Pick up Games and Europe

When the USMNT failed to qualify for the WC, one of the arguments raised is that kids should do more pickup games. Posting some info just to have it out there (not really enough for an article here), but here was our experience based on just having gotten back from spending time with guides, friends and relatives in Spain (particularly Cordoba, Sevilla and Olite) for 2 weeks and my son being in Italy for a week in spring. Not arguing whether pickup games would be a good or bad thing for kids. Our experience was also limited to southern Europe, so not passing on how things might be in the north.

Pickup games are hard. Much like us, southern European kids are a lot more organized (for example, English lessons after school) now and have competing demands for entertainment (like Playstations and phones). They do, however, allow kids 10 and older a lot more freedom than we do (in Spain over the summer, for example, there are lots of kids spending afternoon at the beach by themselves, but soccer pickups aren't necessarily high on the priority )...partially this is a function of the villages being small or public transportation being available.

The biggest problem is finding fields. Most of the good fields (even the small sided ones) are locked up to keep them pristine. There are very few in the city centers and those that they do have that are accessible to the general public (like tennis courts in California) are being torn up and converted into other things. It's actually easier to find a basketball court than even a small sided soccer court. The outer barrios and smaller pueblos have smaller futsal courts, but even those are relatively poor repair and given the distances are mostly limited to working class kids. My son was invited to play at the pitch in the small pueblo of Olite by his relatives, but it's completely grassless at this point and he didn't think diving on it (he's a keeper) would be very much fun. To the extent pickup games do happen, they generally happen at recess when school is in session usually on concrete futsal courts and yes they are more unstructured than our practices (much like a basketball pickup game might be at one of our school recesses). While touring Guernica, there were a couple of kids playing on the concrete futsal court at a school playing shoot on the keeper and he got a chance to jump in there for 5 minutes...but that was unusual since most of the school courts are locked up during the summer and after school. Playing football is illegal in most of the parks (that are more likely to have basketball courts than futsal courts), and whether pueblo, suburb, or big city they are lacking the numerous parks we have all over SoCal with pitches set up (they couldn't even imagine a scenario like Salt Lake City with its wealth of pitches).

While waiting for the train out of Sevilla there was a sports club across the street and they were doing a summer sports camp. There was a rail strike going on so our train was delayed 2 hours so we decided to walk over, introduce ourselves, and check out the camp. Given we're fluent and finding out my son is an American keeper and given how friendly of a country and city it is, they were more than gracious in letting us having a look. They don't have the summer soccer camps we do...sports camp is not about getting better at playing sports but rather it's about childcare. Their seasons run Fall-Spring and if you are an academy player you are on a mandated rest period or touring, and if you aren't then you are doing other things but not soccer camps (again, because of the pitch problem). Childcare has become a huge problem for people working in the summer with kids under 10, so these sports camps have begun to pop up, but after age 10 kids tend to do their own thing and it's generally not soccer. For those over 8 at the camp, one of the options was playing soccer and the session was a lot more unstructured than ours....the kids just basically got to play without interference from a counselor. While there was a group playing soccer, the older set seemed more interested in either playing basketball or learning about baseball in a counselor-led session introducing them to the sport and telling them the rules. During the school year, this sports club does have rec games (both for kids and adults) and group trainings that tend to be more organized, but kids don't just go there and organize pickup games for themselves and there is a fee to join which acts as a barrier.

My son did get 2 pickup experiences while in Spain (none in Italy). One with some kids in a beach resort we were playing at for 2 days. Another was with some Germans who were touring Segovia, and in a middle of a plaza under the aqueduct, started a round robin of headers and juggling (the Spaniards looked at them like they were some kind of aliens to be doing that in the heat).

So long and short my impression is that there isn't some great soccer pickup panacea that we are missing (at least in the south of Europe). To the extent they do get free play, it's largely at school recess and on the whole does tend to be less adult-organized than what we tend to do, but that's reflective of a culture that doesn't hover as much over what kids do period (whether school or free time). My relatives in particular were kind of shocked to find out we play in the California heat, but I was just as shocked to find out they regularly play in the winter snow outside. Our experience with our Latin American relatives, BTW, is much different since there is a much more robust pickup experience there, with our relatives sometimes just playing in the street like we would street hockey.
 
Back in the 70s and 80s we would visit relatives in Holland. One of my cousins played competitive soccer and he would take me to play pick up games in the park. Mostly 2v2 with shirts on the ground for goals. He and his sister ( all four of us were teens) would go to a sports camp and my sister and I would go with them. The camps were mostly about different track and field events like how to throw a javelin and shot put.
 
When the USMNT failed to qualify for the WC, one of the arguments raised is that kids should do more pickup games. Posting some info just to have it out there (not really enough for an article here), but here was our experience based on just having gotten back from spending time with guides, friends and relatives in Spain (particularly Cordoba, Sevilla and Olite) for 2 weeks and my son being in Italy for a week in spring. Not arguing whether pickup games would be a good or bad thing for kids. Our experience was also limited to southern Europe, so not passing on how things might be in the north.

Pickup games are hard. Much like us, southern European kids are a lot more organized (for example, English lessons after school) now and have competing demands for entertainment (like Playstations and phones). They do, however, allow kids 10 and older a lot more freedom than we do (in Spain over the summer, for example, there are lots of kids spending afternoon at the beach by themselves, but soccer pickups aren't necessarily high on the priority )...partially this is a function of the villages being small or public transportation being available.

The biggest problem is finding fields. Most of the good fields (even the small sided ones) are locked up to keep them pristine. There are very few in the city centers and those that they do have that are accessible to the general public (like tennis courts in California) are being torn up and converted into other things. It's actually easier to find a basketball court than even a small sided soccer court. The outer barrios and smaller pueblos have smaller futsal courts, but even those are relatively poor repair and given the distances are mostly limited to working class kids. My son was invited to play at the pitch in the small pueblo of Olite by his relatives, but it's completely grassless at this point and he didn't think diving on it (he's a keeper) would be very much fun. To the extent pickup games do happen, they generally happen at recess when school is in session usually on concrete futsal courts and yes they are more unstructured than our practices (much like a basketball pickup game might be at one of our school recesses). While touring Guernica, there were a couple of kids playing on the concrete futsal court at a school playing shoot on the keeper and he got a chance to jump in there for 5 minutes...but that was unusual since most of the school courts are locked up during the summer and after school. Playing football is illegal in most of the parks (that are more likely to have basketball courts than futsal courts), and whether pueblo, suburb, or big city they are lacking the numerous parks we have all over SoCal with pitches set up (they couldn't even imagine a scenario like Salt Lake City with its wealth of pitches).

While waiting for the train out of Sevilla there was a sports club across the street and they were doing a summer sports camp. There was a rail strike going on so our train was delayed 2 hours so we decided to walk over, introduce ourselves, and check out the camp. Given we're fluent and finding out my son is an American keeper and given how friendly of a country and city it is, they were more than gracious in letting us having a look. They don't have the summer soccer camps we do...sports camp is not about getting better at playing sports but rather it's about childcare. Their seasons run Fall-Spring and if you are an academy player you are on a mandated rest period or touring, and if you aren't then you are doing other things but not soccer camps (again, because of the pitch problem). Childcare has become a huge problem for people working in the summer with kids under 10, so these sports camps have begun to pop up, but after age 10 kids tend to do their own thing and it's generally not soccer. For those over 8 at the camp, one of the options was playing soccer and the session was a lot more unstructured than ours....the kids just basically got to play without interference from a counselor. While there was a group playing soccer, the older set seemed more interested in either playing basketball or learning about baseball in a counselor-led session introducing them to the sport and telling them the rules. During the school year, this sports club does have rec games (both for kids and adults) and group trainings that tend to be more organized, but kids don't just go there and organize pickup games for themselves and there is a fee to join which acts as a barrier.

My son did get 2 pickup experiences while in Spain (none in Italy). One with some kids in a beach resort we were playing at for 2 days. Another was with some Germans who were touring Segovia, and in a middle of a plaza under the aqueduct, started a round robin of headers and juggling (the Spaniards looked at them like they were some kind of aliens to be doing that in the heat).

So long and short my impression is that there isn't some great soccer pickup panacea that we are missing (at least in the south of Europe). To the extent they do get free play, it's largely at school recess and on the whole does tend to be less adult-organized than what we tend to do, but that's reflective of a culture that doesn't hover as much over what kids do period (whether school or free time). My relatives in particular were kind of shocked to find out we play in the California heat, but I was just as shocked to find out they regularly play in the winter snow outside. Our experience with our Latin American relatives, BTW, is much different since there is a much more robust pickup experience there, with our relatives sometimes just playing in the street like we would street hockey.

Careful- you are going to get all of the guys who run clubs over here to move to Spain and open up “Sports Clubs” for kids to spend their summers. Sounds like a nice money maker for people that live in a country that is good at most sports besides soccer and cricket.
 
Grace T.'s experience matches what we saw in small towns in Switzerland. Flat ground is at a premium and fields were locked up to preserve the grass (except on August 1st, when they let cars park on them!). Any other flat grassy areas were for cows. The football clubs there only had one or sometimes two teams per age group, there were no organized recreational options.

Washington DC does have pickup games on near the Treasury building near the National Mall.
 
I lived in South America as a kid and I recall always playing in the streets and dirt/narrow fields.
We always played during school recess, after school, and definitely in the summer. I actually think playing in small spaces is a benefit because you have to be great at ball control and develop a great first touch.

We just need to create an environment for kids to develop their creativity and have fun. We structure the training so much here and play year round. This eventually leads to exhaustion and lack of fun. Our kids should play from August to December and take a 2 month break (mandatory). The spring league should focus on Futsal from March to June. July should be a mandatory break as well.
 
I lived in South America as a kid and I recall always playing in the streets and dirt/narrow fields.
We always played during school recess, after school, and definitely in the summer. I actually think playing in small spaces is a benefit because you have to be great at ball control and develop a great first touch.

We just need to create an environment for kids to develop their creativity and have fun. We structure the training so much here and play year round. This eventually leads to exhaustion and lack of fun. Our kids should play from August to December and take a 2 month break (mandatory). The spring league should focus on Futsal from March to June. July should be a mandatory break as well.
Many teams take a July break. But then their parents put them in camps, do private training and guest with other teams.
 
I lived in South America as a kid and I recall always playing in the streets and dirt/narrow fields.
We always played during school recess, after school, and definitely in the summer. I actually think playing in small spaces is a benefit because you have to be great at ball control and develop a great first touch.
.

This was my father's experience growing up in Peru as well, but outside of Brazil, South America isn't the soccer powerhouse it was once considered. And the kids in Spain and Italy are playing...but to the extent they are it's during recess or after school care or in the poor areas in the city suburbs (not the pueblos and not the city centers). Our kids, particularly on the boys end, have other sports that compete with soccer at recess and our schools don't generally have five-side futsal courts set up. Basketball in particular is just an easier pickup game to organize (and it's increasingly present in Spain and Italy too....pretty much all the elementary schools have a basketball court).
 
This was my father's experience growing up in Peru as well, but outside of Brazil, South America isn't the soccer powerhouse it was once considered. And the kids in Spain and Italy are playing...but to the extent they are it's during recess or after school care or in the poor areas in the city suburbs (not the pueblos and not the city centers). Our kids, particularly on the boys end, have other sports that compete with soccer at recess and our schools don't generally have five-side futsal courts set up. Basketball in particular is just an easier pickup game to organize (and it's increasingly present in Spain and Italy too....pretty much all the elementary schools have a basketball court).

p.s. our local mega club a year ago persuaded the school board to convert a barely used tennis court at an elementary school into a futsal court, agreeing to split funds in return for priority usage and arguing that it would be heavily in demand. They've made use of it but pretty much no one else. For the school, the school discourages its use because it's off of another corner on campus and it would require moving an adult to supervise the area. From what I'm told, kids use it as much as the tennis court (which is almost never). For the other clubs, it's somewhat out of their territory and the times offered (after the mega club takes priority) are poor. For AYSO, it's easier to use their big grassy facility for which they have priority. The only time it really comes into demand is when January/February rains shut the soggy fields during tryouts.
 
was in South of france and spain this past June , saw combo basketball & futsal courts , my DD and Son played in pick-up, Futsal games with kids from all over Europe couple of times for hours. My DD was like that was fun.
 
There is something to be said about pickup games.

For the last two years at school lunch my daughter would play basketball for about 20 minutes each day. Being a keeper I like the idea of her using her hands and rebounding with basketball. Fast forward to today and she has a chance to make the varsity basketball team this fall as a freshman after practicing with them during the summer. Learning to dribble between the legs, around the back, and her ability to drive to the basket, plus learning to defend against that has helped her dramatically.

So for soccer just getting kids out 20 minutes a day trying to meg each other or playing 3 x 3 soccer with trash cans as the goal would have the same effect. Perfect for middle and grade schools. Plus you need coaches that won't shut down a kid in a game that tries some things and fails.
 
When the USMNT failed to qualify for the WC, one of the arguments raised is that kids should do more pickup games. Posting some info just to have it out there (not really enough for an article here), but here was our experience based on just having gotten back from spending time with guides, friends and relatives in Spain (particularly Cordoba, Sevilla and Olite) for 2 weeks and my son being in Italy for a week in spring. Not arguing whether pickup games would be a good or bad thing for kids. Our experience was also limited to southern Europe, so not passing on how things might be in the north.

Pickup games are hard. Much like us, southern European kids are a lot more organized (for example, English lessons after school) now and have competing demands for entertainment (like Playstations and phones). They do, however, allow kids 10 and older a lot more freedom than we do (in Spain over the summer, for example, there are lots of kids spending afternoon at the beach by themselves, but soccer pickups aren't necessarily high on the priority )...partially this is a function of the villages being small or public transportation being available.

The biggest problem is finding fields. Most of the good fields (even the small sided ones) are locked up to keep them pristine. There are very few in the city centers and those that they do have that are accessible to the general public (like tennis courts in California) are being torn up and converted into other things. It's actually easier to find a basketball court than even a small sided soccer court. The outer barrios and smaller pueblos have smaller futsal courts, but even those are relatively poor repair and given the distances are mostly limited to working class kids. My son was invited to play at the pitch in the small pueblo of Olite by his relatives, but it's completely grassless at this point and he didn't think diving on it (he's a keeper) would be very much fun. To the extent pickup games do happen, they generally happen at recess when school is in session usually on concrete futsal courts and yes they are more unstructured than our practices (much like a basketball pickup game might be at one of our school recesses). While touring Guernica, there were a couple of kids playing on the concrete futsal court at a school playing shoot on the keeper and he got a chance to jump in there for 5 minutes...but that was unusual since most of the school courts are locked up during the summer and after school. Playing football is illegal in most of the parks (that are more likely to have basketball courts than futsal courts), and whether pueblo, suburb, or big city they are lacking the numerous parks we have all over SoCal with pitches set up (they couldn't even imagine a scenario like Salt Lake City with its wealth of pitches).

While waiting for the train out of Sevilla there was a sports club across the street and they were doing a summer sports camp. There was a rail strike going on so our train was delayed 2 hours so we decided to walk over, introduce ourselves, and check out the camp. Given we're fluent and finding out my son is an American keeper and given how friendly of a country and city it is, they were more than gracious in letting us having a look. They don't have the summer soccer camps we do...sports camp is not about getting better at playing sports but rather it's about childcare. Their seasons run Fall-Spring and if you are an academy player you are on a mandated rest period or touring, and if you aren't then you are doing other things but not soccer camps (again, because of the pitch problem). Childcare has become a huge problem for people working in the summer with kids under 10, so these sports camps have begun to pop up, but after age 10 kids tend to do their own thing and it's generally not soccer. For those over 8 at the camp, one of the options was playing soccer and the session was a lot more unstructured than ours....the kids just basically got to play without interference from a counselor. While there was a group playing soccer, the older set seemed more interested in either playing basketball or learning about baseball in a counselor-led session introducing them to the sport and telling them the rules. During the school year, this sports club does have rec games (both for kids and adults) and group trainings that tend to be more organized, but kids don't just go there and organize pickup games for themselves and there is a fee to join which acts as a barrier.

My son did get 2 pickup experiences while in Spain (none in Italy). One with some kids in a beach resort we were playing at for 2 days. Another was with some Germans who were touring Segovia, and in a middle of a plaza under the aqueduct, started a round robin of headers and juggling (the Spaniards looked at them like they were some kind of aliens to be doing that in the heat).

So long and short my impression is that there isn't some great soccer pickup panacea that we are missing (at least in the south of Europe). To the extent they do get free play, it's largely at school recess and on the whole does tend to be less adult-organized than what we tend to do, but that's reflective of a culture that doesn't hover as much over what kids do period (whether school or free time). My relatives in particular were kind of shocked to find out we play in the California heat, but I was just as shocked to find out they regularly play in the winter snow outside. Our experience with our Latin American relatives, BTW, is much different since there is a much more robust pickup experience there, with our relatives sometimes just playing in the street like we would street hockey.
You need to know where to go. There are no many places to play in Seville downtown (or old city, or "en el centro") , nor too many children or teens, so you won't find kids playing soccer over there. But if you leave the center of the city and go to the outer barrios (by the way the immense majority of the locals live in those barrios), everybody is playing pickup games in school yards, in "polideportivos", basketball courts etc. There is not too much water in the south so people don't play on grass, they mostly do on concrete fields (with a more or less polished surface), or on courts of "albero", a local yellow soil similar to what they have in tennis clay courts. As a result nobody knows how to tackle on the ground. More recently I have seen some fields of artificial grass, but I am sure you have to pay to play on them. Of course, do not expect to find many people playing in June-August, 40 C is the norm. We used to play over two hours almost every day after school, and longer in weekends.
 
You need to know where to go. There are no many places to play in Seville downtown (or old city, or "en el centro") , nor too many children or teens, so you won't find kids playing soccer over there. But if you leave the center of the city and go to the outer barrios (by the way the immense majority of the locals live in those barrios), everybody is playing pickup games in school yards, in "polideportivos", basketball courts etc. There is not too much water in the south so people don't play on grass, they mostly do on concrete fields (with a more or less polished surface), or on courts of "albero", a local yellow soil similar to what they have in tennis clay courts. As a result nobody knows how to tackle on the ground. More recently I have seen some fields of artificial grass, but I am sure you have to pay to play on them. Of course, do not expect to find many people playing in June-August, 40 C is the norm. We used to play over two hours almost every day after school, and longer in weekends.

My Sevillian relatives live in the burbs in the Gardens of Hercules. In their complex of 12? towers or so there are 3 pools, 4 tennis courts, no grass pitches (nor anywhere in sight) and one concrete futsal/baskbetball court (there were some basketball pickup games in the early am...basketball seems to be catching fad in Spain right now). I agree to the extent there are pickup games they occur on the school concrete courts or in the poorer outer barrios (as opposed to the inner city or outer suburbs) and as a result you might very well be right that in those areas they might be much more common during the school year....but that approach is radically different than ours which focuses on grass pitches in the wealtheir suburbs (I gotta say was amazed by what I saw out in Salt Lake City last year). I think it's insightful that you attribute the lack of Spanish ground game to this...I think it might also explain the propensity of Spanish goalkeepers to stop with their feet as well, and also the fact that the Spaniards don't really have issues with goalkicks (they don't designated big legged players to boot the ball like I saw in England but then they wouldn't have to on the futsal pitches).

The situation in my relatives northern country pueblo was more severe, despite that the pueblo is pretty well off given the tourist and wine industries. Outside of the schools, there were no concrete courts to play on and even at the local deportive club use of the grass fields by non-club teams is strictly prohibited. The community pool, though, was lovely, if cold and my son was uncomfortable having to wear a swim cap.
 
Back
Top