Paul McGuinness, the highly-respected former Manchester United academy coach, joined The FA as a National Coach Developer last month.
Following his spell in United’s youth set-up, which saw 86 academy players go on to make a first-team debut and 23 become full internationals, the 51-year-old has spent time travelling the globe to experience football coaching practices in different nations.
In his new role, McGuinness will help support coaches who are on the coaching pathway in the professional game and, writing for TheFA.com, he explains more.
“It’s an exciting time to be joining.
After such a successful year with England’s young teams, it’s worth noting that all connects up with the coaching the players will have had throughout their short careers so far.
It’s interesting because there’s a talk I’ve done on quite a lot of the courses, about what the ingredients are for youth development, going off what we had at Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson and I can see a similar pattern developing with England now.
At United, the players had a learning environment with no fear, they were challenged, but they all felt comfortable and that was mainly due to how Sir Alex connected with the staff and everybody involved.
There was trust and a set of family values, so he was brilliant at integrating the players and the parents so that they felt a belief in what they were doing and that they belonged to something special and I think that’s happening with England now.
Those players will feel they belong to something special and looking at all of these teams who have won, that’s important as it’s a sense of belonging and you want the rest of the country to get behind that.
All of the coaches in the country have played a part in winning those tournaments because the players all started somewhere. They would have started with an U8 team, a local club and then maybe they went to a professional club and through all the different age groups where they will have worked with different coaches.
Those coaches have all had an input into England winning the World Cup in India and South Korea this year, it’s all connected and that’s what you want to do really, get everybody feeling as though they have a share in developing players.
That’s where my role comes into it and it’s a job that will be evolving over time too.
There are three strands to it really, starting with help on the courses such as the Pro Licence, Advanced Youth and the A Licence, helping to deliver those and working on how they look and the design on them.
From there, I’ll then be going out to support the coaches when they’re in their clubs and try to pass on some of my experience.
The third part is doing some special projects to support this, and I have one in mind which is getting craft knowledge from some top ex-players to put into some of the courses.
It’s a really rewarding role too, because I’ll gain a lot from meeting a really diverse group of people and I can only learn from that.
I was at one club for 25 years so can pass on what I know and I can relate to what they’re doing but I think I’ll learn a lot from the coaches themselves as I can see what they’re doing differently in their clubs.
When I first started at United, I was a director of the centre of excellence, so as well as organising the teams and the coaches, it was about coach education too.
At the very start, it was just one day a week and we didn’t have full-time staff but when we did bring in more staff and coaches, it was an exciting process to be involved in really.
That was from about 1994, so it was when the ‘Class of ‘92’ had just got in the first team and United were starting to snowball in terms of youth development.
The centre of excellence grew along with all of the staff within it, building specific coaching and everything underneath it.
After my role as centre of excellence director, I was assistant academy director and then for over a decade, I was U18 coach which entailed informal coach education in that period too. This role is a step I always thought I’d like to take and I’m probably doing it earlier than I thought I would be.
Hopefully that gives me time to become really good at it and learn and develop in the role, which is the key thing about my decision to come here.
We have so many good staff behind the scenes to learn from and already in the first few weeks, I’ve been shadowing on some of the courses and there’s some fantastic people delivering so you’re going to learn a lot.
For the last year or so, I’ve seen what has been going on behind the scenes.
There’s very clear movement in the coach education and the work that we’re doing and there’s definitely a better atmosphere between all of the coaches because the courses are delivered in a less threatening way.
Previously, if you were doing the old FA badge, you’d watch the FA coaches work, you’d have to replicate it and you were judged there on the spot in front of everybody.
Now, the courses are less pressurised but it’s a better learning environment and more of a chance to mix and learn from each other.
Then, it’s followed up by people like myself going into the clubs to see coaches in their own environment and help them there and it’s a role I’m looking forward to doing."
