Coaching now isn't about nurturing the individuality of players. It's about making them all do the same thing, ball mastery which in theory is good but the way it's implemented in reality is that every child is groomed into some tricky winger then as they get older get put in different positions as they become not as good as another child.
Add to this there is no football culture outside of professional coaching anymore, kids over the park is a thing of the past, and not just in England. I'm in Argentina at the moment and there's no kids playing on the streets here either. That's where the mavericks are born, in the playgrounds.
Someone like Pirlo would struggle to get through the system as it exists now as they simply wouldn't display enough of the metrics coaches are told to look for.
These is fueled by the heavily weighted system approach at the top level where it's all about slotting in.
