During season 2015/16 I had the opportunity to wear a different hat and take a Ms in Talent Development in Football at Real Madrid School. Not only I created AFA 360, my 300-page player development model for the Argentine football, but also I was chosen to work at Real Madrid that season. This is what I learnt from this experience.
During 10 months we got to study, visit and welcome +15 of the top-class football Youth Academies in Europe.
In November 2015 I started my Ms in Talent Identification and Development in Football, at Real Madrid School, in Madrid.
During one full academic year, we studied, visited and welcomed more than 15 of the top-class Youth Academies in Europe, including Real Madrid, Ajax, Feyenoord, AZ Alkmaar, Sevilla, Dinamo Zagreb, Athletic Bilbao, among others.
It was a fantastic opportunity to get a solid understanding of the state of football development in different continents (I already know South America, this time was Europe), and to learn how different football entities design their methodologies and allocate their resources to meet their goals and get closer to their missions.
I am a certified football coach, but I come from a totally different background than most others. This enabled me to see things from a different perspective and to detect right away what opportunities are out there in the football world to better connect goals with actions.
During this time I had the opportunity to create AFA 360, my 300-page-long Thesis. It is a player development model for the Argentine Football Federation.
AFA 360 is the result of four main experiences: 1) My Ms in Talent Development; 2) The experience working at Real Madrid; 3) My almost 6 years at Google; 4) The knowledge on football methodology gained by getting certified as a Smart Football Coach in Catalunya (certified by the Catalan Football Federation).
Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions imposed by Smart Football, I cannot make AFA 360 publicly available. However, feel free to write to me and we can talk privately.
AFA 360 is a player development model for the Argentine Football Federation. It has four pillars:
I was chosen to work at the Real Madrid Youth Academy as Tactical Analyst for the U13-U17 teams.
During that year, 4 students were chosen to work at Real Madrid Youth Academy. Luckily I was one of those. I had the chance to be a Tactical Analyst for U13-U17 teams, and also to be involved in the administration of the Academy.
It was a fantastic experience for many reasons, including the possibility to get a closer look at how one of the top clubs in the world organizes their resources and develops elite players.
I also developed the ability to see problems from the Coach and Players´ points of view, and to leverage on this information to get specific football insights and to deliver recommendations with the goal of increasing performance. This is something that I was already doing on my website Rondos (followed by 60k people including Twitter and Facebook), where I deliver tactical analyses since 2015.
When the season was over I was invited to continue working at the Academy, but due to family and personal reasons, we decided to go back to Argentina.
I developed the ability to see problems from the Coach and Players´ points of view, and to leverage on this information to get specific football insights and to deliver recommendations with the goal of increasing performance.
Apart from the fantastic year itself, it has been an outstanding opportunity to continue developing different muscles. And they are not isolated skills at all, but transferrable to almost any discipline. The following are some of them:
