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S2 E1 - Tom Bryer
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On the season 2 premier of Session Share we are visited by Tom Byer. Tom is a best-selling author of Football starts at home and is world renowned educator in soccer youth development. This is a fascinating listen where Tom talks about Culture, player development and much, much more.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:17
Craig Birtwistle
Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Session Share, The Coaches Podcast. My name's Craig Burthesall, and I'm very excited to have Tom Byer as our guest today. Tom is a bestselling author of Football Starts at Home, and is a world-renowned educator in soccer youth development. How are you doing today, Tom?
00:00:34
Tom Byer
Very good, Craig. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:00:38
Craig Birtwistle
So Tom, let's get started by, can you tell us a little bit about your background? What got you interested in football?
00:00:44
Tom Byer
Sure. Well, first of all, I'm coming to you from my living room in Tokyo, Japan. I'm originally from New York, born in New York City in the Bronx. And then my family moved upstate ah about an hour and a half, two hours north of the city. I got involved in football or soccer, as we call it in America. um because my brother first started playing, like which is more often the case with lots of families. I have ah but an older brother who's a couple of years older than me. And it was just the kind of luck of the draw that one of the close families that we associated with that had five brothers, they were all very athletic. And the oldest brother, Bernie,
00:01:25
Tom Byer
ah The Schaefer family, they're pretty well known from where we're upstate New York, um was into soccer, which got us interested in it. So that's really how I yeah how i got exposed to it.
Soccer Cultures and Player Development
00:01:37
Tom Byer
um And then the rest kind of you know took off.
00:01:41
Craig Birtwistle
Fantastic. So I've been following you for ages on Twitter or X as it's now known, um and I've been fascinated by your opinions and general take on player development.
00:01:52
Craig Birtwistle
You often use a quote from Man United's legend Roy Keane when talking about practicing from home. The quote for our listeners was, skill was was and never will be a result of coaching.
00:02:04
Craig Birtwistle
It's a love affair between the child and the ball. Can you go into a little bit more detail about that?
00:02:06
Tom Byer
Yeah.
00:02:09
Tom Byer
Yeah, I think, you know, what I've found over my career is is that football in general and football development, what separates country by country, isn't necessarily in the traditional sense the way everybody believed it it it would to be, which is coaching, coaches' education, curriculums, ah you know, elite player pathways. so So I started to really kind of understand the importance of culture.
00:02:38
Tom Byer
And I love the quote by Roy Keane because, and he's completely right, I mean, technical skills of a player is rarely the result of the coaching. it's ah It's a love affair between child and ball. So I've studied many countries around the world, ah specifically the countries that develop the best players in the world, which arguably were probably the Latin countries.
00:03:00
Tom Byer
And I started to see that the common thread was they didn't really have better coaching, better coaches' education, better curriculums, better elite player pathways, or even better facilities. They had a culture of development that started way earlier than the rest, and it started sometimes as early as a child starts to walk.
00:03:19
Tom Byer
So I started to see that culture and in particular parents, and we even zero down drilled even more fathers. Of course, in America, we've got a huge, you know, populace of women and girls at play. But in a lot of the Latin countries, more often than not, you find that Latin fathers will use football or soccer as a tool to bond with their kids. So they're getting this tremendous head start.
00:03:46
Tom Byer
which is very important because obviously we play soccer with our feet and it's a herculean ah task for a small child to try to control an object with their feet from a very very young age.
00:03:52
Craig Birtwistle
Thank you.
00:04:00
Tom Byer
So it does take a head start. So that's really, and then, you know, I came across that quote from Roy Keane. He was, wasn't never my, you know, most famous, my most favorite player in the world because he's not really known for his brilliant ah technical ability, more the kind of the enforcer.
00:04:17
Craig Birtwistle
Mm hmm.
00:04:18
Tom Byer
But um I love the, I love the, I love the statement.
00:04:19
Craig Birtwistle
Right.
00:04:22
Tom Byer
And to this day, where I found it several years ago, it features in my presentations that I do around the world.
00:04:30
Craig Birtwistle
It's fantastic and um just kind of like an ad lib on what you just said there. One of the things that fascinate me is about the fact that you've learned from so many different cultures. And I feel like the world is of soccer is getting so much smaller now that everyone's trying to emulate one type of style of play. And I i feel that I used to love as I grew up the World Cup, I thought it was fascinating where you saw like the Italians that were very defensive, the Brazilians that were very Flare orientated Spanish kept possession German were counterattacking all these different things How do you think football is shaping now the fact that the world is getting so much smaller? For example, we can have a podcast from America to Tokyo ah Just as quick as that. How is that altering development now at the fact that are we all just becoming the same?
00:05:19
Tom Byer
Well, that's a really good question, actually. And I think there's a plus and a minus. You can look at the pros and the cons for that.
00:05:25
Craig Birtwistle
I
00:05:27
Tom Byer
The pros is that there's a lot of information that gets shared. um I think the cons or the negative is is that not everything fits in a particular ah silo, so to speak.
00:05:39
Tom Byer
So you're exactly right. Some people, you know if they're Barcelona fans or Pep Guardiola fans, they want to play the Spanish ticky-tock away. It's funny because you you do.
00:05:51
Tom Byer
You're right. ah And but especially those countries that you noted, they have very distinct cultures. The Italians, the Spanish, the Brits, the Germans, they're all different.
00:06:02
Tom Byer
And I kind of look at it as, you know, the Spanish are kind of kill the bull or be killed by the bull.
00:06:07
Craig Birtwistle
Right
00:06:07
Tom Byer
It's the tiki-taka where they're they pass it around amongst themselves and then all of a sudden the killer pass comes through and they've broken a line and they're through. Or if you look at the way that the Italians play, the Italians are the gladiators, right? Keep everybody out, the strength. And that's where, you know, in the 70s and 80s where they became renowned at defending and playing that style of a ball. And then with the Brazilians as well, it's a kind of freedom with no responsibility. It almost looks like they're they're kind of drunken with skill.
00:06:38
Tom Byer
um So yeah, it's it's it's big and you know everybody can kind of pick what they like from different cultures and different you know ah philosophies, methodologies. But you have to be careful because not everything transfers into another culture.
International Soccer Styles and Training Approaches
00:06:57
Tom Byer
So for example, here in Japan,
00:07:00
Tom Byer
The culture is such that when a child joins a football team at the age of six, basically, globally, ah you know, when you were six years of age, first grade is where you enter into organized football. I know that some countries in places that have like, you know, these like mighty mites or whatever you want to call them at three, four, five. But for for for, you know, over for regulating the game, officiating or oversight, basically, it's six.
00:07:27
Tom Byer
So in Japan, if you're a family, a Japanese family, you'll accept that if your six-year-old joins a team, he or she will train a minimum of four times a week, literally sometimes three hours a day. And they play all year long here. So there's no on-off season. So you could literally go 52 weeks. We don't, but it's basically you get some time off. But it's a pretty, pretty hectic schedule here.
00:07:54
Tom Byer
Most Americans would never allow that their little six-year-old is going to train four times a week for three hours a day and, you know, 52 weeks a year. So these are cultural things. Here in Japan, there's a sense of community responsibility. So there's no pay-to-play model here, basically. I mean, most of the club teams or all of the under twelves are run by nonprofits, volunteer, inexperienced fathers and mothers.
00:08:23
Tom Byer
that basically administer the game. And as you know in America, it's extremely expensive sport. So there's different things that go on. And then when you have different cultures, then you have different problems. You have different ways of solving those problems. And so it goes around and around and around. But the you know I think it's a good thing that we can all share the information. But I think you have to be very skilled at trying to understand What is it that you pick up from these different countries or different cultures or different clubs or different philosophies or methods of implementing it?
00:08:54
Craig Birtwistle
Thank you.
00:09:00
Tom Byer
I don't think there's a one size fits all. So that's where I think that countries have to develop their own style, their own culture of development. And so here in Japan, we've been very successful to really create a culture of development that values the importance of ball mastery.
00:09:20
Tom Byer
So if you look at Japanese players and they're <unk> probably some of the most sawed off players in the world right now, we're being literally almost raided by the European clubs these days because our players are so good technically. And so when you can when you can close that gap between the very best and the worst players, that's where the magic happens because your elite player pool explodes.
00:09:43
Tom Byer
And you can you've got a huge player pool. So now the Europeans, it's there's no secret now here. They're all coming here and we've got players playing in just in every major league around the world. So, yeah, culture is good. It's great to be able to exchange this information, but you have to know how to use it, I think, um and fit it into your culture, ah whether it's development, whether it's whatever it is, not just even sports.
00:10:11
Craig Birtwistle
And when you say about like fitting in the issue, using the culture, using the different styles of play that every country do, talk to us about how those cultures and that ah style of play and the fact that you've traveled all over the globe teaching this beautiful game. How has that shaped your coaching philosophy?
00:10:31
Tom Byer
Yeah, that's good another good question. Well, first of all, I was really greatly influenced by the work of the Dutchman Will Kerber. So I consider myself a technical specialist. That's where I have zeroed in on. And it is a specialist specialty because teaching technique is much different than just teaching traditional coaching. I really kind of, you know, you've got traditional coaching um where, you know, you've got you've you've got a group of young players or whatever players that you have.
00:11:04
Tom Byer
boys, girls, men, or women, and you've got a season to play. So you've got to prepare, you've got to decide what players are going to play, what positions, what's your tactic going to be, how you're going to attack, how you're going to defend, all of that, right? But I basically focused in on really trying to improve individual technical skills.
00:11:26
Tom Byer
And so that's that's my baseline. That's how I see a lot of the game. When I watch a game, I'm usually watching at the moments of the technical skills. um Whereas ah other coaches would be looking at, okay, the tactics that they're playing, how are they attacking, how are they yeah just all of that, right? So that that really has kind of influenced um a lot of my career because, and if you think about it, technique is the foundation upon which you build all the other parts or the other components of the game. um And so if you don't get that the technical component right,
00:12:01
Tom Byer
you're always kind of swimming upstream. and and And that's my argument always is that we focus, we don't focus enough on the technical skill development side. So once a child, you know, it's like an education, right? If your child comes home with Ds and Fs in math, science, geography or whatever it is, what do you do? Well, probably the parent is going to hire a tutor or maybe they're going to stay after school.
00:12:30
Tom Byer
or maybe the mom and dad is going to help with the homework. That's how we look at education. If a kid isn't cutting it in in ah in a soccer team, they still just keep going up the rung. We don't really do anything about it. And once say once they pass that window of technical skill development, they lose the ability to really express themselves.
00:12:53
Tom Byer
So, you know, regardless of what tactic system or formation a coach is going to try to deploy, it's always going to be dependent upon the individual ah skills or the individual quality of the players that you have available.
00:13:08
Tom Byer
So I'm really focused laser focused on the technical component. um But you know certain countries develop better technical players. And again, I don't think that that's because they have better coaching. It's because they have a culture of development that's very conducive to developing players because it starts way earlier.
Technical Skills vs. Tactical Training
00:13:30
Tom Byer
you know So football is one of these sports that unfortunately,
00:13:33
Tom Byer
It takes a ridiculous amount of time to practice, to become good, because we're using our feet. I've seen, you know, having grown up in America, in New York, I've seen kids in school that have started to play, you know, varsity American football, and they go on to get scholarships in colleges or, you know, in America. You don't really start football until high school in the olden days. I mean, it's probably a little bit different now.
00:14:00
Tom Byer
But you know these are these are ball and hand-eye coordinated skills that that transfer. Those skill sets will transfer to another sport. If you're pretty good at you know at certain ball games, that's going to help you in the other sports. okay But with football, we don't have that luxury because there's no other sport that depends upon controlling objects with your feet at high speed with little pre with little time to react.
00:14:26
Tom Byer
So yeah, um I don't know if I answered your question, but yeah, it is down to culture. But when I look around and i I see that the best countries in the world that develop the best players, they usually have this kind of army of players who are skilled at ball masteries. They're very good at controlling the ball. Technique really has no culture. It has no style. There's no way to to stop and start or cut with a ball or step right and go left.
00:14:56
Tom Byer
It's pretty much the same. ah Where you get into to to culture, styles, philosophies, methods is more on the non-technical side, right? How do we organize? How do we defend? How do we attack?
00:15:11
Tom Byer
You know, what's the system that we put do? We play with one striker, two striker, all of that. But it's all dependent upon having technically skilled players. And, you know, Pep Guardiola, who I'm a big fan of, um it's kind of funny because I've never really been a big fan of Barcelona. And what a contradiction. But I'm a fan of, ah of, of ah of ah Pep. That's probably a whole different podcast.
00:15:33
Tom Byer
But he said it, and and people got carried away because they saw youre the style and the and and and and the way that you play is going to be dependent upon the the players that you have available, right? So what I think happened was is that because that that the generation of Barcelona players that, you know, they just want everything, right? I mean, it was just like an autopilot. um And then, you know, a lot of youth coaches try to to ah to copy that.
00:16:02
Tom Byer
and you know trying to teach you know seven eight nine ten-year-olds the tikitaka how to pass when they haven't learned how to transfer the ball from the right foot to the left yet they haven't did they haven't learned how to even beat a standing cone and get around it without knocking it over or to do a simple one-two pass or any of that so I'm really opposed to that idea of you know ah not getting the technical component right and trying to figure out how to do that later because it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And and I think it shows because a majority of kids who play football globally, technically poor, most of them are.
00:16:40
Craig Birtwistle
We're actually seeing it as well. Excuse me. We're actually seeing it as well in the Premier League at the moment where it's like Everyone has to play out from the back, for example, regardless of the talent involved.
00:16:53
Craig Birtwistle
I've seen Southampton um attempt it multiple times this season already conceding goals from playing out the back just because they're technically not good enough to do it. But now, like I mentioned earlier about ah how culture seems to be changing the game and everyone's style of play seems to be merging into it because it's considered not cool to play direct.
00:17:03
Tom Byer
Yeah.
00:17:15
Craig Birtwistle
But like it's all about the decision making for me. And obviously when, as you mentioned earlier, your technique will dictate what you can do tactically. So it's extremely important for our young players to concentrate on their technique. So later on in their careers or not really careers, but when they get older, that they can implement those tactics.
00:17:36
Tom Byer
Yeah, I agree. I agree. it And you're right this kind of what happens is is that certain countries have dominated when it comes to football academia. The Dutch, obviously, hence the whole playing out of the back. And you know, the whole playing out of the back was you know it's so funny because it how things evolve over the decades and and and and and how if you understand football education and football coaching and which there's an obsession of which drives me kind of nuts because i know and i've seen here in japan
00:18:11
Tom Byer
that coaching is not so advanced or sophisticated at the youth level here in Japan. Yet we develop armies of technically skilled players. Hence the Roy Keane skill was and never will be the result of coaching. It's a love and affair between child and ball.
00:18:29
Tom Byer
So there's a culture here that values practicing on your own, um you know technical skill. ah you know ah you you're always You've never arrived here at your destinated destination in Japanese way and culture and thinking. it's It's all about the journey. It's all about the practice.
00:18:48
Tom Byer
Even when our women won the World Cup in 2011, they were so humble and bowing their head and saying, we still have a lot of work to do. And so it's culture. it's It's just dependent upon you know what culture you're you're living in or that you're working in.
00:19:05
Tom Byer
But yeah, but I think what happened was is that the Dutch were really um obsessed with this playing out of the back because not so much because they thought they were going to win games.
00:19:16
Tom Byer
It was, I think, because they knew that at the youngest ages, it wasn't a good thing to just boot the ball up because nobody would get to touch the ball. Hence, they wouldn't develop technical skills.
00:19:27
Craig Birtwistle
No.
00:19:28
Tom Byer
but not so much as a tactical reason of why they were playing out of the back. It was a reason because they didn't want to depend upon only one or two good players up on the top and just boot the ball to them.
00:19:41
Tom Byer
But everybody believes that that's actually their tactic or strategy for moving the ball around. Yeah, it could be, but as you know, as you just said, unless you have those skillful players in the back and occasionally we'll see the nightmare, right? The nightmare where, you know, the right back or the left back knocks the ball back to the goalkeeper and he misses it and it goes in the goal or he just fumbles it. Um, but yeah, it's, you know, understanding where these things came from. And then you could almost relate that to the rondos, right? The fascination with rondos with Barcelona.
00:20:10
Tom Byer
And now, you know, six and seven-year-olds just constantly going and playing with the Rondos, not even really understanding what Rondos are and what the purpose are. And it really depends upon, you know, what it is, the point that you're trying to really focus on. What part of the field are you doing a Rondo on? What, you know, making a game related? it' ah It's it's a, it's a misunderstood because there's just such a fascination and obsession with coach's education. And that really kind of drives me crazy because the the reality is, is that These coaches are have inherited players of vastly different abilities that aren't good technically. And so I just wrote something about it and put it on LinkedIn recently as well, that when you've got a little six, seven, eight year old, so you've got the one group or kids that are very good technically, they don't need traditional coaching at the traditional sense.
00:21:03
Tom Byer
just set up and let them play, and then that's the the old kind of cliche, the European century of just let them play, the game's the teacher, the ball's the teacher. Yeah, it happens with kids that are technically sound, because then they can start learning game intelligence, they can start being more creative, they can start doing much more, they can take risks, and they enjoy it more.
00:21:23
Tom Byer
versus the kid that doesn't have the technical ability who needs the traditional coaching. You need to isolate it. You need to give them less pressure while they're trying to. It's more of a repetition. It's exercises to just teach them you know ah ah coordination and motor skill development.
00:21:41
Tom Byer
So if you're if you're a coach or a volunteer, inexperienced dad or mom, and you inherit 20 little eight-year-olds, and a couple of them are pretty good, and the other 16 or 17 have never touched a ball, what kind of training do you put up? Now, in those traditional football countries, and especially in the Latin countries, yeah, in Brazil, ah know they they they they don't need the traditional coaching. Really interesting. there's um there's a friend of mine who was just here visiting recently uh... in japan he has a pretty popular podcast himself in the states and he's from brazil and he was telling me that you know one of the reasons his philosophy is is that why the uh... brazilian if you look at the difference between brazilians and argentine
00:22:26
Tom Byer
in the culture, just not football. Let's just look at music. Samba. Samba, it's an expression. You can samba one person, okay? You can just put the music on and off you go. The Argentinians tangle. It takes two to tangle. It's very choreographed. It's very, they move in the same way. it's So when you start to understand these cultures, so what he was telling me was, and it really made, it's interesting,
00:22:52
Tom Byer
is that football is like Samba dancing. So they know that the players that show up are very, very creative. They're very, you know, technically they're very good. They're drunken with skill, what I like to call them, right? So they don't need a lot of coaching. Just let them play.
00:23:08
Tom Byer
So they don't really believe it. It's to express them, just let them go off. So not a lot of coaching goes on. And if you think about it, I mean, when it comes to the coaching side of football, there's not a lot of Brazilian football coaches that are applying their skills, whether it's the Premier League, whether it's in the Spanish League, whether it's in the Bundish League, it's in you know any of these leagues. So don't they don't seem to be excelling at that very high level of coaching.
00:23:35
Tom Byer
versus you've got many more, probably more Argentinians, right? Also, you've got the Pochettino.
00:23:40
Craig Birtwistle
Yeah.
00:23:41
Tom Byer
There's lots more. So again, it's interesting the culture piece of looking at it and understanding um how culture impacts sport and just about everything else.
00:23:52
Craig Birtwistle
Love that. It's all fascinating stuff. Todd, we're going to be back after a short message from Zencast.
Japan's Soccer Success and Development Strategies
00:24:38
Craig Birtwistle
Welcome back and we're going to go into a bit more detail on coaching and player development. As I mentioned earlier, you speak very highly of the work being done in Japan about how the gap between the J-League is closing in on other major leagues and how top English clubs are now raiding the J-League for talent. Can you tell us a little bit more of this transition that you've seen by the way of the Japanese FA as implemented on the curriculum, style of play, et cetera, that has helped them so much with their player development?
00:25:08
Tom Byer
Yeah, there's a little bit to unpack here. that's These are great questions. I wouldn't necessarily identify the JFA as having been the biggest game-changing agent. And that's a really important part to understand.
00:25:24
Tom Byer
that there's a limit to what federations, even professional teams and clubs can do. And so I came here in the 1980s. I got into my entree into football here, was playing for a team here Hitachi, which was not in the J League. For for the listeners, J League, the professional league started in 1993. I came in the 80s and we had what was called the JFL.
00:25:49
Tom Byer
All the teams, even today, are owned and backed by massive um corporations. ya Yamaha, Hitachi, Nissan, Toyota, all of them. And so I've seen that journey over you know close to 40 years. um And I also seen the journey of player development and understand the journey between grassroots and national teams, right?
00:26:13
Tom Byer
So I think what's happened here, I've seen the transformation of this kind of technical revolution. And I can speak i can speak about this intimately because I've been involved in it. So without trying to sound too egotistical, I know what I know because I've done it, I was part of it. so i have a very And also I was an outsider, so I have a very unique perspective to it as well.
00:26:36
Tom Byer
And so we were able to introduce this whole concept of focusing on technical skill development, but not in the traditional sense. It didn't come by way of influencing ah the JFA with their coach's education or even the professional clubs. We utilized and we leveraged very successfully pop culture here.
00:27:01
Tom Byer
I had come in contact and had been exposed to the work of Will Kerber of the Dutchman. And which is it for people who don't know, most ah coaches around the world know him. He's really credited as, as really being the pioneer of individual technical skill development. He's Dutch, he passed away a few years ago, but world renowned. And I brought his philosophy and methodology here to Japan, and I really wanted to kind of create a movement here.
00:27:28
Tom Byer
And so when you create a movement, you need a way to build the advocacy, build the awareness, deliver the message. And so back in those days, which was the early 1990s, was trying to figure out, well, how do we get this message out there? So basically, it was trial by error. um i' I'm probably most known for my media presence here because I was casted on Japan's number one television show for children.
00:27:59
Tom Byer
back in the 1990s that was produced and created for Pokemon. So Pokemon was enormous. It started and originated from here, the creation, and then exported ah globally. But I was casted on the number one TV show that was born out of that. So it's not a football or soccer show. It's a pop culture about Pokemon. But there was a corner in there in the early more in the beginning of the show. And it was the number one show and in the in the in the country for kids, an early morning show.
00:28:27
Tom Byer
So i would I was presenting this one-point lesson, focusing on ball mastery, 1v1, change of directions, moves, beat opponents, stops and starts, everything.
00:28:35
Craig Birtwistle
Okay. All right.
00:28:37
Tom Byer
And that complimented, I was already traveling around the country conducting what we call these soccer clinics or events. So I'm going around to 47 states here in Japan. forty eight actually sorry forty eight states here or forty seven sorry tokyo's kind of included it as well but I was traveling around and doing these yeah enormous events. So then I started implementing this technical curriculum into my events.
00:29:07
Tom Byer
Then we started focusing on commercial soccer schools that were all focused on technical skill development. Then I was, after casting on the TV show, part of the set was I had a two page layout in Japan's number one comic book, which is 1.3 million copies per month. Super, super popular here. So I had two pages in that.
00:29:30
Tom Byer
Then we had two pages in Soccer Digest magazine, the number one magazine for soccer. So everywhere you looked, and then we created VHS videos around at DVDs today.
00:29:39
Craig Birtwistle
You're welcome.
00:29:41
Tom Byer
That would be apps, perhaps. So we had this unbelievable matrix of delivery. of And it was a very, very simple message.
00:29:53
Tom Byer
You want to be a good soccer player, it starts with the technical component. It wouldn't be until years later, the JFA would see that this was very popular, that they would actually invite us in. And we started doing some coaches education, ah designed specifically only on technical skill development.
00:30:14
Tom Byer
And we had another guy here who was focused mostly on coaches' education that would go and he'd be part of like their licensing course. He'd go for like one or two days and we'd do just purely a technical thing. So it became very popular because we became so big and popular that we couldn't be ignored. But in the beginning, we weren't embraced by the by the Federation or the professionals or or anybody. so And I think that's a very, very good example of how ah You can create and you can bring change to a country in a non-traditional way So if you've got the Federation and the state associations behind you, yeah, surely it's gonna supercharge it But you need to be able to reach as many people as as possible So what I do now fast forward and I go around the world and I'm leaving I was just in Korea a couple weeks ago presenting to
00:31:07
Tom Byer
all 47 member associations that make up our AFC Asian Football Confederation and I gave a presentation and every presentation I go there's one slide that shows and represents how we created the movement and the delivery channels on how we did that pop culture, television, comic books,
00:31:26
Tom Byer
ah ah in-person events, building advocacy, ah creating content through video, online, offline, just all our newspapers, all of that. and show how Because if the regardless of of of what it is you're trying to promote, if you don't have the ability to build the awareness and take it to mass numbers,
00:31:49
Tom Byer
then you can't create a movement. And so that's part of what we do when we go around the world. I'm on my way to Malaysia on Monday to speak at their conference for hundreds and hundreds of coaches and stakeholders. So everybody wants to kind of know, well, what's happening in Japan? And what happens is, is that here in Japan, people come here because Japan is the gold bar standard for Asia most for most part.
00:32:14
Tom Byer
So they all come here and they arrive here and they go to visit the JFA, they go to visit the J League, and they come away a little bit disappointed because they're not still figuring out what it is that, for example, I'm actually talking about.
00:32:29
Tom Byer
Because when you go to an FA, they will just focus on their world. And what is their world? Governance, coaches' education, ah you know elite player development.
00:32:35
Craig Birtwistle
right.
00:32:40
Tom Byer
um that's what That's their mantra. So you'll go there and you'll hear from an instructor about how they've got 47 states and how we've got training centers, national training centers, and we have elite player development.
00:32:53
Tom Byer
And we have more coaches with A licenses, B licenses, blah, blah, blah. And then that's it. You go to the J League, and the J League will say, yeah, we're the ones doing all the work. We've got 60 teams, three-tiered promotion, relegation. We have academies, boom, boom, boom. And then they don't hear the stuff about the the TV shows. They don't hear the stuff about the technical skill development. They don't hear the stuff about, right now, currently, five of our national team players, including the captain that plays at Liverpool, Endo, they all come from our schools.
00:33:26
Tom Byer
So they all got that head start, they all focused and they're all well known for their technical skills. The women, our women are the biggest outlier country in the entire world until Spain just won the, I think it was the senior world cup for the under 20. I can't keep track because they're so often. But Japan was the only country in the world that won all three FIFA World Cup tournaments, man. They won the seniors, the under-17s, and the under-20s. And why that's really interesting interesting is because we have such a small player pool of girls here, 30,000 registered players here in the in Japan. And we won those three FIFA World Cup tournaments in the space of seven years.
00:34:06
Tom Byer
Okay? So why? Why? Because basically the entry level is focused on skill development, ball mastery, and at the youngest ages, usually technique will win at the youngest ages. It gets different when they get older, it's much more physical, speed, just everything, tactics come into a coach it, coach comes into it. But at the youngest ages, technique seems to be the key.
00:34:32
Tom Byer
So Japan is always qualifying for the under-17s, under-20s, always going to at least the knockout stage and usually the best four or usually the final at those age groups. So if you look at that and you understand, well, what's happening, then you understand that the overlying underlying factor for here in Japan is is that it's the emphasis on the technical component.
Challenges in Soccer Cultures and Development
00:34:55
Tom Byer
So if you get all the other parts wrong in football, but you've got a massive pool of players that are really good technically, you'll you'll always be competitive.
00:35:06
Craig Birtwistle
It sounds like to me that um Japan was kind of that sweet spot. You found a country that was willing to change, but also had that night to want to improve. Whereas like I look at my my country England, I look at my adopted country America, and I feel like there can be so some sense of arrogance.
00:35:28
Tom Byer
Cool.
00:35:28
Craig Birtwistle
there that it has to be done a certain way or the fact that because I've watched the game my whole life I know how to coach it even though technically you probably don't. So would you say that was a fair estimate? How would you go about say fixing America?
00:35:45
Tom Byer
yeah So do you hit a great point, and I'll tell you exactly. i'll i'll I'll phrase it in a different way. And I always say this to everybody, because I'm very blessed to travel around the world.
00:35:57
Tom Byer
It's easier for me to work in a country with no football culture than it is to work in a country with the wrong football culture. So that's what you have. You've got lots of pockets of places where there's out at you know outside influence. um yeah You look at America. America has always been this country that, and a lot of other countries as well, where they feel like they've got to hold the hand of the foreign experts.
00:36:25
Tom Byer
Look at the makeup of the US soccer coach's education department. They're not Americans. It's always good. They always hire. Usually they'll hire the experts from Europe ah because they believe that Europe has a monopoly on football development and education. That's it. You know, look at the MLS.
00:36:44
Tom Byer
We've had over 30 years of MLS, so you've had three generations. You'll find mostly in a lot of the MLS clubs, the heads of you know of methodology, the heads of coaching, they're usually not Americans, they're foreigners.
Culture's Role in World Cup and Team Success
00:36:59
Tom Byer
And same thing here in Asia. But here's some insights that I see. Here in Asia, that two especially in East Asia, the two strongest countries in Asia are Japan and Korea.
00:37:11
Tom Byer
We have absolutely no foreign experts working in the federations in either of those countries. Occasionally, the KFA will hire a foreign technical director, but never in Japan. There has never been in the history of Japanese football a foreign coach's educator ahead of it, far of like ah in charge of elite player development, or a technical director, or any key position.
00:37:36
Tom Byer
at the top top national team yes have experimented with foreign coaches but never with an under 20 team or an under 17 ever and so here this is what i put out to the listeners so if you study and you understand there's 211 member association countries that make up FIFA 211 out of those 211 i'm talking in the in the context of men's Out of 211, there's only eight countries that have won a World Cup tournament. I think I might've mentioned them, but Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and England. That's it. Now, no country has ever won a World Cup tournament with a foreign coach. Ever. Never. And out of the eight World Cup champions, only one or two, England, the main one, has experimented with a foreign coach. England was Sven Ericsson and Capello, I believe. Right?
00:38:31
Tom Byer
So to me, what does that say? That tells me that culture rules. That tells me that probably ah native coaches connect better with native players. um can you um I can't imagine Brazil or Argentina going with a foreign coach or the Italians or the French or the Germans. Never say never. And then here's another one, a little bit of trivia.
00:39:00
Tom Byer
No country today, in modern day, has won a World Cup tournament that doesn't border another country that's won a World Cup tournament, with the exception of England. But if we consider the English Channel a border, they border as well. So when you look at the other countries that are knocking on the door to win, they all border other World Cup countries, Belgium, Croatia. So these are things that I think that you have to at least pay attention to and understand. In Japan here,
00:39:28
Tom Byer
the best that the national team has done is usually with the with the Japanese coaches here. And so, anyway, that's, you know, am I right? and Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's something to think about, you know, to think about.
00:39:41
Craig Birtwistle
Yeah.
00:39:42
Tom Byer
And again, it's culture because what is culture? Culture is when a community, a family, a company, ah an organization, a country, they share the same beliefs and values.
00:39:55
Tom Byer
They share the same music, the same food, the same language, the same fashion. It's all the same. right So for football, I think that what are those beliefs and values? Well, I believe that ball mastery should be at the center of development.
00:40:10
Tom Byer
you know And so if you can get everybody moving in the same direction and believing that as well, but Japan's not a football culture. They're the furthest from a football culture. You're not going to get into a taxi in ah anywhere in Tokyo and have some guy you know angry because FC Tokyo won over the they'd lost over the weekend. And they think that the coach deployed the wrong tactic or the wrong formation or system or didn't play you know this guy versus that guy.
00:40:40
Tom Byer
But you'll get that in Rome or in England or in some of these other football countries.
00:40:44
Craig Birtwistle
hundred percent.
00:40:44
Tom Byer
So it's a different world, man. It's a different world where, you know, 24 hours a day people are talking about football, football. I was just recently in the summertime I was in Europe. And I was at Dinamo Zagreb. My son was actually training there. And on the day or the weekend where there's a game, there's a vibe. There's an energy. there's Same thing at IACS, too. I was over at IACS as well in the summertime. you know it's just You don't have that in most countries ah in in the world. you know So there are some countries that are you know just super, super strong culturally. And that helps.
00:41:19
Tom Byer
the development side as well. you know there's ah There's a big thing now. you know America has always had this supremacy in women's football. right And I'm not so sure it's because we were so much better than everybody else, but we got a huge head start because of lots of things. right But now, when you look now, at the even in England, your your own but your home your you know your home ah home ground, right homeland, when you look at the English girls,
00:41:45
Tom Byer
they seem to sometimes be more tactically intelligent or more tactically aware than the American girls. Why? They're immersed in a football culture. On the weekend, it's much more common that they'll be sitting at the dining room table and the game will be on and everybody will be talking about it. So they're hearing about tactics, systems, the grandfather, the uncle, the brother, whoever it is, you don't get that in America. Most girls, and even in Japan too, most don't watch football on TV.
00:42:15
Tom Byer
regularly they play it's a participation sport and you can see it man you can see it you know look at the giant leap forward that european women have made in football man spain right england as well uh french as well
00:42:17
Craig Birtwistle
right.
00:42:31
Tom Byer
And so yeah have to you have to understand that when you're trying to devise a strategy for you know player development, well what works, what doesn't.
Memorable Moments and Closing
00:42:40
Tom Byer
But everybody always defaults to the traditional you know coaching.
00:42:43
Tom Byer
We need more coaches. We need more coaches' education. We need to have the foreign experts come in and and show us how to do it and hold the hand. And meanwhile, the kids just can't transfer the ball from the right foot to the left.
00:42:55
Tom Byer
um Yeah.
00:42:56
Craig Birtwistle
Very true, very true stuff. Tom, we'll be back after a short advert.
00:43:01
Tom Byer
Okay.
00:43:16
Craig Birtwistle
Welcome back. We've just been speaking a lot about culture and Tom, I like to finish my podcast with ah a bit more of a lighter note. Can you tell us what your favorite moment was in sports? It can be as a player, fan, a coach.
00:43:30
Tom Byer
That's very easy. My favorite moment was my last collegiate game in the United States. I went to and went to two colleges. I went to a junior college in upstate New York, which was back in the 70s. I'm confident to say a national perennial powerhouse. We won two back-to-back national championships. Not me. I played after that. But then I went to the University of South Florida.
00:43:57
Tom Byer
And I played in the NCAA Division I tournament, which is the highest level in college. And we went to Duke University, which was very strong. They had won multiple national champions. They had one of the best programs in the entire country.
00:44:12
Tom Byer
And so we played a match there. And the captain of Duke was my former teammate at my junior college in New York. We grew up together and we're buddies, brothers. And I played right back. So it's obviously not a position where you score a lot of goals, except for that game. And I scored i scored a goal in that game. And it was a we were losing 1-0. And I scored the tying goal. But not only did I score the tying goal, but i I combined with a ah player who turned out to be one of our great players who played for the U.S. National Team, 94 World Cup, Roy Wegerle.
00:44:51
Tom Byer
who's South African. And we wound up losing the game, unfortunately. But I remember my dad in the stands standing up and yelling because he was amongst a couple of thousand fans and he was the only guy standing up. And I remember telling him to sit down. So that was my most memorable moment. i'm Sorry, it was centered around myself and I could have a more interesting, but I never forgot that moment of scoring that goal. And that was my last game because we got knocked out of the tournament.
00:45:20
Tom Byer
and then the rest was history.
00:45:23
Craig Birtwistle
I think that's a great memory and it doesn't matter how old you get and how well you're dead. Your dad can always embarrass you, isn't it? That's absolutely fantastic stuff. Well, thank you so much for your time, Tom. I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's been so much fun and I'm sure very beneficial to our listeners. ah So Tom, if our listeners want to get in touch with you and follow you on X and everything, how can they get in touch with you?
00:45:47
Tom Byer
Yeah, probably I'm very active on on X, formerly known as Twitter. And my, my, my handle, so to speak is Tom son 106. So T o m s a n 106. And I am probably pretty well known on Twitter as someone who actually replies to all inquiries if it's done in a polite way, and DMs as well. So I try to be charitable with my time. I'm also on Facebook. If you just search for Tom Byer, I have both a public page and a private page. um And that's it. I dabble in Instagram, but it's not really, it's it's not my way of actually communicating exes. I'm very, very active on that. So come and join and look forward to to interacting with whomever.
00:46:38
Craig Birtwistle
And what we'll do as well for our listeners, and in the podcast description, I will leave all Tom's information where you can get in touch with him, follow him on X and everything. I do ah thoroughly enjoy his tweets.
00:46:51
Craig Birtwistle
I don't know if you call them tweets anymore, but we'll say tweets.
00:46:53
Tom Byer
That's right.
00:46:54
Craig Birtwistle
So, yeah. So, well, that's about it for the time we have on this episode of Session Share, the Coaches Podcast. Thank you again, Tom Bier, for joining us. Be sure to get in touch across all our socials to offer your opinions on all we have discussed today. ah You can find the social media platforms we use in our podcast description. This has been Session Share, The Coaches Podcast. Thank you for listening and thank you for coaching The Beautiful Game.