18.11.2019 - 16:01 | Source: Transfermarkt | Reading Time: 6 mins

Head of development exclusive Arsenal’s Lucassen: Many “coaches haven’t got a clue and try to mask that with words”

There are people in football clubs, who rarely make public appearances, although they sit in crucial positions. Marcel Lucassen (photo), head of development at Arsenal, is one of those.

Every person needs an incitement and Lucassen’s is to make players and coaches better. What maybe sounds like a cliché, the 56-year-old lives for: “After all, there’s nothing bigger than getting acknowledgments like ‘You’ve improved me’ or ‘I’ve never seen it like this before’.”

Manager stats of Marcel Lucassen

As head of coach and player development, responsible for all coaches and teams from under-9s to under-23s, his first official act was implementing a playing philosophy. “When I arrived at Arsenal, I firstly wanted to know, what the club stands for in general. The problem was that no coach could answer me that exactly. As a result, we collectively developed the ‘Way of Arsenal’, for which philosophy our teams from under-9s to under-23s stand for and also set an example of.”

What possibly sounds easy took months. “Because it was a collective project,” Lucassen, who worked as director of football at Al-Nasr in Dubai in front of his engagement at Arsenal, explains. “Because I cannot simply come here and say: That’s how we do it now. I have to convince the people, take them on board and explain why this plan is the right one.”

Arsenal’s Lucassen: “I disapprove of systems”

Exemplary for a clear playing philosophy and a playing system, which is implemented from the youth teams upwards, are Barcelona and Ajax. Amongst other things, Víctor Valdés set against playing in the predefined 4-3-3 system and had to leave his role as Barça’s U-19 coach as a result. Although Arsenal defined the 4-3-3 as the default system for every youth team as well, every coach from the U-15 onwards can decide himself, how he lets his team play.

Youth setups in comparison: The homegrown talents of Barcelona and Ajax

On the topic of systems, Lucassen, who also was a technical coach under Ralf Rangnick at Hoffenheim, as well as occupying a similar role to the one in London at the DFB between 2008 and 2015, has his own opinion: “I disapprove of systems. For me, there is way too much talk about them. It starts, when I ask people, which systems they know. Then the answer is 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. That means, football is played by ten people? If I talk about systems, it is 1-4-3-3 for example. Or does the goalkeeper have a role as an outsider in the team?”

According to Lucassen, many coaches are determined by their favourite system rather than taking the existing players into account. “The playing philosophy should be fixed, the system variable,” the 56-year-old emphasises. Does that mean that football is very simple? Lucassen thinks so. “There are six basic principles, which are features of football: Start the attack, create an attack and finish an attack. Contrary to that, defend as highly as possible, as quickly as possible and initiate transitional play. And to whom this is still to complicated: “If you lose the ball, win it back,” he explains with a chuckle.

Lucassen: “None of these coaches says, how you can improve it”

And why are technical terms thrown around? “Because most coaches haven’t got a clue themselves and try to mask that with words,” Lucassen continues. A serious accusation, as ultimately most coaches obtained a licence and therefore should have a clue about football. This, the Venlo-born Arsenal employee disagrees with. “Why does a baker or a craftsman work through an apprenticeship of multiple years? If he baked buns for ten times, he also knows how it works. It is about learning the basics and picking up experience. These skills, I don’t obtain when I’ve been to a block instruction for ten times. I think it would make more sense if the education takes multiple years.”

Lucassen adds an example for this: “Everyone knows the kind of coaches, who tell their players: ‘Focus more, play a clean pass, don’t get caught offside.’ But none of these coaches come up and tell you how to improve it.”

Instead of criticising, he offers measures for improvement: “I’m certainly not a coach that never makes a mistake. But I reflect a lot and look in the mirror. If I expect that it is taken for granted by a player to move in spaces, then he should also take it for granted that I explain to him how it works. And should mistakes still happen then, I have to analyse the situation precisely. Is the body weight shifted in the wrong way? Does he think about the next step already in this situation or did he make this mistake once in ten tries?” Because of this, Arsenal sign youth coaches only after practical training sessions: “We want to see: Is he able to learn, if and how he uses his experience?”

Lucassen on supreme discipline: Players coach each other during games

Lucassen thinks that emotional coaching is out of place on the sidelines - and explains what he thinks is the supreme discipline for a coach: “From the moment on, when the referee blows the starting whistle, football is a pure player sport. Because of the crowd, no player understands what the coach shouts in from the outside. In training, I have the possibility to interrupt situations and to explain. An outstanding coach manages that players coach each other during games.”

The success of a team depends on the design of training sessions amongst other things: “A week of training should be designed with a single focus. I have to put the team in situations for them to get awareness for it and for automatisms to develop. I don’t accomplish that if I train defensive behaviour today and transitional play in the next two days.”

Lucassen considers that players are also allowed to make mistakes: “Assuming that a player runs towards an opponent and tries to pass him with a stepover but fails. Then there are two kinds of coaches: The first one gives the player hell, so that he never does a stepover again because he fears the consequences. The second kind accomplishes to get a self-reflection from the player with specific questions, so that he thinks about it and decides if a stepover makes sense depending on the situation.” It cannot be forgotten that footballers “are also human beings and need a secure environment to be successful”.

While the assumption that Arsenal have a lot of money and can almost sign any player is obvious, Lucassen demands to rely on youth more often: “Why are clubs on a world class level only for a period? Because there will be a rebuilding phase after time, new players from other clubs come in and these players need time to settle in. If I take youth players instead of expensive new signings, they maybe make one or two mistakes more, but they have the advantage of non-verbal communication. Because they played together in the youth setup for years, they know how the other works and especially about the patters of movements. In the end the rebuilding phase is significantly shorter.”

Interview by Henrik Stadnischenko