# So Cal Recruiting from 2010-2019



## Justus

2004-2010
Hi everyone, I wanted to share our families recruiting experience with all of you from 2010-2019.  All of us has experienced girls youth soccer recruiting right?  We all have stories to tell.  Here is ours.  I remember laying in bed with my wife with when my dd was in the womb.  My wife and I would watch with amazement her feet kicking all the time.  We would laugh because my son was the opposite.  Super mellow, happy to be in the womb in a safe place by a mom who will love him so much that their best friends today.  We would talk about how we thought she must be soccer player.  You see, Grandpa came over to the states when he was 19 from Guatemala.  He got a job delivering milk but also was a huge soccer fa and really good player.  He coached local club soccer in Diamond Bar and coached the likes of Jim Edmonds.  I think Jim played Football, Soccer and Baseball in High School.  Gradpa is also a referee and has been doing refereeing for High School Soccer for over 30 years.  The day before dd was born, we went to the Dr for last appointment.  Everything looked great.  Position of the head and all that.  The next morning my wife's water burst and we were off to the hospital.  I've been through this before I said to my self.  Nurse comes in and does a check and says, "your breached mam."  We both were shocked.  That little stinker moved positions.  Our great friend and Dr Lisa Johnson comes in and comes in says, "your going to have a baby in 45 minutes."  Dr does her thing and dd comes out kicking and screaming and Dr says, "wow, I think you got a little soccer player."  No joke.  It's cool to look back sometimes.  So we bounced around and ended up in Temecula 2008.  I finally get to see how this little bundle of energy does on the u6 AYSO circuit.  We were the "shooting stars."  We were the league champs and pretty much won all the games.  Grandpa and I would watch and he would say things like, "wow, she passes the ball."  It was fun times.  She loved little other girls score.  She was really fast but we had that was even faster.  After team party, the real fast girls mom told us good next season.  I saw the mom because she helped coach the girls.  I asked if they were moving and they said, "no, were doing club."  I said, "oh."  I asked my wife what club soccer was and she shared about how she grew up in club soccer and it was really tough to make.  She said her dad will start his meeting with the parents like this: If you want play time promised, you need to stay in AYSO.  I play who I want, where I want on the filed to play because I want to win.  I'm the coach.  Edmonds was all in and was told he was one of the best in the area.  3 sport athlete in High School I think.  Every year he would have pissed off parents complaining about their boys not getting in the game.  He would say, :Go to AYSO if you want play time.  I want to win!!!!


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## Justus

2011-2012 
So dad jumped on Google and typed, "club soccer Temecula." First ad, "Arsenal Rec League"  I said to myself I've seem that logo before.  I searched some more and low and behold it's one of the PL top soccer teams from England.  I must say I was more in the Jim Rome school of thought back then about soccer not being a sport. I have also learned that is and I think Jim would agree.  Soccer parent, now that is not a good term for any of us.  So I take her down to sing up in the new rec league.  As I'm filling out the forms, the gy says, "hey pops, can help with some extra time?  I said sure, what are the needs.  We need a coach.  Oh no, not soccer coach I said.  He assured all would be ok.  I only played keeper in AYSO and a few coed games with Grandpa, my sister in law and my wife aboot that ball so far.o I didn't have the game figured out yet.  Anyway, I take over and let's just say I think I got the last team formed.  I had little CJ.  This guy was classic.  Super afrain of the ball.  CJ love video games so I pulled the little guy over and said, "listen CJ, that ball is from outter space and we need to kicked out of here.  Do you think you could help us CJ?"  It was cool to see that little guy boot the hell every game after.  I also had this little girl with special needs.  Other coaches would look at me and tell me to get her under control.  I soon found the dads who were there for all the wrong reason, to win.  Anyway, we came in last place and at the end of the season got her first club inquiry from the Arsenal South Club that was just forming a new satellite location.  I did some research and they were head courted in the IE.  I thought it was strange but hey, a coach was interested I thought.  Checked it out, met with the coach and we  jumped into the arena of everything "SOCAL YOUTH SOCCER."  The team worked hard and my little one played left back.  She was fast so she could run and kick the ball away before it went into the goal.  We went to Governors State Cup in Antelope Valley and lost all three games.  We played a team from Legends South that I was impressed with.  Mainly the coach and how she treated little girls.  I boldly went up to her when I saw her in the parking lot.  I asked where they were from and they said, Temecula.  I was like, oh.  She asked who my dd was  She had very nice things to say about her.  To this day she is by far the best coach for little girls I know.  If you have her as a coach you are in good hands.  Thank you JL for being "A GREAT COACH TO LITTLE GIRLS."  She gave me the number of the coach for next years team and my dd got another incredible coach.  TY for being so great with the little girls.  Your father and you warned me of going too fast and I didn't heed the advice.  Any way, we had a good little team.  Girls making friends and the coaches providing heathy environment and all was good until...………..


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## Justus

U9-U10...…
Great times, but also a time of super crazy, knarly, competitive soccer dads and moms.  I can't make fun of others if I can't make fun of myself.  We were ALL CRAY CRAY but we had fun   Surf Cup preditions, #1, #2 and of course the big State Cup tourneys.  The GOAT times were so awesome.  For me, I needed a freaking break from all the BS a lot of us dads were seeing going on.  I think some of the DOCs had issues with some of us "Protective type dads" if you know what I mean. The "GOATS" were formed and to this day, the funniest times I had watching my dd play with other great unicorns from all over socal all there to "Just PLAY" the game.


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## Justus

U9-U10 continued...…
So like I said, we were in some serious competitive times.  Legends had a North and a South team.  I remember "the combo team from Legends" would enter a tournament and do really well.  We would get slammed from all the competitive dads instead of  them being fired up a top team was there to challenge the girls.   Clubs were trying to earn market share in these times in what I now see is a big time business opportunity for some. 
My dd and few other South Legends players decided to make the drive up north so people would stop making excuses if their team lost to us in a meaningless tournament....lol.  I look back and have a few regrets.  One, JH was right.  We should have waited a couple more years.  You were right JH for the reasons you said.  Anyway, U10 was a very interesting year.  This Grey hair old coach was coming to our games and taking notes.  I asked a few folks who he was and they said, "That's the grand wizard of soccer."  He's here scouting to form his next years U11 team for Socal Blues.  Ok, now were getting into some big time soccer I thought.  They had the best team as did Surf.  Season went on and I soon got a call from Tad Bobak.  His first question was, "do you have a piece of paper to take notes,"  I aid yes, but I need to confess I was lying.  He went on for an hour or so and we talked about the 4 areas of a great soccer player.  I got off the phone and spoke to my wife.  We went to Google and typed in his name.  Head Coach at UCSB, Founded OC Blues with LD.  Founded ODP.  Head Coach of the first U15 national team EVER!!!!.  Our family was honored that someone like him thought my dd had potential.  Well, word gets out were bailing to Blues after State Cup.  The pressure to stay is tough though.  Saying good bye to JL came with tears.  It was by far the hardest decision my dd had to make.  I did not make this decision, she did.  She did because she had a dream to one day play on the NATIONAL TEAM.  When you leave a soccer team, the new team is so loving and welcoming.  The old team and club just lost a good player, great teammate and leader and there not happy about it and that is understandable.  It's hard on all involved.  I must say playing the State Cup QF and losing to the Lightning in OT is still one of the all time classics.  Those dads down there love their girls and we had it out in that game.  So fun and pure too.  808 still talks about it


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## LASTMAN14

Sage advice....

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bob+newhart+stop+it+video&view=detail&mid=85639008646F6CB45F5685639008646F6CB45F56&FORM=VRRTAP&vrvid=85639008646F6CB45F5685639008646F6CB45F56&PC=APPL


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## Justus

U11...…….
More on the call with Tad Bobak.  He also stated at the very beginning of the call that he has a policy that he will never talk about another player, parent or anther club or coach.  I tried to "fish" for info about who else was going to make his new U11 team.  I couldn't get it out of him as hard as I tried.  A man of great character.  He also said after each season he makes cuts and bring in new players each year.  So we started the drive two days a week from Temecula to "The Ranch."  I heard it all.  "crazy dad driving to OC from Temecula with an 11 year old."  It was different type of practice as well.  Other clubs warned me that all he does is PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY.  Sounded good to my dd and me, just saying.  It was awesome and some of my best memories for me and my dd.  We worked hard and won State Cup.  My dd got the winning goal in OT in the QF to set a big semi match with Surf.  I was overjoyed for my dd and her team.  Smallest on the team and not the strongest kicker either.  But she did have something in her that wanted to win and she nailed one at the right time.  Surf Soccer Club was the best according to my dd at possession and when I watched them I couldn't deny that.  It seemed a debate was going on that time about playing a more possession style game vs direct style or how some would say "Kick Ball."  My dd was fast and quick but more than that had a hunger to win.  When it was a tight game or a goal was needed, it wasn't uncommon to hear the people say, get it to my dd.  I'm not bragging, its the truth.  I had dad proud moments but my dd hated it because she felt it was a TEAM GAME and she wanted to be just one of the girls on the team.  We played Surf and my dd had the game of her life at the time.  Scored first two goals and we won and went onto the finals where we won tough one in the rain against Slammers.  It was so awesome.  Everything seemed like it was going as planned.  However, *sometimes life can throw challenges at you that you have no control of and fear sets in because you don't know what to do.*  That is the beginning of the next chapter of my dd recruiting in SOCAL YOUTH SOCCER.


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## Justus

LASTMAN14 said:


> Sage advice....
> 
> https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bob+newhart+stop+it+video&view=detail&mid=85639008646F6CB45F5685639008646F6CB45F56&FORM=VRRTAP&vrvid=85639008646F6CB45F5685639008646F6CB45F56&PC=APPL


Is that to warn me or just a joke?


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## Justus

U12...………..
US SOCCER FEDERATION announced without consulting with the parents (the customers), this new birth year change.  This change had a HUGE impact on YOUTH CLUB SOCCER ACCROSS AMERICA and more important to this dad, his dd rights to EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO BE SCOUTED BY ALL US SOCCER SCOUTS.  I have also witnessed the social destruction it is causing with school age students not playing soccer with their peers.  Can't you see this?  It's NOT HEALTHY AND SHOULD NEVER BE THE REASON TO PULL A BAND Aid out TO EARLY.  WHY THE RUSH?  You learn from experience, right?  So I call coach Tad and ask about what team he's taking, 03 or 04?  He says 03'.  How do you think my dd and I took that news?  Also, Tad had a long held policy not to let parents know until after the season was over if your dd make the team.  I kept asking and I kept getting the same answer, you have to wait.  I felt panicked and confused.  She was small and Tad's practices were very physical.  We started getting calls from other clubs because of the age change...…….


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## Justus

One of the greatest things Tad ever said to me was that "Acacia was born to play soccer."  Now as one with a big ego, I took that like she was going to be the next "One."   But after all this time, I realized what he was saying.  My dd was born to play the game, not to be the best or make some list.  Playing the game she loves with her friends to this day


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## Justus

U13-U14...……
All I can say is you wouldn't believe it if I said it, so I'll leave it all to your imagination and your own perceptions.  I wanted to start a discussion.  I'm sorry for coming on here but I felt like I had to say something and get some answers I've had for the last two years.  I hope things can get better for everyone with young girls who have dreams to one day play for her National Team.  Go USA forever and always know we will always root for all things USA!!!!


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## timbuck

Keep going.  This was good to read.


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## LASTMAN14

timbuck said:


> Keep going.  This was good to read.


Your enabling him.


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## LadiesMan217

LASTMAN14 said:


> Your enabling him.


Actually I agree with timbuck - this was much better read than the other threads.


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## Justus

timbuck said:


> Keep going.  This was good to read.


ok, I will.  I remember Tad Bobak telling me it's very disruptive to add players to the roster mid season.  My dd never did that before so I put that one in my Tad vault in my brain.  I have lot's of them still.  I also have one from a really great dad on that team who tried to warn me and guide me to slow down and let the process finish itself out.  Imagine a 11 year old with a dream driving 1 hr and 10 minutes each way to practice two days a week for two years?  Where I come from you follow your dreams.  True friends and family support that dream until it becomes a reality, either way.  Let the kid be the one to decide when to hang that one up and go for something else, like another dream. I'm still shocked at how much I get ridiculed for asking a few questions from 201602017.  My dd was flying high.  The stats are all there and the accomplishments.  Plus in Also because just about every DOC told us that scouts were watching her and she needed to get into the TC.  She was also the leading scorer at Far West Regionals.  The year before that SJ was top scorer.  Look at the goal she got in first game.  Her goal was a miracle that 100% got us through to the finals.  It was huge!!! And let me say this, Acacia was not the "best" one on that team.  She was needed on that team if you know what I mean for different reasons.  A true spark plug like her old man back in the days of all things high school sports   She help lead them with others to win together.  Every girl on that team and every girl that plays soccer in the USA needs their dream looked at.  Only ONE coach told me he can't answer that dream until she's grown and matured to her full potential has been reached and that was Tad.  Her dream was so real that my wife and her saved some money so they can go to Vancouver in person and root for her country.  I think that's a dreamer right there.


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## LASTMAN14

LadiesMan217 said:


> Actually I agree with timbuck - this was much better read than the other threads.


Maybe, but still playing into his manic self absorbed situation. This is not a genuine thread/posts to help others.


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## Justus

At the very least couldn't she have gotten one lousy waiver so she can play both HS Soccer with her new friends and the DA?  She wanted to do both and that's my issue because she deserves it


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## Justus

Not asking to be on the list!!!!  She loves to Play the game of soccer.


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## Justus

U13-U14 Transfer of teams.  TB be was 100% right and I got smacked in the face hard with.  I learned that the team you leave is not happy and then the team you join is not really happy except maybe a few and DOC.  Lot's of tention you think?  Poor girls have to go through is not good for the young ones.  TEAM first. I know my kid was not the only highly sought after player in this unique time no one else has gone through like these kids.  So you can't speak on it.  Birth year change, DA and No HS Soccer all in 2 years.  Just writing this makes me feel bad for the kids. I know many coaches, parents and all things soccer have labeled us club hoper and I guess we are.  You tend to piss some people off and I want to 100% apologize for that disruption we caused.  My wife and I see all her uniforms and we think of all the fun games she has played since she was 5.


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## Justus

I forgot to add the no subbing rules too.  That was a tough one on everyone too.


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## Kicknit22

Justus said:


> At the very least couldn't she have gotten one lousy waiver so she can play both HS Soccer with her new friends and the DA?  She wanted to do both and that's my issue because she deserves it


Just curious......Why do you think she deserves it?  Interesting choice of words.


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## Justus

Kicknit22 said:


> Just curious......Why do you think she deserves it?  Interesting choice of words.


Deserved to play both.  Figure out a way to help all girls play together, not divide.


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## Kicknit22

Justus said:


> Deserved to play both.  Figure out a way to help all girls play together, not divide.


I’ve argued on here about the ridiculousness of DA (of which my kiddo is a member) and the HS soccer thing as well.  What I’ve been able to come to grips with over the past 2 years, is that HS soccer means something different to EVERYONE! Not just me and my DD or you and yours. To DA’s credit, the initial rules DID allow for HS soccer and a return to DA status until 2021.  The blame ultimately fell on the individual club DOC’s that enforced the the NO DA RETURN RULE early!! I was pissed. Because I, like you and many others, love HS sports and think it’s stupid to preclude them from participating.  While I haven’t changed my position on this, I’m less inclined to be upset about it, personally. After all, life is full of choices and sacrifices to achieving ones goals. USSF just happened to create one for our kiddos that will take time to for us to come to grips with.  Mine has always been a top tier player. ODP invites, Training Center invites (until she aged out) and has a true passion for the game. She reluctantly sacrificed HS soccer, as well as the other HS sports in which she was a Varsity letterman as a freshman, because she had to make that choice.  Wasted energy looking back and saying it wasn’t worth it, just because she never got a YNT call.  She did, however, grab something far more valuable.....a COLLEGE commitment (her ultimate goal in this journey).  Ten years from now, she won’t look back with regret about missing a couple HS seasons. Hell, it may not take that long.  So, my advise.....get over it.  I did.  Sometimes, achieving ones dreams, comes with sacrifice.


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## Gameon1

Mr Justus, why are you so angry. I have never seen anyone go off like this. Do you need help?


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## Papa's Fritas

Justus said:


> At the very least couldn't she have gotten one lousy waiver so she can play both HS Soccer with her new friends and the DA?  She wanted to do both and that's my issue because she deserves it


Well, that's your job to get that waiver. That's on you, not her. Here you are clucking like a little gallina for your failure to do so. Just be thankful and pray that she will be on the right path of getting good grades, staying away from trouble, and not getting hurt.  You have done enough.


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## Justus

U13 United States Youth Soccer Championship run...………
With age change all set and playing for Surf it was still confusing for many players who were 04' in SoCal.  Should they play up?  Should she play her own age.  We as parents look for DOCs to help us navigate in a very competitive arena.  Players, with the help of their parents and DOCs are shooting to make the first U14 list that some say will come out sometime in the fall of 2017.  DA announced first ages as 03/04, remember?  At the time of all this, some clubs had "no play up allowed policies" and some "clubs allowed play ups" if you could compete Like Legends.  Some clubs might "let parents dictate" play up as part of them coming to the club.  We were honestly confused.  Some DOCs were saying do ECNL 04', DA might not last.  Some were saying DA is where you need to be and you should play up.  Well, we went with Legends to try and make 03/04 combo team for first inaugural season.  No promises were made except that your dd has potential but it must come with hard work.  Sounds fair to me and a chance to help my dd which her dream.  You don't make friends doing that either, let me tell you.  Off to Legends.  DA then announces single band 03 and 04 a month or so later.  My dd saw a chance and confidently told me she wanted to go back to her friends to try and win a US Youth National Championship with them.  Now I'm in a tough spot.  I saw old coach and he said the girls would love to have her back and lets go win a championship.  I had to tell Legends and I'm sure they weren't too happy.  Plus TC were being run by DOCs.  My dd only went to one TC in San Diego right before we went to Legends.  Not invited back after we left.  Not sure why. I'm sure through all this recruiting there is blame to go all around.  It was a messy time for a lot of us.


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## Justus

Continued......…
The hardest part for me at this time was when high up folks and DOCs and others say things like, "Your a Club Hopper, no one likes a club hoper.  This will hurt her college recruiting and so on."  All to a dad whose kid is in 7th grade. I see how fast you get labeled in this industry and some even say, "you will get blacklisted."  You feel trapped and cornered unlike anything you've experienced in sports, all because your trying to help your kid through a difficult arena non of us had gone through before.   I'm not going to kiss up to DOC so I can get my kid up to the top.  I don't know anything about how TCs are run today but the one in 2016 was not what my dd and I expected.  Very sad experience


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## 3SoccerLadies

Is this for real?


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## RJonesUSC

3SoccerLadies said:


> Is this for real?


Unfortunately


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## LASTMAN14

Justus said:


> Is that to warn me or just a joke?


I guess that depends on what day it is and how you feel then.


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## redhood

Cry me a river. Oh my god.


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## Justus

https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-soccer-leagues/story/3919297/adieuadu!-jacobs-youngest-to-sign-us-deal
I saw this article today and it was like a big giant soccer ball smacked me in the head and knocked me out of my CRAZY SOCCER PARENT RANT!!!  
First of all, congrats to both 14 year olds.  However, I see a major deference.  
com·pe·ti·tion
"there is fierce *competition between* Teams"
synonyms: rivalry, competitiveness, vying, contesting, opposition, contention, conflict, feuding, battling, fighting, struggling, strife, war; 
_informal_keeping up with the Joneses
"I'm just not interested in competition"

I got way too competitive.  My dd does not fit the DA and I was all mad about it.  I will move along and get out of the way.  My dd is gamer and she's wants to play games to win.  I'm sorry everyone.  Good night now!!!!


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## Desert Hound

Justus said:


> I got way too competitive.  My dd does not fit the DA and I was all mad about it.  I will move along and get out of the way.


We can only hope you move along.

You are exactly the parent nobody wants to be on the sideline with, nor the parent that clubs and coaches want to deal with.

If you have 2 coaches or scouts or whatever analyzing your kid and another with similar skills, they are going to pick the one that doesn't have a crazy father like you. Simply not worth it.

Relax dude.


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## Mullet

Justus said:


> At the very least couldn't she have gotten one lousy waiver so she can play both HS Soccer with her new friends and the DA?  She wanted to do both and that's my issue because she deserves it


Why does she deserve a waiver?

Is she at a private school?


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## rainbow_unicorn

I just lost 10 minutes from my life reading this thread.


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## Emma

Elle Justus - thank you for sharing your story with us on this thread.  Some of the other threads were confusing but this one is definitely helpful and informative to all of us on this forum.  You're a dad who saw potential in his player and was swayed to take his child to different clubs because of coaches recruiting you and telling you it's better for your child to do so.  In the end, you listened bc why would an experienced coach lie and steer a young child in the wrong direction?  I think this is a lesson most of us have learned or will learn, bc in the name of "business & promotion",  some coaches excuse themselves for screwing over children in the youth club soccer world.  Then somehow...these coaches blame the parent and label them as club hoppers...even though the coaches are the ones who recruited your child over and promised a million things, then the coaches don't keep their promises. Parent leaves bc promises aren't kept, but Coach gets to label and ostracize a young child in order to defend his own reputation bc it's ok to screw a kid over to protect yourself and your program even though you're the one that broke your promise. 

A lot of these winning coaches that advertise their winnings as development are like that...be careful out there...and listen to the whispers of the parents...it's probably true but most families don't say it publicly bc they're afraid of the consequences.  You may not have dealt with it yet but you will down the road if for some reason.  If it's in the best interest of the coach versus your child's best interest. 

Parents buying the fake HS DA waivers should be exposed.  Private Schools selling waivers should be exposed.

There are great parents and coaches out there who actually will do the right thing for the kids - no matter what.

EJ - your daughter sounds very talented and with continued dedication, she'll find a great soccer outcome...might not be exactly as you mapped out but the best things come as surprises. Can't wait to see where the future takes her and you on this roller coaster joy ride.


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## rainbow_unicorn

I dunno...I saw the posts as a guy thinking his daughter was The Chosen One at an early age and then ran smack head-on into reality that there are a lot of other good players out there.  And then went into a rant how it's DA and every DOC's fault...cause God forbid that anything could be the fault of a parent.


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## equipo

Gotta give Justus credit, whether you liked, hated or tolerated his rants, he pumped some life into this rather dull forum of late!


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## ToonArmy

She can play for Guatamala National Team if it's not possible to play USWNT without DA. If Grandpa was born there.


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## Justus

Emma said:


> Elle Justus - thank you for sharing your story with us on this thread.  Some of the other threads were confusing but this one is definitely helpful and informative to all of us on this forum.  You're a dad who saw potential in his player and was swayed to take his child to different clubs because of coaches recruiting you and telling you it's better for your child to do so.  In the end, you listened bc why would an experienced coach lie and steer a young child in the wrong direction?  I think this is a lesson most of us have learned or will learn, bc in the name of "business & promotion",  some coaches excuse themselves for screwing over children in the youth club soccer world.  Then somehow...these coaches blame the parent and label them as club hoppers...even though the coaches are the ones who recruited your child over and promised a million things, then the coaches don't keep their promises. Parent leaves bc promises aren't kept, but Coach gets to label and ostracize a young child in order to defend his own reputation bc it's ok to screw a kid over to protect yourself and your program even though you're the one that broke your promise.
> 
> A lot of these winning coaches that advertise their winnings as development are like that...be careful out there...and listen to the whispers of the parents...it's probably true but most families don't say it publicly bc they're afraid of the consequences.  You may not have dealt with it yet but you will down the road if for some reason.  If it's in the best interest of the coach versus your child's best interest.
> 
> Parents buying the fake HS DA waivers should be exposed.  Private Schools selling waivers should be exposed.
> 
> There are great parents and coaches out there who actually will do the right thing for the kids - no matter what.
> 
> EJ - your daughter sounds very talented and with continued dedication, she'll find a great soccer outcome...might not be exactly as you mapped out but the best things come as surprises. Can't wait to see where the future takes her and you on this roller coaster joy ride.


TY


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## Justus

ToonArmy said:


> She can play for Guatamala National Team if it's not possible to play USWNT without DA. If Grandpa was born there.


She loves her roots but not an option.


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## Justus

2017, 2018, 2019......THE LIST, NC Showcase and The decision for HS Soccer...…...I will finish the recruiting story tonight.  I am not Crazy soccer parent anymore.  I think if some of us are honest we all can get a little cray cray sometimes.  I'm not here to bash anyone.  If I said something from past post I'm sorry.  I was not drunk.  I was manic I guess.  I wanted some answers as a dad and a as customer who has devoted 9 years to the SoCal Youth Soccer Arena


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## oh canada

I don't condone talking about your kid on a public forum---selfish, short-sighted, and lacking any morsel of good judgment.  However, I will say this...with all of the changes that have occurred over the last 5 years in youth soccer--age groups, DA, DPL, CRL, ECNL, etc. etc.--how any parent/player could be deemed a "club hopper" is beyond me.  You want families to stay at soccer clubs?  Keep the youth soccer landscape consistent, reliable and predictable for 3-4 years in a row.  That shouldn't be too much to ask.


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## Mystery Train

This should be a pinned thread for all parents of "youngers" that come to the forum as a warning of what can happen when your little Mia or Lionel is really good as a really young player and you get too caught up in having a “special” “unicorn” with national team dreams.

There are multiple studies cited in articles that prove athletic success as a child is no predictor  of athletic success as a physically mature adult.  So please, please, please for the sake of your sanity and your child’s future, when your kid scores a hat trick in that U10 debut, or dribbles through the entire opposing team and bangs it into the upper 90 in U11, or gets ODP at U12 and makes DA at U13, take the advice of those who have already been there:  Chill. The. Bleep. Out.  Because it means NOTHING in the long run.  Just enjoy the ride and be prepared for it to end much earlier than you want it to.  Because it will.  Statistically, you have a better chance winning  Super Lotto than playing in the EPL or USNT. So you should have about the same level of expectation for your 13 year old kid to end up playing for the full National team as you do when you throw down for the Power Ball while picking up a six pack at 7 Eleven. Hell, most of the ODP kids I knew from U11 back when mine was just starting club aren’t even playing soccer anymore as HS seniors or college freshmen.

Like most people here, I thought Justus was a total crack job when I read the other thread posts... but reading this I honestly feel that this sort of scenario is exactly what our youth club system counts on creating in order to make money.  Unrealistic expectations WAY too early.  And as you can see, it’s unhealthy for the kids AND the parents.

To paraphrase the great holy man, Chief Rolling Stone: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.” 

I hope the OP and their DD both get what they need.


----------



## rainbow_unicorn

Justus said:


> 2017, 2018, 2019......THE LIST


What's "THE LIST"?


----------



## OCsoccerdad7777

Mystery Train said:


> This should be a pinned thread for all parents of "youngers" that come to the forum as a warning of what can happen when your little Mia or Lionel is really good as a really young player and you get too caught up in having a “special” “unicorn” with national team dreams.
> 
> There are multiple studies cited in articles that prove athletic success as a child is no predictor  of athletic success as a physically mature adult.  So please, please, please for the sake of your sanity and your child’s future, when your kid scores a hat trick in that U10 debut, or dribbles through the entire opposing team and bangs it into the upper 90 in U11, or gets ODP at U12 and makes DA at U13, take the advice of those who have already been there:  Chill. The. Bleep. Out.  Because it means NOTHING in the long run.  Just enjoy the ride and be prepared for it to end much earlier than you want it to.  Because it will.  Statistically, you have a better chance winning  Super Lotto than playing in the EPL or USNT. So you should have about the same level of expectation for your 13 year old kid to end up playing for the full National team as you do when you throw down for the Power Ball while picking up a six pack at 7 Eleven. Hell, most of the ODP kids I knew from U11 back when mine was just starting club aren’t even playing soccer anymore as HS seniors or college freshmen.
> 
> Like most people here, I thought Justus was a total crack job when I read the other thread posts... but reading this I honestly feel that this sort of scenario is exactly what our youth club system counts on creating in order to make money.  Unrealistic expectations WAY too early.  And as you can see, it’s unhealthy for the kids AND the parents.
> 
> To paraphrase the great holy man, Chief Rolling Stone: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.”
> 
> I hope the OP and their DD both get what they need.


So you're saying there's a chance???


----------



## Justus

THE LIST is to tell you all to take me, my family and my dd off your list.  Go have fun with your brand of soccer competition.  We will bow out graciously.  The last two years has been a tough run for us and for many other parents and players for all different reasons.  You know where everyone stands.  I've never seen so much division in a youth sport, ever!!!.  Really sad and I'm sorry to have contributed to it.  I wanted my dd story told from me her father instead of you on this forum and old coaches and or DOCS.  You can believe what you want.  Like I said before, I'm so sorry for sharing toxic rants!!!


----------



## Supermodel56

Justus said:


> THE LIST is to tell you all to take me, my family and my dd off your list.  Go have fun with your brand of soccer competition.  We will bow out graciously.  The last two years has been a tough run for us and for many other parents and players for all different reasons.  You know where everyone stands.  I've never seen so much division in a youth sport, ever!!!.  Really sad and I'm sorry to have contributed to it.  I wanted my dd story told from me her father instead of you on this forum and old coaches and or DOCS.  You can believe what you want.  Like I said before, I'm so sorry for sharing toxic rants!!!


What the hell are you apologizing for? It's your story, own it... and finish it already, geez.  =) 

Btw, I agree, while I don't think club hopping is healthy for the kids, I think the age group change, DA/ECNL/League changes, and frequent coach & team changes really have almost made it a necessity in order for your kid to be in the right environment to develop.  If you've found a stable team, consider yourselves lucky!


----------



## Justus

Mystery Train said:


> This should be a pinned thread for all parents of "youngers" that come to the forum as a warning of what can happen when your little Mia or Lionel is really good as a really young player and you get too caught up in having a “special” “unicorn” with national team dreams.
> 
> There are multiple studies cited in articles that prove athletic success as a child is no predictor  of athletic success as a physically mature adult.  So please, please, please for the sake of your sanity and your child’s future, when your kid scores a hat trick in that U10 debut, or dribbles through the entire opposing team and bangs it into the upper 90 in U11, or gets ODP at U12 and makes DA at U13, take the advice of those who have already been there:  Chill. The. Bleep. Out.  Because it means NOTHING in the long run.  Just enjoy the ride and be prepared for it to end much earlier than you want it to.  Because it will.  Statistically, you have a better chance winning  Super Lotto than playing in the EPL or USNT. So you should have about the same level of expectation for your 13 year old kid to end up playing for the full National team as you do when you throw down for the Power Ball while picking up a six pack at 7 Eleven. Hell, most of the ODP kids I knew from U11 back when mine was just starting club aren’t even playing soccer anymore as HS seniors or college freshmen.
> 
> Like most people here, I thought Justus was a total crack job when I read the other thread posts... but reading this I honestly feel that this sort of scenario is exactly what our youth club system counts on creating in order to make money.  Unrealistic expectations WAY too early.  And as you can see, it’s unhealthy for the kids AND the parents.
> 
> To paraphrase the great holy man, Chief Rolling Stone: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.”
> 
> I hope the OP and their DD both get what they need.


I needed to share our families story.  It was about a dream of a 10 year old.  Nothing wrong with that.  You and I know it's next to impossible.  However, 1st step is to get on u14.  That's a good goal to have and realistic.  It would have been nice to get some good technical feedback from the scouts at DA and area's needed for improvement.  Only feedback came from DOCs and coaches.  Not sure how the 2nd season scouting reports were handed out to each player.  If Scouts sat us down and gave my dd a good reason to skip HS Soccer maybe she has something to think about.  Maybe she was on the list to be on the list?  I don't know and it is what it is.  Sorry for being a crack job


----------



## Justus

I can conclude with all that happen the last few years down to this:  04' and younger were the beginning of the new way of the DA.  My dd grew up with a club that was the old way, ODP.  ODP had lot's of scrimmages, dropped to 40 and then a team was picked.  Much better process for my dd.  The new way of the DA is only 24 from the whole country which makes it very tough, and the selection process seems very subjective.  I realize that now and I'm find with it.  They have to produce the team and they can choose however they want.  So, I'm done for awhile.  I can feel the toxin coming and it's best to not type anymore.  I'll come in and lurk from time to time.  I seriously wish all the girls a great season regardless of the league they play in


----------



## oh canada

Mystery Train said:


> This should be a pinned thread for all parents of "youngers" that come to the forum as a warning of what can happen when your little Mia or Lionel is really good as a really young player and you get too caught up in having a “special” “unicorn” with national team dreams.
> 
> There are multiple studies cited in articles that prove athletic success as a child is no predictor  of athletic success as a physically mature adult.  So please, please, please for the sake of your sanity and your child’s future, when your kid scores a hat trick in that U10 debut, or dribbles through the entire opposing team and bangs it into the upper 90 in U11, or gets ODP at U12 and makes DA at U13, take the advice of those who have already been there:  Chill. The. Bleep. Out.  Because it means NOTHING in the long run.  Just enjoy the ride and be prepared for it to end much earlier than you want it to.  Because it will.  Statistically, you have a better chance winning  Super Lotto than playing in the EPL or USNT. So you should have about the same level of expectation for your 13 year old kid to end up playing for the full National team as you do when you throw down for the Power Ball while picking up a six pack at 7 Eleven. Hell, most of the ODP kids I knew from U11 back when mine was just starting club aren’t even playing soccer anymore as HS seniors or college freshmen.
> 
> Like most people here, I thought Justus was a total crack job when I read the other thread posts... but reading this I honestly feel that this sort of scenario is exactly what our youth club system counts on creating in order to make money.  Unrealistic expectations WAY too early.  And as you can see, it’s unhealthy for the kids AND the parents.
> 
> To paraphrase the great holy man, Chief Rolling Stone: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you get what you need.”
> 
> I hope the OP and their DD both get what they need.


Totally agree.  And I've written this on other threads in the past...for soccer, the documented sports science states that you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys.  And peak ability is not until mid 20s.  Other sports like ice skating, gymnastics, swimming, etc. are younger.  College coaches know this and you will hear them talk about this often.  And they can be honest about it because they are getting players no younger than 17yrs.


----------



## MarkM

oh canada said:


> Totally agree.  And I've written this on other threads in the past...for soccer, the documented sports science states that you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys.  And peak ability is not until mid 20s.  Other sports like ice skating, gymnastics, swimming, etc. are younger.  College coaches know this and you will hear them talk about this often.  And they can be honest about it because they are getting players no younger than 17yrs.


Sounds interesting.  Can you point us to the documents?


----------



## Avanti

oh canada said:


> ... you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys ...


Ant the best professional clubs disagree with you. They recruit much younger boys based on ability to the point that they are willing to pay very high fines and forfeit signing windows when recruiting foreign young talent. Please send your documents to Barcelona, Madrid, City, Athletico and the likes, so that they can save money.   
A more correct statement is that every great player at 25 was already a very good/great player at 13 (and younger), and continued working hard. But there are many, many good/great players at 13 that don't make it, for a variety of reasons. That is what actually happens, and the reason why absolute national teams are not dominated by players that made the U17 national teams.  If you don't develop your skills at a very early age, your ceiling in soccer is mostly based on your athleticism and won't be very high. But you can start playing football, not everything is lost.


----------



## oh canada

MarkM said:


> Sounds interesting.  Can you point us to the documents?


Sure...in separate posts...first, I think what's most relevant to this original post is that US Soccer may finally (hopefully) be recognizing that early maturers -- ie, the big/fast boys and girls at the younger ages -- don't = success on the field.  The relative age effect was first documented in Canadian Junior Hockey.  But more detailed research demonstrates that while the older/more mature kids do have a temporary edge in endurance and speed, that doesn't carry over into winning.  And if US Soccer is concerned with finding players to help them win games (as they should), they should id and develop the players with better skill.  The original poster seems to be relaying this in his story--a player that was fast and physical but not as skilled.  Here's a recent study that goes into a lot of detail (probably more than you need), so excerpts below.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095254614000635

_Combining a database of birth month and year with the season ending records provided a look at whether that assumption actually resulted in a better record. From Table 3, it is obvious that simply having a team populated with players born earlier in the birth year is no guarantee of having a successful season as evidenced by the lack of a correlation between average team birth date vs. winning percentages and scoring. The lack of any discernable pattern would seem to indicate there is no systematic benefit of having a team of early maturing players._
_
 If the best solution is awareness of the problem, showing coaches that selecting players based on maturation within a particular birth year has no impact on seasonal outcome might be sufficient to convince coaches to focus more on each player's soccer performance and less on each player's size._


----------



## oh canada

Avanti said:


> Ant the best professional clubs disagree with you. They recruit much younger boys based on ability to the point that they are willing to pay very high fines and forfeit signing windows when recruiting foreign young talent. Please send your documents to Barcelona, Madrid, City, Athletico and the likes, so that they can save money.
> A more correct statement is that every great player at 25 was already a very good/great player at 13 (and younger), and continued working hard. But there are many, many good/great players at 13 that don't make it, for a variety of reasons. That is what actually happens, and the reason why absolute national teams are not dominated by players that made the U17 national teams.  If you don't develop your skills at a very early age, your ceiling in soccer is mostly based on your athleticism and won't be very high. But you can start playing football, not everything is lost.


Well, I just think the professional clubs are caught in an expensive game of fishing.  As you suggest, the success rate for identifying professional players for the "big successful clubs" is tremendously low.  They can afford to throw out a huge net and snag 100s of 10year olds knowing that 1 or 2 will actually make it.  They do it at 10yrs because everyone else is doing it that young, not because that age is a reliable predictor.  Sometimes they don't even realize talent when the kid is 18yrs old - Gareth Bale's story is a good one.


----------



## Avanti

oh canada said:


> Well, I just think the professional clubs are caught in an expensive game of fishing.  As you suggest, the success rate for identifying professional players for the "big successful clubs" is tremendously low.  They can afford to throw out a huge net and snag 100s of 10year olds knowing that 1 or 2 will actually make it.  They do it at 10yrs because everyone else is doing it that young, not because that age is a reliable predictor.  Sometimes they don't even realize talent when the kid is 18yrs old - Gareth Bale's story is a good one.


Yes, they are fishing but they only fish among players with great talent at 10-13. They do not fish blindly, they can identify talent at those ages. Gareth Bale's story is not a good one, it is just a mantra. From what I can read in wikipedia, Bale enrolled in a soccer academy at 10, played in Southampton 1st team at 16!, and was a Welsh national team player as early as U17. I would not call him an undetected  bloomer. 
Again, send your documents to the people with the know-how, they may hire you.


----------



## oh canada

Avanti said:


> Yes, they are fishing but they only fish among players with great talent at 10-13. They do not fish blindly, they can identify talent at those ages. Gareth Bale's story is not a good one, it is just a mantra. From what I can read in wikipedia, Bale enrolled in a soccer academy at 10, played in Southampton 1st team at 16!, and was a Welsh national team player as early as U17. I would not call him an undetected  bloomer.
> Again, send your documents to the people with the know-how, they may hire you.


You can never get the full story from Wikipedia...

_Bale could easily have been cut loose by Southampton at the age of 15, when it was touch and go whether he would be offered a scholarship. Ruddick is a mild man but he knew that he had to dig his heels in to convince others. "I had to be strong. And to be fair to Rupert Lowe [then the Southampton chairman], he later said to me: 'I'm glad you pushed it.'"_
_
Ruddick is not the sort of person to blow his own trumpet or, for that matter, criticise anyone. He was, however, convinced that Bale "had everything to be a great player" and was determined to fight his corner. In Ruddick's eyes, the reason that Bale's development stagnated a little in his mid-teens, when some questioned the merits of keeping him, was purely down to a growth spurt._


----------



## oh canada

Here is one of my favorite podcast episodes that discusses so many good issues -- not just the i.d. age issues mentioned above, but also the downsides of sports specialization.  AC from UCLA part of the conversation along with the Sports MD.  If you don't want to listen to the entire thing, fast forward to 6:45 and 19:40 for his citing of the age id.

https://ilovetowatchyouplay.com/2019/04/13/sports-specialization/


----------



## Avanti

oh canada said:


> You can never get the full story from Wikipedia...
> 
> _Bale could easily have been cut loose by Southampton at the age of 15, when it was touch and go whether he would be offered a scholarship. Ruddick is a mild man but he knew that he had to dig his heels in to convince others. "I had to be strong. And to be fair to Rupert Lowe [then the Southampton chairman], he later said to me: 'I'm glad you pushed it.'"
> 
> Ruddick is not the sort of person to blow his own trumpet or, for that matter, criticise anyone. He was, however, convinced that Bale "had everything to be a great player" and was determined to fight his corner. In Ruddick's eyes, the reason that Bale's development stagnated a little in his mid-teens, when some questioned the merits of keeping him, was purely down to a growth spurt._


Sure, some people in that academy were not very good at evaluating talent, and you surely do not see the contradiction between  "... can't even begin to assess ability until ... 17yrs for boys ...  Gareth Bale's story is a good one (confirming that)" and the facts that he debuted with Southampton at 16 (before you continue with the argument let that sink for a little bit, he debuted with a major professional team at 16!)  and played for his U17 national team. Maybe Bale just walked from his rugby practice into a professional soccer locker room  and they made him play just for fun?
The careers of young great players in these top academies can end rather fast for many reasons, but I have never heard that one's ended because an athletic 18 year old good at basketball or ball dancing came to take his spot. That is the main point of the message. I had a good friend and neighbor that at 17 was a top player in my country, was the star in a final where they beat the base of the eventually absolute national team (which included the guy generally considered the best coach in the world these days), and retired at 21 without making it to first or second division. I think he was somewhat depressed for a few years. Situations like this one are the norm, very few get to the top. Moral of the story: always have a plan B (at this point and in the case of girls, College is plans A and B) . 
But everybody who makes it to the top was a very talented player at 13-15, and without a lot of training since much earlier almost nobody can get to the required skill level by the time you are 13-15. This level of commitment was not needed for the US women soccer program until recently, and players could start much later, do something else, play HS or watch TV, because  there were no real soccer countries that cared at all about the women's game. This has changed now (7 European countries among the final 8 in the last world cup, is further proof needed?), and the formative years of our girls adjust to the new reality, or within one generation the US women soccer team will be as irrelevant as the men team has been for ever.


----------



## oh canada

Avanti said:


> Sure, some people in that academy were not very good at evaluating talent, and you surely do not see the contradiction between  "... can't even begin to assess ability until ... 17yrs for boys ...  Gareth Bale's story is a good one (confirming that)" and the facts that he debuted with Southampton at 16 (before you continue with the argument let that sink for a little bit, he debuted with a major professional team at 16!)  and played for his U17 national team. Maybe Bale just walked from his rugby practice into a professional soccer locker room  and they made him play just for fun?
> The careers of young great players in these top academies can end rather fast for many reasons, but I have never heard that one's ended because an athletic 18 year old good at basketball or ball dancing came to take his spot. That is the main point of the message. I had a good friend and neighbor that at 17 was a top player in my country, was the star in a final where they beat the base of the eventually absolute national team (which included the guy generally considered the best coach in the world these days), and retired at 21 without making it to first or second division. I think he was somewhat depressed for a few years. Situations like this one are the norm, very few get to the top. Moral of the story: always have a plan B (at this point and in the case of girls, College is plans A and B) .
> But everybody who makes it to the top was a very talented player at 13-15, and without a lot of training since much earlier almost nobody can get to the required skill level by the time you are 13-15. This level of commitment was not needed for the US women soccer program until recently, and players could start much later, do something else, play HS or watch TV, because  there were no real soccer countries that cared at all about the women's game. This has changed now (7 European countries among the final 8 in the last world cup, is further proof needed?), and the formative years of our girls adjust to the new reality, or within one generation the US women soccer team will be as irrelevant as the men team has been for ever.


You're making this way too complicated...my point is simple (and is backed up by science as the Patriots doc discusses)...long term soccer success/performance does not begin to reveal itself until 15yrs old or later.  Bale was almost cut at 15yrs because most at Southampton lost confidence in his ability.  They waited for him to complete his growth spurt and were rewarded.  That's an example at the highest level.    

If you are disagreeing with me (and the science) then you are suggesting that the best players at 10yrs old will be the best at 15-18yrs old.  I think many on this board can tell you that is certainly not the case.  Sometimes, yes.  But reliably predictable (which is the point of the post)?  No.


----------



## Mystery Train

Avanti said:


> Sure, some people in that academy were not very good at evaluating talent, and you surely do not see the contradiction between  "... can't even begin to assess ability until ... 17yrs for boys ...  Gareth Bale's story is a good one (confirming that)" and the facts that he debuted with Southampton at 16 (before you continue with the argument let that sink for a little bit, he debuted with a major professional team at 16!)  and played for his U17 national team. Maybe Bale just walked from his rugby practice into a professional soccer locker room  and they made him play just for fun?
> The careers of young great players in these top academies can end rather fast for many reasons, but I have never heard that one's ended because an athletic 18 year old good at basketball or ball dancing came to take his spot. That is the main point of the message. I had a good friend and neighbor that at 17 was a top player in my country, was the star in a final where they beat the base of the eventually absolute national team (which included the guy generally considered the best coach in the world these days), and retired at 21 without making it to first or second division. I think he was somewhat depressed for a few years. Situations like this one are the norm, very few get to the top. Moral of the story: always have a plan B (at this point and in the case of girls, College is plans A and B) .
> But everybody who makes it to the top was a very talented player at 13-15, and without a lot of training since much earlier almost nobody can get to the required skill level by the time you are 13-15. This level of commitment was not needed for the US women soccer program until recently, and players could start much later, do something else, play HS or watch TV, because  there were no real soccer countries that cared at all about the women's game. This has changed now (7 European countries among the final 8 in the last world cup, is further proof needed?), and the formative years of our girls adjust to the new reality, or within one generation the US women soccer team will be as irrelevant as the men team has been for ever.


Nobody is suggesting to fish blindly.  Of course if you’re trying to fish for a future pro player at 13 you’ll look in the sea of 13 year old studs rather than the sea of below average 13 year olds... but the point is that fishing in that sea of “studs” is still a massive crapshoot where the odds are millions to one.  If your kid is a starter on a top team at 13, the odds are still 2 to 1 that they won’t even be playing soccer AT ALL in 7 years.  Those are such long odds that it demonstrates the futility of even labeling a 13 year old as a “stud” in the first place.  I have another great article that was posted on this forum that addresses this... will post later.


----------



## MarkM

oh canada said:


> Sure...in separate posts...first, I think what's most relevant to this original post is that US Soccer may finally (hopefully) be recognizing that early maturers -- ie, the big/fast boys and girls at the younger ages -- don't = success on the field.  The relative age effect was first documented in Canadian Junior Hockey.  But more detailed research demonstrates that while the older/more mature kids do have a temporary edge in endurance and speed, that doesn't carry over into winning.  And if US Soccer is concerned with finding players to help them win games (as they should), they should id and develop the players with better skill.  The original poster seems to be relaying this in his story--a player that was fast and physical but not as skilled.  Here's a recent study that goes into a lot of detail (probably more than you need), so excerpts below.
> 
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095254614000635
> 
> _Combining a database of birth month and year with the season ending records provided a look at whether that assumption actually resulted in a better record. From Table 3, it is obvious that simply having a team populated with players born earlier in the birth year is no guarantee of having a successful season as evidenced by the lack of a correlation between average team birth date vs. winning percentages and scoring. The lack of any discernable pattern would seem to indicate there is no systematic benefit of having a team of early maturing players.
> 
> If the best solution is awareness of the problem, showing coaches that selecting players based on maturation within a particular birth year has no impact on seasonal outcome might be sufficient to convince coaches to focus more on each player's soccer performance and less on each player's size._


Isn't this just an article that supports the theory of bio-banding?  It doesn't say anything about the inability to determine future success at early ages.  It just says that coaches in the particular pool studied tend to focus on the wrong factors (physical maturity).  Bio-banding would eliminate that natural bias.


----------



## Avanti

Mystery Train said:


> Nobody is suggesting to fish blindly.  Of course if you’re trying to fish for a future pro player at 13 you’ll look in the sea of 13 year old studs rather than the sea of below average 13 year olds... but the point is that fishing in that sea of “studs” is still a massive crapshoot where the odds are millions to one.  If your kid is a starter on a top team at 13, the odds are still 2 to 1 that they won’t even be playing soccer AT ALL in 7 years.  Those are such long odds that it demonstrates the futility of even labeling a 13 year old as a “stud” in the first place.  I have another great article that was posted on this forum that addresses this... will post later.


I agree, and that was part of my message above. The other part is that the players that get to the top do it after a series (in time) of selections, in which  the better players usually move forward at each step. In men's soccer, which is played at a very high level, you never have the case of a 16 year old who has played soccer only casually, devotes to soccer at 16, and then makes it to the top.


----------



## timmyh

I know lots of players who were elite at age 12 who weren't all that special at age 18.

I don't know any players who were elite at age 18 who weren't at least pretty good at age 12.

I am sure there are rare exceptions, but while being amazing at age 12 isn't a guarantee that one will be still be a standout at age 18, being at least very good at age 12 is almost a prerequisite.


----------



## MarkM

Mystery Train said:


> Nobody is suggesting to fish blindly.  Of course if you’re trying to fish for a future pro player at 13 you’ll look in the sea of 13 year old studs rather than the sea of below average 13 year olds... but the point is that fishing in that sea of “studs” is still a massive crapshoot where the odds are millions to one.  If your kid is a starter on a top team at 13, the odds are still 2 to 1 that they won’t even be playing soccer AT ALL in 7 years.  Those are such long odds that it demonstrates the futility of even labeling a 13 year old as a “stud” in the first place.  I have another great article that was posted on this forum that addresses this... will post later.


Nobody is suggesting that you can pick the next Mia Hamm at 10.  But you can certainly start cutting the wheat from the chaff.  And if true, then there is the ability to assess future soccer performance at an early age in very meaningful ways.


----------



## Avanti

oh canada said:


> You're making this way too complicated...my point is simple (and is backed up by science as the Patriots doc discusses)...long term soccer success/performance does not begin to reveal itself until 15yrs old or later.  Bale was almost cut at 15yrs because most at Southampton lost confidence in his ability.  They waited for him to complete his growth spurt and were rewarded.  That's an example at the highest level.
> 
> If you are disagreeing with me (and the science) then you are suggesting that the best players at 10yrs old will be the best at 15-18yrs old.  I think many on this board can tell you that is certainly not the case.  Sometimes, yes.  But reliably predictable (which is the point of the post)?  No.


You have mentioned three times that a player that both debuts in a major professional team and plays internationally at 16 supports your late blooming theory. You need to find a better example.
You misquote me. What I am saying is that in men's soccer, the players that get to the top are very talented at 13-15, and they get there by working/playing  since much earlier. I also say that talent can be and is evaluated at that age. Unfortunately, most of those very talented kids don't make it. 
You use your late blooming theory and your assumed impossibility to evaluate talent to defend multisport dedication in the teenage years, HS soccer and whatever else. You also cite some general studies (are they soccer specific?) to defend it. On the other hand, I mentioned that the people that have the know-how and are betting their money on this (professional soccer clubs) do exactly the opposite: they focus on finding talent  at an early age  and develop it, even if they know that only a few will make it. Those kids put an insane number of hours in training. I wonder which one of the two approaches is the correct one to develop players. I know that Americans and Canadians are very smart while most of the rest of the world is chopped liver, however I am not fully convinced yet.


----------



## oh canada

MarkM said:


> Isn't this just an article that supports the theory of bio-banding?  It doesn't say anything about the inability to determine future success at early ages.  It just says that coaches in the particular pool studied tend to focus on the wrong factors (physical maturity).  Bio-banding would eliminate that natural bias.


correct...i linked this study as it's relevant to the original poster's comments re his dd being passed over for more technical kids (or maybe it was in one of his other threads)


----------



## oh canada

Avanti said:


> You have mentioned three times that a player that both debuts in a major professional team and plays internationally at 16 supports your late blooming theory. You need to find a better example.
> You misquote me. What I am saying is that in men's soccer, the players that get to the top are very talented at 13-15, and they get there by working/playing  since much earlier. I also say that talent can be and is evaluated at that age. Unfortunately, most of those very talented kids don't make it.
> You use your late blooming theory and your assumed impossibility to evaluate talent to defend multisport dedication in the teenage years, HS soccer and whatever else. You also cite some general studies (are they soccer specific?) to defend it. On the other hand, I mentioned that the people that have the know-how and are betting their money on this (professional soccer clubs) do exactly the opposite: they focus on finding talent  at an early age  and develop it, even if they know that only a few will make it. Those kids put an insane number of hours in training. I wonder which one of the two approaches is the correct one to develop players. I know that Americans and Canadians are very smart while most of the rest of the world is chopped liver, however I am not fully convinced yet.


Ok, last try...forget about Bale if need be...you have 500 youth soccer players...all of them good and have been playing for some time...let's say half the girls/boys in DA...the science says you should wait until they are 15yrs old (at the youngest) before making any further judgments about long term performance and ability.  Make sense?


----------



## Avanti

oh canada said:


> Ok, last try...forget about Bale if need be...you have 500 youth soccer players...all of them good and have been playing for some time...let's say half the girls/boys in DA...the science says you should wait until they are 15yrs old (at the youngest) before making any further judgments about long term performance and ability.  Make sense?


Whatever.
And that is not how you started this. You said that "you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys", which is a perplexing statement, as suggested by the work of professional academies all over the world which start working with kids at much earlier ages. They must be all wrong while the oh canada blogger is right.  It is difficult to forget about  your use of Bale as a proof of your theory, very few early bloomers have played professionally as early a 16 years old, that was a big blunder of yours.


----------



## OCsoccerdad7777

ToonArmy said:


> She can play for Guatamala National Team if it's not possible to play USWNT without DA. If Grandpa was born there.


Grandpa? Doesnt dual citizenship require the parent to be born in the country not grandparents?


----------



## Desert Hound

..


----------



## MarkM

oh canada said:


> Ok, last try...forget about Bale if need be...you have 500 youth soccer players...all of them good and have been playing for some time...let's say half the girls/boys in DA...the science says you should wait until they are 15yrs old (at the youngest) before making any further judgments about long term performance and ability.  Make sense?


How do you know if the 500 youth soccer players are good "if you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys"?  You already made an assessment of their ability!  You already cut out the thousands of other players in the pool!


----------



## MarkM

OCsoccerdad7777 said:


> Grandpa? Doesnt dual citizenship require the parent to be born in the country not grandparents?


Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you need dual citizenship.


----------



## Tomnchar

timmyh said:


> I know lots of players who were elite at age 12 who weren't all that special at age 18.
> 
> I don't know any players who were elite at age 18 who weren't at least pretty good at age 12.
> 
> I am sure there are rare exceptions, but while being amazing at age 12 isn't a guarantee that one will be still be a standout at age 18, being at least very good at age 12 is almost a prerequisite.



Alex Morgan didn't even begin playing soccer until she was 14 years old, however, she may be the exception.


----------



## OCsoccerdad7777

MarkM said:


> Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think you need dual citizenship.


Ok but in general, is the parent (mom or dad) that needs to be born in whatever country? Not grandparents?


----------



## Mystery Train

@Avanti @MarkM @oh canada 
Here are three articles that I've read that support the argument that success at a young age is not a good predictor of success as an adult.  These are soccer specific articles backed by research, not simply the biased generalities of a soccer dad.  
https://thecoachingconversation.com/early-success-in-sports-future-success/
https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/561707/?__twitter_impression=true
https://changingthegameproject.com/our-biggest-mistake-talent-selection-instead-of-talent-identification/

I know that it may seem very counter intuitive to learn that children who are absolute stars, dominating their peers, exhibiting rare talent and ability at the age of 10 are actually *not* _*significantly*_ statistically more likely to achieve adult success than their average peers, but this is the truth by numbers.   Think of the lottery analogy I used earlier:  If you do not play the lotto, you have zero chance of winning. A kid who doesn't play soccer has zero shot at playing pro or making a National Team.  If you do play the lotto, and buy just one ticket, your chances are infinitely better than the one who did not purchase a number, right?  This is true... but those odds are still so ridiculous (one in 300 million) that they might as well be zero.  Think of the one ticket holder as being the average youth club player.  Now go out and buy 100 tickets.  You are now 100 times more likely to win than the 1 ticket holder... but guess what your odds are now???  ONE IN THREE MILLION.  Think of the 100 ticket holder as that U12 DA star who has NT scouts checking them out. Are his/her chances better than the others?  Why sure.  But if you look at everything that the parents and the kids and the clubs are investing in this one in three million shot, you suddenly understand what a bad investment it is.  My original point in responding to the OP is that he clearly got caught up in "The Dream."  And that sucks because he put a whole lot of emotional and financial investment in his kid's youth soccer career - largely because the coaches and the scouts and the pipe dream that everyone sells about success in youth sports is really just a mirage for the more than hundreds of thousands of kids (maybe even millions globally) who are given labels like "elite" at 10 - 12 years of age.  And what the advocates of "separating the wheat from the chaff" at 12-13 are missing is that the whole activity of doing so is insanely inefficient!  To the point that even those professionals who get paid to do it are really not any better at picking the next superstar as they are at getting hit by lighting.  Sure, if you stand in enough thunderstorms it might happen... but not because it's a good process.  It's just pure numbers.   Sure the European clubs eventually groom some of their 12 year old prodigies into pros, but that could be simple confirmation bias at work.  It doesn't mean that kids who got overlooked at 12 could not have achieved the same or better by age 23, but they weren't in the system.  They didn't get the same opportunities.

HOWEVER, just like another poster said, "So you're saying there's a chance??"  Haha!  Yes, there is. The brilliance of the line "So you're saying there's a chance?" from "Dumb and Dumber" (let that sink in, soccer parents) is that it simultaneously speaks to the delusion of all of us soccer parents so blinded by our love of our children and visions of glory that we can't embrace reality... but on the flip side, also the sort of optimism and self-confidence that is actually necessary to achieve greatness!  I mean, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else ever will, so you have to start somewhere!   Why not buy that lotto ticket if you can?  In the end, I agree with some of what both sides are saying.  If your goal is to be a great adult player, being a great 12 year old player is definitely more _fulfilling_ than being a slightly above average 12 year old player and it won't hurt your chances... but it is not a prerequisite for greatness and it certainly doesn't guarantee you anything other than some amazing memories.    

And in the end, that should be enough for all parents to want for their kids.


----------



## CopaMundial

Tomnchar said:


> Alex Morgan didn't even begin playing soccer until she was 14 years old, however, she may be the exception.


That's a common misconception. She didn't start playing "organized/club" soccer till 14, but she was playing soccer previously as well as other sports.  It's not like she didn't kick a ball till 14.


----------



## Tomnchar

CopaMundial said:


> That's a common misconception. She didn't start playing "organized/club" soccer till 14, but she was playing soccer previously as well as other sports.  It's not like she didn't kick a ball till 14.


Didn't say she had never kicked a ball but she probably wasn't being looked at as a talented player at 10 or 12 since she had really only played for fun. Again, she may be the exception.


----------



## Avanti

Mystery Train said:


> @Avanti @MarkM @oh canada
> Here are three articles that I've read that support the argument that success at a young age is not a good predictor of success as an adult.  These are soccer specific articles backed by research, not simply the biased generalities of a soccer dad.
> https://thecoachingconversation.com/early-success-in-sports-future-success/
> https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/561707/?__twitter_impression=true
> https://changingthegameproject.com/our-biggest-mistake-talent-selection-instead-of-talent-identification/
> 
> I know that it may seem very counter intuitive to learn that children who are absolute stars, dominating their peers, exhibiting rare talent and ability at the age of 10 are actually *not* _*significantly*_ statistically more likely to achieve adult success than their average peers, but this is the truth by numbers.   Think of the lottery analogy I used earlier:  If you do not play the lotto, you have zero chance of winning. A kid who doesn't play soccer has zero shot at playing pro or making a National Team.  If you do play the lotto, and buy just one ticket, your chances are infinitely better than the one who did not purchase a number, right?  This is true... but those odds are still so ridiculous (one in 300 million) that they might as well be zero.  Think of the one ticket holder as being the average youth club player.  Now go out and buy 100 tickets.  You are now 100 times more likely to win than the 1 ticket holder... but guess what your odds are now???  ONE IN THREE MILLION.  Think of the 100 ticket holder as that U12 DA star who has NT scouts checking them out. Are his/her chances better than the others?  Why sure.  But if you look at everything that the parents and the kids and the clubs are investing in this one in three million shot, you suddenly understand what a bad investment it is.  My original point in responding to the OP is that he clearly got caught up in "The Dream."  And that sucks because he put a whole lot of emotional and financial investment in his kid's youth soccer career - largely because the coaches and the scouts and the pipe dream that everyone sells about success in youth sports is really just a mirage for the more than hundreds of thousands of kids (maybe even millions globally) who are given labels like "elite" at 10 - 12 years of age.  And what the advocates of "separating the wheat from the chaff" at 12-13 are missing is that the whole activity of doing so is insanely inefficient!  To the point that even those professionals who get paid to do it are really not any better at picking the next superstar as they are at getting hit by lighting.  Sure, if you stand in enough thunderstorms it might happen... but not because it's a good process.  It's just pure numbers.   Sure the European clubs eventually groom some of their 12 year old prodigies into pros, but that could be simple confirmation bias at work.  It doesn't mean that kids who got overlooked at 12 could not have achieved the same or better by age 23, but they weren't in the system.  They didn't get the same opportunities.
> 
> HOWEVER, just like another poster said, "So you're saying there's a chance??"  Haha!  Yes, there is. The brilliance of the line "So you're saying there's a chance?" from "Dumb and Dumber" (let that sink in, soccer parents) is that it simultaneously speaks to the delusion of all of us soccer parents so blinded by our love of our children and visions of glory that we can't embrace reality... but on the flip side, also the sort of optimism and self-confidence that is actually necessary to achieve greatness!  I mean, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else ever will, so you have to start somewhere!   Why not buy that lotto ticket if you can?  In the end, I agree with some of what both sides are saying.  If your goal is to be a great adult player, being a great 12 year old player is definitely more _fulfilling_ than being a slightly above average 12 year old player and it won't hurt your chances... but it is not a prerequisite for greatness and it certainly doesn't guarantee you anything other than some amazing memories.
> 
> And in the end, that should be enough for all parents to want for their kids.


MT: thanks for the detailed comment. I agree with you regarding the insignificant chance that a "superstar" 10 year old has of making it as an adult, and therefore the craziness of the father that started this thread. We all agree on that. But this is not what we are discussing now. The current discussion is about:
1] whether the statement "you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys" is true
and 2] since this is apparently true, there is no point in dedicating yourself "fully" to soccer before you are 17 years old. We are better off if US Soccer does not scout kids before 15/17, kids play soccer in HS and other sports instead of training/playing soccer at the highest level possible, etc.

Statement 1] is obviously false. Regarding 2], if the boy does not put in hours since an early age, the boy has zero chance of making it. The main reason for this is that skills with your feet, something that is not very natural for human beings,  are essential in soccer and this simply requires both many hours of training/playing and starting at an early age. Plus many, many boys in many countries are putting in those hours, and you have to compete against those boys.  Soccer is not football, where athleticism can make an Antonio Gates a superstar even if he barely played football before becoming a pro. If you could get by with a late start and athleticism were what matters most in soccer, the US men team would have won the last 20 world cups.  In the women's game you could get by with a late start and lack of full commitment until recently because the game overseas was at underground level, but that is not the case any longer.


----------



## oh canada

MarkM said:


> How do you know if the 500 youth soccer players are good "if you can't even begin to assess ability until 15yrs for girls and 17yrs for boys"?  You already made an assessment of their ability!  You already cut out the thousands of other players in the pool!


Not sure if you're serious or just trying to argue to argue.  It would help if you weren't so literal.  Of course anyone can look at a 10 year old player and see that kid uses both feet, that kid doesn't, that kid is an accurate passer, that kid isn't.  That's so obvious, it's like writing the sun will come up tomorrow.  Duh.  But my posts are always written at a level above stating the obvious.    

What we're discussing is meaningful performance judgments of players for long term investment and success.  College, National teams, professional clubs, etc.  At what age can the players begin to be reliably assessed?  If you listened to the podcast, you heard the expert state that "in soccer, the data shows the age of measurable performance breakouts is 15."  (hockey is 13 and triathlon is 20)  So, what does that mean to you then? 

In context of this thread, I don't believe this player is 15yrs even now.   Unfortunately, Dad made all kinds of assessments of his kid's ability and future in soccer much too early.  Hence the utter disappointment now.


----------



## Supermodel56

Ya’ll are crazy. 

Lemme just sum this up for ya’ll so we can move on:

1) True, just because you’re a superstar at age 13 and under, it is no indication that you’ve got what it takes to be a pro or Olympian. 

2) True, most superstars at that young age don’t make it - but that is more because pros and olympians are the elite of the elite and it’s a very selective group. To argue that being a young superstar is a contraindication of future success is completely wrong logic. Most teams in a tournament are NOT going to win first place. 

3) Most olympians and pros were involved in their sport at a young age and performing at a decently high level. The natural talent was there in some form or another - as with all kids and some more than others, it just needed refinement. Take Alex Morgan, for example, her natural talent was there, but since she only played rec, she didn’t have the technicals... but her natural abilities allowed her to pick that up. 

4) Do not discount hard work and commitment, that’s where the real separation begins. After a certain level, most athletes are serviceable, it comes down to who’s putting in the hours to be the best.

5) You MAY never be a pro or make the national team. But then again, if you don’t believe you can, don’t invest the time and hard work, or don’t have the support system, you WILL never make it... ain’t nothing wrong with a dad who believes in their kid and willing to invest to see how far he/she can go.  Each family has to decide for themselves if it’s worth pursuing.

6) Taking pleasure in another dad/family realizing that their kid doesn’t have it is a real asshole move. To those parents who believed in their kid and invested the time and energy, kudos to you. That’s sure as hell a lot better than your kid growing up thinking you DON’T believe in them or won’t support them in their passions.   And personally I don’t think it’s a waste of time nor resources - because it teaches a kid how to pursue a dream. It’s not so much the end result, but understanding the process and what it takes to be the best. They may never make the national team, but once that door is closed, they’ll know what it’s going to take to succeed in the next endeavor. Just think, no matter what you pursue, the odds are you will NOT be the best in the world. But does that mean you shouldn’t go 100% after what you love to do? By not helping your kid pursue this dream, you’re basically teaching them to not commit to anything simply because there is the risk of disappointment.


----------



## Gokicksomegrass

Honestly, I haven't heard the true definition of the LIST in this mega thread. 4.0 GPA, Honor Roll, AP/Honors/IB program, 1400+ SAT/32+ ACT, great extra curriculars besides soccer, etc. You know things that colleges care about, which is really the end goal for 99.99% of us. If your kid isn't trying to be on this LIST, then none of this matters.


----------



## Lambchop

Tomnchar said:


> Alex Morgan didn't even begin playing soccer until she was 14 years old, however, she may be the exception.


Not true, Alex Morgan played AYSO soccer  from a young age and didn't join a club team until age 14.


----------



## ToonArmy

OCsoccerdad7777 said:


> Ok but in general, is the parent (mom or dad) that needs to be born in whatever country? Not grandparents?


From what I have been told its Grandparents. I know some girls that have played or still do for Mexico Phillipines and El Salvador and I was told that but might be incorrect info. Also my daughter had a chance to play in an Olympic type of tournament in Mexico which we declined and all she needed was a Grandparent born in Mexico to qualify. That was not youth national team representing Mexico it was more of like a national cup representing a region or state all teams from Mexico.


----------



## Justus

Supermodel56 said:


> Ya’ll are crazy.
> 
> Lemme just sum this up for ya’ll so we can move on:
> 
> 1) True, just because you’re a superstar at age 13 and under, it is no indication that you’ve got what it takes to be a pro or Olympian.
> 
> 2) True, most superstars at that young age don’t make it - but that is more because pros and olympians are the elite of the elite and it’s a very selective group. To argue that being a young superstar is a contraindication of future success is completely wrong logic. Most teams in a tournament are NOT going to win first place.
> 
> 3) Most olympians and pros were involved in their sport at a young age and performing at a decently high level. The natural talent was there in some form or another - as with all kids and some more than others, it just needed refinement. Take Alex Morgan, for example, her natural talent was there, but since she only played rec, she didn’t have the technicals... but her natural abilities allowed her to pick that up.
> 
> 4) Do not discount hard work and commitment, that’s where the real separation begins. After a certain level, most athletes are serviceable, it comes down to who’s putting in the hours to be the best.
> 
> 5) You MAY never be a pro or make the national team. But then again, if you don’t believe you can, don’t invest the time and hard work, or don’t have the support system, you WILL never make it... ain’t nothing wrong with a dad who believes in their kid and willing to invest to see how far he/she can go.  Each family has to decide for themselves if it’s worth pursuing.
> 
> 6) Taking pleasure in another dad/family realizing that their kid doesn’t have it is a real asshole move. To those parents who believed in their kid and invested the time and energy, kudos to you. That’s sure as hell a lot better than your kid growing up thinking you DON’T believe in them or won’t support them in their passions.   And personally I don’t think it’s a waste of time nor resources - because it teaches a kid how to pursue a dream. It’s not so much the end result, but understanding the process and what it takes to be the best. They may never make the national team, but once that door is closed, they’ll know what it’s going to take to succeed in the next endeavor. Just think, no matter what you pursue, the odds are you will NOT be the best in the world. But does that mean you shouldn’t go 100% after what you love to do? By not helping your kid pursue this dream, you’re basically teaching them to not commit to anything simply because there is the risk of disappointment.


I see it like this.  "I want to play for the California Angels" = Dream  "I want to start at 2nd base for my 8th grade travel ball team, hit .500 and start as a Sophomore at big time HS program" =Goals to hit the dream.   BTW, I think this is better odds than "I want to play on the Woman's National Team" = Dreamer "I want to start at top club, have impact and make u14 list" =Goals to make dream come true...…..


----------



## Supermodel56

Justus said:


> I see it like this.  "I want to play for the California Angels" = Dream  "I want to start at 2nd base for my 8th grade travel ball team, hit .500 and start as a Sophomore at big time HS program" =Goals to hit the dream.   BTW, I think this is better odds than "I want to play on the Woman's National Team" = Dreamer "I want to start at top club, have impact and make u14 list" =Goals to make dream come true...…..


Why can’t you have both? And most likely, the kid is already starting for their team and are already doing everything they can to be the best player they can be. 

You gotta dream big... but I do see your point, if you actually want to reach your dreams, you gotta understand the pathway - which in itself is not easy and has significant milestones along the way... those milestones are great intermediate goals and indicators where you stand. 

The question for the dad who’s finding that their kid may not be good enough to make it - if  your kid knew from the beginning this was how it would end up, would she still have played anyway? Would she have trained as hard as she did? did she love the game that much? Would you still have made the same decisions?


----------



## OCsoccerdad7777

ToonArmy said:


> From what I have been told its Grandparents. I know some girls that have played or still do for Mexico Phillipines and El Salvador and I was told that but might be incorrect info. Also my daughter had a chance to play in an Olympic type of tournament in Mexico which we declined and all she needed was a Grandparent born in Mexico to qualify. That was not youth national team representing Mexico it was more of like a national cup representing a region or state all teams from Mexico.


Good to know thanks. Sorry not trying to change the thread.


----------



## ToonArmy

OCsoccerdad7777 said:


> Good to know thanks. Sorry not trying to change the thread.


I think I am wrong and you are correct I screwed up and confused myself sorry


----------



## Yak

No need to rely on hearsay, FIFA regs are posted online...

A player who, under the terms of article 15 of the Regulations 
Governing the Application of the FIFA Statutes, is eligible to represent 
more than one association on account of his nationality, may play 
in an international match for one of these associations only if, in 
addition to having the relevant nationality, he fulfi ls at least one of 
the following conditions:
a) he was born on the territory of the relevant association;
b) his biological mother or biological father was born on the territory 
of the relevant association;
c) his grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the 
relevant association;
d) he has lived on the territory of the relevant association for at least 
two years without interruption.


----------



## MarkM

Mystery Train said:


> @Avanti @MarkM @oh canada
> Here are three articles that I've read that support the argument that success at a young age is not a good predictor of success as an adult.  These are soccer specific articles backed by research, not simply the biased generalities of a soccer dad.
> https://thecoachingconversation.com/early-success-in-sports-future-success/
> https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/561707/?__twitter_impression=true
> https://changingthegameproject.com/our-biggest-mistake-talent-selection-instead-of-talent-identification/
> 
> I know that it may seem very counter intuitive to learn that children who are absolute stars, dominating their peers, exhibiting rare talent and ability at the age of 10 are actually *not* _*significantly*_ statistically more likely to achieve adult success than their average peers, but this is the truth by numbers.   Think of the lottery analogy I used earlier:  If you do not play the lotto, you have zero chance of winning. A kid who doesn't play soccer has zero shot at playing pro or making a National Team.  If you do play the lotto, and buy just one ticket, your chances are infinitely better than the one who did not purchase a number, right?  This is true... but those odds are still so ridiculous (one in 300 million) that they might as well be zero.  Think of the one ticket holder as being the average youth club player.  Now go out and buy 100 tickets.  You are now 100 times more likely to win than the 1 ticket holder... but guess what your odds are now???  ONE IN THREE MILLION.  Think of the 100 ticket holder as that U12 DA star who has NT scouts checking them out. Are his/her chances better than the others?  Why sure.  But if you look at everything that the parents and the kids and the clubs are investing in this one in three million shot, you suddenly understand what a bad investment it is.  My original point in responding to the OP is that he clearly got caught up in "The Dream."  And that sucks because he put a whole lot of emotional and financial investment in his kid's youth soccer career - largely because the coaches and the scouts and the pipe dream that everyone sells about success in youth sports is really just a mirage for the more than hundreds of thousands of kids (maybe even millions globally) who are given labels like "elite" at 10 - 12 years of age.  And what the advocates of "separating the wheat from the chaff" at 12-13 are missing is that the whole activity of doing so is insanely inefficient!  To the point that even those professionals who get paid to do it are really not any better at picking the next superstar as they are at getting hit by lighting.  Sure, if you stand in enough thunderstorms it might happen... but not because it's a good process.  It's just pure numbers.   Sure the European clubs eventually groom some of their 12 year old prodigies into pros, but that could be simple confirmation bias at work.  It doesn't mean that kids who got overlooked at 12 could not have achieved the same or better by age 23, but they weren't in the system.  They didn't get the same opportunities.
> 
> HOWEVER, just like another poster said, "So you're saying there's a chance??"  Haha!  Yes, there is. The brilliance of the line "So you're saying there's a chance?" from "Dumb and Dumber" (let that sink in, soccer parents) is that it simultaneously speaks to the delusion of all of us soccer parents so blinded by our love of our children and visions of glory that we can't embrace reality... but on the flip side, also the sort of optimism and self-confidence that is actually necessary to achieve greatness!  I mean, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else ever will, so you have to start somewhere!   Why not buy that lotto ticket if you can?  In the end, I agree with some of what both sides are saying.  If your goal is to be a great adult player, being a great 12 year old player is definitely more _fulfilling_ than being a slightly above average 12 year old player and it won't hurt your chances... but it is not a prerequisite for greatness and it certainly doesn't guarantee you anything other than some amazing memories.
> 
> And in the end, that should be enough for all parents to want for their kids.


Thanks for the post.  Interesting articles.  I really wasn't focused on selecting the professional superstar.  I was focused on the comment that no one can even begin to predict soccer ability until age 15.  

At any rate, I appreciate the articles.  This is the way I look at it:  If there are 10,000 girls playing soccer at age 12, and I (or someone with actual soccer knowledge) can select 200 that I think are going to be high performing (either college or pro), those selections will be much more accurate than a random selection of 200 from the pool of 10,000.  Am I wrong about that?  If not, don't we have the ability to discern soccer ability at an early age.  It may not be perfect, but it is still materially advantageous to make those assessments.


----------



## Mystery Train

MarkM said:


> Thanks for the post.  Interesting articles.  I really wasn't focused on selecting the professional superstar.  I was focused on the comment that no one can even begin to predict soccer ability until age 15.
> 
> At any rate, I appreciate the articles.  This is the way I look at it:  If there are 10,000 girls playing soccer at age 12, and I (or someone with actual soccer knowledge) can select 200 that I think are going to be high performing (either college or pro), those selections will be much more accurate than a random selection of 200 from the pool of 10,000.  Am I wrong about that?  If not, don't we have the ability to discern soccer ability at an early age.  It may not be perfect, but it is still materially advantageous to make those assessments.


I agree to a point.  Certainly this is the prevailing logic and probably the best we can do given what we know.  But you do pose an interesting question in that argument.  It would make a great statistical study of the concept of selection bias if we could run an experiment like that.  

Part of why I complain about the process of trying to ID 12 year olds is that the selection bias that occurs after the supposed wheat has been separated from the chaff.  Done at too young an age across a large scale, I think this sort of thing can actually be a detriment.  If you take 200 randomly selected youth players and _tell_ them they are the elite, and give them the same training and attention and resources as the 200 that were actually selected on their accomplishments in their 12-year old soccer leagues, the final tally of which group has more long term success might be closer than you think.   Mainly because the 12 year olds who do get selected are often the early puberty physical elite, which does not translate to long term growth as much as the late bloomer.   Physical power is not the most important soccer trait, so it is probably better to do this earlier in soccer than in football and basketball, as was mentioned by someone in this thread earlier, but it's still a big part of the equation.  

Lastly, the main reason I brought this up in this thread is that I think too much expectation and too much emphasis on talent ID at young ages is detrimental to most of the kids who do get ID'd early.  They are being set up more for failure than success because of the pressure and expectations not to mention the sense of entitlement that can set in.   There are way more stories where frustrated kids quit or parents get caught in vicious cycles like Justus did than there are stories where it totally worked out and the kid reached all the expectations put on them and go on to adult soccer glory.  Would it be less so if we moved the bar of talent ID from 12 to 14?  Or 15?  I don't know.  What I do know is that I don't think moving the bar back would hurt our results in terms of selecting talent for colleges, pros, or national teams at all.  Because if you think that a successful 12 year old will also be a successful 15 year old and also a successful 20 year old, then what does it matter if you pick him out at 12 vs 15?  He'll still be there.


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## Avanti

Mystery Train said:


> I agree to a point.  Certainly this is the prevailing logic and probably the best we can do given what we know.  But you do pose an interesting question in that argument.  It would make a great statistical study of the concept of selection bias if we could run an experiment like that.
> 
> Part of why I complain about the process of trying to ID 12 year olds is that the selection bias that occurs after the supposed wheat has been separated from the chaff.  Done at too young an age across a large scale, I think this sort of thing can actually be a detriment.  If you take 200 randomly selected youth players and _tell_ them they are the elite, and give them the same training and attention and resources as the 200 that were actually selected on their accomplishments in their 12-year old soccer leagues, the final tally of which group has more long term success might be closer than you think.   Mainly because the 12 year olds who do get selected are often the early puberty physical elite, which does not translate to long term growth as much as the late bloomer.   Physical power is not the most important soccer trait, so it is probably better to do this earlier in soccer than in football and basketball, as was mentioned by someone in this thread earlier, but it's still a big part of the equation.
> 
> Lastly, the main reason I brought this up in this thread is that I think too much expectation and too much emphasis on talent ID at young ages is detrimental to most of the kids who do get ID'd early.  They are being set up more for failure than success because of the pressure and expectations not to mention the sense of entitlement that can set in.   There are way more stories where frustrated kids quit or parents get caught in vicious cycles like Justus did than there are stories where it totally worked out and the kid reached all the expectations put on them and go on to adult soccer glory.  Would it be less so if we moved the bar of talent ID from 12 to 14?  Or 15?  I don't know.  What I do know is that I don't think moving the bar back would hurt our results in terms of selecting talent for colleges, pros, or national teams at all.  Because if you think that a successful 12 year old will also be a successful 15 year old and also a successful 20 year old, then what does it matter if you pick him out at 12 vs 15?  He'll still be there.


Excellently put. Trying to guess who will make it to the top at 12 is indeed a lottery. And the burden that goes with expectations at that age is detrimental. And the logic behind your last three sentences is overwhelming.
But I will take the other side of the argument in your thought experiment about the outcome of two groups of 200 12yrs players, one selected by perceived talent and another selected randomly. Similar experiments have been done many times before (not in the same exact manner): think of the outcome of 200 12 yrs boys randomly selected in Argentina vs the outcome of 200 12 yrs boys randomly selected in the US. If you show these two 12 yrs groups to coaches (unbiased by ethnicity and without knowing origin), upon inspection of how they play the coaches will surely take the Argentinian group as the talented one; this will be our talent-selected group moving forward, and the American kids will be the randomly selected group. Groups like these have been trained to adulthood many times. How many American born-players do you have playing at the highest level? How many Argentinians do you have? The main reason for the different outcome is the decisive head start (5-12 yrs) of the Argentinian kids. In this respect soccer is similar to a language: it is very difficult to truly master a language unless you learn it in your childhood. In soccer (basketball and football are different, maybe baseball is similar to soccer but I am not sure 100%), if you don't have good skills at 12 (and because of that coaches will recognize you as talented), it is very difficult (not impossible) to make it to the top. But predicting the final winners from those 200 talented kids is a lottery.


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## Mullet

Avanti said:


> Excellently put. Trying to guess who will make it to the top at 12 is indeed a lottery. And the burden that goes with expectations at that age is detrimental. And the logic behind your last three sentences is overwhelming.
> But I will take the other side of the argument in your thought experiment about the outcome of two groups of 200 12yrs players, one selected by perceived talent and another selected randomly. Similar experiments have been done many times before (not in the same exact manner): think of the outcome of 200 12 yrs boys randomly selected in Argentina vs the outcome of 200 12 yrs boys randomly selected in the US. If you show these two 12 yrs groups to coaches (unbiased by ethnicity and without knowing origin), upon inspection of how they play the coaches will surely take the Argentinian group as the talented one; this will be our talent-selected group moving forward, and the American kids will be the randomly selected group. Groups like these have been trained to adulthood many times. How many American born-players do you have playing at the highest level? How many Argentinians do you have? The main reason for the different outcome is the decisive head start (5-12 yrs) of the Argentinian kids. In this respect soccer is similar to a language: it is very difficult to truly master a language unless you learn it in your childhood. In soccer (basketball and football are different, maybe baseball is similar to soccer but I am not sure 100%), if you don't have good skills at 12 (and because of that coaches will recognize you as talented), it is very difficult (not impossible) to make it to the top. But predicting the final winners from those 200 talented kids is a lottery.


Just because 199 of those 12 year olds selected didn't go on to make the U19 WNT does not mean they were wrong about the talent of those kids at 12. The reality is there are only 20 or so spots. The system is not designed to keep all of them. 

That said, those kids are still very, very talented players and will likely play at a high level in college. Some kids simply don't pan out when you are looking for the top 20 kids over the course of 6 years.


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## Justus

I told you so


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