‘We need to stop discriminating against the small, technical player’

Mokhtar Addani grew tired of Irish football.

The UEFA A licensed coach has worked as a technical advisor for Bray Wanderers, Wexford Youths and various underage clubs throughout Leinster but he left club football in Ireland after 20 years of watching on from the sideline. His love for the game is clear. Watching him take over a session at Ballyogan and relentlessly coach his players through drill after drill demonstrated that he has lost no love for the game, but he has become disenfranchised with how it's structured at underage level in Ireland.

"After 20 years in the academies I noticed that a lot of the technical players were discriminated against because they were small and even though they are technically good the coaches are looking for the bigger child. "They use the child and they never develop them because when they get to 14 the other technical players have caught up. The child does more physical work and there's not a lot of concern about the young and small players so in reality they're the players that we need to see. "It's about intelligent players and improving decision making."

Addani launched the National League Football Academy earlier this year to help further develop players and he puts on training sessions for a minimal fee (to cover pitch hire) at the Samuel Beckett Civic Centre in Ballyogan. He wants to coach smarter players, players capable of taking multiple touches and making the right decision, but he's also sought those that have been told that they're not good enough. That they don't have what it takes to kick on and progress.

"We set up this academy to prepare the kids and get them back to the teams," added Addani. "When you see the GAA and the IRFU, they're more effective at underage level than the FAI are in Ireland. Kids grow up loving the Premier League and they support Liverpool or Manchester United and there's a love for the game there, from an early age they love it. "They have big dreams and they want to play somewhere and be good but the academies fail them and their dreams. The reality is that these academies are losing numbers because the good players and coaches are going to the underage national leagues and there's more players going to the GAA and rugby. "There's some kids that are being told at 12 or 13 that they're not good enough. If the child is good, the parents will send them abroad, but if a child is told that he or she is not good then they will start hating the game and they will want to do something else. "I have this player Paul and he was told he wasn't that good, the father got sick of the kid getting upset so moved him into GAA but I reached out to him through his friend who was playing for Cabinteely and he told me 'I don't want to play football, I'm not that good'. "He had been brainwashed to believing that he's not good and he is and he can get better. I wanted him to come back and challenge those people and I told him the story of Ayman ben Mohamed who had left the game after he was bullied but then came back when he was older, we helped him develop and then he went on to UCD and now he's a professional."

Addani runs numerous sessions per week in Ballyogan and he wants his academy to function as a supplement to his players training during the week. His idea is for players to continue to develop and that whatever they can learn from him, they can ultimately take back to their clubs, however, a few of his players have been selected for the national underage leagues, and without naming the clubs, he said that two of his players were told that if they trained with him, they would no longer have a place with their national league team. He added that some of the coaches that have helped him at the academy have been discriminated against in club football so he took the initiative to start his own academy and so far he's got five kids back into playing football and a further four into the national underage leagues. Selected players from his academy will travel to Rennes next month where they will be pitted against some of the best teams in northwest France. "You have to put them up against the best of the best so they know exactly what level they are," added Addani. Some may follow Ben Mohamed into the professional game, others may not, but Addani has set up an initiative independent of the FAI, the DDSL or any other association to help further develop Irish football and reintegrate those back into the game who were told they were no longer needed. Even if he doesn't solve Irish football's problems, he's solving problems for some kids who viewed football as the problem.