Joe Shulberg: Success is a journey

Holistic approaches

Coaches in an academy have the obvious target of developing players for the first team and possibly an international squad, and then perhaps making money from a transfer in the future – but Shulberg says there are even bigger aspects to consider.

“We talk a lot in academy football about the holistic development now. I don’t think that’s necessarily unique, but creating a really caring environment where you’re trying to inspire them in each walk of life. The amount of players that we’ve had that have come through, gone to university and gone and done completely different careers that come back and say, ‘Academy football prepared me for this,’ you’re just as proud. 

“Ultimately you’re trying to work with talented people that want to be ambitious and achieve something in life, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re the ones that are inspiring that and providing as much of a platform for them to do so.

“It’s so important to co-create these things with the players themselves so they’re buying into what that individual development plan is”

“Yes, success is ultimately measured by what we’re here to do: develop players who can contribute to a winning first team and make that team better. It’s not just about achieving a ‘debut metric’ – and that distinction has always been very important 
to us.

“You’ve got these connections that you have with families, the parents, and all you want is the best for each individual player, and that’s so important.”

Norwich City also offer what they call the City Select (previously Futures Group) programme – an opportunity to get top-quality coaching for players who are not quite ready for academy football, whether they are the youngest in their age group or for some other reason.

“It’s a great way of role modelling for local players that you’ve always still got a chance and something to be ambitious for. There’s players that would have exited Norwich previously, gone into City Select and then re-entered the academy at a later point. Brad Hills has been a really good example of that, who’s now signed for Stockport County in League One. He was a local boy, I believe he exited around under 12s, rejoined under 14s, ends up being in our first team, and if we didn’t have that as a forum, he could quite easily have not had the opportunity to go and do that.”

Improving the individual

Each player’s needs are paramount, says Shulberg, with every individual having their own development plan running throughout the year, and a multidisciplinary team to support them all the way.

“It’s so important to co-create these things with the players themselves so they’re buying into what that individual development plan is,” he says, adding: “It has to be driven from a central point, co-creating with the player where they can drive it themselves, where you’re trying to go from a coach dependency to a coach referral basis, where they’re coming to you not necessarily that they need you, but because they want to. That’s when you know that you’re in a pretty good place.”

Shulberg points to the success of academy product Abu Kamara, a player he first saw as an under-14, having signed at under-12, and who was then small compared to his peers. Kamara’s individual development plan, he explains, “needed to find a way to give him the confidence and belief in his technical ability.”

Kamara did grow physically, becoming a very good athlete later on in his teenage years, and that physical development combined with his technical skill plus the support of the development plan and the multidisciplinary team helped him to become a successful professional player.

“It’s trying to find a way within that IDP and the MDT to help him learn how to be a professional footballer, how you take charge of your own career, become an independent decision maker,” explains Shulberg. “And that was very deliberate. His plan was very deliberate. It was really well thought out and it’s no wonder he’s gone on and been successful, and I’m sure he’ll continue to do so.”

“It has to be driven from a central point, co-creating with the player where they can drive it themselves, where you’re trying to go from a coach dependency to a coach referral basis, where they’re coming to you not necessarily that they need you, but because they want to. That’s when you know that you’re in a pretty good place.”

And Shulberg also highlights the progress of Liam Gibbs, who joined Norwich as a technically gifted under-18 and then changed position, moving to play as a holding midfielder. That switch was a deliberate decision from the team.

“Knowing that he might not be the most physical player under contact, he had to be more intelligent to escape under pressure or play off one touch and bounce in his movement to not get tackled. The best way of doing that was giving him the ball as much as possible can, so playing him in that six position and getting him to coach on the pitch. He would often be one of the leaders in coming up with a game plan.”

Shulberg goes on: “When he did transition into the first team, when we asked him, ‘What could we have done differently, what are the things that best prepared you?’, he said, ‘I felt more than prepared to play first-team football technically.’ It was the physical side of the Championship being like ‘bumper cars’ where off the ball you just get knocked around everywhere, which he never felt that 21s football could ever give him.

“But the way that we played the game helped prepare him individually to be able to cope from a technical point of view, and again, that was very deliberate to put him in a position that would allow him to do that and play in the way he’s having to make consistent decisions under pressure.”

The game model

Developing a game model for a group needs to be done with each player in mind, says Shulberg.

“The game model is built around what we believe best supports each player’s individual development on the pitch. It’s very principle-based. When we place players into certain roles, we always ask: ‘Why are they in this position today, and what will the gain from it?’ We focus on the behaviours and responsibilities of the role rather than the position label itself, giving them opportunities to showcase their strengths while exposing them to the areas they need to improve in a supportive environment. We don’t just throw them in at the deep end – unless we believe character-wise that they’re able to cope with that.”

He explains that as an academy coaching team, they have “very clear language, a clear coaching identity, what the player identity, what the session identity, what the team identity looks like, which mostly revolves around behaviours - and as long as we’re seeing those behaviours, as long as the principles are being met, the system has to revolve around what the needs of the players are on the pitch.”

“The moment you’re labelling players too soon one way or the other, I think you’re writing them off”

Norwich City are about to review their game model for the academy set-up to ensure they are still on the right path for them and for their players. Shulberg says that it also means a careful selection of coaches to implement the plans. The academy coaches each have their own unique and varied experiences in football, and those backgrounds are valuable to feed into deciding the way the system runs – but once that’s done, each coach also needs to be fully committed to it.

“If you don’t have the same development beliefs, you can’t work here in the first place,” Shulberg says of the challenges of recruiting staff. “Everyone needs to understand what they’re here for. Definitely no ego. If you’re out there just to purely win games at the expense of player development, it’s not going to work. So your recruitment process for the staff in the first place, you have to be extremely diligent. You’ve got to be very careful of the types of coaches or staff that you’re bringing into the building.

“And then it’s welcoming challenge, it’s welcoming thought, it’s bringing everyone on the journey.”

Making a commitment

And Shulberg is keen to warn any coach off judging a young player too early. He refers to an academic study that described what has since been referred to as “the Pygmalion effect” – it is the way a person is presented and then treated that makes the difference, rather than any inherent change in them. Shulberg says it applies to footballers just as much as in any other walk of life, including the study’s original setting, the school room.

“All that had happened is the behaviours of the teachers around [the pupils in the study] had completely shifted,” he explains, saying that if an eight-year-old is suddenly touted as the next footballing superstar, almost everyone around them will buy into that hype – but it also works the opposite way.

“The moment you’re labelling players too soon one way or the other, I think you’re writing them off. My biggest thing is always kids always have a funny way of surprising you one way or the other. If you made a commitment to them, make a commitment to them.”