A youth coach without a license surprises the elite soccer league

In the 1950s, the famous – two-time finalist of the European Champions Cup – now the average French club Stade de Reims, which moves between the first and second leagues, has not lost thirteen matches in the highest competition. After 0:0 and 1:1 draws, he also defeated the famous Paris Saint-Germain.

Great credit for this goes to the English-Belgian coach Will Still, who took over from the position of assistant to the team in mid-October after a goalless draw with Lorient after Spanish colleague Oscar García. And he did not succeed with him only once, in the winter training he lost to Racing Lens 1:2. In competitive duels – whether league or cup – he does very well.

At the same time, he did not play football at the highest level. And he learned the coaching trade by playing the video games Football Manager and Championship Manager.

Still’s parents left the UK for Belgium in 1990, William “Will” was born in 1992. The family spoke English at home, he went to a French school in Walloon Brabant. He learned Dutch while playing for youth teams in Flemish clubs and played for Sint-Truiden, Mons and Tempo Overijs, then in the Belgian fourth division.

He himself admits that he was not a dazzling footballer. “I definitely wasn’t the fastest, I could run a hundred meters in ten days,” he joked in an interview with the English newspaper The Sun.

At seventeen, he decided to end his “promising” career, move to his ancestral homeland of England and study at Myerscough College in Preston with the desire to become a football coach. To do this, he practiced his analytical skills by playing the video games Football Manager and Championship Manager.

He started as an analyst at the Preston North End club, for a change a club with a great tradition, the winner of the first two years of the highest English competition, 1888/1889 and 1889/1890. He tested his practical coaching skills with pupils up to 14 years of age.

At Belgian clubs Standard Liège, Lierse and Beerschot, he first edited video footage and evaluated game moments, but later moved up to the first team. “You can have anyone much more experienced than me,” he objected. But he got the trust.

He eventually moved to France, where Reims noticed him. And again he started as an assistant and took care of match analysis. When coach García left in October of last year, he sat on the bench of the first division team.

And things happened. His team has yet to find the slayer.

For the six-time champion of France, in whose jersey such stars as Raymond Kopa and Just Fontaine played, hiring an English coach is quite an expensive matter. As he does not have the appropriate diploma – Pro UEFA License, he pays a fine of 25,000 euros (about 600,000 crowns) for each uncoached match. But so far it seems to be paying off for the club, he hasn’t played with him on the bench yet.

He doesn’t like it very much. “I would be in favor of abolishing this rule that supports a certain coaching nomenclature in France,” Still wrote on his Twitter account.

After the draw at the Parc des Princes against champions Paris Sanit-Germain, he is admired by the whole of France. “We are witnessing the birth of a high-level coach,” wrote l’Equipe. “Week in week out his team does something incredible,” added another compliment. “The way he bravely went into the fight against a heavy favorite is admirable,” he continued.

At the same time, it was not essential in the admiration that the home team finished in ten when the Italian European champion Marco Verratti was sent off. And Neymar’s goal from the 51st minute was answered by the visitors in the set-up (96th minute), when the Senegalese legionnaire Folarin Balogun, already a proven support of the team, scored.

The newspaper l’Equipe also pointed out that Still is only thirty, in Belgium he was even the youngest coach on the first division bench in history.

“It’s no coincidence that very young coaches are gaining ground even in the best European leagues,” reflects Verner Lička, a former outstanding forward, member of the League Gunners’ Club, 1980 Olympic champion from Moscow and bronze medalist from the 1980 European Championship in Italy. After the end of his active career, a recognized coach, now the chairman of the Union of Czech Football Coaches. “It is enough to recall the German Hans-Dieter Flick,” he offers a specific name.

Although Lička was trained in French coaching and, as the highest representative of the Czech coaching union, he makes sure that those who are responsible for the results of professional teams and educate players have the appropriate authorization, he does not dwell on the fact that Still was trained in video games. “It is important how someone can evaluate knowledge,” he thinks. “And how he reads the play,” he adds. “Still can probably do it,” he says.

Another renowned Czech football expert, Milan Bokša, who led eight first-league teams during his career and also worked in Kuwait, was always extensively involved in methodology, studying theory and evaluating data.

He divides trainers into three categories. “Former excellent players who got to know the process in depth during their careers and then just smoothly moved to the bench,” says the first. “Then those who also played football for a long time, even if not at the highest level, and mostly amateurs, but also absorbed what it entails,” Bokša offers the second.

“And then there are individuals who have defied these laws and followed a rather unusual path,” reveals Bokša the third. “But there are very few of them, they are the real exceptions,” leaving them with a touch of exoticism.

According to him, the coach of the French team Still is one of them.

On Sunday, Stade de Reims will face Auxerre at home, a well-known club that is not doing well, has lost five games in a row and is on the penultimate – naturally relegation – step of the table. However, coach Still will certainly not underestimate anything and will prepare the team in an exemplary manner. He will use his analytical skills.