MUST WATCH!!!!
- Thread starter Lemmon Pepper Lou
- Start date
My God... the message is great but someone edited the shit out of it. Hard to watch.
Wow, thank you Eric for shinning a light on this money-making business off our kids' legs, bodies, hard work and the parents money and sacrifice. It was fun but it was insane. I had to pull my daughter out of this when she was 14. I said no to travel ball and 3 games in 36 hour showcases. I also had the honor and privilege to sit next to him as my dd's team beat his daughters team a few times in these crazy tournaments. I will say his daughter always brought ganas to the matches and we beat his team in the final of Far West Regionals in 2017
I tried to talk to the higher ups at these big clubs, but they all told me to STFU, your advice will hurt our bottomline. STFU and be grateful for a college deal.
Focus on the message
There is also a tension between the full game players and the half game players.
For a half game player, you’re fighting for minutes and extra games sound good. Even 3 games in 3 days isn’t so bad, because you only play for 120 or 135 of those minutes.
For a full game player, it’s the opposite. That same 3 game showcase looks more like 240 or 270 minutes. It can easily be too much. Driving out to play a single match against a good opponent is more appealing. (But what bench player family wants to drive all over creation for 30 minutes on the field?)
For a half game player, you’re fighting for minutes and extra games sound good. Even 3 games in 3 days isn’t so bad, because you only play for 120 or 135 of those minutes.
For a full game player, it’s the opposite. That same 3 game showcase looks more like 240 or 270 minutes. It can easily be too much. Driving out to play a single match against a good opponent is more appealing. (But what bench player family wants to drive all over creation for 30 minutes on the field?)
It's bad on multiple levels for any kid giving up their weekend to play 3 games and being stuck on the 5 Frwy coming home. Regardless if you play 200 minutes or 120, one game a week is the way to go Zeke. Shut down this tournament money making business that only feeds the fat cats. The fat cats also get their kids all the action and prizes.
Wouldn't be an issue if coaches treated it more like a showcase and tried to get all their players time who cares about the result. But it comes from the attitude of being must win. Soccer can't be everything: a place to make friends and have fun/exercise, a place to win trophies, a place to showcase talent for college athletes, a place to develop professional athletes. All our issues stem from the fact that we are trying to appease everyone with soccer instead of picking a line. That's why the MLS/ECNL split might be good if ECNL can survive on the boys side and become more robust: MLS for pro players, ECNL for college players who want to play high school (but if that's the case MLS shouldn't change its age line).
Yeah, agree: the incessant cut edits in this video are just next-level distracting.
The message is on-point, re the business nature of tournaments, and particularly the level of greed there now (eg: Stay and Pay). It's frustrating that more clubs which purport to prioritize overall player development and health of the game don't push back on this more vigorously. Instead, it's seemingly just accepted as a necessary evil.
I don't know if I fully agree about the play time and exhaustion aspect, though, and I'm approaching that from the perspective of having a kid who plays and runs more than most on his team. I think the on field game experience is valuable, and not something which is easy to replicate in practices. I would not mind if that was more scrimmages/friendlies and less tournaments (and I couldn't care less about trophies and such), but I also don't think cutting down games to 1x/week max is optimal, at least from the perspective of what would be best for my kid's development.
I like Grace's perspective in concept: if we could divide up players in leagues based on intended path, that might be a beneficial change (then at least some teams could focus on friendlies and development, and not chasing trophies in tournaments). If one could find the appropriate level of competition in each "track", that would be great, and conceptually make it a lot less expensive for those of us who don't see our kids ever going pro.
Rollonyoubears
SILVER
Soooo hard to watch. My brain hurts.
We have great leagues dedicated to getting exercise, making friends, and handing out trophies. They play one game a week, take a long break between seasons, and have very low injury rates.
It's called rec, and that model makes a whole lot of kids happy.
Even low level comp has teams which work on the one game a week model. Their fees are lower, too.
But then our kids get better, and something shifts. 20 league games aren't enough anymore. We add in another 30 games with scrimmages, tournaments, playoffs, and nationals. Plus another 20 games from the high school season and high school playoffs.
And there we are at 70 games a year.
I'm not sure how we got here, but I think we parents are to blame as much as coaches or anyone else.
As we discuss the elephant in the room, it would be great if each poster would share if their a parent, coach or Doc. I am a parent of a former player and also have relatives playing youth soccer in socal. They asked me to ask this question, thanks.
P.S. If we all come together, we can make youth soccer great and safe. Good luck everyone.
P.S. If we all come together, we can make youth soccer great and safe. Good luck everyone.
There's a missing middle ground, imho.
To play HS soccer where we are (as an example), you essentially need to be a club-level player; more specifically, you need to have that level of training. Rec level seasonal training with 20ish games a year is not enough. If you're only playing at the rec level, you won't have the opportunity to play in HS (or beyond), with all the social development and connections which comes with that (in addition to any potential advantages with respect to college).
OTOH, every club seems vested in winning, and tournaments in particular, even if they are nominally focused on overall player development. I think some of this stems from access concerns, though; winning gives access to more level of competition, more paths for development, more player visibility, etc. There's a valid argument that a focus on winning high-visibility events is the optimal approach for player development, in that context.
What's missing is a club-level training program without the focus on winning and participating in high-profit events, where kids can still get good enough to play in HS and maybe college. I don't know how we get there from here, but that doesn't seem to exist at present, in the youth soccer landscape.
Ayso did it to themselves. They didn’t tier rec so you have the future pro playing with a vip player. Everyone won a trophy. Teams were balanced. Again you have to pick one. Even ayso rec didn’t satisfy the let’s have a good time players and those who wanted a real trophy, much less the future pro and college athletes.
The message is that Wynalda shouldn't be doing videos.
AYSO isn’t so easy when you have 4 players guarding you and you don’t want to pass to your sucky teammates.
Midfielders especially should play AYSO. If you can hold on to the ball with 4 guarding you, you won’t lose the ball in a club game.
lol... Tell me about it. My daughter had a hard time finishing high school season as freshman playing varsity. Due to the fires that we had in LA, HS kids were forced to play 3 games a week within the M-F (5 day span). She was playing full games as a winger with no rest. By the end of the HS season she was suffering from shin splints while at the same time battling the flu in the open division playoffs... Totally recipe for disaster. Glad we lost to the #1 ranked team in CA so it was a quick in and out of playoffs. I gave her 3 weeks off after that and now shes 100% again. 1 game a week should be the max. And if kids are going to play multiple games a week, they shouldn't be playing the full game period.
Americans dribble the ball too much. To the extent you can't pass because you have sucky teammates, AYSO is a waste of time for the player you envision. Key trait a midfielder needs to have is knowing when the play is developing (not dribbling to goal) and where to put the ball
