The Club’s Youth Department has begun a brand new innovative project. Over the next few months, the Youth Department will produce various video clips that will be shown to the players as to how to perform technical movements along with special ways as to handle the ball. Robin Verheul, assistant to Performance Director Patrick van Leeuwen is managing the project at both the Youth Training Facility and at the University. The Youth Department has trained two coaches, one at the North facility and one at the South facility who will responsible for teaching the technical training procedures and special movements of the most successful players in the world to the youngsters.

This season, the Youth Department has begun technical training through the methodology of Wiel Coerver (a Dutch coach who developed training methods that deal with technique). The Department has trained two Youth Academy coaches, Idan Kazinitz (North facility) and Hamda Meri (South facility) that will carry out the technical training for the Under-10 to Under-15 age groups.

The Youth Department will produce 35 video clips on movements in various different directions. Two players will be filmed performing the movements correctly, while each movement is named after a famous player who performs the specific move. Younger players will be challenged to do these movements and the videos will encourage them to work harder in order to handle them during a match as well.

Robin Verheul who is managing the project said, “We want the movements to be performed at the highest levels, but they also must be done quickly. We are teaching the younger players how to do these movements with both feet and each movement is also of a different nature and different direction in order for the players to learn them at each position on the pitch. Just learning the movements is not enough and it’s very important to repeat the exercise over and over again in order to improve the speed of the movement. At the moment, these movements are being done freely and without defensive players. The next step will be to add defenders. At the end of the day, these technical movements will help the player’s confidence in handling the ball and ultimately make them more complete players.”