4 Questions Series - Isac Doru; Indian FA Technical Director

January 3rd 2020

A note from the Sporting Director;

Isac is one of my mentors in football. He holds a key position in World Football as the Technical Director of Indian Football. His career has seen him work on 5 different continents.

Isac’s insights in the series are sincere and routed in development. His education (he holds a Phd.) is matched only by his education in the game. It is incredible, having worked with Carlos Queiros, Bora Milutinovic and of course Arsene Wenger during his time in Japan with Grampus Eight. This alone will make for a football education most dream of. However, Isac’s willingness to serve the World football community is astounding. He is always there for advice and counsel. Isac told me once “your passion is the key, players need that passion to succeed” and I have tried to carry that in every session and conversation with players since.

I always that Coach Doru has been my teacher and Isac is my friend.

You can learn more about Isac here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isac_Doru

I hope you enjoy Isac’s 4 Questions.

1. What are the biggest issues facing youth development across the globe?

  • Lack of patience from all the football ecosystem elements: coaches, clubs, parents and involvement of agents at the early ages.The development of youth requires thousand of training sessions and hundreds of games during 8-10 years of development, than they will become the master of the ball with the making decision process ready for the professional world.

  • Lack of competitions( leagues; tournament; development tournaments, international exposure games) and a lot of unnecessary pressure for the players during those games;

  • Very superficial youth development programs, the training specific by age and position should be "must do" principle. Talent identification and performance assessment deficiencies.

2. You have a vast educational background, how has that helped you in football coaching?

Needless to say that knowledge is power, the more you know, the more powerful you can be: the man management, the players personality management and understanding of their psychological profile; the capacity to read the game at the different levels with different speed of play and speed of thinking; the physical preparation at the individual and team level as become a science; the fast regeneration after the accumulation of fatigue;  analysis of the football individual and team performance, all of those are impossible to understand it without efforts of studying and developing your academic background as a coach. 

3. You've have held roles at a high level on several continents, what have you learnt from them - How could they integrate to make football better?

It depends on every each individual DNA and his personality, from my unsuccessful work I learned very fast and very deep. The successful career all over the world was giving me confidence and believe in my training principle and philosophy of playing the game.

Being humble and thinking to the next game and professional challenge  is one of my precious  lesson that I learned form my international experience.You can not inspire the players and the people around you if you don't possess this chemistry of confidence and inner motivation.

4. What do you think is the most important advice you could give to a young player?

  • Believe!

  • Be realistic!

  • Be open minded to accept new things and new people around you!

  • Be mentally strong, especially when the things are going against your interest!

  • Be ready to work hard and sacrifice valuable time of your childhood to follow your football dreams!

Lee Cullip