“I want you to take advantage of soccer to become better,” advises the former Spain coach to the participants in his campus.
“If you don’t dominate the ball, it’s a bad thing…” It was one of the lessons taught by Vicente del Bosque at the opening of his first campus in the cradle of soccer, at the Rayners Lane FC ground in London, in front of eighty boys and girls who proudly wore the shirt of his academy.
“It’s very difficult to get there, but I’m not telling you to stop dreaming,” stressed the “best coach in the world” (awarded as such by FIFA in 2012, after winning the World Cup and the European Championship). “What I want is for you to use soccer as a tool to become better: I don’t know if we’ll be able to make good players out of you, but we’ll make good kids.
“We are coming to London to internationalize our work,” admitted Del Bosque. “And to show in passing that soccer has no borders, even if some people want to put them up again.”
The three-day campus is open to children of all nationalities, but the presence of the “Spanish quarry” has been more than guaranteed through the Cañada Blanch Soccer School, directed by Tomás Ruiz, who acted as presenter at the well-attended ceremony, along with campus director Pau Alberti.
“We are facing a global project that finally arrives in London, after a delay forced by the pandemic,” explained Tomás Ruiz. “Vicente del Bosque not only symbolizes the success of our soccer, but also a way of working, embodied since 2011 in the academy that bears his name and where sports and values training go hand in hand”.
“Soccer teaches you to be generous”, was another of the “lessons” of the maestro Del Bosque, who emphasized that in the “campus” there is no competitive pressure and that what prevails is precisely “friendship with the ball” (technique) and team play, including parents. “Tactics will come later,” stressed the former national team coach, a standard bearer of restraint and balance from the bench.
“There is no single model, but I believe that in soccer it is very important to control emotions,” explained Del Bosque with his usual parsimony. “Although sometimes I see my reaction to Iniesta’s goal, like shrinking and clenching my fists, and I don’t know if I could have celebrated it in any other way…. It fills me with pride to see our heroes, like Xavi or Xabi Alonso, now become coaches”.
About the new national coach, Luis de la Fuente, it is enough for him to say that he is his “friend” and that he hopes he can get the best out of the new generation of the “reds”, despite the puncture in Qatar… “Winning a World Cup is something very difficult, which also requires a touch of luck: we had it in South Africa”.
“Without the victory, nothing is the same,” concluded Del Bosque, in a final lesson in realism. “I probably wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t won the World Cup (…) The truth is that I ended up being a professional coach due to the vicissitudes of life. For 17 years, my job was in the Real Madrid youth academy: working with the youngsters and knowing how to attract them. And to make sure that the best moments of their lives are associated with soccer”.
https://www.elmundo.es/deportes/futbol/2023/02/12/63e926d1e4d4d8ab1f8b45aa.html