World Champions Barcalona

Barcelona won the FIFA Club World Cup with a 4v0 win over Santos. This team truly deserves it and continues to promote playing the beautiful game the beautiful way. 

I hope this serves as an inspiration to young teams and coaches to keep playing “sexy soccer” focusing on ball movement and great touches. Teach our young players to be creative and confident on the ball. Too many young players are focused on fitness for hours every week and packing defences playing a long ball to the fastest kid on the team. With nobody learning skills or creativity it makes a terrible game to watch.

I’ll take beauty over the beast any day of the week. 

FC felber

Euro draw

Euro draw

The Euro cup 2012 is going to be fantastic as always. I grew up hearing that the Euro Cup is the World Cup without Brazil and Argentina. 

The truth is the European Cup is the World cup without Costa Rica and Iran, What a great time its going to be.

Top 1st round game to watch Germany v Netherlands great teams and great rivals. The Dutch like to act like they invented total soccer and have long been master of the game, but again the truth being they have long been in the shadow of Germans. When they invented total soccer the attacking Libero Beckenbauer was lifting the world Cup.

FC Felber

 

WORLD CUP 2018 BID

There has been a lot of talk about the recent world cup host being voted in and a lot of unhappy feelings. But I must say I’m Delighted with the choice of Russia. Russia is a beautiful highly diverse country with lots of interesting people. And the fact of the matter is Russia is a hugely successful Sports country and has the financial support and creative eye to build a wonderful event.

I think a lot of people have hang ups on things and events that happened many years ago we all have to move on. Being British and living in America I know there must be a lot of people to hate myself for those very things but there is no better way to connect people countries religions and Nations than Football. After the 2018 World Cup I’m sure the world will be thanking and loving Russia for a great event.

Youth Soccer in Pennsylvania, 8v8-11v11

Right now in Pennsylvania the big issue is the change over of age groups moving into 11v11. up in till a few years ago all u11 teams where playing 11v11. In the last year or two this has slowly changed into U11′s playing 8v8. Now all of a sudden u12 are being forced into playing 8v8 as well.

Honestly I think it’s a good change and more developmental for the younger players. But the problems arise of teams are not playing 8v8 as the have already upped the squads to 11v11. Leagues and club are also designed and have fields built to deal with the old system. But still I think its beneficial clubs and League just have to find away to adapt out of their old ways.

However the system is still not perfect field sizes are a huge issue. 10 year olds on a full size field is ridiculous as they can not cope with the space, even the majority of 12-year-old goalkeepers can not touch the cross-bar of a full-sized goal. But 12 year olds on an 8v8 field becomes very tight.

EPYSA should make very strict field sizes and not allow such large difference between fields. 8v8 field should be maximum size for U11/U12 games, and a smaller size for U9/U10. These dimensions should be set by EPYSA and met by all other organisations. I do believe this is the biggest problem each game you play is played on a completely different sized field, some 8v8 fields look more like 4v4 fields which is a nightmare for U12 teams.

Another option would be to introduce another step up again with strict feild sizes. 5v5 up to U8, U9/U10 will play 7v7 adn U11 u12 will play 9v9 then all other ages play 11v11. We could even set up 4v4, 6v6, 8v8, 11v11. either way another field size could make all the difference to the development of youth teams. EPYSA has definitely taken the right step but we all need to step together so we can all make it work and move forward.

FC Felber

Scottish Football, No I do not have an answer but I have a suggestion.

Growing up in Scotland I loved to follow my Club Aberdeen, but as the years have gone by boredom and constant disappointment have hit hard. Whenever one of the Clubs outside of the Old Firm build a strong team they lose their player for two main reasons. MONEY AND BOREDOM.  Teams do not have the finance and Players find themselves playing the same teams week in week out. We have a top flight of 12 teams, was 10 not so long ago. With only one relegation spot there are never any new teams coming in.

Every weekend I feel like Aberdeen is playing Kilmarnock or Motherwell and that just doesn’t thrill me at all and with the cup competitions your almost guaranteed to play one team 5 even 6 times in one season.  To me the key is that we get the fans interest back, uping attendances will help bring back money and popularity will bring more sponsorships which will give clubs more money to build better teams and in return this will bring in more fans and the circle of success continues.

Most of Europe plays with leagues of 18 or more with at least 3 teams being relegated. We need this system and up our league make playing Motherwell at Fir park a little more special as its once a year. 3 or 4 teams coming in new each year would be a big refresher too. I also have ideas from America, the MLS has Canadian and Mexican teams joining the league and I recently went to the Philadelphia vs Toronto game. The nationals anthems of both countries where played before the game and i just gave a nice friendly yet different feel to the game as it was a battle between two nations. We also see Welsh teams in the English league. So my second idea is to bring in some of Ireland’s biggest clubs. Linfeild and Glentoran Bring in attendees of over 20,000 which would be massive for the Scottish league. Bohemians would be the next club I would look to bring from the Republic of Ireland. What a fresh change it would be to play some new clubs and bring in a little international competition to our domestic play.

My final idea is to merge some clubs. We have Clubs within miles of each other competing for the same very few fans. the SFA should be promoting these clubs to combine together and produce more competitive teams with larger fan basis. the SFA could even offer to buy their unused stadiums and use these as youth development centres. Again I look to American and the huge amounts of money there sports make. In Pennsylvania a state bigger than Scotland they only have 2 professional American Football teams. But this means that everybody in Pennsylvania supports one of these two teams. bringing a lot of support and money too these teams. its ludicrous that we would have a half-dozen teams in Fife/Stirlingshire and Grampian all struggling. 

Some thing radical has to be done and I did recently see the SFA make a statement that they are looking for a change. But their big change last time was to add 2 teams, and introduce a league split. which has been a huge failure. WE NEED A BIG CHANGE lets hope the SFA had some guts and imagination, years past have proven they don’t.

This would be my Scottish premier Division.

Aberdeen                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Rangers                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Celtic                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Kilmarnock                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Motherwell                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Hibs                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Hearts                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Dundee Union (was Dundee united and Dundee)                                                                                                                                                                         FC Grampian(was Arbroath, Forfar Brechinand Montrose)                                                                                                                                                  Fife Atheltic (was Raith, Dunfermline, East fife, Cowdenbeth)                                                                                                                                             StJohnstone                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Inverness   (Ross County and Inverness)Linfeild (fromN.Ireland)                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Glentoran (N.Ireland)                                                                                                                                                                                                             Bohemians (from R.Ireland)Falkirkshire ( Falkirk &Stenhousemuir)                                                                                                                                                                        Hamilton                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Stirling United ( was East Stirling, Stirling and Alloa)

Chris Felber for some thoughts on youth football in Scotland go to footballasiknowit.wordpress.com

Hello soccer world!

My name Chris Felber I am a soccer coach currently living and working in America. Originally from Scotland and with German family I have a wide range of interested in Football(soccer) across the world.

My Blog is going to give me a chance to vent some feelings on issues across the soccer world. Of chores I expect everything I am Involved in to be perfect and when it is not I will be short tempered and abusive. I will however give praise when due and most likely to those people and organizations that are being over looked.

I’ll start my Blog by saying Thank you to FIFA for finally taking some action towards the diving issue in the game. Diving to me is the ultimate form of cheating. FIFA has been using video evidence to catch players throwing elbows fists and even heads at players. but at least these players are fulled by passion, The players that flop around do it out of disrespect to the game, the referees the fans and the opposing team. FIFA has given permission to each league to fine players caught “simulating” I only hope FIFA and UEFA take action when these acts of simulation happen in their territory. Stopping diving can only speed our game up and help the popularity of our sport especially in countries such as Australia and USA where they watch highly physical sports and see our sport as a joke when players roll around the ground.

So I start of with a 1-0 lead to FIFA we will see how long that last.