Category Archive

Improvement is based on constantly achieving small goals.

Rather than focus on achieving a big goal, Top Flight Football Academy advocates young players committing to continual development by hitting short term targets.

There are two reasons for this approach.

The Four Rules of Pep
Pep Guardiola is the seminal club manager of the decade.

He has dominated both La Liga and Bundesliga with Barcelona and Bayern Munich respectively, winning trophies while evolving a style of play that is simply breathtaking.

When watching football it is easy to assess performance in terms of goals, assists (the final pass before a goal) and tackles.  But the real value of a player is often the pieces of play that are not so easily noticed.

Gaizka Mendieta scored the best goal you haven’t seen in the 33^rd minute of the 1999 Copa del Rey Cup Final between Valencia CF and Atletico Madrid.

Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski’s 5 clinical goals in just 9 minutes against Bundesliga rivals VfL Wolfsburg was one of the spectacular individual footballing performances of 2015.

Little would the Wolfsburg defenders have known that a dog had a role in giving Lewandowksi the speed and technique that he has today.

Back to the 30s
Any nation capable of beating Germany 6-0 and 5-0, Italy 2-1, Belgium 6-1, France 4-0 and Hungary 8-2 is clearly one of the very best teams in the world.

Between 1931-33 these results did occur.  The team that did the destroying was called the wunderteam.  Any guesses on who the nation was?