My brand of Football

Football ( or the beautiful game as I prefer to call it ) is played across the globe, someone once told me that football is a game of gentlemen played by hooligans and someone else said, 22 men in need of rest watched by 36,000 people in need of exercise.

Whichever way you view football as a game in England, it is overdue for a makeover, trouble is the Football Association (FA) is like a toothless dog as the game is now controlled by Corporate Britiain purely for profit, England invented this game so atleast they should be really good at it with the most coaches and made easily available to all.
The contrary is true, there are only 2,769 English coaches holding Uefa's B, A and Pro badges, its top qualifications. Spain has produced 23,995, Italy 29,420, Germany 34,970 and France 17,588.
There are 2.25 million players in England and only one Uefa-qualified coach for every 812 people playing the game. Spain have 408,134 players, giving a ratio of 1:17. In Italy,  the ratio is 1:48, in France it is 1:96, Germany 1:150 and even Greece, the Euro 2004 winners, have only 180,000 registered players for their 1,100 coaches, a ratio of 1:135.

The so called 'big clubs' through their football academies haven't helped either, the serious business of playing for a big club starts at 16 (after a few years of playing matches at grassroot level) yet the Premier League and Football League say between 60% and 65% of the 700 or so offered scholarships each year are rejected at 18. Even half of those who do win a full-time contract will not be playing at a professional level by 21, reckons the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA). Simply put, five out of every six on the scholarships that started in July 2010 will not be playing football for a living in five years.
If it was a university of football, with our success rates we would have been closed down by now because it's just not good enough," says Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the PFA.

In my quest for making the beautiful game perfect or as perfect as humanly possible, I'm introducing my brand of football, which I have christened 'the beautiful game with Christmanship';  CHRISTMANSHIP is to compete in the image of Christ in the way you connect with team-mates, opponents, officials and coaches. It involves competing with zeal and unmatched enthusiasm, while honouring your opponent as you play your very best.
The aim is to coach and produce better and well behaved footballer for the future, we need to show the world that we can be good at a game we invented.

Till next week

Yemi Awolola
Owner & Coach
Football Club of Riverside

Football club of Riverside is affiliated to the London Football Association and members of the Enfield Football Allliance league, season 2010/11