UEFA•technician: Lagerbäck on coaching

Lars Lagerbäck masterminded Iceland's qualification for UEFA EURO 2016 and takes pride of place in the latest edition of UEFA's official coaching magazine UEFA•technician.

Lagerbäck has spent 25 years on national-team coaching's front line, taking his native Sweden, Nigeria and now Iceland to major international final rounds. In addition, his commitment to helping the development of the coaching profession has seen him give sterling service to the UEFA Jira Panel as part of the campaign to improve, among other things, the education of coaches.

His view on handling players is simple. "What I believe today is that you should have very few rules," he says. "I feel you should focus on getting the players to understand that they need to take responsibility for themselves if they want to become good players. Because I, as a coach, can't run them all the time, on and off the pitch. So I tell the players today that if they want to be 100% professional, they have to take on a lot of responsibility themselves."

Lagerbäck relishes being involved in training coaches to produce good players and teams. "The quality of coach education is important for the future of a game which has developed with money and pressure and so on," he reflects. "So the important thing is to give people as much knowledge as possible and give them the feeling of security that they are well-equipped to do the job."

In his editorial column, UEFA's chief technical officer Ioan Lupescu talks about the crucial link between coach education and successful youth development. "Youth development is, without a shadow of a doubt, key to the future of the game. Successful youth development work can only be built on the foundations of top-quality education delivered by highly qualified coaches – and that, in turn, hinges on the professional, leadership and policy-making qualities of the coach educators."

UEFA•technician looks in depth at the recent UEFA Coach Education Workshop in Bratislava, and the presentation there of an independent assessment of the newly revamped UEFA Coaching Convention which, since 1997, has raised coaching standards, promoted the credibility of the coaching profession and paved the way for the free movement of qualified coaches within Europe.

Findings were presented by Julian North and David Piggott from Leeds Beckett University in England. "The national associations' engagement with the convention has been very impressive and a tangible success for UEFA and European football," the researchers said in Slovakia. "The convention has had a significant impact on the quality of coach education systems, especially in the less and middle-established national associations. These systems also appear to be improving the quality of coach education, coaching and player development."

UEFA's head of football education services Frank Ludolph considers the research findings as a basis for further improvement of the convention, and gives key examples of where and how. "Tutoring the tutors is one of them," he says. "Not many member associations have specific education programmes for tutors, and ambitions of continuing to raise standards of coach education can be realistically linked to the quality of coach educators.

"There is also room for progress in further education for coaches – or continual professional development as it is called in the business world. We can look for ways of fine-tuning further-education courses and catering for specialist areas. The new convention stresses the value of reality-based learning and this is another area where we can clarify definitions and help national associations find the best pathways towards efficient implementation of the concept."

As part of its comprehensive coverage of the Bratislava deliberations, UEFA•technician also highlights a view expressed at the event, namely that a coach licensed at UEFA's Pro level is not automatically the best person to take responsibility for coaching youth players. Denmark's technical director, Peter Rudbæk, who also underlined the necessity for quality training of tutors, told delegates: "You might be a good coach, but that doesn't necessarily make you a good tutor or instructor."

This need for specialised skills for youth coaches was emphasised in Bratislava by UEFA's head of football development, Jean-François Domergue, leader of UEFA's elite youth player development programme. Domergue told his audience at the workshop: "The objective is to give national associations access to high-quality development programmes for young players and create a proper educational environment, where there is the right mix of values, school and sport."

Finally, this latest edition pays tribute to the club or national team coaches who have won medals as winners or runners-up in the 2015 UEFA competitions.

UEFA•technician is a fascinating window through which to view the European coaching profession, and is available to read in English, French and German.