This month, February 2006, I travelled to Sydney to go the Aime Jacquet Conference on French Football Methodology called "Youth development to World Champions" which lasted three days. Aime Jacquet was the coach of the World Cup winning French team in 1998 and is currently the Technical Director of the French Football Federation so I thought if you are going to learn it is best to learn from the best.

I live in Perth, Western Australia which is a 4 to 5 hour flight away from Sydney. We flew overnight so I arrived in Sydney on the day of the conference and I must admit I was so excited at what lay ahead I didn't feel too tired although I had had little sleep on the plane. On the first day Aime summarised the structure of football in France and how Clarefontaine was set up to develop elite footballers. He spoke in French but we wore headsets and everything was translated into English for us. This was fine although at one stage when Aime spoke about Maradona this was translated to Madonna now she may be very talented but I don't think she was involved in the 'hand of god' incident against England in Mexico in 1986.

Although I thought the first day covered the structure of the French Football Federation in too much detail one thing that shone through on that day was Aime's passion for football. At times he was incredibly animated about what were really rather mundane stages in the development of the structure. In fact at times I felt like I was missing something as you watched this man speak with real fire and yet the translation that came through your headsets was spoken in a clear, calm manner.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that in France children don't play full 11-a-side matches until they are 12 years old. They play 5-a-side from 6 to 7 years old, then 7-a-side from 8 to 9 years then 9-a-side from 10 to 11 years. The reason for this being that this way the children enjoy playing football more as they touch the ball more often and so improve quicker. He, also, spoke about the formations for these teams leaning heavily on teams scoring goals instead of stopping goals i.e for 9-a-side play a 2-2-4 formation and this would be on a half pitch. It makes complete sense to me.

In the evening after the first day we went to watch an 'A' league game between Sydney FC and Adelaide United. A vocal crowd of over 25,000 was there and they gave Mr Jacquet a standing ovation when it was announced he was there. The highlight of the night for me was watching Dwight Yorke take a real pressure penalty. He stepped up and chipped it down the middle while the keeper dived to his left. Yorke is having a terrific season playing for Sydney FC and looked worth every cent spent on bringing him to Australia during this game.

The second day was superb it began with Aime giving us his appraisal of the game from the night before. It was terrific to hear someone with his experience speak about his thoughts on a game openly without simply just saying the right things so nobody gets offended. He then spoke more on his philosophy for developing the player. Most of his ideas were really simple and about providing an environment were the children can enjoy playing the game. I'm becoming more and more convinced that developing young players is largely about making them enjoy the experience so they want to learn and only a small part is actually teaching them how to play. One of his ideas was to were possible always play with a net on the goal as younger players love to see the net bulge when they score so a net as well as helping them see were the goal is acts as a reward for scoring.

Another point he made repeatedly was to instil pride in the players. Make them proud of everything they do so that even a simple pass they will do to the best of their ability. Another was that a pass is more an invitation to play rather than a changing of who has possession of the ball so be proud that your pass allows another player to create something.

He, also, put on a training session for us with some elite under 15 players from a Sydney School. I think the young players were understandably nervous having a world cup winning coach take the session with an audience of coaches from around Australia and to have everything spoken to them via an interpreter. It must have been a unique experience for them. The most interesting thing for me was that I had seen every drill and exercise he did before many times so the reason for his success couldn't be simply the drills or exercises he used. Later on I spoke with Ricki Herbert, the New Zealand national team coach, and he said when he saw international teams train at the Confederations Cup in Germany he didn't see anything new in their sessions just the same drills but done by better players.

One thing that particularly interested me was that in the first half of the session when each player had their own ball he often stopped the session and asked the players to juggle the ball for 30 seconds to a minute. He was insistent they use both feet to juggle and he would impose conditions such as only with your head this time or outside of your feet.

After he had completed the training session I got to speak with him and asked him why he had so much juggling in the session. He said that juggling was important to give the players a feeling for the ball and that he preferred to use it during a training session to give the players a rest or recovery from all the running they are doing but still to work their ball control technique. So he would have the players doing some exercises that involved running and then to get their breath back he would ask them to juggle the ball for 60 seconds or so. This way they are still getting touches on the ball even when they are recovering. He thought juggling helped players control the ball but he didn't want his players juggling on the pitch. If they had the ball under control he wanted shots so they score goals and not juggling.

I was delighted that someone who has won the world cup would see the importance of juggling and include it in their training sessions. He had the same philosophy as me juggling helps ball control but obviously that is only one aspect of being a player not everything. I'm not sure why so many coaches are against juggling but I suppose the more they hear of top class successful coaches saying they believe it has its place in training the more used it will become.

After the training session we had a game with Alain Giresse the famous French player from the 80's playing. Giresse was the other person in central midfield with Michel Platini when France won the European Championships in '84 and during the Mexico World Cup in '86. He must be at least 50 and he was outstanding. He really was operating on a different level from anyone else on the pitch. I thought I'm going to play no matter how much my hip hurts and started off at right back. This is were I would like to be more economical with the truth as I must have given the ball away 5 or 6 times in the first 10 minutes. In my defence I have not played a game on a full size pitch for at least 15 years and it was played at a fair clip with plenty of the players on the park having international or national league experience. But if I could have changed any part of the weekend it would be that first 10 - 20 minutes as after that I played better well at least I stopped giving the ball to the opposition. I think I was helped by the fact my team stopped passing it to me unless I was in some much space that a one legged man with a sprained ankle couldn't have stuffed it up. Anyway I got to play and against some tremendous players and surprising my hip didn't hurt as much as I thought it would so in the end it was a very good day.

The last day was only a half day. Aime finished his presentation about developing youth players and Clarefontaine. Today he spoke more about creating an environment around the player so nothing gets in the way of them playing. He spoke about his routines when he is training teams and how he likes to provide time to talk to the players before sessions and after. How thinks it is as important for him to listen to his players as it is for them to listen to him.

As he did on other days he opened the floor to questions. Over the course of the three days he was asked about Futsal which he thought was very beneficial for development, about Coerver Coaching which he said was also good for player development, about why Cantona wasn't in the world cup squad in '98 which he avoided answering directly. During one question time he was asked why has the FFF produced so many good players through Clarefontaine and he answered because we focus on younger players and what they need so that they develop fully and we try to create a pleasure in simply playing the game.

All in all the three days were terrific. I got to talk and hear opinions from people which have altered the way I look at some things and confirmed my opinion on others. From now on I will be focusing more on how the players can get more satisfaction out of everything they do at training. I have always tried to make training fun but now besides making the drills or games fun to play I will look at other ways such as providing nets to bulge when goals are scored, altering formations during small sided games to produce more goals and basically reviewing everything I do to see if I can remove any obstacle or provide anything so the player simply enjoys playing football. It has confirmed my opinion that a coach's role is just as much about encouraging the player to want to learn as it is about teaching them anything.