DON’T RUSH IT
As Ashworth plots an end to the pain of penalties, FA’s message is...
THE Football Association’s technical director Dan Ashworth would like it to be known that his job is about more than studying penalties. Ash w or th’ s brief, and the role of St George’s s Park from where he oversees English football, is clearly much broader than trying to ensure England internationals can hit the target from 12 yards in Russia this summer.
But he also knows that the perception of how well he is doing could well boil down to those tiny margins. So Ashworth is preparing for the summer, yet reflecting on an extraordinary 2017, a mixed year when the England age-group teams mesmerised world football and won two World Cups yet which also saw calls for his dismissal for his handling of En iA luko’ s complaints against then England women’s manager Mark Sampson.
He survived that and lived to take some credit for the men’s Under-17 and U20 World Cup wins. Yet all will be quickly forgotten by many should England endure a tournament as bad as Brazil 2014 or France 2016. Hence the conversation on penalties.
‘ I don’t want this to focus on penalties,’ he says. ‘There’s a bit more to it than that. There’s a range of projects from Talent ID, sleep and recovery, there’s all sorts of things going on. St George’s Park has given us the scope for research and development .’ Ash worth highlights recent breakthroughs on recovery and nutrition which have been implemented in the national team. Referee analysis is now an important part of game preparation, whereby detail is available on the refereeing style of the officials in charge of England games.
But with England, it all too often comes down to the problem of penalties. Ashworth insists that England will not fail for want of trying to understand why there has been six ex its from major tournaments in shoot- outs since 1990, including Gareth Southgate’s crucial penalty miss in the Euro 96 semi-final against Germany.
‘We have a research team on it to come back with some interesting findings,’ says Ashworth. ‘Gareth would joke that he’s hardly the man to lead it. But actually he is. He’s very insightful and detailed in his thought processes.
‘I’m not going to give you any secrets but you can break the penalty shoot-out down. So when the whistle goes, you’ve got a couple of minutes to prepare. So how do you do that? Where do you do that on the pitch? Who’s involved? Where do you stand? Where do you begin the walk?
‘ There has been a little bit of research done to show that English players are quick to the ball when the whistle goes. When the referee’s whistle goes, you have as long as you want to take the penalty. As a nation over the years we’ve been a bit quick. You look at other nations, they take a bit more time. There are some interesting patterns. For example, Crist i ano Ronaldo’s self-control is incredible.’
Ash worth’ sr eve la ti on that nervous English players rush to strike are borne out by analysis done by author and penalty expert, Ben Lyttleton (see panel). And this is a small example of the difference that Ashworth, appointed in 2012, and St George’s Park are meant to play in English football.
‘I don’t believe there is a magic pill or a magic guru or magic spell which will all of a sudden take away [the pressure of] the England shirt and allow us to perform at international level and win a World Cup out of the blue,’ he says. ‘What we try to do is be a bit more methodical and joined up in how we resolve these problems.
‘Everything we’ve talked about [here] is about building a system that will equip players to deal with the pressure of a tournament. We can’t take away the pressure. What we can do is try to equip them, technically, tactic ally, psychologically and physically to be able to deal with those demands and play to their potential.’
Since Ashworth arrived, England have coincidentally had two of their worst tournaments, finishing bottom of their group at the 2014 World Cup followed by the Iceland debacle in the last 16 at Euro 2016. And while it would be foolish to lay those failures at Ashworth’s door, he is aware he cannot be promising jam tomorrow for ever. ‘There’s only a finite number of “lives” a technical director can have. I can’t be sitting here in 20 years’ time saying, “Look, we’re still at the growth stage”. My job has to be on the line as well at some stage. What is that period of time? I can’t give you that answer.’ He knows that, despite the successes of English football last year, his position was precarious for a time because of his handling of investigations into Aluko’s complaints about Sampson, who kept his job in that instance but was then dismissed because of what were deemed to be inappropriate relationships in a previous job. Ashworth was criticised after it took three inquiries to establish Sampson had made discriminatory remarks to Aluko and a team-mate (though the independent QC ruled he was not racist). Some called for Ashworth to be sacked too but he insists he has learned from it.
‘I never want to see any player, any coach, any member of staff leave the FA or England with a negative experience,’ he says. ‘I want everybody to look back on their England career positively.
‘There are some things which we didn’t do so well. You talk about lessons learned: grievances and whistleblowing policies were not in place. They are now. My job as technical director is to make sure those things do not happen again.
‘It was a tough time, not so much for me but a tough time for my family. It probably hit them hardest. I’m perhaps more used to media speculation. But it is hard for the kids and that is what people don’t realise. Your 15-year-old son calls you up and says “Have you seen BBC Sport, dad?” That’s tough.’
What he can reasonably take some credit for is the transformation of England age-group teams. Young English players are now so well regarded that their players are targets for major European clubs.
‘We wanted to get the players to believe that you can win in an England shirt. There’s less pressure at U 17, U 19 and U 21 level, of course there is.
‘But we wanted to give them that confidence. If the first time they ever play Brazil is in the quarterfinal in Russia, that iconic yellow shirt and the fact we haven’t historically done very well against them, means it might be, “Urgh!”.
‘I can understand the freeze. But if it is, “Actually we played these at U17s, we played these at U20s, we beat them in the semi-final of the World Cup. Do you remember”? Then all of a sudden it instils confidence in them.
‘The first thing we did [when I arrived in 2012] is look at 10 countries — seven European and three non- European — and ask, “What does success look like at international level and how have they got there”? And there were two massive things that came out.
‘One was that success at youth level does correlate to success at senior level. So you look at Spain, you look at Germany and they mopped up at youth level before they started winning at senior level. The second thing was the number of caps. We call it our capaccumulation programme. At the time when we did the study the German team were getting around 60 youth caps before they got into their senior team and we were on about 30.’
But Ashworth is aware that much of how the FA are perceived will hinge on what Southgate’s senior team can do in Russia. And Ashworth comes as close as the FA have done to confirming the last-16 of the World Cup is a minimum requirement this summer.
‘Look at the FIFA rankings. Like it or not we are 13th in the world,’ he says .‘ That suggests a last -16 appearance would be fine. Gareth has given opportunities to younger players, so there is a longer term view to it. But that doesn’t excuse the fact we have to do well this summer and there will be some expectations to play well and win some games of football.’