“If I undress, I can show you better”

Also a technician in the making, Bourceanu first spoke about the inability of technicians to manage the extreme moments of the players: the excellent ones, but also the periods when the footballers give a very poor performance.

VIDEO. Alex Bourceanu, speech-manifesto at GSP Live: “It’s amazing what’s happening in Romania to children and juniors!”

“In general, every player wants to feel part of the group, to be validated for what they have achieved. Usually the recalcitrants are the ones who need the most support, the most validation.

There is also the phenomenon called regression to the mean, which occurs in any field, when someone achieves something extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad. There are very few who are extraordinarily good and stay there all the time, and very few who are extraordinarily weak and stay in a group until the end.

Usually they all come towards the mean. Because they don’t know this phenomenon, coaches think they have to scold the players all the time. They think like this: if a footballer performs well, I praise him, then he plays at an average level, he regressed because I praised him. And vice versa – the coaches believe that if a footballer plays poorly, they argue with him and later reach an average level, it’s their credit,” Bourceanu believes.

Alex Bourceanu: “The coaches exhausted us”

Then the former FCSB captain points out an error that coaches make at the children’s and junior level: “When you give instructions to children, “Do this, do that!”, instead of teaching the child, you, as the coach, make the decision. And when he has to make his own decisions, he won’t know what to do, because you didn’t let him. We don’t develop leaders either, because we don’t let the kids fight in the locker room for hierarchy. We always establish the hierarchy”.

Bourceanu also talks about the mania of coaches to value physical training starting at an early age.

“A 15-year-old kid from a big team from Bucharest, after a one-month break caused by an injury, told me that he felt much better, that he enjoyed playing football again. He said the coaches were wearing him out.

That’s what I said too, the coaches sold us out. They believe that more training is better. No, doing a higher quality workout is better than having 25 workouts where you’re always at 70% and kept busy“, says Alex Bourceanu.

Alexandru Bourceanu / Photo source: GSP Archive

“At 10 years old, you don’t have to do stairs, slopes, TRX”

Alex Bourceanu declares that inadequate physical training inevitably leads to injuries.

“In Romania, from a young age, from 9-10 years old, players go to the mountains, run, do TRX or other crazy things. It’s hallucinatory! That they saw at the senior level, at Steaua, in 2013, for example, that this works. But if a big team did something, it’s not necessarily a positive example, and in 10 years you don’t have to do stairs, slopes and millions of other things.

Why? Because at 15, 16, 17 years old, you tear your anterior cruciate ligament, complete injury, injury and it’s over. Or tendon problems. Many youngsters have tendon problems, parents of juniors know. If I strip from the knees up, I can show you something like this“, explains Bourceanu.

“Yamal from Barcelona played incredibly!”

Regarding the way in which young players are promoted, Bourceanu makes a comparison between Romania and the big teams abroad.

“Let’s see what will happen in the future with Yamal. He has already played too much. It’s incredible how long he played! He’s not an adult. He understands football and plays it like an adult, but his body is not an adult. We are not inventing evolution. Otherwise, you end up in the situation of the young man from Rapid, Cîrjan, who broke his cruciate ligament twice before he was 16. Why did this happen? He was unlucky, wasn’t he?

Why should a 15 year old player play just for the sake of playing? He has to play gradually. Let’s see what Guardiola is doing. Why doesn’t Bob play more, who is a very good footballer? Because he can’t throw them into battle suddenly, from the first,” concluded the former midfielder.

46 matchesplayed Lamine Yamal, 16, for Barcelona this season

Alexandru Bourceanu’s CV

• Born in Galați, Bourceanu played in League 1 at Oțelul, Poli Timișoara, FCSB and Dunărea Călăraşi.
• Abroad he played for Trabzonspor and Arsenal Tula.
• He won 7 trophies in his career, all with FCSB: 3 titles, a Romanian Cup, two League Cups and a Supercup.
• Football player at FCSB, where he was also captain, in 3 different intervals, 2011-2014, 2014-2015 and 2016-2017.
• He marked 27 selections in the shirt of the first representative team.

• GSP Live, the show made from the Gazeta Sporturilor studio and moderated by Alexandru Barbu, can be watched from Monday to Friday, from 11:00 a.m., on Facebook page, YouTube channelas well as on the website of Gazeta Sporturilor, GSP.ro

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