Exclusive: Former Wales coach warns against ‘exhausting’ the likes of Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane
Former Wales coach Raymond Verheijen has offered some words of advice to club coaches to help avoid burning out young players like Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling.
The 42-year-old, who worked closely with the Welsh set up under Gary Speed’s stewardship, has written a book titled Complete Handbook for Conditioning for Soccer and is seen as an expert in developing youth players.
Verheijen believes young players have to be given special considerations when they initially break into the first team, identifying Kane and Sterling as prime examples in recent years.
“Unfortunately all these youth players are thrown in at the deep end. Not only does the speed go up, but the volume does at the same time and basically you are exhausting these young kids,” said the Dutchman.
“The coaches need to reduce the volume in the beginning so they can keep up with the speed and then gradually increase the volume in training.”
Kane took just 80 seconds to announce his arrival on the international scene on Friday evening against Lithuania after earning his first call up this week, and Verheijen says he can get even better with time.
Verheijen said: “His body needs time and you cannot solve that with conditioning, he firstly needs time to adapt to play at this level and then secondly to get used to playing two or three times a week.
“As long as his training is not exaggerated in the beginning then nature will take care of it.”
The Dutch coach also said he was not surprised to see Wales performing so well in Euro 2016 qualifying so far and pointed to Swansea’s promotion to the Premier League in 2011 as a watershed moment for Welsh football.
“I’m not surprised. It’s a great group of players - you could already see their potential under Speed in 2011,” said Verheijen.
“When Swansea got promotion to the Premier League it was a turning point. Now all of a sudden seven or eight players are playing at the top level.”
The Welsh national team are unbeaten from their opening four games in Group B and face a crunch clash against group leaders Israel in Haifa on Saturday evening.