“It’s like we’d been invited to your party and we were speaking a language you didn’t understand. We needed a common language.”
Matt Radcliffe, Manchester United’s first-team physiotherapist, is talking to a group of academy coaches from Category One clubs in the Premier League and beyond and referring to a time when sports science and medicine were struggling to be integrated at clubs.
Now the language barriers between the various people charged with developing and supporting players have come down.
Radcliffe is a guest speaker at a recent Premier League Leadership Journey event for the youth development phase (for teams U12-U16) at The Cliff, the former training ground for Manchester United.
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These events are held regularly to allow academy directors and coaches to share best practice, debate pertinent issues and learn from one another as well as those from outside the sport.
One of the outcomes of the introduction of the Premier League's Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) in 2012, which aims to maximise the elite young players' potential by making them the centre of his development in the best environment, is the opening of these communication channels.
"The single most important thing is that player on the pitch," says Frankie Hunter, who worked with Radcliffe at Southampton and is now Head of Academy Sports Science and Medicine at Hull City. "It is getting them on the pitch and staying on the pitch, getting time with the coach so that he can implement his knowledge to those kids.
Hunter sums up the challenge facing footballers' support staff.
"If we can set parameters that the coach understands, then he needn't worry about the physicality, but can focus fully on those players technically and tactically."
Chris Casper, the former Manchester United player, who is Club Support Manager at the Premier League and organises the Leadership Journey events, offers a summary of the key message for the coaches.
"It's the multi-disciplinary team – the sports scientists, the medical people, the education people, the coaches – all working together and having clear communication.
“You're not going to get anywhere with people working in silo, all doing their bit. It has to be that joined-up thinking, and today is about sparking that debate.
"We're not talking about coaches who can automatically become expert sports scientists and physios; it's about giving them an insight into what the sports scientists is working towards with regards to the player's development."
Radcliffe achieved an average 93% player availability rate during his four years at Southampton, and defines a player's four main corners of support: the coaches; education and welfare; parents (and agents); and sports science and medicine.
He also believes four basic principles apply for the academy coach liaising with his sports science and medicine team.
"Coaches and clubs have their own philosophies. So sports science and medicine feed off those needs."
These are firstly communication between the teams with a player-centred approach. There must also be a readiness to train and play matches but also adequate recovery between bouts of exercise for the player. Finally, he advocates methods of periodisation, namely the division of periods of time to plan for athletic training by a player.
That division is not just over long periods (such as years, termed "macrocycles") but also six-week blocks ("mesocycles") and weekly ("microcycles"), which help to make the macrocycle more logical and thorough. And these priniciples need to be embraced by all parties.
As an example of holistic communication, Radcliffe recalls how he and Hunter helped with the periodisation planning for the whole year (the macrocycle) among different staff.
"At Southampton, we all locked ourselves away in a hotel room until plans were made and recorded and language agreed for the smooth-running of the department for the whole season."
All the academy coaches present divide their working week around the matchday so they have MD+1, the first day after the match, MD+2, MD-3, MD-2, MD-1 and MD.
The intensities at which players train can be tightly planned (usually at an average of 160% of match output during the day furthest from the match) and monitored, through GPS systems or "Rates of perceived exertion", whereby the player scores a session subjectively.
Radcliffe highlights the need to consider "top-up" sessions for those young players finding their workload easier than others.
When asked by a coach whether young players need to take some responsibility for their own welfare, Hunter accepts that they should communicate other factors such as extra-curricular school activities that could affect their performance and capability.
Another coach questions whether there is not an ideal template for clubs to follow.
"Coaches and clubs have their own philosophies. So sports science and medicine feed off those needs," Hunter replies.
This is one of the points that Ged Roddy, the Premier League's head of youth development, picks up on.
"In the youth development phase, you’re dealing with kids from 11-16," he says. "That's an incredibly rich period in a young person's development where there's all sorts of things going on.
"You're never going to be expert in all aspects of that person's development but what we've started to build in academies are groups of people who, if they work together, can provide a holistic support system to take these kids through the journey.
"In the foundations of the EPPP is an assumption that every club will write their own coaching philosophy, their own curriculum, their own approach. Those approaches will reflect the culture and ambitions of the club, from a technical perspective, or a playing perspective.
"So if this club is going to play 4-3-3, for instance, then they work from that. They might have full-backs that are going to overlap and attack, or we're going to have full-backs that tuck in, don't go over the halfway line and keep us compact, whatever it happens to be.
“There’s a shared philosophy at a club that has to be bespoke to that club. As the club build their playing group around that philosophy, there might be nuances [in sports science] that are different.
“There are norms that will relate from one club to another and from one player to another so what we’re trying to do at the centre is capture data about players over a long period of years.
“What that data gives you is lots of norms you can work off. We hope to gather the data from the clubs and return it anonymised so they can tell what the state of play is on a given measurement.
“For example, if clubs will be able to pull down benchmark results on how quick our 14-year-olds are in the country.
“We’re doing the same with injury surveillance, so you can look at your club and compare yourself to the others. Eventually, that’ll be filtered down to all clubs, but for now it’s Category One clubs only.
“When I came in we didn’t have any information at all. That was the systemic failure we inherited: a generation of people who thought such information was not relevant. So we have come from nothing.
“If we achieve anything, when we hand the baton on, at least the next people will be able to say, ‘They put something in place, so we can look at all the implications of that.'”
Pete Lansley (@PeteLansley), a freelance football reporter for the Sunday Times and the Guardian, is a Level 2/Youth Module 3 coach working with Derby County Community Trust.
