'Youth football a great learning ground'

Having coached Scotland to victory at the 1982 UEFA European Under-18 Championship, UEFA's technical director Andy Roxburgh is perfectly placed to assess the importance of the organisation's youth competitions as the 2005/06 U19 finals get under way in Poland.

Technical expertise
Prior to taking up his present post in 1994, Roxburgh worked for the Scottish Football Association (SFA) for almost 20 years after ending his playing career in 1973. Initially the SFA's technical director, Roxburgh also assumed responsibility for his country's national youth teams in 1976, and a decade later took over the senior side, whom he led to the 1990 FIFA World Cup finals and EURO '92. Since stepping down as Scotland boss in 1993 he has also become a member of FIFA's technical committee and has been a technical observer at every World Cup since 1978 for either the SFA or FIFA, yet he still retains considerable affection for the place where it all began.

'Fantastic stepping stone'
"There's no doubt that if you coach the national youth teams, it's a fantastic stepping stone for people to go to the top clubs and the national team," he told uefa.com, making the example of a UEFA Champions League-winning manager to illustrate his point of the valuable education working with young players provides. "You can run through the coaches who've started there and gone forwards; just one example is Rafael Benítez, who started with Real Madrid [CF]'s youth team and then stepped up to the higher level. It's a great grounding, especially working at U19 level."

Different routes
Roxburgh's route to the summit was a winding one, as he explained: "I had no thoughts [of stepping up to senior level]; I was the technical director of the SFA, and in charge of the U21s and the youth teams, and it was only when [then Scotland manager] Jock Stein suggested that I could do his job that I began to consider it. You get a lot of specialists at youth level but people follow different routes. Some always stay with the youth teams, some move into club football, and some others become top club managers and then go on to the national team, like Sven-Göran Eriksson. Berti Vogts was the youth team coach of Germany and went on to win EURO '96™. People like Berti and myself almost became specialists at international level rather than working with clubs."

'Great learning ground'
Working with youth players presents a distinct test to that posed by the seniors, and Roxburgh believes the ability to adapt to different challenges is a fundamental element in a coach's personality. "The U19 boys are young enough to still need coaching in a comprehensive way but they're adult as well so they have that competitive mentality," he said. "You're taking part in tough, tough competitions but at the same time you're dealing with players you can still educate, whereas in the national team it's all about getting the best out of them. At senior level you're just preparing the players for individual matches whereas with the younger ones there's a tutoring, educational, coaching element to it. It's a great learning ground."