Robin Nelisse and Richard Elsinga reform youth football at Aruba

Robin Nelisse and Richard Elsinga were unknown to each other until recently. Now try to reform football in Aruba.

Small world, isn't it, says Robin Nelisse. He experienced the turn of the century with his breakthrough in the Premier League, as an accurate striker for SC Cambuur, which rented him from Feyenoord for a season. Almost a quarter of a century later, Nelisse's dreadlocks have made way for a short haircut, and the paths of the rush hour and Friesland cross again. This time as a trainer.

That's how it is. Nelisse trains talented football players in Aruba, with a large number of practice materials provided by the Caribbean Football Association. All these training courses and individual exercise forms are devised and put together by footon, a company that has a football training program for youth football players and has its roots in Fryslân.

The owner of footon is Richard Elsinga, born in Harlingen but raised in Joure, where he still lives. He remained in the second team of SC Heerenveen, but stopped playing football at the age of 26 due to an elbow injury. Elsinga became a teacher in special education and started working in amateur football. He was, among other things, trainer of Be Quick Dokkum and GAVC and head of youth training at Blauw Wit '34 and SC Joure.

 

Illuminating insight

Combining teacher and trainer positions was invented by Elsinga for an enlightening insight. “I worked in education with age-related core objectives for my students, which were then grouped into learning objectives.” In short, children learn the basis for language and arithmetic.

Why, Elsinga wondered ten years ago, do amateur clubs not work according to a well-defined methodology? One that gives trainers that direction?

Elsinga roughly distinguishes four types of youth trainers. “Well-meaning parents, but people who don't give a damn when it comes to football,” Elsinga sums up. "You also have parents who have played football themselves, or still play football, and enjoy giving training. Trainees of youth players who follow a trainer course and ten finally: certified trainers.”

The danger? “Trainings were given with all good intentions. But there was no structure whatsoever.” For Elsinga it is an indefinable feeling. “When I left a club I asked myself the question: what have I given up?” Elsinga was often left without an answer.

 

 

Foppe de Haan

Elsinga went to work, often in the evenings. He created exercise forms that beginning and advanced youth trainers could perform, inspired by Foppe de Haan, his old trainer at Heerenveen. He linked learning objectives to it and devised schedules so that trainers could work step by step on the development of players and team.

The plasticized documents that Elsinga created a decade ago have now been replaced by apps. More than 300 amateur clubs, spread throughout the Netherlands, and some German associations use the exercise forms, of which approximately a thousand are available. Just like SC Heerenveen, FC Twente, Vitesse and therefore the Aruban Football Association.

Nelisse is responsible for Aruba under 14 on the Caribbean island. "I wanted to improve myself as a trainer. For me, these apps were a good tool,” he says. "I therefore urged the Aruba Football Association that they should be available for every amateur club."

Aruba has twenty amateur associations with a population of 120,000. Fifteen of them now use the feeton program. How Elsinga briefly describes the training methodology? “First and foremost, we want to teach children good technique. They must then be able to apply that technique in competitions under resistance.”

 

Facilities

With a football vision from Friesland, Elsinga and Nelisse want to improve football in Aruba. However, the facilities are the biggest problem. Aruba has only three artificial grass fields. The vast majority of teams train on sand and stones. The temperature is also a complicating factor. During the day it is simply too hot to exercise, says Elsinga, who visited the island last week for presentations to dozens of youth trainers.

Currently, approximately 3,500 Aruban youth football players are following the Feeton program. “We are fishing from a small pond,” says Nelisse. Slowly but surely, players are breaking through. “A few boys are now playing football in the youth academies of Sparta and Feyenoord.”

After ending his active football career in 2011, Nelisse distanced himself from the football world for a while. "I enjoyed my time as a professional football player, but when I stopped it was also nice not to have any stress, hassle or obligations."

He sometimes provided training for the youth of Feyenoord and initiated a foundation in Aruba. “We organize football camps and clinics in which underprivileged children can also participate.”

 

 

Pleasure 

Nelisse currently enjoys being a trainer. “You know,” he says. “At FC Utrecht, Willem van Hanegem once said to me that you should not make yourself so important as a trainer. I agree. A coach must be there for his players. Nothing more or less.”

Elsinga nods next to him. “I started this platform ten years ago. Now it is a company, with a team of football trainers and other specialists, but as a trainer you are not the most important pawn. It's about kids having fun. It's only nice if you can help them with that.”

 

Source: Leeuwarder Courant