SoccerFan4Life
PREMIER
The morons I was referring to is whoever decided that kids can't play competitive soccer before age 8 because it will somehow harm their development or that more kids will stick with soccer if they don't play competitively "too early".
There is this strange concept espoused on this site quoting numbers like 70% of kids stop playing by high school as if there is something wrong with that. Its natural for kids to grow up and find new interests or figure out at some point that they aren't competitive enough to continue on. Its a great sport for kids and a huge number play it at an early age so its a statistical certainty that at some point there will be a big drop off. Its not like the high school teams are having a hard time getting enough kids. If the point is that the Mens national team will somehow solve its problems by eliminating competitive soccer before age 8 and by retaining more of the 70% that decides they'd rather play some other sport or no sport at all then its flawed reasoning. It.
You do realize that club soccer U8 and below is a fairly new concept. It's a concept that makes sense for the clubs to make money. 10 years ago, you didn't have club teams for 6 and 7 year olds. Now they start them as young as 5!! In Colombia where I lived, The best kids were selected from elementary and middle school tournaments. Kids are good players because they play street soccer after school, they play before school, during school, and on the weekends. Club teams recruited only the best from the local town tournaments and inter- school tournaments. If you were a good player, just keep playing at a rec level. If you were fantastic then you were selected on a youth academy. And the academies had a longer off season than our bronze level/flight 3 level kids have in the USA. This leads them to burnout!!