Club Team Tiers

Like many apps, it's a 30-day free trial - so you can enable it and then disable it at day 29 if it turns out it wasn't particularly useful or worth the money.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
You (or anyone else with knowledge of which team is actually which), can try to add correct data sources, and delete incorrect data sources, so the team name that holds the team data that accurately represents the games that they have played. But it's ultimately a losing battle as long as the club is reusing identical names for what are actually different teams over time. They will almost certainly be brought together automatically, and incorrectly, at some point in the future and will have to be resolved multiple times per season.

Your club's method of naming teams has some foreseeable and negative consequences, but perhaps it's completely unintentional. A friendly chat with whoever is registering these teams and explaining what you are seeing might educate their choices. But for any number of reasons, it's better to name a team:

2012B Purple People Eaters Elite

and keep using that team name as the boys progress from U10, U12, U14, whatever.

Rather than:

U12 Purple People Eaters Silver Division

and have to change it next season to:

U13 Purple People Eaters Gold Division

even if it is essentially the same team.
Click to expand...

If enough parents notified the manager and club about this, it would be a massive help. Some of the team names crack me up.
 
Larzby said:
Ignore all the nonsense (though it's hard). If you find a coach who cares about your kid, seems to know a bit about soccer, and who your kid enjoys playing for - - you've won at club soccer. Stop there. And it doesn't necessarily take $3,000 a year to accomplish that, but sometimes it does, so be prepared to roll with the punches financially. After 3 or 4 years of that, it gets slightly more complicated, but by then this message board will have taught you all you need to know.
Click to expand...
For people who are financially constrained, spending $3000 to "enjoy" soccer is not wise. Sacrificing family vacation or math/english tutoring to give your son/daughter playing time may not be acceptable for everyone.
If you have the time and money then yes, the advice above is absolutely correct, just look for a good coach. If your kid is talented, it will show, he will find better league later but be prepared to spend $10000/yr for MLS NEXT
 
aong cangkol said:
For people who are financially constrained, spending $3000 to "enjoy" soccer is not wise. Sacrificing family vacation or math/english tutoring to give your son/daughter playing time may not be acceptable for everyone.
If you have the time and money then yes, the advice above is absolutely correct, just look for a good coach. If your kid is talented, it will show, he will find better league later but be prepared to spend $10000/yr for MLS NEXT
Click to expand...
I cannot write a nuanced post that addresses every single situation. I'm writing to the parent who has a kid with an interest in the game and wants to get better by avoiding the pitfalls of charlatans that are everywhere in club soccer. The readers of this site are sharp enough to make a determination whether they are financially able to make sacrifices for private group and individual training which will give them better access to quality coaches.

"If your kid is talented, it will show" is not sound advice. Footballers don't just pop out at 12, ready for u13 MLS Next or some other, higher league without putting in work. Kids who make those leagues at u13 and above put in tons of hours for years developing their fitness, technique, and ability both in team and outside the club setting. Check out "The Myth of Talent" if you underestimate the work required.

But none of it is worth while, though, unless the kid loves the sport. As a parent, you can help that by fostering enjoyment of the game. Play with your kid, watch pro games, send your kid video of players to open their minds, show them guys from the past so they get some appreciation of the history of the sport, pop on a coaching podcast in the car when you're driving, etc. Or don't, and your kid will do something else.
 
Soccer Dad & Ref said:
Except it is truly an amazing app with amazing accuracy overall. Filled a massive void in this realm
Click to expand...

For how simple it is... it's actually surprisingly accurate with "score predictions"
And even without the "predictions", it just shows a way to rank teams based on recent performance...
Is it perfect? No. But none of the professional sports "power rankings" are either.
It's the best $10 for entertainment I've spent! :D
 
Socal-Soccer-Dad said:
For how simple it is... it's actually surprisingly accurate with "score predictions"
And even without the "predictions", it just shows a way to rank teams based on recent performance...
Is it perfect? No. But none of the professional sports "power rankings" are either.
It's the best $10 for entertainment I've spent! :D
Click to expand...
What I like about the rankings app is that it provides a quick and easy way to define a team or clubs relative standing against their peers.

Before the rankings app team and club standings were 100% subjective. You'd get articles written showing team and club rankings that were completely made up by the article writer.

What I dont like about the app is predictability. While it's nice to see who mathematically will win a game. The problem is there will always be players and parents that will decide which games they choose to participate in based on their teams ability to win. To me this is the wrong way to approach team sports. Unfortunately it happens more often than you'd expect.
 
I haven't seen it to that extent, but perhaps I'm not aware. One of our coaches is pretty adamant to not directly share any of that information with the boys prior to a game or tournament, with I believe the optimistic goal of inspiring them to give it their all regardless of whether the game was expected to be a 5-0 blowout against a particularly weak team, a 1-5 drubbing by quite strong team, or a 2-2 tie. But he certainly wants any and all knowledge of the competition ahead of time. As the teams get older, I imagine it becomes more common for kids to be interested in the predictions if they were aware of their existence. I can't imagine individual players deciding to come or not depending on what the outcome predictions were telling them, whether individual league games or even full tournaments.
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
I haven't seen it to that extent, but perhaps I'm not aware. One of our coaches is pretty adamant to not directly share any of that information with the boys prior to a game or tournament, with I believe the optimistic goal of inspiring them to give it their all regardless of whether the game was expected to be a 5-0 blowout against a particularly weak team, a 1-5 drubbing by quite strong team, or a 2-2 tie. But he certainly wants any and all knowledge of the competition ahead of time. As the teams get older, I imagine it becomes more common for kids to be interested in the predictions if they were aware of their existence. I can't imagine individual players deciding to come or not depending on what the outcome predictions were telling them, whether individual league games or even full tournaments.
Click to expand...
The reason your coach is asking not to show players predicted results is because you never know what might happen in a real game. Some teams don't travel well, others might have injured players, maybe it's raining out, etc, etc, etc.

Predicted results are just the results of previous games applied to another teams results of previous games. If everything is exactly the same for both teams as they were during previous games the predictions will likely be true. But, usually this is not the case. Usually something is different which means there's a chance a prediction might be invalidated.

Also even if you know the predicted results simply playing a team provides opportunities to make yourself and/or your team better players.
 
Here's an example of how predictive results are bad for teams....

Say you're on a team and need to travel from CA to AZ to play against a league team. The predicted results are either win or loss by 5+ goals. When this happens there's a HUGE incentive for parents to skip that game and save $$$ by not traveling to play in that game.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
Here's an example of how predictive results are bad for teams....

Say you're on a team and need to travel from CA to AZ to play against a league team. The predicted results are either win or loss by 5+ goals. When this happens there's a HUGE incentive for parents to skip that game and save $$$ by not traveling to play in that game.
Click to expand...

Traveling to AZ to play one league game is what's wrong with youth soccer in America...
To no one's fault to be honest... it's just the country is so damn big... A benefit in every other situation... but not so for youth sports...
 
Carlsbad7 said:
What I dont like about the app is predictability. While it's nice to see who mathematically will win a game.
Click to expand...

What I don't like is my kid's team underperforming predictability every single game lol
Oh we are supposed to win 5-1? It's a 2-2 nail biter...
So we should eek out a 2-1 win? It's a 5-1 blowout loss...
Stop giving us false hope! Rank us down already so we can stop expecting to win! :D
 
RandomSoccerFan said:
I can't imagine individual players deciding to come or not depending on what the outcome predictions were telling them, whether individual league games or even full tournaments.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure I've seen kids decide to go on a trip based on expected outcomes (though I don't doubt it happens occasionally), but I have seen kids use the app to decide where to play. When my son switched teams one year, he pulled out the app to decide where to try out.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
Predicted results are just the results of previous games applied to another teams results of previous games. If everything is exactly the same for both teams as they were during previous games the predictions will likely be true. But, usually this is not the case. Usually something is different which means there's a chance a prediction might be invalidated.
Click to expand...

I don't know how you can still believe this. You know, or should know, that the app is going to get the right winner 5 out of 6 times. That does mean it usually *is* the case. The prediction will likely be true. And it will get it wrong a portion of the time also. It's what prediction means. There is no requirement that all circumstances must be identical or the predictions are invalidated. The predictivity as measured right now already incorporates all of that variability.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
Here's an example of how predictive results are bad for teams....

Say you're on a team and need to travel from CA to AZ to play against a league team. The predicted results are either win or loss by 5+ goals. When this happens there's a HUGE incentive for parents to skip that game and save $$$ by not traveling to play in that game.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, I can see this. But of course they can look in the league standings and see that the team they are traveling to is terrible already - the app isn't likely to have made a difference.

focomoso said:
I'm not sure I've seen kids decide to go on a trip based on expected outcomes (though I don't doubt it happens occasionally), but I have seen kids use the app to decide where to play. When my son switched teams one year, he pulled out the app to decide where to try out.
Click to expand...

That seems like one of the primary use cases of the app.
 
Who here also thinks RandomSoccerFan is Mark and Mark is RandomSoccerFan? I have read the FAQ section of soccer ranking app and I don’t come away with all the details that Random has shared here. It’s time to come clean Random. Ransom’s avatar is also a soccer ball…hmmm.
 
Jamisfoes said:
Who here also thinks RandomSoccerFan is Mark and Mark is RandomSoccerFan? I have read the FAQ section of soccer ranking app and I don’t come away with all the details that Random has shared here. It’s time to come clean Random. Ransom’s avatar is also a soccer ball…hmmm.
Click to expand...
As some people on this board know me, and also know Mark, they also know that you're not particularly savvy. However, you certainly are ridiculous.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top