Dhe name says it all: Football School Professional is the name of the company that Mimoun Azaouagh runs with his brother Aziz and three other coaches. Unlike many other competitors on the market, this football school primarily appeals to children and young people who have the ambition to try a professional career. The response is great. On this hot early summer day, 50 to 60 children come to the sports grounds of FV 09 Eschersheim, where the school trains. They are greeted with a handshake, as are the parents.
Mimoun and Aziz Azaouagh both played once for FSV Frankfurt, Mimoun even played 104 games in the Bundesliga. They founded the football school in 2006, and the “concept with remedial training” and the cooperation with the Eschersheim football club have existed since 2020, says Aziz Azaouagh. A training session for players who play in a club and also attend the football school once a week costs 30 euros.
If you train more often, there is a discount on the hourly rate. The football school also offers holiday camps. In a club, you usually only train for the team’s success at the weekend and “don’t develop the individual player,” explains Azaouagh. The focus of the training is the basic technology and there in particular the acceleration in one-on-one.
It gets straight to the point
From the point of view of talent promotion, the football school concept is a “good addition”, agrees Arne Horst, who does something similar to the Azaouaghs once a week at the DFB base in Bensheim, just free of charge at association level. However, it is not possible to register for DFB support training; you have to be invited to do so by the base manager after a review. Horst is critical of the monetary aspect when football schools ask for prices for training sessions. “The basic idea of football gets lost a bit there,” says Horst.
Soccer school training begins. Some children attend the training for the first time, they are introduced individually and greeted with applause from the rest of the children. Four different groups are then formed. It gets straight to the point. Coach Mohamed Elyazidi, who has worked as a coach in youth soccer for over ten years and has helped over 100 players into a youth training center (NLZ), very energetically looks after one of the four groups. Elyazidi often yells at his group if he doesn’t like something. It has something of military drill, less of relaxed football training.
The intensity of the training is high.
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Picture: Private
He looks after one of the two selected teams. They are available in two years. These teams take part in regular club games. To make this possible, the football school entered into a cooperation with FV 09 Eschersheim. Mimoun and Aziz Azaouagh approached the club three years ago, says Bettina Hoebelt from the youth department of FV 09 Eschersheim. After consultation with the board, it was decided to respond to the football school’s suggestion. It supplies new football talent, the club provides the infrastructure. This turned out to be beneficial for the club. You got “a lot of growth”. “Life is back,” says Hoebelt.
Aziz Azaouagh explains that the concept of competing with selected teams is the unique selling point of the football school. The selected teams train three times a week, and the league games take place on the weekends. This gives the kids “an enormous amount of game practice”. In order to properly challenge and encourage the selection years, test matches are also played against teams from the youth academies (NLZ) of the professional clubs. The opponents are called Wehen Wiesbaden or Darmstadt 98. The success of the football school can be judged by the performance in the competition. “We are only ever as successful as the development of the children. With us you can see a development early on,” he says, but emphasizes that he speaks for all coaches. That goes for the parents too.
“We’re all like that”
The intensity of the training is high. Even the drinking breaks – it’s around 30 degrees warm – are short. The fathers standing by the gang provide their children with water. Elyazidi counts down: “Five, four, three, two, one.” It goes on. The parents follow the goings-on on the artificial turf half with excitement. They seem familiar to each other. “Your water is my water too,” says one father to another. The fact that her children are being verbally attacked by Elyazidi doesn’t seem to bother her.
Elyazidi’s training is tough, says one of them. This is also the case in Cologne, says another. By that he means the football school that Elyazidi runs in Cologne. He is there from Thursday to Sunday. On Sunday he is on the pitch from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and has six training groups at a time. He doesn’t do anything else. Many players didn’t go to their limit, so you have to push them to do it. That explains his resolute nature on the field. When asked about the military character, he laughs. “We’re all like that,” Aziz Azaouagh reveals, referring to Elyazidi’s coaching.
The performance-oriented path that the professional football school is pursuing coincides with the development at the DFB bases. It’s about NLZ managers paying attention to the players. “Ultimately, the bigger fish always eat,” says DFB base coach Horst with a view to recruiting the youngsters. In the process, people lose sight of those who, despite intensive efforts, do not manage to be accepted into a NLZ. And of those who make it to the NLZ, not even five percent become football professionals. “If they fail, they won’t go back to the small club, they’ll stop playing football,” Horst is concerned about the development in youth football.