‘Focus is to produce a competitive team’

[1]

India’s youth development coach Colm Toal.

Youth development coach Colm Toal feels it is very difficult to scout talent in a vast country like India but said state associations have to take responsibility in spotting grass-root talents in their respective regions.

“Finding best players has always been a problem of the Indian national team. I feel the state associations have to take more responsibility in identifying and selecting the best players in their respective states,” Toal said.
Presently in charge of the Under-19 national team training at the Elite Academy in Goa, Toal, spoke about his experience in India, the forthcoming U-19 AFC qualifiers, problems surrounding the Indian football and much more on the All India Football Federation website. Excerpts:

On future plans: My point of focus is, as it always has been, to produce a good, competitive Indian team. Young players will never improve if they are playing in a poor team. The present U-19 squad have been chosen from our 2012 U-16 national squad which qualified for the AFC final phase in Tehran 2012. The squad had also earlier qualified for the final phase of the 2011 AFC qualifiers in Tashkent.

On India’s chances in the U-19 AFC qualifiers: We have been drawn in a very difficult group with Uzbekistan, Qatar, Turkmenistan and Nepal and our chance of qualifying has been made harder by the AFC changing the format. Under the new format, only the winners of each group gain automatic qualification to the next year’s finals.

On the progress made during his tenure: The best decision we made during my time here was the introduction of our own developmental team to the I-League in 2010-2011. It really helped the U-19 national team players to bridge the gap between leaving the national team programme and playing in the I-League.

On difficulties faced while working with the young team than senior pros: I think it is very important to strike a psychological chord with whichever age-group you are coaching. Players of all age groups will respond positively to any coach they feel will help them become better individually and help their team win more matches.

On scouting talent in India: Finding best players has always been a problem for our national team. I feel the state associations have to take more responsibility in identifying and selecting the best players in their respective states. They then need to spend more time coaching and preparing their teams for the national tournaments from which we select our national youth teams.

On the biggest bane in India as far as youth development was concerned: Obviously the problem of age-group cheating continues to be a concern even though I feel we are improving in this area. Overall the problem goes a lot deeper and we need to get the state associations to follow the Youth Development Programme which has been laid out in Robert Baan’s Master Plan.