In Search of Lost Time or Memories of the Future

How many years does it take for a national football association to progress to the national youth team level? How long will it take for the national youth team institution, which is an integral part of the larger FA national team institution, to achieve the level of results that should be considered a success?

Defining success

Let's immediately define what success or "result of the appropriate level" is. To do this, let's take a short excursion into the history of the UAF/FFU national team institute, and to be more precise, to its junior division, the national youth national team institute. Starting from the 2012/13 sports season and ending in 2017/18, one of the youth national teams of Ukraine - U-17 or U-19 - went to the final part of the UEFA European Championship. During these six sports seasons, the national teams of only two football associations have played in at least one of the final rounds of the UEFA youth competition each year: Ukraine and the Netherlands. At the same time, during the specified six seasons, the national teams of 31 associations of UEFA members qualified for the final competitions.

Now in more detail by birth year and age category. The year of birth is indicated in parentheses, and then the team's achievements during the performance in the final part of the tournament are indicated:

2012/13 - U-17 (1996) - Group Stage

2013/14 - U-19 (1995) - Group Stage

2014/15 - U-17 (1996) - Group Stage

2015/16 - U-17 (1999) - Group Stage

2016/17 - U-17 (2000) - Group Stage

2017/18 - U-19 (1999) - Semi Final

Only once did the Ukrainian team reach the playoff round of the final part of the competition. However, 2019 was a year of peak performance as the 1999-born team won the FIFA U-20 World Cup.

Thus, success should be considered the systematic/annual entry/participation of youth national football association teams in the finals of the respective UEFA European Championships for at least several consecutive years.

At the same time, it should be added that the UEFA U-17 and U-19 age categories tournaments take place every sports season, unlike the tournaments for the A and U-21 teams, which play final tournaments once every two years. By the way, this difference is one of the reasons for the allocation of junior (U-15/16/17) and senior (U-18/19) youth national teams to a separate division of the National Football Association National Teams Institute.

Why does the question arise about the terms of achieving success? This is not only due to the general interest in this topic on the part of the author, but also because, starting from 2017, the UAF/FFU began to minimize the activities of the youth national teams. In particular, for example, the project of the U-20 national team was closed. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a real cancellation of such a concept as international friendlies. Starting from March 2020, for three years now, the national youth teams of Ukraine have not participated in international friendly matches. Such an important, in my opinion, element of team preparation is simply missing. It should be frankly recognized that the UAF/FFU is close to the reference point, from where sooner or later the path will have to start either uphill or in the opposite direction. Thus, the Ukrainian Football Association is in an almost ideal situation from the point of view of predictive analysis. This is almost exactly how we were in 2002 when we started our first ascent.

Forecast

The first full-fledged International Match Calendar of the FFU was adopted in 2002 and implemented in 2003, and it is this mark that should be taken as a starting point. The systematic/annual participation of the youth national teams of Ukraine in the finals of the UEFA European Youth Championships began in 2013. It took 11 years or 10 youth national teams (by age of birth) starting with the team born in 1987, which just started in the fall of 2003 in the UEFA European U-17 Championship 2003/04.

This is what this path looked like. The serial number is indicated in the first column, in the second -

calendar year, the last two are the birth years of the U-17 and U-19 teams:

In turn, this is how the forecast of success or "result of the appropriate level" looks like, while we take the next calendar year - 2024 - as a starting point:

Thus, if the UAF takes advantage of the previous experience of the FFU and restores the full functioning of the institute of youth national teams starting next year, then with a high probability, success should be expected starting from 2034.

What does international experience tell us?

Ulf Schott, head of the German "Talent Support Program" ("TALENTFORDERUNG") in zero: "Our specialists have developed a "Talent Support Program". It was expected that we would get a return in eight to ten years. And so it happened." Germany began reforms in 2001. During 2008-2009, the national teams of this country became the winners of the UEFA European Championships U-17, U-19 and U-21. The national team "A" became a prize-winner and champion at the UEFA and FIFA competitions in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014.

England. Here we should talk about the rule "Footballer trained in the club" / "The Home Grown Player", which was applied in the English Premier League in the 2010/2011 season. Eight years later, it paid off in the semi-finals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Meanwhile, England's boys became world champions twice within a year: the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup and the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup. It took eight years.

Italy. After the 2010 FIFA World Cup fiasco, the Italian Football Federation invited Arrigo Sacchi as coordinator and Maurizio Viscidi as vice-coordinator of the national youth teams. To describe the Italian reforms very succinctly and simplistically, the youth national teams have significantly increased the intensity of their activities along with the improvement of selection work throughout the country. It is very likely that Italian teams held matches and training sessions most often in Europe. On average, they met almost every month.

This is how Maurizio Vischidi comments on his work: "For a guy who has been regularly called up to the national team for many years, who is familiar with the atmosphere of Coverciano, who has already played against England, France and Germany, it is much easier to move to the first team. Our idea was to make the transition painless. Our goal is to increase the value of players. They are formed and grow in clubs. They spend an average of three days a month with us, the remaining 28 at the club. That's why we work very closely with them."

In the period from 2016 to 2020, the Italian national teams played twice in the final matches of the UEFA European Championships U-17 (2017/18 and 2018/19) and U-19 (2015/16 and 2017/18), as well as in the semi-finals of the FIFA World Cups U-20 2017 and 2019, and UEFA Euro U-21 2017. To this, it remains to add victory at UEFA Euro 2020. Thus, the Italians needed 11 years for the triumph of the first national team. But no one is immune to failure in the future.

The example of Belgium and its "Michel Sablon plan" cannot be overlooked (Michel Sablon, the coach who worked with the Belgian national team during the 1986, 1990 and 1994 FIFA World Cups, in 2000 is the technical director of the Belgian FA). This project started in the mid-2000s and brought a very small country to the leaders of European and world football. In November 2015, the Red Devils topped the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking and at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, they finished third. It's been about 10 years already.

Finally, France and its so-called "Operation Guérin". The head coach of the French national team during the 1966 FIFA World Cup, Henri Guerin, after the foggy Albion fiasco, became active in the local football federation and created a program that later bore his name. All over the country, boys at the age of 14-15 began to be selected. In 1972-1974, all professional football clubs were obliged to create youth training centers. France became the European champion in 1984, but came close to triumph at the FIFA World Cup in Spain two years earlier and two years later - two semi-finals. By the way, in 1984, France won the football tournament of the 1984 Summer Olympics. The same 8-10 years before the first big success of the "A" national team. Apparently, the French were the first in Europe to start systematic work at the national level, respectively, ahead of their opponents by a decade and today are significantly ahead of everyone in Europe in terms of the number of their students in the applications of the teams of the Top 5 championship clubs.

Therefore, the above number of years that UAF needs to return to 2013 levels is, in my opinion, quite reasonable. Along with this, the following should be noted immediately. It is not known how long it will take for team "A" to achieve a "result of the appropriate level". At the same time, we exclude the war and the temporary occupation of some territories of Ukraine by the Russian army from this conditional equation. That is, we are looking at a kind of ideal or initial/initial conditions, when everything is ready for the start of the development program of the youth national team institute.

What will contribute to the success of the national youth national teams, and later the entire institution of national teams of the UAF?

Absolutely effective management of both the institute of national teams and the UAF. It would be very good if the UAF simultaneously improved the coaching educational programs. Increasing the level of education and knowledge of coaches working with young football players is hard not to recognize as an integral part of success. It is necessary and desirable to be in conditions of economic growth. For example, once at the beginning of zero Ukraine was in conditions of economic growth and by 2013 it had more or less recovered from the crisis of 2008.

The undisputed driving force of this process is professional football clubs and their programs for the development of their own pupils, if they have them not only on paper. Thus, we are talking about the development of professional football as a whole, primarily in terms of business projects. This requires a correspondingly high level of the national indicator "the doing business" or a corresponding level of promoting the business environment (Business Enabling Environment) in the country. Today, unfortunately, the Ukrainian business environment is in very unfavorable conditions, and the war plays far from the first and not the second paperclip in this situation.

This kind of "letter of wishes" can and should be continued. But this, in my opinion, is already a subject for another and more detailed analysis, preferably organized within the walls of the UAF.

How much does the inaction of the national football association cost?

I want to note right away that the above analysis is definitely a simplified calculation that takes into account our own Ukrainian experience and international practice. Each time period, each national football association has its own characteristics, nuances and principles of development. Therefore, as Oleksandr Halych sang: "...be afraid only of the one who will say, 'I know how to do it!'"

At the same time, even such a simplified approach more than eloquently shows that a stop or a pause or a slowdown in the development of the structure, which is the institute of national youth national teams, leads to at least a deterioration of the results, and the so-called minimization of the functions of the institute is predicted to cost ten years of rather intensive work of the successors for achieving results that were previously almost normal.

In this case, a rather simple and even natural question arises: why invest in the development of the institute of youth national teams in conditions when clubs exist, their youth teams play, and the educational and training process continues.

All of Europe, small and big, especially the Top 5 countries, are developing and improving their own institutions related to national teams. After all, the first national team or "A" team begins its formation with the relatively youngest team, for example, U-15. As justification, we quote the words of Fernando Hierro (Fernando Hierro), in the past sports director of Real Federaciún Espásola De Futbol: "I know that traditionally many national associations try to see in the youth national teams a reflection of the style of the "A" national team. But our view is that it should be the other way around: the game of the national team "A" is based on what we do in the youth national teams.

At the same time, one should take into account the fact that international game practice is a more competitive environment compared to most national championships, and Ukraine is no exception. Official competitions under the auspices of UEFA are even more competitive, especially at the level of final competitions. Therefore, there is no doubt that acquiring this practice as a minimum does not bring harm, but on the contrary, it allows young football players to grow, and clubs to draw appropriate conclusions.

Yes, the rejection of the systematic development of the institute of national teams will certainly not lead to any irreversible processes. After all, when nothing similar was done at FFU, as in the period from 2003 to 2016, for example, our teams became vice-champions of Europe, as in 2000 during the U-18 championship. And until 2013, the Ukrainian national teams won the U-19 European Championship in 2009, were second at the U-21 Championship in 2006. At the same time, already in 2022, the U-21 national team qualified for the final tournament of the Youth Euro, but after a break of 12 years and after not eight, but sixteen teams already play in the finals. At the same time, we did not reach the finals of the UEFA U-19 European Championships for 10 years - from 2004 to 2014.

That is why the choice of goals and objectives remains under the guidance of the national football association. Either "the main thing is the greatness of the plan", that is, to be able to dream and set and solve big tasks, or "everything will work out sooner or later, better or worse."

P.S. The quote "главное, ето величие зымсла" belongs to the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. The words "sooner or later it will work better or less poorly" is a quote from the book of Russian economist Oleksandr Auzan "Economics of everything. Как инстутиты печать наше жизнь", which in turn belongs to the Russian human rights defender Lyudmila Alekseeva.

P.P.S. The title of the article is a reference to the French writer Marcel Proust's novel "In Search of Lost Time" (fr. A la recherche du temps perdu), as well as to the title of the British film directed by James Kent "Memories of the Future" (English Testament of Youth). The script of the film is based on Vera Brittain's memoir Testaments of Youth.

Volodymyr CHORNO-IVANOV for Dynamo.kiev.ua