Coach-turned-electrician Withe wants to work on team's mentality
Coach-turned-electrician Withe wants to work on team's mentality
Zakki P Hakim
Jakarta
After being assigned to take in charge of the Indonesia's U-20
team, Peter Withe says that the mental attitude of the team would
be upgraded in order to make itself a strong team in the future.
The 52-year-old coach from Britain said that It was important
for him to get to know the mental attitude of his team members.
"The right mental attitude should be that playing soccer is
not just a game of kick and run. It's like all the jobs you do..,
you need to use your brain. You have to think in playing soccer,"
he said.
"Soccer is not about always winning. You improve the standard
of soccer all around, winnings will come along the way. You have
to work hard to win," he told The Jakarta Post in a recent
interview.
After being rumored to take Vietnam's offer, Withe, a former
English Premiership's Aston Villa striker, signed a four-year
contract as Indonesia's head coach in March.
He has ended up in partnership with the Soccer Association of
Indonesia (PSSI) after his five-year stint with Thailand from
1998 to 2003, during which he brought the Thai soccer team to
finish fourth in two Asian Games in 1998 and 2002, to the Tiger
Cup victory in 2000 and 2002.
The contract value is not known but PSSI says that Withe is
paid about the same range with his previous salary in Thailand,
where he was said to receive about US$14,000 a month.
Withe said that he had chosen Indonesia instead of other
countries because he found tremendous desire and commitment from
PSSI, support from the people and most importantly the soccer
fans for their teams.
"As I noticed in last year's Tiger Cup in Jakarta, hundreds of
thousands of people were watching their team. If the national
team had this kind of support, it is the nucleus in making the
team good," he said.
Withe's main task is to develop the Indonesia's U-20 team into
a strong senior team in four years. His real test will come next
September when he leads the team to the Asian Championship in
Kuala Lumpur.
And Withe has around three years to polish his players in term
of skills as well as psychological field. The team already looks
tough when it held India to a 1-1 draw last week.
Withe said he had observed that the national team played as
well as some of the local clubs in premier league. But he said
that players were still lacking the knowledge of play
organization.
"At the moment, the mentality here is I am defender and my job
is only defending, you are striker and your job is only striving
to score," he said and added that whenever the players did not
have the ball, they to stand still and watch others play. "On the
field you are players not spectators!"
For Withe soccer is a war that becomes into 11 battles. He
explained that in the field, there were 11 players and they
normally play a one to one challenge, where stopper play against
striker, while left winger against right winger.
"There you have 11 battles. If you win all 11, you might get
6-0 result. You win only six battles, then you have a fifty-fifty
chance of winning, while winning only four battles, you would
definitely lost by big score," he said.
"I told the team: You have 11 strikers and 11 stoppers. If you
are without the ball, you are all stoppers and if you have the
ball, you are strikers," said Withe, who has 11 full
international caps for England and was a squad member in the 1982
World Cup.
The players must constantly think and anticipate the game, not
only kicking and chasing the ball, and therefore Withe is
educating them on the art of soccer, apparently in a 4-4-2
format.
"Whatever happens, the picture of a match is constantly
changing, not in every ten minutes, but in every second. While
you are standing and watching the opponent made a score," he
said.
Using the 4-4-2 format requires the players to constantly
moving to fill in posts left by other players to do other roles.
"It is as if the players were attached on a string, so
whenever one player move, the others will have to move to
maintain the format," he said.
"No more spectators on the field."
Born in Liverpool, Withe started his professional soccer
career as a late developer, when he was 18 years old, at
Southport FC while keeping his job as an electrician working a
port in his birth city.
"I played soccer in my spare time, when friends started
suggesting me to play professional. So eventually I joined
Southport," he said.
In his career, he had played for among others Wolverhampton
Wanderers, U.S. soccer club Portland Timbers, Birmingham City,
Nottingham Forest, Newcastle United, Aston Villa and Sheffield
United.
He considered his key achievement while playing for the clubs
was when he scored the winning goal for Aston Villa in the 1982
European Cup.
Withe recollected that playing for Southport he was paid 25
poundsterlings per week, while during his peak career as Aston
Villa's top striker he received 600 pounds per week or an annual
of up to 50,000 pounds plus bonuses.
"Nowadays, a player like David Beckham could earn the same
amount in two days. I guess I was born in the wrong time," he
said jokingly.