The Next Generation Sports Academy: Prioritising soft skills for youth development

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The Next Generation Sports (TNGS) are a sports consulting company and international football academy that specialise in developing young talents across the world in a high-performance environment.

Participants who have attended TNGS camps have been selected for clubs such as West Ham United in the Premier League, Villarreal in La Liga and Toronto FC in the MLS. Alongside this, players have also been chosen for the England and United States National Teams.

Based in Valencia, the company has developed athletes and coaches over the last 10 years in territories such as Sweden, USA, South Korea, Japan, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Bermuda Islands and many more using their own methodology.

This methodology includes a strong emphasis on educating young talent on abilities that will make them an important player in a team and also on an individual basis.

Improving the ‘soft skills’ of young players, such as creativity, leadership, adaptability, problem-solving and decision making is prioritised across the board by coaches at the academy.

Using an example according to the TNGS website, the creativity of players is tested through various technical, tactical and psychosocial exercises to challenge and prepare them to resolve situations in-game and improve their overall game intelligence.

Decision making is encouraged through visual coaching strategies which are implemented through the use of modern learning tools, to help youngsters immediately understand and learn how to read and interpret proposals to make appropriate decisions.

Adaptability, which is a key factor between being a successful player or not, is encouraged and drummed into players in a tactical sense, so they are aware of when and how to put a certain tactic into practice.

The Academy was forced to be adaptable itself in the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and change the way in which they connected and worked with players.

Coaches were not only concerned about players’ physical wellbeing but also their mental skills when it came to self-motivation, discipline and dedication.

In response to dealing with this predicament, through the use of technology, TNGS created innovative NG Virtual Camps. This was a concept that blended sports training exercises and soft skills exercises for new talent to overcome during the challenging period.

Players would conduct weekly sessions, with the TNGS coaches providing youngsters with guidelines through personalised Zoom calls.

TNGS coaches have worked in top clubs all over Europe and have obtained their UEFA Pro Licences. Some of the academy’s coaches work at La Liga clubs Levante UD and Villarreal CF, with others having played at Valencia and Real Madrid.

These aspects make them specialised in high performance training and talent development, with their video calls for the online camp focusing on the following three areas:

  • Soft skills sessions: Organising exercises and providing knowledge on how to develop the mental abilities of players so that they are able to reach their maximum potential in this area
  • Technical sessions: Teaching the concepts of the sport which have defined Spanish football over its history
  • On the field: Initiate team activities that develop challenges so coaches are able to evaluate factors such as creativity, empathetic communication, cooperation and much more.

These sessions, that were completed in the virtual camp, were a perfect scenario to educate young players on a variety of matters, including tactical concepts, game intelligence and technical and physical aspects in multiple situations during a game.

“The TNGS virtual camp was an amazing experience for me. It was informative, well organised…it was not only about football, it was about mentality, how to be a good person, things that are crucial in life, success, and school,” a student of the program explained after experiencing the opportunity with other players of various cultures.

A list of other details from the TNGS website on their methodology for teaching players can be found below:

  • Individualized training to strengthen the player’s effective and quick responses based on the tactical principles of the game.
  • Application of Visual Coaching strategies for reading, understanding and decision making in the field.
  • Match and training analysis to improve self-knowledge and self-confidence.
  • Creation of a profile and individual technical report that is reviewed monthly.
  • Specific plans for preparatory periods, holidays and free time that complement the role of the player
  • Establishment of weekly objectives for the development of self-determination and task orientation.
  • Cater for all specific needs: Physiotherapy, Sports Psychology, Nutrition.

For more information about TNGS click here.

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Brazil is coming. But what is the real price of bringing football’s giants to Australia?

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Image Credits: Shutterstock

There is something undeniably exciting about Brazil coming to Australia. The five-time World Cup winners will face the Socceroos twice in Queensland from Friday, with Townsville and Brisbane set to host the blockbuster fixtures.

For Australian football, these are the kind of games that should be anticipated, celebrated and capture the public’s attention. But they also raise questions: how much should Australian football pay to bring the world’s biggest nations here, and when does the bill become too big? 

The cost of bringing the big names

Australia has always paid up to bring big names down under. Last week’s NFL game in Melbourne, at a cost of between $10 and 15 million dollars to the Victorian Government, is just the latest example.

It could cost the same amount to bring Brazil to Queensland. A report in The Sydney Morning Herald last year revealed Brazil was reportedly seeking around $7.5 million per match to play in Australia. The fee is in line with other major international events; Western Australia reportedly faced a bill of around $12 million in taxpayer funding for the recent Perth Italian Football Festival.

I’m worried Football Australia won’t get return on investment to make this particular event worthwhile. The enormous fee to bring Brazil to Australia can’t immediately be justified as an investment in our footballing future. Instead, Football Queensland and the state government could have put these funds into grassroots facilities. Part of Football Queensland’s scrapped state headquarters investment plan was to spend $8.5 million to refurbish fields, lights, drains and irrigation at Mappas and Meakin parks. Instead of these plans to invest in the state’s youth players and academies, money has been spent on two international friendlies.

So ahead of the fixtures, the question remains: will these games inspire the future generation, and will participation grow? The NFL match was impossible to ignore: a sold-out MCG and a live audience of 2.1 million on free-to-air, not even including those watching on ESPN and Netflix. Football Australia is not simply buying 90 minutes of football; it is buying the attention that comes with Brazil. So let’s see if they can maximize returns. 

Ticketing Tells a Story

Ticket sales provide insight into the interest in the fixture. Brisbane has sold much quicker than Townsville, but neither have sold out as yet. The fact these games didn’t immediately sell out may be considered surprising as there is a genuine appetite in Australia for elite international football at the moment, evidenced by SBS’ World Cup viewership numbers of 17.1 million.

Brazil is bringing some of its brightest stars: Vinicius Junior, Raphinha, Bruno Guimaraes, Marquinhos and Endrick are among the headline names in their squad. The star power is there. So why haven’t these matches sold out? There’s a chance it comes down to the competition and the visibility of the event.

The viewing problem

The timing of this fixture could raise eyebrows amongst fans. As much as Australia and Brazil will draw huge crowds, both games fall on either side of the AFL Grand Final. The 2024 AFL Grand Final, which involved Queensland’s Brisbane Lions, drew over 4 million viewers on free-to-air. Brisbane, who have won the last two premierships, will feature once again on Grand Final day. Therefore, fans who could’ve attended may instead be making the trip to Melbourne.

Then comes the strangest part: one of the fixtures Australia will play will not even be available on free-to-air television. The Townsville match will be shown free on Network 10 and 10 Streaming, as well as Paramount+. The Brisbane match, however, will be available exclusively on Paramount+. That creates a disconnect. If governments and football administrators are spending millions to bring a global sporting brand to Australia, why should a large section of the Australian public need a subscription to watch the second match?

The Brisbane game is behind a paywall, limiting the national reach of the event. Reach is surely part of the justification for spending big on Brazil, it’s not just that 50,000 people get to sit inside Suncorp Stadium. It is that millions of Australians get exposed to the spectacle and if that audience is restricted, the value of this fixture is limited.

A solution could be to spend the money on advertising the match to the public to try to generate interest across streaming and free-to-air. With less than a week until the first game I don’t believe the advertising has done enough to generate enough interest to justify a $15 million price tag for the two game series. 

The Brazil friendlies will be spectacular. They should attract big crowds, create memories and give the Socceroos an excellent test against one of football’s most recognisable nations. But for the appropriate return, attention must be measured. Does this fixture carry on the Socceroos hype and keep the eyeballs of the general public on our sport? I’m not convinced. However, if these matches bring new fans to football, strengthen the national team and create lasting investment in the sport, the enormous price tag could still be justified. But if they simply produce two nights of football before the attention disappears, then Australian football has paid a premium for a very expensive show.

Arncliffe Aurora’s Riverine Park investment creates a platform for growth

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Image Credits: Arncliffe Aurora

Arncliffe Aurora Football Club has started a new chapter with the launch of Riverine Park, creating a larger platform for football, community engagement and long-term growth in Sydney’s St George region. More than 2,500 people attended the community opening on 8 August, marking the club’s first matches at its new home and showcasing a significant upgrade in its operating capacity.

Riverine Park provides two full-size natural turf football fields, modern player and community amenities, and a new clubhouse. The additional capacity responds to strong growth in Arncliffe Aurora’s football programs, particularly at junior level. The club has also highlighted a $2.5 million investment in facility upgrades. Together with its existing Arncliffe Park base, Riverine Park gives Aurora two homes and a stronger physical platform for its football operations.

More capacity allows the club to accommodate more teams, players and programs, while updated facilities can support stronger member retention and recruitment. They create more opportunities for coaching, development programs, events and community activities. The new site can also strengthen the club’s commercial proposition; a modern facility gives sponsors greater visibility and provides more opportunities to activate partnerships around football and community events. It can also help the club build relationships with schools, community organisations and football bodies. That matters as grassroots clubs increasingly operate as community hubs rather than simply sporting organisations.

Riverine Park also creates opportunities for the wider football ecosystem. Football St George has identified the facility as a platform to grow participation and provide opportunities for players of different ages, abilities and backgrounds. Bayside Council’s project includes upgraded change rooms, toilets, canteen facilities, lighting, seating and solar panels, adding further functionality to the precinct.

For Arncliffe Aurora, the investment is therefore about more than adding fields. It creates infrastructure that can support participation, player development, community programs and commercial activity over the long term. The challenge now shifts from construction to utilisation. The club must maximise the new capacity, maintain the assets and convert greater participation into a sustainable operating model to benefit the community long-term.

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