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MacDre said:
Can somebody please explain why so many in the US soccer ecosystem have no faith in our youths ability to learn basic fundamentals?
A long tradition of not emphasizing fundamentals. Seriously, though, don't coaches tend to teach the way they were taught? "
One of the main reasons we aren't great with fundamentals is that we care too much about winning games at too young of an age. I'm not saying kids shouldn't play to win. Learning to win is a very important trait.
But we've all witnessed a team playing 7v7 or 9v9 that wins a lot of games, but can't connect 4 passes in a row. Once a team, coach and parents get a taste for winning every game by 3+ goals- It's hard to "put the toothpaste back in the tube" and play in a way that might cause some mistakes by playing in tight spaces in your defending third.
Couple that with teams playing games on back to back days and there is little room for "development".
Pretty common example:
Team practices 2x per week for 90 minutes. 10 minutes is a warm up. 15 minutes of unopposed technical skills. 15 minutes of rondos or some sort of small sided game. A 30 minute "scrimmage" at the end of practice. 10 minutes of water breaks mixed in. 10 minutes of either "sprints" or a shooting/finishing drill.
Team has a game on Saturday and they win 4-1. Everyone is happy. They have another game the next day at 8 am. The kids are tired because they woke up at 6:00 am to get to the game by 7:15 to warm up. Some of them are sore from yesterdays game that ended at 4pm. Instead of trying to work on a specific game model/style of play - The coach is in survival mode and just wants to finish the weekend with another win. So they kick everything long. But it works because they have a kid who was born Jan 1st and is a foot taller than everyone else on the field.
Players go home and don't touch a soccer ball until practice in a few days. They don't watch any soccer on TV during the week (so they dont even know what "good" soccer looks like).
Another example that hampers overall development:
A kid with good skill and athleticism switches to a new coach every season. This could be for a variety of reasons:
1. Coach gets fired
2. Club merges with another club and coaches get reassigned.
3. Players parents think other players on the team aren't at the right level of their player.
4. Some other coach makes promises that sound amazing
5. Some "new" league pops up and players shuffle around trying to jockey for "the best league".
6. Parents don't like the way the coach has the team play and wonder "why do they keep passing it backwards"