LA TIMES: Is youth soccer training to blame for American team failure to make WC?

http://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/la-sp-youth-soccer-sondheimer-20171119-story,amp.html

Marvin Mires, the boys’ soccer coach at Downey, offered this opinion:

 

A uniformed curriculum is one piece that is necessary.

 

Interesting...but as usual they bring up HS...what a farce...HS in 2017 is NOT developing any players !!! It has a social aspect and that’s it...these journalists that mention that lose credibility in my eyes...it’s like goin back to the 80’s...

It’s about identification at the young ages and then developing that talent...our identification sucks !!! And let’s be honest regular club soccer is becoming recreational as the lower teams pay the bills... meanwhile the top teams are trainin in a shit area cause all teams get equal access...at some point Flight 2 and 3 teams need to pay less and then get less of a field...the top teams/players need to be developed...

 

Also the digital age isn’t helping... our kids aren’t bored enough these days...too many fun distractions...the best players are playin when they’re “bored”...not watchin Netflix or on some lame and addictive app on their phone...

 

The main problem is our country's greatest athletes are not playing soccer. Pick any running back in the NFL, or or just about any NBA player and teach them good fundamental soccer from the same age they learned their current sport, and we would be a force to be reckoned with, if not the absolute #1 team in the world.

 

High school or club soccer aren't the problem. We do "ok" at the u17-u19 levels internationally. It's college soccer that really screws us up.

 

Mr. Mac - it is pretty much that simple. Not sure about those NBA dorks (maybe for headers or goalie) but any NHL player or NFL player not on the line.

 

High School is an issue but the biggest issue is with college. If your child is a top player and the choice was a full scholarship to Stanford or UCLA or the chance to go pro. It would be tough to turn down that kind of pay out for the fraction of a chance that the child makes it and earns the kind of money making it worth while going pro. Just another issue with the NCAA and their "amateur" philosophy.


Read the op-ed by Pulsic. He calls this out specifically.
https://nesn.com/2017/11/usmnts-christian-pulisic-explains-whats-wrong-right-with-usa-soccer/

 

I don't know..but seeing men that are 6'7" and have the quickness they do plus their jumping ability.. I am pretty sure they could at least be great defenders or holding mids. They have cardio for days too. But I agree about Hockey or any non lineman in the NFL, and I would even say most MLB player's except for pitchers, first basemen and Albert Pujols would great too. Haha.

It's a shame too..Our best female athlete's have been playing since they were toddlers and look at our USWNT and their success (until Jill Ellis started going coo coo that is!)

 

The biggest problem is that the chances for a big pay day is bad. MLB, NFL and NBA, kids can be making massive amounts of money at 19. It’s here in their faces.

The drive for that in soccer is non-existent. It’s not as much about athleticism for me as it is about the reduced number of kids lacking the desire.

 

Bingo

Increase professional soccer salaries and make the big pay day a reality for more.

We are a money driven society. Fixing US soccer isn't brain surgery. Just increase the size of the carrot and the results will follow.

 

It is always interesting to see all the same silly arguments about "our best athletes" not playing soccer. Or how H.S. soccer screws up our players....wait, no...it is college that screws up our players. Yeah, that's it.

Consider this...all those "Super Star" athletes (almost every single one of them) that are playing in the NFL or the NBA have a few things in common.
1. They played High School Ball
2. They played College Ball
3. They DID NOT play Club Ball
4. They DID NOT play in the Basketball Development Academy
5. They DID NOT play in the American Football Development Academy

Most played the same way we played as kids growing up down south. After school, we went outside and played until it got dark, we got yelled at or we got dragged off the dirt, gravel or asphalt patch by our ear. There was no instruction or coaches just like there are no coaches on the courts when you drive through south LA neighborhoods and see the kids playing pick up basketball games to teach them "good fundamental" basketball. I have seen great volunteer coaches at the various local Boys & Girls Club so don't want to take anything away from them but I think my point is clear.

Yes, I realize that opportunist with dollar signs in their eyes are starting "club" basketball leagues all over the place but that is a relatively new event and mostly driven by Asian money. Took my player to one last year for the benefits of cross training and footwork and I was blown away by the number of Asian parents that drop, cut a check and go. Easy money for those coaches and like club soccer, they really don't have to develop anyone. However, I didn't see any pure ballers.

To suggest that you any of the above mentioned pro players would be great soccer players demonstrates one of the biggest problems we have in this country with soccer development. It is a real lack of understanding of the game of soccer. Plain and simple. It will be better in 25 to 30 years.

 

This article is not very good and relies too heavily on the CEO of U.S. Club Soccer, who is hopelessly conflicted. Then you have a single H.S. Coach who thinks kids don't know what foot to play a ball on. None of these guys are involved in selecting or recommending players for the national team. Why not get the opinions of DA coaches, ODP coaches, MLS coaches, or those from outside the country. Certainly coaching education is one of the problems, the practical unavailability of scholarships at the college level, low pay for professionals, etc., etc.

All of that said, Mr. Payne's point is sound in that the US youth soccer landscape isn't concerned with core development in as much as wins and loses. The irony here is Mr. Payne's organization perpetuates the very win, win, win attitude that Mr. Payne complains about. Hypocritical. When US Club Soccer can say its multi-million dollar tournaments are now showcases his opinion will have more weight.

 

You are off on the club basketball thing. ALL the top basketball players in the country play club ball and travel all over the country doing so. Most of the top players play in EYBL, a club basketball league sponsored by Nike that is/was equivalent to ECNL for girls soccer. The attendence list of college coaches at EYBL events is a who's who of college basketball. ALL the top coaches go to these events to recruit.
http://www.nikeeyb.com

 

I think you misunderstand the sports landscape. I agree that pickup games and playing for many hours is one way to get better but every sport has club/travel ball. Basketball has AAU (which all of the top players played in) baseball has a similar program.

The main difference between soccer and baseball/football is that the rest of the world plays soccer while none of them play football. My entire point is that the elite of the sport at age 18 should be focusing on becoming a professional versus dealing with college and the NCAA.

 

Davin's right on this. Basketball has changed for the iGen and is now very club oriented for the kids coming up. College is also increasingly being cut out as some NBA players choose to pass on college and go straight to the pros, if the rewards outweigh the safety net of a college degree for the particular athlete. It's even beginning to be the same for football, if you watch the series "Friday Night 'Tykes". The Europeans don't understand why we "waste" (their words, not mine) 4 years of player development in college.

Another of the reasons we struggle with US soccer is because the parents didn't play. So 1) they don't introduce the game early enough to their kids, 2) they can't help along the way, and 3) they aren't knowledgeable about the training which leads to be taken by sales pitches, or chasing the wins over development. And while YMCA basketball or TYFA football may have coaches that have played, too often in AYSO we get parents who don't. That will change as more years pass (and has changed on the girls side quicker than on the boys since many of the girls playing now had parents introduced to the sport in the 90s). Even in AYSO it's changing since the EXTRAs and United coaches tend to have played in the past, but it's still not to the point where you can walk onto any AYSO team and trust the parent has some basic level of knowledge.

Which BTW is the reverse problem with international basketball. Internationally other nations have been catching up. Some, like Russia and China, because of the long state-sponsored athletic programs. Others, like the Europeans, by importing American coaches. But they still aren't to the point where if you didn't play you can send your kid to rec basketball and have them receive solid instruction. While the US dominance is slipping (we did have to shift from a college to a pro based Olympic team because of what the Soviets were doing to us, and increasingly the DreamTeams are encounter decent opposition), it will still be decades before it looses its dominant position. Note too that loss of dominance has occurred with baseball, which has been around in some nations longer than basketball has.

 

Well thank goodness we are focused on the DA right. ehh.. I believe there are many Pulsic's out there that do not have access to DA either do to geographic area or exposure opportunity (size, speed etc) at 14yrs old and is turned away. We are throwing all our eggs into the DA basket. As for 4yrs in college, that is what we are told to do. The likelihood of our kids going pro is so small the safe bet is to take the education as their brains can make them more than their feet in the long run. USL is not paying enough for a player to sustain long term MXII or what ever the second Mexico division is pays less than that. What does a first tier Albanian player make on average. The opportunity is there but at what risk?

 

Context for this article: It was written by Eric Sondheimer, who has had the HS beat for the LA Times for eons. Kevin Baxter normally writes a Sunday soccer column, but he has been pulled in a variety of directions lately, covering UCLA Women in the NCAA tournament, the Lakers, and even drag racing. Baxter got a break from writing his column this Sunday and either he or his editors thought Sondheimer and the HS angle would be a natural substitute (especially given the seasonal transition in HS sports this time of year meaning fewer games). So, you can be happy you're getting a soccer article at all, but with the understanding that it's really a HS soccer article from a guy who mostly knows HS sports, not soccer in particular. Sondheimer likely should have double-downed on his HS expertise and just gone with talking to HS soccer coaches about the issue, but he tried to get some broader perspective and it came off under-researched, which it was and may have been because he got the assignment last minute and/or because he didn't have his own contacts for this kind of story and wasn't going to develop them for a one-off.

 

I think that shoe contracts pay most of the way for these kids to play. So the cost is relatively low to play. Yet coaches are making good money. And are steering kids to the "right" college. My understanding is that it's a pretty shady world. Not sure we want to open this up to soccer in the US.

 

Our main problem? Not even close. This a massive over-simplification. Iceland, a country with a population of 332k, qualified in Europe. The US, a country with a population of 323M, failed to qualify in CONCACAF. This has very little do to with the “best” athletes picking other sports. It has to do with the lack of a soccer culture and identity in this country. It has to do with the poor identification and development of talent in this country. There are so many shortfalls in the system, from culture to league structure. Not enough time to get neck deep here, but you should know that you are way off base.