Stepping Outside the Bubble: A Perspective from Brazil
Sometimes, the most eye-opening moments come when you step outside your bubble. In the world of football development, it’s easy to get caught in a narrow mindset, one shaped by your immediate surroundings, long-held practices, and the influence of those who’ve done it a certain way for decades. This is true in Ireland, in England, and across much of Europe.
But distance offers clarity. Take Brazil, for example, a country with over 211 million people and millions of registered players, with many more deeply rooted in grassroots football. In Europe, we often associate football development with elite access: private one-to-one coaching, meticulously scheduled training hours, high-end facilities, and clubs competing to increase contact time with young players via paid coaching. We seem to assume that’s the key to producing talent.
But Brazil paints a different picture. Here, football is woven into everyday life. Kids grow up in densely populated neighborhoods, often with modest surroundings and limited resources. Yet you travel far to find any of them loitering on street corners glued to their phones. Instead, it feels like a throwback to simpler times, where football lives in the streets, parks, and community courts.
There are public futsal courts and improvised pitches, concrete, dirt, or worn-down astro. Facilities, but they’re accessible, note that point (THEY ARE ACCESSIBLE). And more importantly, they’re alive. Kids play not only because it's organized or structured, not because a coach is guiding them, but because they love it. Passion here is raw, unfiltered, and real.
In Europe, all kids might say they’re passionate too, but for me, true passion shows itself in action. It’s in the child who walks often miles to play, who chases the ball until dusk not for recognition or reward, but because it brings them joy. That love for the game, pure and undiluted, this is something that offers an advantage no amount of coaching or structured training can match.
In Brazil, you can feel it. In the eyes of the kids or adults, the energy of the neighborhoods, the feeling around their stadiums, football isn’t a scheduled event, it’s a way of life. While children in Europe might be at home waiting for their next structured session, here, they’re already playing, mixing with all ages, learning with every touch, absorbing the game the way nature intended development of skill to be...through play and practice.
So maybe the solution in Europe isn't paying coaches more or building fancier facilities. Maybe the key lies in something simpler and deeper: giving kids open access to local spaces where they can play freely, whenever they want. But even before that, maybe we need to reignite their love for the game, not to chase a career, but to rediscover joy. The career will be a consequence of that joy anyway!!!
Remember when we used to knock on friends' doors to play until dark? We did it because it was fun. Football was freedom, not a system weighed down by overbearing coaches and empty promises of professional glory.
All the development hours in the world mean nothing if children don’t enjoy what they’re doing. That’s the truth, harsh as it may sound. The athletes who rise to the top and stay there are almost always the ones who love the game with every fiber of their being.
In Brazil, they love football. In Europe, too many kids love the idea of being a footballer. And those are two very different paths.