Billy Garton when he was a Defender for Manchester United in 1986

Great Coaches on Great Soccer: Billy Garton on Youth Soccer - Part Two

Billy Garton is Director of Coaching with Carmel Valley Manchester, which he founded in 2001 with his former coach and mentor Jeff Illingworth. Garton played defender at English powerhouse Manchester United and brought the lessons he learned there to coaching. Garton has a refreshing, honest and open view on youth soccer. This is the second half of that interview.

Click HERE to read the first half of the interview. 

SNN: What was it like when you first became DOC at CV Manchester?

Billy Garton: When I first came to Southern California, being a former Manchester United soccer player and coming into an area where soccer was on the way up, I was the new kid on the block; I was the flavor of the month.

Everybody said, “Hey, it is Billy Garton. He’s a great guy with a great pedigree. He’s a good coach and great with the kids and the parents.”

Then gradually, over time, I think the gloss has gone off me a little bit.

SNN: Is it because you’re not new any more?

Billy Garton: I think some of the newness has gone, but what I’ve realized, as Director of Coaching at our club, is that people cannot like you based upon some decisions you make.  

I believe you should make a decision because it’s the right decision for the kid or for the team. But sometimes, people perceive a decision is a personal slam against them and/or their child.

Perhaps I could have made some decisions differently and kept everybody happy, but you just can’t run a club that way. I have to be true to what I believe.

SNN: Is it possible to keep everybody happy?

Billy Garton: You just can’t and that’s the reality.

You’re not going to please everybody all of the time, therefore your reputation is not always going to be glowingly positive.

Sometimes you play a kid in a particular position because you know that is the best position for the kid, but then the parents yank him from your team or club and take him somewhere else because you are not doing what they want. For example, the parents only want their child to play forward or midfield, but you’re seeing the kid as a sweeper.  But who really has the experience to know where the child should play and how to develop the player?

Many times I’ve told parents that their son has the best chance of being a great player if he stays at a specific position. And they will say, “Oh, no, you’re kidding me. My son has to be a center mid.” So they leave the club because you will only play their son at, say, defender. Then you get this bad rap that you lost your best player, but you lost your best player because you stood on principle. You decided that you would stick to your guns. A parent telling you their son plays a certain position or doesn’t play at all would not sway you.

SNN: How hard is it to communicate to a parent that you think their child isn’t going to be a top forward in the MLS or the English League. That the player has the best chance of becoming a pro if they honed their skills as a defender?

Billy Garton: It’s tough. It seems no one wants to play defense here in Southern California. It’s a total disservice to their son or daughter and to their team – and probably to the game of soccer – because a lot of people don’t understand the value of each position. They don’t know the game well enough to make those judgments, but I think I do and so do the other coaches that know their job.

SNN: What is the answer? Can we educate the parents?

Billy Garton: Educating parents is important but I don’t think we are ever going to be able to educate all of them.

I think there are certain parents who obviously have a greater understanding of the game and the sport, and I think you can learn the game if you really want to. But I think some people will have difficulty understanding soccer because their background is in football or basketball or baseball.  

SNN: Football fans think the forward in soccer is the quarterback?  The star player?

Imagine being part of a great team, being paid to do something you love and being a professional sportsman? Who cares what the position is if you’re on the field and you’re being given an opportunity?

Billy Garton: The quarterback in football, the pitcher or best hitter on the baseball team, the point guard in basketball. These main positions are where parents want their son (and daughters) to be; if he’s a good player they want him in one of those stud positions. 

SNN: Soccer is more of a team-oriented sport ... all positions are important?

Billy Garton: When I went to Manchester United at 15, Eric Harrison was the youth team coach. He developed David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary and Phil Neville and many other great players.

I came in as a midfield player, and within one month Harrison said, “You’re not a midfielder, you’re a defender.” And that’s where I stayed my whole career. Who was I to dispute what Eric Harrison decided? Imagine my dad going to him and saying, “You’re kidding me, my son’s a forward. Have you lost your mind?”

The reality is that it’s different in England.

There’s a greater respect in England for people who know more about soccer. Here there’s an attitude of entitlement and almost arrogance. Maybe it’s just this part of the world where we live. The people still tend to think that they can tell you your job.

I once told an attorney that I would never ever knock on his door and tell him the way he conducted himself in a trial was inappropriate. I would never have the audacity to do that. But parents do this to soccer coaches, even soccer coaches with a lot of experience and great expertise.

Jeff Illingworth likes to say, “I’m not an expert at many things, in fact I’m not expert at anything other than soccer. I think I’m expert at soccer and in the development of players. I’m not an expert on computers, or in mechanical things or on cars and how cars run. I’m useless in things like that. But there’s one little niche that I’m good at, and that is coaching soccer and developing soccer players.”

So when I get a mortgage broker or corporate CEO trying to tell me, “My son is never going to play there” or “You’re kidding me, the way you made your subbing patterns was just wrong,” it’s just disrespectful. 

SNN: Parents pay for competitive club coaching, why do you think they question coaches so often?

Billy Garton: It is good to question authority figures and parents do know their children best. I am just saying that there are certain times when parents obviously know in their heart that they do not know enough about the sport of soccer to be able to dictate, but they still feel entitled to try.

SNN: Parents push coaches to play their kids in positions that even the kids' don't want?

Billy Garton: Absolutely. They will often use “what the kid wants” as the reason to leave a team and the kid really wants to stay.  It is sad.

The kid probably would have been quite content going along with what the coach was saying, but the parents don’t see it as beneficial to the kid.

Or perhaps they don’t see it as a great enough attraction for a kid to play in a position that’s not deemed one of the “star” positions because they don’t score a goal.

Who cares if you score a goal? If you’re a great sweeper and you stop the other team from scoring, then you’ve contributed to your team.

I played defense all my professional life, and so maybe I do value the worth of a defender more than most. My son is a left footer and plays center mid – If someone told me tomorrow, “Hey, your son is going to be a pro at left defender,” I’d take that deal in a heartbeat.

Imagine being part of a great team, being paid to do something you love and being a professional sportsman? Who cares what the position is if you’re on the field and you’re being given an opportunity? I think that’s great.

As I said, I develop soccer players, I don’t just develop forwards. In my practices, the forwards defend and the defenders go forward and score. We juggle together, we pass together, we receive the ball together and we work on team concepts together. I don’t pigeon-hole players and say, “Hey, at U9, you’re a sweeper.”

SNN: What is the best thing about being a DOC?

Billy Garton: Certainly from our perspective of being a club that’s relatively new – ten years in existence – the best thing about being a DOC is watching the club develop. It’s watching the teams within the club develop and watching the reputation of our club be enhanced by the performances of some of the teams and by the job that we do. And I say “we” as in our entire coaching staff.

I get so much pleasure watching our U7 developmental team play and watching those little kids try to do the things that their coach has been working on with them. Some of these kids are 5, and seeing them try to settle and pass a soccer ball, and trying their utmost do the things the coach has asked them to do, gives me as much satisfaction as one of our teams going on and winning State Cup.

SNN: What do you think about the Academy system?

Billy Garton: The Academy system is one of those concepts that have the greatest intentions, but I’m not sure how it will succeed. I understand the worth of it and I understand the concept, but the club scene here is so different from the way it is back in England, in Europe and maybe even in South America. The clubs here still tend to hold the power, and therefore you’ve got this interesting situation.

SNN: When you say “clubs” what do you mean?

Billy Garton: I mean the competitive youth soccer programs. The youth clubs, like our club CV Manchester, and San Diego Surf, Nomads, FC San Diego, among others.

With all these competing youth soccer programs, the Academy system is not always going to be able to attract the elite “cream of the crop.” Because, with all due respect to some of the Academies, they don’t always have the best coaches. So, just because you’ve been given the “Academy” tag, it doesn’t mean you have the best coaching.

If I was putting my son in one of the Academies, it wouldn’t be because it was an Academy; it would be because of who is coaching the team.

SNN: So it’s most important to look at who is coaching?

Billy Garton: Absolutely. It’s like teaching. Maybe you go to a school that has a fantastic reputation, but the teaching staff for your child's grade is useless.

On the other hand, you might find a school that may not have as great a reputation, but the teachers are getting their job done well and they’re producing great results with students who love to learn.

That’s a good way to look at the Academy system. It’s a misnomer that you have to be at one of the Academy clubs.

In England it would be different. If you were going to be an elite soccer player you would want to be on an Academy team at a pro club.

SNN: Do you see any other major differences in the way soccer is viewed in America compared to in England?

Billy Garton: Let me give you an example. If you told my son he was going to play for LA Galaxy, he’d say, “Oh, okay.”

I’m serious. It’s because he’s English. I don’t mean that with disrespect to Galaxy or any MLS club, but that is how it is.

In England, if a lower league team like Aston Villa comes and says, “Hey, we love your son and we want him in our Academy because we think he has a chance,” that’s huge. That would be like the New York Yankees coming knocking on your door if you were a baseball player.

At the moment, the MLS just does not have that respect or status or even, and I’m going to say it, the financial enticement - compared to  the Yankees or the Indianapolis Colts knocking at your door.

I think there’s a bit of denial here, with some parents who say they are not in it for the glory.

Honestly, some are in it for the glory. If their kid has a choice of being a center mid starter for an MLS team or a quarterback for one of the top pro clubs, they’re going to go with the football deal. It’s because soccer just doesn’t have enough respect in the U.S. yet, and I wish and pray and work and long for that day when it does.

When I first came here and I was earning next to nothing and we had five teams in the club, I used to wonder if it was worth it. Now, I think of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and what other great coaches in San Diego have done and I can see it changing. I think it’s now becoming more of a profession where we’re being given the respect and the status we deserve for the investment we’ve made.

Related Article: Great Coaches on Great Soccer - Billy Garton