Welcome to Golazzo. We are delighted to kick off this journey with you as a part of a community passionate about the heart of grassroots football. Our intention with this FREE online magazine is to give insight in to many of the issues that surround the game, provide easy to read interesting features, supply coach's with drills and tactical analysis not solely to be copied, but designed to make them think and develop their own innovation, run competitions and much more.

Each issue we'd like to develop the magazine further by encouraging you the reader to interact with us and let us know what you like, what you don't like and what you want to read about etc.

Whether you are a club chairman, a committee member, a coach, a parent or a player we want to ensure there is something for everyone.

In this edition you will find articles about 'The Football' and one about 'Training Efficiency'. An opinion piece on the Champions League, a feature on the star that was, is, Roberto Baggio, as well as Coach's corner, a couple of drills that can be adapted to suit any coaching aspect you wish.

We hope you enjoy our first edition but again, please feedback to us so that we can improve it and create together what we want.

David Platt - Founder, Golazzo

The Football

It's the product we all should know more about!

Sialkot is no ordinary city. Situated in the Punjab province of Pakistan, it lies circa 820 miles from the nearest sea port, yet regardless it has managed to become the global centre of football production and distribution.

The population of 650,000 people puts it on a par with Glasgow in size, but here, well over half of the world’s footballs are manufactured.

Think about that - this city produces around 28 million footballs per annum, and more when it’s a World Cup year.

Footballs you have bought in your lifetime have undoubtedly, by and large, had Sialkot as their origin.

With an industry as large as this concentrated in such a small area, not surprisingly the people involved in the manufacturing processes are experts in their field. Furthermore, investment into the city - a private air field, a dry port where goods can immediately enter the freight chain, ensure that manufacturers in Sialkot are constantly at the forefront of football design.

Innovation is key for them to retain their market dominance, under pressure primarily from China where the cost of production is often lower. Technology is constantly being developed to improve the offering.

The manufacturing processes and components of a football are complex, and all have a bearing on the final quality of the ball. Not understanding the basic elements involved means we will always buy blind, be influenced by aesthetic design and be distracted by big brand marketing.

We will gamble and place a ball at the feet of a player that essentially we know very little about.

Grassroots football should always strive to improve, and that being the case, it is fundamental that the players get to play with the best ball that can be provided for them relative to a club’s budget.

A FOOTBALL’S ANATOMY

Prior to technological advances, hand stitched balls were structurally more robust than machine stitched balls, but hand stitched is a process gradually declining due to being much more labour intensive and developments in technology.

Nowadays the market essentially provides two different manufactured footballs - a machine stitched entry level training ball, and Hybrid.

Hybrid footballs have the panels machine stitched together and they are then glued, undergoing a thermally bonding process that seals the seams, strengthening the structure at the same time as aiding water resistance.

If the above seems complex, the components within the ball are a minefield of detail.

Entry level training balls generally have one layer of EVA foam, 3.5mm thick, covered with a material known as TPU - the outer casing - usually 0.1mm depth.

For Hybrid balls two layers of EVA foam are used, separated by a layer of fabric. The outer casing is made of Polyurethane (PU). Increasing the thickness of all these layers can improve the ball, but the manufacturer needs to be mindful of the overall weight, which needs to meet FIFA standards. Increasing the foam thickness by 1mm may require a tweak in the thickness of the PU, and vice versa.

This weight issue puts a limit on how much quality can be added to a ball, and makes a mockery of prices charged for so called premium balls.

To further compound the detail, the PU can be sourced locally, or imported from Japan or Korea. Korean PU is considered the industry best, and any brand not marketing their ball as made with Korean PU is almost certainly not using it.

The next time you are choosing which ball is right for your club, don't buy blind. Ascertain the manufacturing process, find out how much foam is in the ball and what the outer casing material is.

Golazzo 9ine - Machine stitched with thermally bonded seams, 3.5mm of EVA Foam, 0.4mm TPU outer casing. Available in sizes 3 & 4 - £7.00

Golazzo Ei8ht - Hybrid ball, 4.5mm of EVA Foam, Korean PU outer casing. Available in sizes 3, 4 & 5 - £9.50

Golazzo 6ix - Hybrid football, 5mm of EVA Foam, Korean PU outer casing. Available in sizes 4 & 5 - £12.50

Golazzo 4teen - Hybrid football, 5.5mm of EVA Foam, Korean PU outer casing. Available in sizes 4 & 5 - £17.00

Golazzo 1o-Rei, Hybrid football, 4.5mm EVA Foam, Korean Microfibre outer casing. Available in size 5 - £24.00

Meticulously Researched

TRAINING & MATCH FOOTBALLS BY GOLAZZO

www.golazzogroup.com

How the Champions League Has Distorted the Football Landscape

The UEFA Champions League (UCL) has long held a special place in world football, providing a platform for Europe’s elite clubs to battle for continental glory. Yet, while it has captivated audiences globally and cemented clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Manchester City as household names, its rise to prominence has come at a cost. Many argue that the competition, in its current form, has created an uneven playing field not only in domestic leagues, but in the Champions League itself, benefitting an elite few and leaving the rest to struggle to keep up.

Financial Imbalance

The financial windfall of Champions League participation is substantial. Clubs in the competition receive lucrative rewards from qualification, bonuses, prize money, television rights, and sponsorship deals, sometimes in the hundreds of millions of euros. This allows consistent participants to vastly outspend their domestic rivals, making it difficult for any club outside the Champions League bubble to match their financial muscle.

In addition, it is becoming increasingly more apparent that the big clubs, on annual qualification to the latter stages of the tournament, are significantly more rewarded than the others - leading to constant ‘success’.

This qualification, success in getting to the latter stages and bonuses from winning games is performance driven, but there is also a huge pot of money distributed to those clubs who play in the major European leagues.

Clubs in The Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A, create a gap between Champions League regulars and the rest that is striking. These clubs benefit from the injection of UCL revenue, enabling them to attract and retain top-tier talent. This advantage perpetuates a cycle in which the same clubs qualify for the Champions League year after year, further widening the financial gap.

Competitive Disparity in Domestic Leagues

With greater financial resources, Champions League clubs can build larger, more talented squads, creating a disparity in quality that affects the competitive balance of their domestic leagues. Clubs like Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain, who have dominated the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 respectively for the past decade, have not only used UCL earnings to fortify their squads but have also leveraged their prestige to consistently sign the best players from within their leagues and beyond. It’s David & Goliath in full view of everyone. If a smaller club threatens the dominance one season, the big club swoops to sign it’s best players - thus rendering the new kid on the block weaker and themselves stronger.

As a result, these leagues become predictable. The likelihood of any club other than the reigning Champions League participants winning the title decreases to particle impossibility, reducing suspense and excitement for the fans of domestic leagues. Even when there is a shock result - think Leicester City in 2016, it doesn’t last long before the status quo returns.

Diminishing Importance of Domestic Competitions

For many top-tier clubs, success in the Champions League has now become more important than winning the league. Managers and club owners are often more focused on continental success, sometimes even sacrificing their domestic form. This shift is visible in lineup choices, where league games are often used to rest players for midweek Champions League fixtures.

In leagues like Serie A, La Liga, and the Premier League, fans and club executives alike may be more disappointed with an early Champions League exit than with missing out on the league title. This has led to a situation where national league titles, which used to be the pinnacle of achievement, are increasingly seen as secondary to European glory. Take that one step further and the domestic cup competitions are of no interest to the bigger clubs. Notwithstanding this, and highlighting the gap between the elite and the rest, the English FA Cup has been won just 4 times by clubs outside the ‘elite’ since the inception of the Champions League.

Financial Pressure on Clubs Outside the UCL Circle

For clubs outside the Champions League regulars, the financial allure of UCL qualification is often viewed as essential for staying competitive. This pressure has led to financial overreach by clubs desperate to qualify, resulting in significant financial mismanagement and instability. Teams may spend beyond their means on player wages and transfers in the hopes of breaking into the Champions League, only to face financial ruin if they fall short.

The case of Valencia in La Liga and Schalke 04 in the Bundesliga are examples of teams that took financial risks to qualify for the Champions League, only to suffer harsh consequences when they failed to make it consistently. The pressure to reach the Champions League is now so intense that some clubs are willing to gamble their future on the slim chance of European glory.

Distortion of The Champions League

As we progress from inception of the Champions league through to it’s editions 32 years later, we can visibly see that the same elite clubs are getting to the latter stages, leading to multiple winners over the years. Whilst it is marketed as a competition for all the Champions, in reality it ends up with only the elite clubs, fueled by huge earnings from the competition itself, actually getting to the Holy Grail of winning it - which in turn gives them the riches from which to strengthen.

In an attempt to get away from this predictability, UEFA have introduced a new format - to date we don’t know how this will unfold - but at the end of the day it is very unlikely that once we get to the group stages the same old elite clubs that have dominated European football for some time will be omnipresent again.

Thus, UEFA have the dilemma of providing a competition that is appealing to broadcasters because of it’s unpredictability, set against the backdrop that people want to see the best players play the game that they love. It’s very hard to find that utopia.

The Development of the Super League Concept

The Champions League’s financial structure has not only fueled inequality but has also inspired proposals for a breakaway European Super League, a concept that gained significant attention in 2021. The reasoning behind the Super League was that a set of elite clubs wanted guaranteed income and the assurance of continuous participation in a closed competition, avoiding the risks of failing to qualify for the Champions League in any given season.

While this proposal was widely condemned by fans and governing bodies and ultimately scrapped, the mere existence of such a concept illustrates how deeply the Champions League has reshaped football’s hierarchy, creating a gap between the elite and everyone else. The Super League’s allure rests on the UCL model’s impact: a small group of ultra-wealthy clubs looking to insulate themselves from the volatility of domestic competition. In the end, money may talk, if so don’t be surprised to see a Global Super League forming, with the newly formed Saudi Pro league featuring prominently.

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Knowledge is key

but imparting it is fundamental

As a coach it is vital to have a knowledge of what we want to teach, but having a clear understanding of how we are going to impart that knowledge to the players is far more important. In addition, we must also understand how EACH individual player learns. Their learning could be verbal, it may need to be visual, it could be taught by asking them questions, or it could also be by showing them in a demonstration.

In any group of players everyone’s learning capacity and ‘best way to learn’ will be different.

The quicker a coach understands this for each player and uses it in their coaching sessions, the more beneficial they will become to both their players and the team as a whole.

It’s far from easy, and perhaps even harder at grassroots level.

Coaches at professional clubs have to contend with several issues that impact the time they have with their players. Minor injuries that keep players off the training pitch, midweek games, sports scientists and fitness coaches having ‘their time’ with the players, travelling and international matches are all factors that steal time from a coach.

As a result they devise training sessions that are repetitive, that overlap training needs - physical, technical and tactical - designed to give them enough spare time to work on specific tactics for specific games.

At grassroots level, where you get to work with your players for as little as 1 hour per week, you need to plan your coaching with a degree of strategy far more profound than a coach at a professional club.

Coaching is as much about planning as it is about being on the pitch with players.

Bouncing from game to game, looking at aspects that the team haven’t done well and trying to rectify them in training is not using your limited time efficiently. A player may well understand what you show them or tell them during that training session, but ask yourself if they will be able to replicate it in a game when they are making decisions at breakneck speed, ask yourself whether all the players will be in harmony with the tactics you have ‘instilled’.

Watching top level football and trying to emulate what you see coaches doing at that level is all well and good, but is it of maximum benefit for your players, or are you coaching for yourself?

It’s never too late to plan. Being already mid season is not an excuse to say “I’ll start next year’.

Start now, look at your players characteristics in your team and then fit a style of play that suits those characteristics. If you have players that aren’t fit enough to press constantly then that’s not the style to adopt. If you have strong midfield players but they aren’t great with the ball at their feet then playing out from the back won’t be effective, regardless of how good your defenders are on the ball. That’s not to advocate a kick and rush style, it’s just an example, and there are plenty of ways you can play football.

Once you have decided on a style that fits your player’s characteristics, you can look at what formation is best going to suit that style and compliment those characteristics. Beware though, a formation is only a guide, it’s what you do within that formation and how you deal with the various situations that arise which are the tactics. A style and player’s characteristics can easily be transferred into different formations, and classic doesn’t necessarily have to be adhered to.

A basic 4-4-2 could operate with one wide player higher and wider than the opposite who could be ‘tucked in’ for example.

From here you can begin to design your SEASON coaching plan. Before you devise your sessions, think about where you can overlap those training needs - physical, technical and tactical.

If your age group needs a reasonable amount of time to warm up, do it with a ball, incorporate your playing style into that warm up, see if you can easily intensify it after a short period and work physically too.

A 20 minute warm up could actually include three different training needs that would take you more than your hour if you worked on them individually.

Approach training drills, and your end of session small sided games in exactly the same manner. The drills are your real time to coach, so give yourself the best chance of being able to teach within them. Create the right environment through pitch size, pitch shape, game conditions and how the teams ‘score’ so that even if you don’t step in and direct things the players learn.

You don’t need different training drills every week, keep a rotation of repetitive drills as professional coaches do, ensuring you have enough so that players don’t become bored and lose their intensity. However, the same drill can have different conditions set and as such can be utilised to coach defensive and offensive aspects. These different conditions will make the players think, and that thinking will keep them focussed.

Consider conditioning your small sided games at the end of training sessions for the same purpose.

Repetition will bear fruit, both in the intensity the players show because they are familiar with the ‘game’, and in the learning that they will derive.

The enjoyment of being a coach is seeing improvement in the players you are coaching. Find yourself the time to think about planning for the long term, not just an individual session.

Each issue we'd like to bring you a couple of coaching drills that you can manipulate however you wish to.

The internet, various forms of media and paid for platforms will provide you with a wide spectrum of drills which you can copy, all of them giving detail on why the drill is being performed and what the coaching topics are.

I don't believe that's what should be provided to coaches. Ideas on drills are fine, but they should be drills that spark imagination in the coach, give them a stimulus from which to innovate. As stated in the last article, having a small amount of drills for a grassroots coach which the players are asked to perform will lead to better practice, more efficient coaching sessions due to understanding, yet different coaching aspects taught within the drill.

Rather than give drills to copy, I would hugely encourage coaches to develop their own drills, adapt pitch sizes to produce intensity and cater to the level of players, overload with numerical advantage dependent on the coaching topic, and manipulate each drill to get out of it what you actually want to.

The 2 drills within this edition are designed to get you thinking. Copy them by all means, but please adapt them, change conditions, pitch size, numbers of players, touches allowed..

Use your imagination and your innovation to develop drills, and don't be frightened to share them with us. As coaches we should never be frightened of sharing information, it is what will eventually drive improvement right the way through football.

Pitch Size; To suit number of players

Objective; Score through one of the 3 goals

Conditions;

Cannot score in a goal defended by the 'out of pitch' player - ie, behind the goal

'Out of pitch' player can move as play develops

Utility;

Eg, Counter attacking, switching play, defending showing one side, pressing.....

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Pitch Size; To suit number of players

Objective; Score by team in possession passing to & same team receiving back from 1 * 'out of pitch' player, then successfully transferring the ball to the opposite 'out of pitch' player without interception

Conditions;

'Out of pitch' player can move

Utility;

Switching play, possession, off ball movement, pressing...

* 'Out of pitch' player can be limited on touches dependent on ability

* Consider using Goalkeeper's as 'out of pitch' players to improve technical aspects

ANALYSIS OF A LEGEND - ROBERTO BAGGIO

Most people remember Roberto Baggio from his 1994 penalty miss in the World Cup Final against Brazil. Coming to the end of his career - having resurrected himself to actually make Arrigo Sacchi’s World Cup squad, Baggio missed the all important penalty in the shoot out that ‘gave’ the trophy to Brazil.

His ponytail, the flamboyance of his game, all led to that becoming the memory for many. Yet in Italy especially, few footballers have captivated the hearts of fans like Roberto Baggio, a player whose genius transcended mere statistics. Known affectionately as "Il Divin Codino" (The Divine Ponytail), Baggio's career is a tapestry of brilliance, resilience, and poetic heartbreak.

The Early Days: A Star is Born

Roberto Baggio was born on February 18, 1967, in Caldogno, a small town in northern Italy. From an early age, his talent was evident. Playing for his local youth team, Baggio quickly caught the eye of scouts. At 15, he joined Vicenza, where his flair, creativity, and goal-scoring prowess made him a standout.

Baggio’s rise was nearly derailed by a devastating knee injury in 1985, which many thought would end his career before it began. That injury was the catalyst for his belief in Buddhism, a praying ritual he performed daily which in his eyes enabled him to play again, and thus became his faith.

His rehabilitation ensured he returned stronger. Fiorentina took a chance on him in 1985, a decision that would cement his place in Italian football.

Fiorentina and The Birth of a Legend

In Florence, Baggio's artistry blossomed. He became a talisman for Fiorentina, mesmerizing fans with his dribbling, vision, and free-kick mastery. His ability to create something out of nothing earned him the adoration of the Viola faithful. Despite persistent injuries, Baggio’s performances for Fiorentina made him one of the most sought-after players in the world.

His transfer to Juventus in 1990 for a then-world-record fee of £8 million was both groundbreaking and controversial. Fiorentina fans rioted in the streets, not solely devastated by the departure of their hero, but to their nemesis Juventus. Juventus & Fiorentina didn’t get on, a rivalry born from a disputed penalty years earlier that won the title on the last day of the season, beating Fiorentina into second place. Regardless, at Juventus, Baggio reached new heights, winning the Ballon d'Or in 1993 and leading the club to domestic and European glory.

David Platt; “I had the good fortune to play with Robi for a season. Many have asked me who is the best player I have played with, and he comes into that conversation. But if I was asked what is the best performance I’ve ever seen then his first 45 minutes against Udinese was by far the best I’ve ever seen”.

Later Years: An Eternal Artist

Baggio’s career after Juventus included stints with AC Milan, Bologna, and Inter Milan, before a magical renaissance at Brescia. At Brescia, he played with freedom, becoming a mentor to younger players while continuing to display moments of genius. His retirement in 2004 marked the end of an era.

Legacy: The Divine Ponytail Lives On

Roberto Baggio is more than a footballer; he is a symbol of artistry, resilience, and humanity. His combination of skill, grace, and humility made him beloved across the globe. As a footballer he had very few equals, as a man he was humble, a true team-mate, not for himself but for the good of the squad as a whole.

David Platt; “I had the pleasure of rooming with him at Juventus for a significant period as the team went on a positive run and superstition dictated keeping things routine. He prayed every night, had me teach him the words to the entirety of the song “We Are the Champions” by Queen. In one particular game v Inter away, he defended me against the coach when I was apportioned blame for the result. First and foremost he was a mate, showing a humility rarely seen in one with so much genius. I’m not surprised he has extricated himself from public life, rarely if ever giving interviews post career.

A player who has won Serie A titles and Italian Cups, reaching the latter stages of World Cup Finals, his goals statistics are exceptional. But it’s his individual honours as a player that really set him apart. Nevertheless, Baggio’s story is not just about trophies or goals but the magic he brought to the field and the indelible mark he left on football.

For millions, he will forever remain "Il Divin Codino."