In the last days the Atlético de Madrid Academy received a severe setback after the colchonero subsidiary was left out of the fight for promotion to the First RFEF (known as the Second B Pro). After drawing against him Navalcarnero will fight to stay in what will become the fourth category of Spanish football, the Second RFEF. A setback that has come after great seasons with a subsidiary that achieved promotion to Second B and that played two consecutive seasons in the play-off to Second, without forgetting the ‘Treble’ and ‘Double’ of Juvenile A a few seasons ago.
And is that the Atlético de Madrid Academy is working on a model that goes beyond the results as revealed a few weeks ago Javier Vidales placeholder image, sports director of the lower categories, through social networks: “The rush that has come to training football is caused by professional football. Professional football lives from immediacy, it lives from short-term results. While the formative soccer cannot be in the short term. A person who has set out to become a footballer goes through a process to become a product that will reach the end of the road as a result of simmering. Formative football is a very long process that has nothing to do with immediate processes ”.
Since the arrival of Javier Vidales placeholder image to the quarry of Atlético de Madrid The directional method that the sports director himself has invented has prevailed: “The directional method was born after a long journey after 35 years in football. The first step was playing it. I stayed in football as a coach. There is a path of a few years training in lower categories, training fingerlings, children, cadets, youth to enter professional football again. It is at that moment when players who are very young and who are not footballers yet come into your hands and you see how many open the door but are left in the dark. That's when I started asking myself questions. I began to ask myself questions about all those young people who when the time comes to cross that door to professional football are repelled by a demand that they cannot control, assume and overcome ”.
His objective is to preserve the times in formative football: “It is there when I return with greater responsibilities. Instead of training a group of boys, he went on to lead the coaches. So to protect that slow process and that he has to take hold with that young boy is when he structured that way of working that prevents coaches from getting into the rush that exists in professional football. It is important that the coaches are not in a hurry to meet the objectives set for the player ”.
Javier Vidales placeholder image has no problem explaining the three pillars of the directional method that are worked on in the Atlético de Madrid Academy: “The player needs to have a series of vertebral columns that allow him to become a footballer. Those spinal columns are your technical and bodily capabilities, which is what I call the tools. There is another fundamental pillar that is the brain, which is where all the player's decision-making starts. Then there is the part about emotions. This functioning of the brain based on a knowledge that has been given so that later the decision making for that footballer is accepted, also depends on the emotions. That is the third spine your emotions. That is why the directional method was created to safeguard that structure that will lead the child to maintain the dream of being a soccer player ”.
For this reason, in the end, the objective sought through this training system is “to safeguard football in this simmering process as opposed to the rush of professional football. It is not at all like working in professional football in which the results are the most important to working in training football in which the most important are training tools, including competition ”.