It was a pang of jealousy that kickstarted the need to change Belgium’s football culture. It was 1998, and Belgium had just been knocked out in the first round of the World Cup. Watching it on television, Bob Browaeys swore under his breath. “This is not working. We need to change. Where is the quality? No dribbling or passing skills, no real strategic thinking.” As the matches progressed, envy hit. “I saw the way France and Netherlands were playing, and that made me jealous,” laughs Browaeys, who has been Belgium’s prominent youth teams’ coach and a man who played a big part in the country's turnaround. A former professional goalkeeper, he had just joined the Belgium federation and went to the office next day to speak his mind. However, it would take some more time, and it coincided with the arrival of a man with similar passion to change the culture: Michel Sablon, who was the assistant coach of that 1999 team. Sablon would become the technical director of Belgium football association and Broweays, who already knew him, was thrilled. “Sablon was a powerful man, someone with vision, who understood we had to change. Most of the national players in the team today, I am proud and happy to say, came up through the system we put in place.” A country of just 11.5 million people and 34 clubs has reached the final four at World Cup - not a mean achievement. Leading the team is Eden Hazard who has roots in France, a country that Broweays loved as kid and whose football he envies. Broweays remembers Hazard as a 14-year old, who had just moved to Lille in Belgium in 2005. “I remember him, he used to play like he was playing in his garden,” Broweays laughs. “I had to take him aside, talk to him about need for tactical thinking, strategies, and make him think about the game. Even now he plays as if it’s all fun — which is a great quality of course. But I am glad to have played a small part in his early years.” Hazard returned to France while still in his teens but an entire generation of Belgians came up through the system put in place by Sablon's team. Browbaeys, Eric Abrams, Marc Van Geersom, Kris Van Der Haegen . The plan was mindboggling: To put a unified way of playing across all teams in the country. Across schools, clubs, youth teams. Every team, Sablon’s think tank decided, would play a 4-3-3 Zonal model. “We decided that 3-5-2 that used to be prevalent in Belgium then was of no use in development. The nature of the game, then, was man-marking. You are just following the opponents then. And try to counterattack at some point. This wasn’t good enough,” Browaeys says. “Whereas, if you play in zones, you have to think, you have to position yourself in relation to your opponent and the situation of the game." To ask an entire country to change the way it played the game wasn’t going to be easy. Here is where Professor Helson Werner, of University of Leuven came to the picture. Sablon knew him from European Championship days, and called him to join the revolution. In 1996, Werner’s research team had already come up with a publication whose essence can be distilled thus: “It was clear that if you want to make it to the top, you needed to have at least 10,000 hours of focussed practice behind you,” Werner tells this newspaper. So, with the backing of Sablon, Werner’s team once again went into a frenetic phase of detailed study and analysis of the way youth training was done at the country. “We collected 1500 hours of game time, from across the country, and analysed it.” The result was startling. “We found that ball touches of the players were very very less. It was a waste of time really. Without ball on your foot, how were you going to improve, just by running around?” Werner says. The study showed that in a 11-a side, some young players were just touching the ball twice in 90 minutes. The devil in the details He suggested that the composition of the team be changed. “We decided 4- a side was best to start young. So 4 a side in a diamond (field), 8 at double diamond, and ultimately at slightly more senior level only, 11-a side.” Broaweays remembers that this university study helped them turn around the thinking of clubs. “Now we had evidence. Numbers that said what was happening was wrong.” Sablon would now walk into presentations with the study as a chief tool in convincing the clubs and schools. Slowly, things started to change. Belgium federation had started eight TopSport schools, where young players come for development. The first implementation of the programme started there. Sablon devised a 6-point model to scout talents. “Winning mentality, emotional stability, personality, explosiveness, insight in the game and ball and body control," Broweays explains. Ball circulation became the key. “We stopped goal kicks, throw-ins and free kicks at very young age. More ball circulation helped the kids develop their tactical thinking and how to work as a team. Even the goalkeepers were encouraged to get into the play more - a goal keeper can do two things, either kick the ball away and don't build up. Or adopt the zonal approach and build up. You will lose games in back passes but over time, you will learn, improve and develop as a team." The amount of hours in training also was escalated. Werner says that the old approach of few hours of weekday training and weekend games gave just 10 to 12 hours. “That wasn’t enough. So we had the youth train 3 hours every morning except for Wednesdays.” Browaeys explains how it all weaved in together. “So you have more hours now, more ball-circulation, more real-game play in training – week after week, when you do this, thinking and dribbling and passing skills all sort of become muscle memory. It produces a more rounded player.” The Topsport schools went beyond game. “Not everyone is going to make it, so it was a holistic approach – the school will equip to grow up as a intelligent being, with skills that would help you find a job in real world.” Sablon’s team would send their coaches to youth teams of top clubs, and invite them to come over as well. “There are several late-to-mature players in the youth group and clubs focussed on short-term goals would only look for high-performance players and high-potential players would lose out,” Browaeys explains. “We had to invest in players who had insight of the game and those six points we felt were crucial. Once the clubs and youth teams began to buy our approach, things began to change.” It wasn’t easy. Sablon’s team took 2-3 years to put together the vison plan. Then the convincing and implementation process began. Then came the toughest part: wait for 10 years to see the results come through. “You need to wait, you need to wait,” Browaeys laughs. “There is no other way. We really believed we can change for better and we persisted. We were confident. In 2012-2014, I would say young players coming through. So it took us 10 years at least. We then started to do well at U-17 and U-21. And then the national team.” All the people concerned have had a remarkable careers of their own. Sablon is now the technical director of Singapore football federation, trying to change the culture there. Werner not only researched VAR for FIFA but his team is also with the national team in Russsia, monitoring the load on players. He is going to Russia to join his team for the semi-finals. Eric Abrams, another vital cog in Sablon’s team, is now national technical director of Australia football. And Browbayes, who took U17 team to semi-finals of World Cup in 2007 and ’15, continues to shape youth teams across Belgium.
