This kind of thread is old and repetitive to those of us who's been around for awhile but glad it comes up time to time so that new members can chew the fat and regurgitate what's wrong with USY soccer....
PS brings up a point that we rarely discuss on the form, and that's how important it is for kids to watch the game. When our older kid was recruited by a club coach back in U8 or so, the first season he said to my kid and to us that to have him watch as much of professional games as possible. The coach's point then was exactly the same as what Paul describes.
....Watching games (whether on TV or going to games) is a massive thing and I genuinely think it is hugely underestimated here by many parents and kids (certainly in my experience anyway). You learn to understand the game and the movement of players (particularly off-the-ball).....
Decision making is everything. Combining watching and truly understanding soccer with practicing (both organized and pick-up) and elements like futsal will help to develop an all-round smart decision maker....
So we tried but the kid wanted to play more than watch so it didn't happen until much later in the process but it did happen eventually. It took couple of key things to get him interested in watching the game - discover player he liked and find a team to favor. In our kid's case, that was Ronaldinho and Liverpool. He must have watched every video highlights of Ronaldinho at Barca and AC Milan. He almost never missed Liverpool game thereafter too.
Over time, much of the soccer IQ stuff got embedded in this thinking organically between watching games and playing FIFA (actually, it was FIFA first and its through FIFA that he discovered his favorite player). I don't think NBCSports no longer provide this but early on, their app used to provide alternate view of the game being broadcasted - without announcers and close ups. Rather, gave a bird's-eye view of most of the field and could watch the player movements significantly better than the broadcast feed.
Kids, in general, copy actions and moves of superstars that they like and have seen on video. If the kid is very interested in the sports to begin with, he'll work on perfecting the moves for hours and hours. You often see it on the field and everyone goes "wooo" or something like it, when the move is executed in the game. While some may dismiss it as hot dogging it, there's more to it, if the kid actually has worked at it.
We were fortunate with our oder kid, because he always had coaches that emphasized creativity and decision making as the paramount in the games. Its that type of environment that allows any player to develop his own style and way of playing - the very basic of who the player is. It is not to say that the player can be a loose cannon on the field. On the contrary, the player has to play the position responsibly but how its done is the point. And it is that "how" that separates the good players from ordinary players.
So what's wrong with USY soccer? Many answers and opinions with little to no change in actions. I believe there are plenty of great coaches out there. I also believe there are lot more crappy coaches out there too, along with DOCs and club officials. But at the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility of how good we are comes down to the individual players. And yes, coaching interferes with some potentially great players as well as how the game is played but no coach executes plays on the field.
My personal view is that we have too much structure and hierarchy in USY soccer development - in the name of "finding NT players". Didn't we have more success in the 80s and 90s, when we used to qualify for WC and didn't have all the infrastructure to produce the national team? I'm not suggesting we go back to the way of those days but I do believe we have beaten the dead horse for quite some time.....
