By Tim Vickery
South American football reporter

For the past few years an annual conference of coaches has been held in December in Rio de Janeiro. This year's star turn was Jurgen Klinsmann.

It was his second time at the conference and two years ago he spoke on how he was rebuilding the German national team, with a cultural sensitivity and a clarity of exposition that makes me suspect that England have missed out on a potentially wonderful candidate to succeed Steve McClaren.

This year he was back, and gave a lecture which some hardened people in Brazilian football described as the best they had ever seen.

His subject was what he described as the fifth dimension in player development. The traditional four areas which footballers work on are technical, tactical, physical and psychological. Ignored, especially in a career where players start young and have little formal instruction, is personal development.

Klinsmann said he wished when he was a player he had received advice and input beyond 'run here or run there, score here or score there.'

The point he was making was in his view the coach has a responsibility to improve every individual player, including in their development off the field.

He gave one example with special resonance for the audience he was addressing. The vast majority of Brazilian players want to move abroad, he said.

So the coaches have a responsibility to prepare them for this experience, especially by stimulating the players to learn another language.

Klinsmann's advice is simple, practical - and grows more necessary by the day.

He says when he left his native Germany to join Inter Milan he was 'barely ready' - and he was 24 at the time.

Nowadays there are not many South American players prepared to wait so long for their dream move across the Atlantic. The global market is full of forces pulling the players to Europe before they are up to the challenge.

Their club might desperately need money in order to pay last month's salaries. Or the club may have already sold the player's registration to a consortium who are looking for a quick return on their investment. Then there is the agent eagerly anticipating his percentage of the deal.

And also to be factored into this is the anxiety of the player himself. Klinsmann stresses today's players are completely different from those of his generation, the principal reason being the pace of technological change.

When I arrived in Brazil in 1994, communication with friends in England took at least two weeks - one for a letter to make it across the Atlantic, one for the reply to travel back. Some 13 years later and there are people who consider e-mail too slow!

Gilberto Silva and Vagner Love both moved to Europe

But there is a downside to this extraordinary progress. In a world of instant solutions the idea of 'process' can easily be lost. Instead of building a career step by step the youngster imagines himself scaling the heights right from the start, with all the lifestyle perks this entails.

From the point of the European club this is not too much of a problem. Because the player is young and unproven the fee is relatively low. If the gamble does not come off, then little has been lost and there are plenty more fish in the sea.

From the point of view of the player the terms of the gamble end up looking very different. This is the only career he has - if he is not sufficiently mature, if he fails to do himself justice, if he loses all momentum being loaned out or left on the bench or in the stands, he will never have that time again.

Given that players will surely continue to make early moves from the periphery to the centre of football's globalised economy, Klinsmann's advice is of great importance.