Author: afcunity

by Jay Baker

Firstly, happy new year from myself and everyone involved with AFC Unity. It’s such an exciting time for this football club, as morale has never been higher, team spirit has never been better, the football itself has never been so good, and we’ve never been more sure of ourselves and the work we do in the wider community.

This is the first entry into this column since before the start of the season, in which I made the bold statement that you’re now ‘seeing a real, true Unity.’ And that was absolutely right, as evidenced by the complete difference in our football as well: now in a much tougher second of two divisions formed from the original three, our defeats have actually been less heavy than last season when we diluted ourselves across two teams – yes, we’ve won as many if not more games already by the new year than we did all of last season (and there will be more wins to come in the future, though no easy ones), but the emphasis is still on the process rather than the results.

With one team in Unity now, we rebuilt the squad from scratch in the pre-season, as mentioned in my last entry to this column. We made sure we had all the right ingredients to succeed and meet our aims off and on the pitch, and sure enough the club has been democratised even further with greater player involvement and the women really pushing the club further forward – be it via shared captaincy, or taking the lead in socials and fundraising – and this has only been possible because we have the maximum amount of 25 registered players who are good people who believe in the club and its ethos and really genuinely care about something bigger than just themselves. It’s what we wanted all along.

These 25 players are selfless, prepared to fight for their spots in the 16 on a Sunday, so they can play for this badge and everything we represent. It’s a camaraderie and friendly competition made possible by the positive approach we have, the sports psychology and social elements that go into making this such a great team of players to coach and manage. They know that it’s not just about what they get out of it, but what they put in to it, too – that the culture of our club that they enjoy only exists because people like them stand up and fight for it. That’s selflessness, and it’s admirable.

And it’s not for everyone. One or two players in the past may have found the positivity a culture shock – scoffing at the empirical evidence of sports psychology and the work of Dan Abrahams, for example, they were used to football clubs run like army camps, with drills to match, and an “everyone for themselves,” dog-eat-dog culture of negativity. That’s fine. There are plenty of other clubs for those types. But now AFC Unity has 25 players who all believe in it, and battle to protect it.

That kind of culture shock can be avoided in future by the potential players interested in joining us (around one a week, on average) being directed first to Solidarity Soccer (and some go for it, but a remarkable few are prepared to relearn football in this way, which is how you separate those who just want to play some football for some local team, and those who really badly want to be an ambassador for AFC Unity, which is something I for one hold in high regard).

Yes, there are journeying footballers who play Sunday league football drifting from team to team changing their shirt and their badge with nothing to believe in or fight for. That’s how you get some teams having star players presented as saviours,  a very individualistic and frighteningly short-term mentality. And because of that, you get teams going up and down the divisions or even collapsing altogether, or changing coaches and managers every several months. At AFC Unity we’ve at least enjoyed a consistency in that area, and a long-term approach that sees us still going four years after our formation in early 2014, even while being completely unaffiliated with an established men’s team and being proactive and progressive with our community actions, and doing things so differently.

So with that in mind, we’ve harnessed that consistency within the culture of the club to a point where players don’t panic when they lose a game; they know there’s a long-term plan and a process; they smile and laugh and have fun after matches where meanwhile I’ve seen “winning” teams shouting and swearing at each other and looking absolutely miserable as sin.

Yes, we have yet again chosen the path less travelled, and it’s been a mountain to climb. It’s always been about doing things the right way for us. I don’t sit here and pick out my star players for praise (they each know how highly I think of them, and every one is valued); I don’t sit here and slag off our opponents to provoke negative reactions and get a few extra hits on our web page that may or may not be put together on a template by Pitchero (our page hits come from our supporters more than our enemies, which is a far more positive response, one we should all seek to provoke in people).

So yes, ours is the right way, but it’s the hard way too – dealing with abuse from opponents, and from players rejected in the past, and seeing us lose matches to inferior football (not always, mind you – several times we have been beaten by pure class, and we praise such teams for their integrity). But our integrity continues beyond the pitch, out in the community, not just with Football for Food, but with our promotion of trade unionism too.

When we had our early lucky run – when we were a grouping of individuals rather than playing football that represented our ethos – we endured far more abuse than we do now. Teams hated us because we were just formed, and yet we were winning games (there were more genuinely local grassroots teams then, rather than mighty professional football clubs pumping money into development teams). Now, they condescend to us, because they don’t see us as a threat. I said at a recent training session: let them do that, let them patronisingly praise our pretty football, but they’ll start hating us again soon, I’m afraid. And that’s fine.

So could we win more matches, right now? Of course we could. We have fantastic players. But having them play defensive, boring, long-ball territorial football to win a match would have them puke on the spot, and probably quit right after (with me not far behind). They want to be challenged, they want to be developed, individually and as a team; they want to master more complicated styles of play where they all attack and they all defend. These players know the effort put in at training, the higher quality of football we’re working hard for, so that the process presents greater (and more satisfying) results in the long-term – while these so-called “winners”; teams of individuals, relying on individuals, are back in chaos and upheaval and jeopardy yet again.

Ultimately, though, we’ve shown that these players are winners – not just their spirit as a team after a match, not just their incredible efforts and development. But with everything Unity continues to do in the community and beyond. We’ve always said, time and again, ‘When you’re just solely about winning, when you lose you have nothing else left.’ I laugh when teams love beating us, because it’s not only immensely flattering, but also misguided: win or lose, we’re still Unity. We don’t stop.

I’ve never been so proud of my team. They’ve challenged me too, because now I’m not putting out fires, I focus on the football coaching and this season this team is making me a better manager, which is something I’m really grateful for. There’s a trust in the team where we all care about each other and know we can all bring out the best in one another.

So as AFC Unity grows, and as more and more people get involved – at matches, at activities, and in campaigns – so our football evolves, and improves. And these players are grasping an art form at the moment, so be patient, because once they’ve mastered it, the results will follow as well, achieved in the right way – even against the bigger clubs and the short-term teams.

Please support our players, come to matches, cheer them on, and spread the word: something special is happening at AFC Unity.

by Jay Baker

I made a lot of promises in the last entry to this column and I’m proud to have kept them. But I’m more proud to say that now, AFC Unity’s current squad is the best I’ve ever managed.

What’s the secret? Well, I’ve mentioned in this column before about the keys to winning, and belief, but it goes beyond that. We’ve got such really good people and personalities in the squad right now – a mixture of pre-existing players who craved an even more positive environment, players who were in the second team, players coming through our Solidarity Soccer initiative, and also players coming to us from elsewhere (yet who seem like they’ve played for us forever).

One thing managers and coaches must be, first of all, is decent, and respectful, and see themselves as teachers or facilitators, not drill sergeants. You have to conduct yourself in a way where you can practice what you preach. My background in youth work and community coaching helped me a lot with this, and last season reached a point where I’d worked hard, learned as much as I possibly could, and was being positive, but still wasn’t afforded the same positivity in return by some players, because at some point all coaches have to put their ego aside and admit that they have to give up trying to change some players, because those types of players will never change anything except your own environment, which is fatal for a football team.

We were really clear about the kinds of people we wanted involved this year because the club had reached a point where it wasn’t a start-up any more, struggling to recruit players. It’s not even September yet and the fixtures aren’t announced and yet I now have the maximum of 25 players on the roster, and each and every one of them met the right criteria when we decided on registrations, with top quality players knocking on the door still wanting to join the club since.

But because we went into this preseason with the right people, there was a mutual trust where we were not only all working together to develop our philosophy and style of play which are a very strong part of Unity’s identity, but we were also able to empower more and more of the women in the team to step up and really help drive the club forward. When the players trust you, and you trust them, you can do that, as evidenced by the shared captaincy – each of our five preseason games was captained by a different player, and none of them had captained our team before. That not only exemplifies our emphasis on empowerment and doing things in a dynamic way that reflect collectivism, but also demonstrates the strength of character and belief we possess in the squad now.

There’s also been an emphasis on process before results (which have developed nicely over the preseason as well, a far cry from the constant heavy defeats we suffered last season). Players have bought into the style of play in a way where we can employ different systems to fit it, ask them their thoughts on it, and again empower them to be pro-active and positive, questioning not ‘Why are we doing this?’ but ‘How can we make this work better for the greater good?’

This solid identity of our style of play and work ethic means it’s a good thing our squad is full of players who want to play for our badge and everything different it represents about grassroots football. Because coming into our environment of positive football can be a culture-shock for a player used to “drills,” authoritarian coaching, the huffing and puffing of frustrated teammates, and negative, defensive 4-4-2 stuff that doesn’t even challenge a coach never mind the players. I am really proud that we’ve taken players from the calibre of several divisions above and we’ve still shown them a kind of football they’ve not encountered for years or even decades, and challenged them so that they’ve developed into better players, and better people with stronger character and mental toughness (something we talk about a lot and a cause for amazement from onlookers at how focused and positive our players remain in challenging circumstances).

So things like Solidarity Soccer are now more crucial than ever as a way of introducing women to our different way of doing things, and our positive playing philosophy. And it’s something we’ll have to find ways to fund more as time goes on because it’s an important potential stepping stone to the sought-after standard four-week first team trial that avoids that culture shock for incoming players.

We all believe more than ever in our positive culture on and off the pitch, and that’s all part of the process that in the longer term also has a positive effect on results, especially as this squad settles in and gels even more than it has in preseason. We’ve learned a lot but are still figuring things out. We’re just getting started.

Support has been great this preseason, and I’m sure will continue to grow after the start of what, incredibly, will be our fourth season in a league where even women’s teams who rely on a men’s club collapse, let alone an openly progressive, independent women’s team that runs as a legally incorporated not-for-profit organisation facing the inevitable but welcome high levels of scrutiny that brings with it.

I rather facetiously said at last season’s Awards Night, ‘What is past is prologue,’ but actually it was probably the least daft thing I said all night. The past is prologue; everything we’ve done was building up to this point, where finally our culture and identity is strong and unshakeable, and we all believe in it, and stand up for it. You can tell the players fight for it.

If you want to see physically and mentally tough, talented and strong women who have big hearts, come along and support this team. You won’t meet a better bunch of people and I’m proud to even know them; coaching them is an honour and a privilege – because they’re empowered anyway and capable enough to know many of the solutions to problems; I just facilitate it.

They play for a badge that represents a different way of doing things; a better way of doing things. These “Red Stars” wear that red star badge with pride – and win, lose, or draw, that will remain. We won’t stop doing things the way we do them because of any single one result, be it on the pitch or out in the community. That makes this team winners anyway.

Now you’re seeing a real, true Unity.

by Jay Baker

Much has already been said about the challenging season AFC Unity just had, so now I’d like to focus more on the future. However, it is worth acknowledging the adversity we experienced, because tough times always reveal true character in people, and in football players.

Let’s borrow an anecdote from men’s mainstream professional football. Love him or loathe him, Neil Warnock made no secret of the difficulties he had with Neil Redfearn at Leeds United, when Warnock was in charge of the first team and Redfearn was responsible for overseeing the youth academy, where resentment towards the first team set in.

We saw some of that in our second season when we had a Development system (since replaced by an overwhelmingly successful and award-winning Solidarity Soccer initiative). Thankfully, such resentment was rare in our newly-created second team, the AFC Unity Jets, even when players from there were called up into the injury-ravaged first team. After all, it’s totally the wrong attitude to resent your teammates an opportunity to progress! In addition, it’d have been wrong for any of us to be negative when the Jets then still had 18 players in the squad, and it’d have been wrong to focus on those who stopped showing up as the heavy defeats continued, rather than those who kept going: those who kept playing till the end are heroes.

Meanwhile, the constant changes in the first team presented its own difficulties, as mentioned before. Now as we revert back to one team and one squad, looking ahead I’ll be using about three different formations while we rebuild the football at AFC Unity on the foundation of a newfound footballing identity and playing style. Last season, we couldn’t even get the whole team to grasp one formation, let alone three, but that depends on having a squad who as a collective hold the four keys to winning. American college sports coach Davey Whitney once said, “If it’s important to you, you’ll find a way; if it’s not, you’ll find an excuse.”

Last season, I stuck with one formation until there was belief. The majority of the team has been absolutely fantastic, and a dream to coach. Rather than disrupt an already injury-hit team by removing any odd negative players, I kept them in – and the more they got negative, the more the rest of us went positive; the more they wanted to play defensive, the more we went on the attack; the more they wanted to park the bus, the higher our defensive line got. It cost us of course, leading to its logical conclusion in the last match of the season and our record defeat of 17-1. But now we can wipe the slate clean.

Some players will just never believe, and are better suited to the old vanilla 4-4-2 – which of course is fine for them, because pretty much every other grassroots club does that, so there’s no shortage of other options out there for them. One coaching phrase is: One player can’t beat an opposing team by themselves, but they can destroy your own team with a bad attitude. Yes, there are some players who just always seem to associate with the negativity and bad apples and players we removed for poor behaviour; you can’t have them in your club, or else you’re asking for the same mistakes to be repeated over and over without learning from them – and when we preach learning from mistakes, we have to do so ourselves, and act on it! And we will. We have to now.

So what we’ll have going forward is a series of game plans we can spend pre-season embracing, learning, and enacting whenever they’re needed. It kills the season if you can’t even commit to one formation, but now we will have a squad that does, I can promise that. I’ll only have positive vibes in my squad, and complete faith in a team of players who in turn have faith in me. Any doubt, and they’re out! AFC Unity is a lovely club, everyone, even opponents, agree on that. But that doesn’t mean players don’t want and need solid, strong leadership to keep it positive. If you’re too soft, it crumbles.

We’re looking to build a single squad as a cohesive unit based on commitment, dedication, and talent, full of problem-solving players who are keen to listen, and learn, and trust in their coaches – again, it comes back to the keys to winning.

We’ll be signing players who completely understand the football philosophy, and believe in everything we’re trying to do at the club, and – beyond enjoying the environment – trust in our approach so that this environment can be sustained long-term. We can’t do that with players who might cause problems, who are oppositional, yet continue to enjoy everything we offer. That won’t work. ‘People who are in it for their own good are individualists,’ said another American college coach, Paul William “Bear” Bryant: ‘They don’t share the same heartbeat that makes a team so great.’

As manager of the first team, I’ve been so lucky in this past very unlucky season to have filled the majority of the squad with the best personalities and people I’ve genuinely been fond of and friendly with, and trusted – because despite how cynics may scoff at the idea, you simply can’t have good players who aren’t good people; the two go hand-in-hand. Gordon Strachan once said, ‘Believe me, you need good people if you want to make good players.’ So first and foremost, AFC Unity has to be full of good people who believe in the badge and everything it represents, who want to play for the badge, and who want to enact our ethos and football philosophy on that pitch. We want great ambassadors for this club.

I intend to build a strong squad of 25 players who might not be 25 of the best, but definitely the best 25 – those who are just happy to be part of AFC Unity, enjoy the environment, believe in it, and also enact it to further our ethos and prove it can work. And it can. It will.

While other teams might be an add-on to a men’s team, or be run like an army camp, or have cliques, or play re-active “man-marking” football, or play the long ball, waste time, run down the clock and complain – and they can and do win games like that, because the flawed rules of the game enable them to do so, sadly – instead we will choose the road less travelled, the longest and hardest path to success, because it’s important to succeed the right way. The journey is as important as the destination, if not more important; it’s like life itself.

I’m excited because I have so many players to choose from. The downside is, some players will no longer get the opportunities they once had to play 11-a-side football, but trust is key; players have to trust me, and I have to trust them, and if there was any shred of doubt either way, this wouldn’t work. It’s no secret we at AFC Unity admire the “Barçajax” football philosophy, but more because it’s ethos-first, and the victories have to come along later.

We need a solid 25 and definitely need 16 every single Sunday because our playing style – what I affectionately call “hard rock football” – can be intense, and rigorous, and demanding, but it definitely develops players. Yet it isn’t for everyone; we have to have defenders who play a proactive role in build-up play and attack, and we have to have forwards who are more than just poachers but press and get the ball. I truly believe that at this level, players can go no place better than AFC Unity to learn intelligent, exciting, attractive football that’s a real challenge to learn and grasp.

One player, who’s played for some top clubs, once even asked me if our style of play was too advanced for our team. But the thing is, I have never stopped learning since taking on this role, and I enjoy developing as a coach too, yet I have no football ambitions except for this club – it’s important that, instead, we raise the standards of football that we play. We’ve already seen some beautiful football even without a consistent, coherent unit! Wait till we finally settle into being one team with one vision, long-term!

We also have to present opportunity to Solidarity Soccer players as well as those coming to us from other clubs who show the trust, passion, and belief in what we’re doing – as well as high levels of attitude, ability, and attendance.

Sports mogul Robert Kraft once said he wanted the kinds of players to have an impact both on the field and in the locker room, and I agree that’s really important for building a strong team. With the newly-introduced shared, or rotating, captaincy we will keep developing, nurturing, and encouraging those leadership qualities right throughout the team so that it’s not just my voice reinforcing the ethos, or even one captain’s voice. It has to be a collective voice. That’s why we’re called “Unity.”

Not just because we’re going to be one team with one vision, but because we’ll finally have a large solid squad and a long pre-season, this finally feels like the AFC Unity we always wanted it to be. The building process won’t be easy – it might take the entire season to bond the team how we’d like – but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

And besides, yet again, the journey is just as valuable and exciting as the destination – and, after all, often more important.