Footballers - players and people

Video presentation
Top coaches such as Carlos Queiroz, Sven-Göran Eriksson and Morten Olsen reflected on the football philosophies which have brought them success in a special video presentation earlier in the week – and with UEFA EURO 2004™ just around the corner, one of the coaches looking forward to an exciting summer in Portugal was in Crete in person on Thursday to put forward his viewpoint on how any coach should approach the task of producing winning teams and fostering talented players.

Rehhagel's success
Otto Rehhagel, a German Bundesliga winner with SV Werder Bremen and 1. FC Kaiserslautern, UEFA Cup Winners' Cup conqueror with Bremen, and UEFA Cup winner with FC Bayern München, has succeeded in moulding a Greek national side good enough to feature among the 16 final-round participants with a concoction of Germany's tried-and-trusted football values and an understanding of how to make players tick, even if they speak a different language and come from a different culture and football school than his own.

Player-human link
"You have to be able to judge the players' possibilities appropriately," said Rehhagel in a lively presentation. "And you must transfer the way you deal with other people to football players. To find the right balance between the player as a footballer and the player as a person is one of the biggest challenges," added the German, whose philosophy of "controlled attacking play", as he puts it, has paved the way for his distinguished career.

EURO preview
EURO 2004™ remained in the spotlight with a preview of the final round from a technical perspective by UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh. So many things had changed over the years, he said, that coaches had been forced to adapt constantly. Issues such as so-called passive offside, the changed stakes with three points for a group win, stricter crackdowns on tackling from behind, the introduction of the back-pass rule for goalkeepers and golden and silver goals had, among other things, all become prominent in the past decade, presenting coaches and players with new challenges to solve.

Entertainment or sport?
A fundamental issue raised by Roxburgh in another address to the course was whether football should be considered as entertainment rather than sport. For example, Carlos Queiroz’s view was that, while a coach's brief was to win matches, football must be accepted as entertainment. The great Scottish coach Jock Stein stressed in his lifetime that football could be nothing without the fans. Coaches must be urged to handle talented players in the right way, play the game in the right way and ensure that players and coaches combined entertainment for the public with a respect for the game and its sporting values.

Technical training
During the proceedings, Manchester United FC skills development coach Rene Meulensteen gave a practical session of the technical training undertaken at the English club. Holger Osieck, a FIFA World Cup-winning coach alongside Franz Beckenbauer for Germany in 1990, a former Canada head coach and a successful coach at club level, also led a practical session. Players, he said, must be encouraged by coaches to adopt conscious tactical behaviour, and to find their own solutions to match situations.

English school
The course's recurring theme of different European schools of football was revisited by Robin Russell, the English Football Association's technical co-ordinator, who gave an insight into the FA's impressive FA Learning educational programme, designed to stimulate involvement in football – and, among other things, in coaching and coach education.