A different vision of football

The “JMG Academy”project was motivated by a challenge : to prove that a certain idea of football can always go hand in hand with performance.

To meet this challenge, it was necessary to train players, because most adult players, have a spirit perverted by realistic football. A football advocated by a majority of leaders and therefore unfortunately also by many technicians.
“The JMG Academy” was thus to serve a conviction, a philosophy and its implementation since 1994 in several countries, was made according to rules deriving from this conviction and its philosophy.

What is this philosophy? And what are the logical rules that follow ?

This philosophy takes into account that football is above all at the service of people in general.
We therefore believe that any football match should leave an image of human and physical realities ans values.

In a non-exhaustive way, the main values that underlie our philosophy are:

Respect :
All elements of football, play, players, referees, rules and regulations;
Finally, the human limits, because sport aims precisely to go to the end of these limits to push them back if possible, without ever resorting to supernatural means.
Promote :
Intelligence or lucidity in the individual and collective tactical approach of the game;
Generosity so that each individual gives their efforts, energy and skills to the team, their club, their discipline ;
The beauty of the game or the aestheticism resulting from the technical ease, skills and characteristics of each individual ;

These values, whose list remains open, have two essential common denominators:

A philosophy without rule remains dead letters …

For the moment, all that has been stated in the preceding paragraphs does not seem likely to distinguish precisely “the JMG Academy” from any other training structure.
In theory, everyone will tell you they have the same motivations and objectives, except that in practice, it’s different story ! Because knowing or having one philosophy is one thing, putting it into practice another.
Indeed, a philosophy without respected remains dead letters. At the “JMG Academy”, there are rules that are the corollaries of our philosophy.

At “JMG Academy”, all training work is conditioned by whole of our philosophy

Thus, to acquire the sense of the first value: respect for all the elements of football, there is a very simple and very strict rule: You don’t lie, you don’t cheat, you don’t steal. First educational principle that makes honesty the solid and indispensable foundation for all social relationships.
The design of the game, its animation as well in the defensive phase and in the offensive phase, gives the greatest place to intelligence, to collective play (even in individual action) and to generosity. The acquisition of a technique without fault and nevertheless adapted to each individual is a permanent quest for beauty.
Finally, the duration (7 to 9 years of training) is the sign that we take into account the human limitations.

Time as a guarantor of morality

There is a morality in the long run that sorcerer’s apprentices betray by ignoring human realities. At the “JMG Academy” this is not the case.
It is not the only result (of a match for example), it is not the extraordinary success of one or a few players who guide or dictate our actions. In our country, it is the respect of our philosophy and therefore of a certain idea of the football that takes precedence.
In the 16th century Rabelais already said that “Science without conscience is only ruin of the soul”, we could today paraphrase it by saying that: “Victory without ethics is only ruin of the sport …“