £20,000 ($33,400 Canadian) in my journey towards gaining my UEFA A Licence.

On the way I never asked any club from Jackton Boys Club a decade ago to East Kilbride FC and BSC Glasgow in the Lowland League or Motherwell or Airdrieonians in the pro ranks to pay a penny of that.

I didn't want to be beholden to anyone, I knew from my experience as a soccer journalist how fickle the game can be.

What started as a vague vision became a defined dream having achieved all I wanted in my first chosen career in the newspaper world, I wanted to find a way to coach full time in Canada.

I feel blessed to be doing that every day, yet those simple high-fives from the players last night made me think of all of my coaching colleagues in Scotland. Too often shown no respect.

Coaching is not about cash, it's a vocation, yet to follow any path you have to earn a living.

I have operated as Head Coach for two clubs in the Lowland League, one of the divisions that acts as a direct feeder to the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL).

Working alongside my childhood friends Craig Young and Ally Graham we won the prestigious SFA Challenge Cup with both East Kilbride FC and BSC Glasgow.

At Kilby we were unpaid volunteers, at BSC we shared £100-a-week expenses between the three of us.

That is the culture in Scottish football, coaches expected to view their participation in the game at grassroots level as a privilege they should be grateful for.

PACKING A PUNCH...former Motherwell Youth guru Gordon Young is lost to the the Scottish game for now as Coaching Director of Impact Soccer Club in North California

Listen, it IS a privilege to be out on the grass educating and inspiring players but for every coach I know back home it comes at a hefty cost.

The investment in their badges, the time taken out of their family lives, preparing sessions, washing kit, doing the paperwork, the endless fundraising for their clubs.

Think how much better they might be as a coach if they didn't have to frenetically scramble around juggling their day job.

Believe me, the difference is MASSIVE. Here we work to a winter training curriculum agreed upon by our technical staff with session plans set out, knowing we can be monitored on what we are delivering by the Ontario Soccer Association (OSA) at any given time.

Sure, there are flaws in the system but there is a will and an energy to develop soccer in a country where ice hockey is king, closely followed by baseball, basketball and the NFL.

For now it is often based on imported knowledge, the employment of full-time coaches from around the world who bring their expertise to bear on the way the clubs and their players are moulded for the future.

The issue of the lack of respect shown to Scottish coaches has been gnawing at me.

I have read so much about Project Brave yet not once have I seen the prospect of changing the culture and paying coaches raised.

Even a government-backed scheme to make the badges more financially accessible would be a start but nothing. No respect.

Contrast that to Iceland, the nation of 335,000 people who have just qualified for the World Cup Finals in Russia after their heroics at Euro 2016 saw them humiliate England 2-1 in the last 16 before their eventual quarter-final loss to hosts France.

In Iceland there are now over 400 coaches with a UEFA B Licence or above, you must have that qualification to coach from Under-10 level upwards.

Every single one of them is paid for their work in the clubs. Respect.

That's one in 825 of the population who has an excellent working knowledge on how to coach the Beautiful Game, in England it's one in 11,000.

In England they spent an obscene £757MILLION on the new Wembley, Iceland used the UEFA money that sloshed into their coffers on superb indoor soccer facilities and mini covered pitches tacked onto the side of their schools to keep growing the game.

I would argue that their astounding story has respect for their coaches as one of its cornerstones.

A NOBLE PROFESSION...with my old Gala Fairydean rival Steven Noble as we completed our A Licence in the summer of 2016, a perfect example of a dedicated Scottish coach

In British football there remains a lack of respect also for those who have not entered coaching by the traditional route of first having a professional playing career.

Whilst recognising the flaws in Ian Cathro's ill-fated reign at Hearts - particularly his handling of the media - the sheer glee with which his failure was greeted by ex-pros in my homeland was unedifiying. They lined up to give him a kicking.

He was portrayed as a laptop coach, an out of his depth left-field crackpot. This was a man who helped Nuno Espirito Santo lead tiny Rio Ave to two Cup Finals in Portugal and the Europa League before they won a dream switch to La Liga giants Valencia. No respect.

If you are serious about coaching this game, look at the Box Soccer system Cathro devised and judge whether he has a football brain or not.

Legendary AC Milan and Italy manager Arrigo Sacchi never played as a professional, he was a shoe salesman to trade.

He once famously said: "I never realised that to be a jockey you had to be a horse first." Respect for that remark.

Failure to qualify for the World Cup Finals has sparked soulsearching post-mortems in both the USA and Scotland. Where did it all go wrong?

Here in Canada, where the men's national side haven't reached the pinnacle tournament since Mexico 86, it's fair to say the reaction to missing out again has been more muted.

In the States the Pay to Play Debate rages. Respected figures like former Rangers midfielder Claudio Reyna, now Director of Football Operations at New York City FC, fear they have created a middle-class sport.

Parents shell out their hard-earned dollars to put their kids through club coaching programs and less privileged, inner-city talent has no chance to flourish.

In my adopted home city clubs like my own North Toronto Nitros have well-established hardship programs to help fund places for developing players but it remains a searching question as North American soccer battles to unleash the vast potential that lies here.

Pay to Play is a debate for another blog at another time.

For now I hope the coaches now getting set to soldier on in the worst the Scottish winter can hurl at them are given the one commodity they have never received enough of. Respect.

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