As some of you already know, Anshuman’s recent achievement got us some media spotlight:
Feels nice to get some attention and see the word spread.
The article does a great job of covering Anshuman’s football journey so far.
But this is only part of the story. A lot more has happened behind the scenes and it would be a shame to leave the rest to the imagination. Not just because a lot of other people also deserve the credit for his success, but also because knowing the process might help your child too.
The Assessments And Initial Training
The 360-degree training program for Anshuman that this article mentions started with an assessment of his Personality and the entire Football Ecosystem. All the important factors that Visibly (Coaching/Competition/Fitness/Nutrition etc.) or Invisibly (School/Parents/Family/Friends/Interests etc.) impact his development and performance besides his Personality (characteristics important for football success). The action plan put in place for him gave clear recommendations on each of these elements and to the credit of Anshuman and his Parents, they followed them to the ‘T’.
This was followed by detailed match assessments in India and Denmark.
Thomas Joseph, a highly accomplished former National team coach with many age groups, assessed and benchmarked him over a few matches in India. He also trained him and shared much-needed insights before he went to play in the Future Cup last year.
Køge Boldklub from Denmark graciously accepted him in their team for the Future Cup at Sweden last year. Pontus Maltborg, the Swedish youth football expert and scout, mentioned in the article assessed and benchmarked Anshuman at the tournament. The Køge Boldklub coaches also gave us valuable insights from his time with them.
Two other very successful Danish coaches who work in Professional football clubs – Mads and Lars, also assessed his matches and gave me independent feedback. In fact, Mads was the first one to point out that Anshu would be best suited for a Left Full Back position – a huge mind shift since he was always a forward and unfortunately none of the academies he went to before had taught him even the basics of defending.
Based on all these inputs, we arrived at very specific recommendations for his way forward.
The Move To Denmark And Subsequent Steps
This led to his joining Ikast FC, the club mentioned in the article. Also a fantastic fitness expert, Andreas who has been instrumental in building Anshu’s football fitness and strength – vital in the new defensive role.
But he did have a huge gap compared to the Danish players of his age, since the training till then was not comparable. So we needed something ‘extra’ to bridge that gap.
Enter Peter – a ‘maverick genius’ (both words are understatements) in football. He deserves a majority of the credit for Anshu’s development over the past few months but he is a media hermit and I don’t want to push the wrong button – so enough said.
The support and guidance outside football in Denmark came from Karsten, who has been a brilliant guide and host (whenever the rest of the family was on travels) for Anshuman in Denmark. He made sure that Anshuman’s entire ecosystem worked to give wings to his football development.
By the way, Anshuman’s school in Denmark also deserves some credit. The way they have welcomed him with open arms and given special consideration to his football commitments has also been a big reason behind this progress.
There are a few other experts who have played smaller but important roles in his development so far but every single person I have engaged for him so far has never cared about the glory, only about the results. Each one of them has seen much greater success in football and they are eager to see how Anshuman grows as a person and a player in the future.
The Road Ahead
None of this would have been possible without Anshu’s wholehearted commitment and Arun’s faith in our recommendations.
The best part for me is that we are all united in the realization, for Anshu and for Smart Sports Parenting, that:
This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But, it is, perhaps the end of the beginning.
Looking forward to conquering much higher peaks ahead.
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