Is US Mens/Boys Soccer Dead or Dying

[watfly]

Hmmm....this is interesting. Anyone seen the new MLSN pilot program drop in conjunction with Taka? In U13 and U14 they are introducing "quality of play" rankings . It doesn't say what it will really entail other than it moves it away from a pure athleticism/winning the game focus but instead will encourage teams to develop traits like "dominates possession".

More BS from the powers that be that completely ignore the "core" problems of US youth soccer development. Hey, we will change how we report the standings. Wah lah, our development problems are solved! Just like the following revolutionized youth soccer:

-DA
-2017 PDI's
-Calendar year age cutoff
-Build out line
-Bio banding
-MLS Next
-School year age cutoff
-etc

Our development system needs to be burnt to the ground, not having layers added to it.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

That might be funniest thing I've read in a long while. What sports are the "athletes" choosing? American Football? Basketball? Both those sports have unique physical requirements that limit who can actually play them. I don't think that is athlete vs non-athlete. Are there some players from those sports that could be good soccer players? Sure....but definitely not that 350lb lineman or that 7'2 center.

I get what you're saying but the concept still holds true.

The very best of our athletes aren't attracted by youth soccer.

We now live in an environment where college athletes are officially professional athletes getting paid $5m+ a year. College soccer can't offer that... Even making MLS senior roster at 16 years old would be far far behind what college football and basketball stars make...

This might ruffle some feathers but I think we actually do alright with soccer on the global stage despite the fact that it's our like 6th most popular sport (by viewership, consumption, TV money, etc). We are in FIFA ranking 16th place?

C'mon, we are vastly ahead in 95 different sports - not to sound like an arrogant American...

Yea, it sucks that in the ONE sport that is truly global, we aren't the very best... but we can't be the best at everything... it is what it is. I've accepted it (somewhat sadly, since it is my favorite sport after being NFL and NBA fanatic for most of my earlier years).

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

Lack of Pro/Rel may certainly have an impact in soccer's popularity (or lack thereof) in the US, but it isn't the missing piece. It may not even make the top 10 list of what's wrong the the US soccer environment as a whole. I think on balance, it is helpful, and it has shown to have some benefits - but it also creates foreseeable perverse incentives that can harm player development at the individual, team, and club level in the younger ages.

There's really only one reason... soccer isn't all that popular in America... yes I know it's made some advances but it PALES in comparison to NBA or NFL or even college football...

NFL's media rights deal is $111 BILLION over 11 years... vs Apple's exclusive MLS deal is a 10 year $2.5 BILLION...

NFL's is 55 times larger! 55 times!

Go to a sports bar on a Sunday... or a college campus in the SEC on a gameday...

This is football country. It will always be.

(Side note: NBA's deal is $76 BILLION over 11 years...)

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

This is probably a different issue with the USMNT, but there are 25 players on the team that play in the first division of the top 4 Euro leagues with another 7 playing in the Eredivisie (few are impact players, but still competing at the highest level). Panama has one and he didn't play in the game. 9 of the 11 starters for the USA played in the top 4 Euro leagues, one for Norwich and the other in the MLS. Somewhere there is a big disconnect.

It's almost as if soccer is a team sport and a team playing for each other can beat a "better team of more individually talented players" that don't play as a team...

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

I'm not sure if you are intentionally trying to ignore the point, are being intellectually dishonest, or really aren't getting it.

Soccer is not the sport of choice in the US for the best athletes or anyone else. It is not one of the most popular sports. It isn't the one that kids gravitate to. It isn't the one parents take their kids to watch. It isn't the one people watch on TV.

If we could snap our fingers and change that in the US - we would - and have been saying that it has been moving in that direction for 50 years now. But reality is a bitch.

Until that changes, it's unlikely that the USMNT is ever going to attract enough home-grown talent to challenge on the world stage again in our lifetimes. It's also likely that US soccer is going to have a particularly hard time in the college years given recent events.

I would actually argue that the global reach of European soccer is hurting the growth of American soccer...
It helps in terms of more kids being interested in it and playing it at the youth level...
That's not what I'm saying....
What I'm saying is, for US soccer to truly grow, we need more people watching it, more people going to it, more people buying apparel...
But with easy access to EPL or La Liga or Ligue 1 on streaming platforms, many just watch European soccer and not MLS... because it's an immensely better product... Much the same way Europeans or Asians watch NBA games (they have their domestic leagues too... but they know NBA is a superior product)

 

[NorCalDad]

I get what you're saying but the concept still holds true.

The very best of our athletes aren't attracted by youth soccer.

We now live in an environment where college athletes are officially professional athletes getting paid $5m+ a year. College soccer can't offer that... Even making MLS senior roster at 16 years old would be far far behind what college football and basketball stars make...

This might ruffle some feathers but I think we actually do alright with soccer on the global stage despite the fact that it's our like 6th most popular sport (by viewership, consumption, TV money, etc). We are in FIFA ranking 16th place?

C'mon, we are vastly ahead in 95 different sports - not to sound like an arrogant American...

Yea, it sucks that in the ONE sport that is truly global, we aren't the very best... but we can't be the best at everything... it is what it is. I've accepted it (somewhat sadly, since it is my favorite sport after being NFL and NBA fanatic for most of my earlier years).

My only point on this whole thing is that I've heard this argument many times over "our best athletes aren't playing soccer" without really any analysis if it has any weight to it. It sounds obvious on the surface, but I think when you look deeper at it (@Grace T. has a good response somewhere in this thread), it really isn't the reason why we're not more dominate at the international level. A very large chunk of NFL and NBA athletes don't have the prototypical soccer player body type. All sports lose players to other sports. I can come up with anecdotes all day long that shows this (just look at Jeff Samardzija at Notre Dame). I still stand by that our issue has nothing really to do with the amount of available athletes. There are other things (coaching, culture, field time, player identification, etc). There are about 1.5 million kids playing organized soccer between the ages of 13-17. The pool is huge.

 

[Mosafie]

My only point on this whole thing is that I've heard this argument many times over "our best athletes aren't playing soccer" without really any analysis if it has any weight to it. It sounds obvious on the surface, but I think when you look deeper at it (@Grace T. has a good response somewhere in this thread), it really isn't the reason why we're not more dominate at the international level. A very large chunk of NFL and NBA athletes don't have the prototypical soccer player body type. All sports lose players to other sports. I can come up with anecdotes all day long that shows this (just look at Jeff Samardzija at Notre Dame). I still stand by that our issue has nothing really to do with the amount of available athletes. There are other things (coaching, culture, field time, player identification, etc). There are about 1.5 million kids playing organized soccer between the ages of 13-17. The pool is huge.

1.5 million boys is still less than England, a small country with

40% of all boys in England participated in Soccer.

My only point on this whole thing is that I've heard this argument many times over "our best athletes aren't playing soccer" without really any analysis if it has any weight to it. It sounds obvious on the surface, but I think when you look deeper at it (@Grace T. has a good response somewhere in this thread), it really isn't the reason why we're not more dominate at the international level. A very large chunk of NFL and NBA athletes don't have the prototypical soccer player body type. All sports lose players to other sports. I can come up with anecdotes all day long that shows this (just look at Jeff Samardzija at Notre Dame). I still stand by that our issue has nothing really to do with the amount of available athletes. There are other things (coaching, culture, field time, player identification, etc). There are about 1.5 million kids playing organized soccer between the ages of 13-17. The pool is huge.

1.5 million is a low number in comparison to even a small country like England which has about the same number of boy players.

40% of ALL boys in England play soccer. When you have 40% exposure the chance of finding talent is much higher, specially in a country with a free youth academy system.

The US participation rate doesn't come close to that.

Of that 1.5 million probably less than 5% have the athletic ability to be world class. Then you look at how many have the means, access to proper coaching and development to be world class.

US has both a sport popularity and development system problem.

Even MLS Next clubs have part time coaches with barely a high school degree with negligible knowledge of sports science and youth physical and mental development.

 

[Mosafie]

There are 18,000 youth professional academy players in England. They play free. Of players given scholarship at 16 less than 2% are still in any of the 5 English pro leagues by 18 years old. Less than 20 players make it to the Premier League.

20 kids out of 2.4 million kids that play are world class in England.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

My only point on this whole thing is that I've heard this argument many times over "our best athletes aren't playing soccer" without really any analysis if it has any weight to it. It sounds obvious on the surface, but I think when you look deeper at it (@Grace T. has a good response somewhere in this thread), it really isn't the reason why we're not more dominate at the international level. A very large chunk of NFL and NBA athletes don't have the prototypical soccer player body type. All sports lose players to other sports. I can come up with anecdotes all day long that shows this (just look at Jeff Samardzija at Notre Dame).

You continue to ignore the point. The pool isn't huge - and the many of the best potential players aren't in it. It's not just that all sports lose players to other sports. It's that soccer loses players to just about any other more popular sport - while those other sports aren't losing their best candidates to soccer. That's how popularity works. It's not just that the body types are extreme at the 0.001% level for some sports - is that at the 1% level, a whole bunch of them aren't even going to consider soccer due to its lack of popularity.

I still stand by that our issue has nothing really to do with the amount of available athletes. There are other things (coaching, culture, field time, player identification, etc). There are about 1.5 million kids playing organized soccer between the ages of 13-17. The pool is huge.

But it doesn't contain enough kids who are going to be good enough - and it isn't large enough to make up for that fact.

 

[watfly]

My only point on this whole thing is that I've heard this argument many times over "our best athletes aren't playing soccer" without really any analysis if it has any weight to it. It sounds obvious on the surface, but I think when you look deeper at it (@Grace T. has a good response somewhere in this thread), it really isn't the reason why we're not more dominate at the international level. A very large chunk of NFL and NBA athletes don't have the prototypical soccer player body type. All sports lose players to other sports. I can come up with anecdotes all day long that shows this (just look at Jeff Samardzija at Notre Dame). I still stand by that our issue has nothing really to do with the amount of available athletes. There are other things (coaching, culture, field time, player identification, etc). There are about 1.5 million kids playing organized soccer between the ages of 13-17. The pool is huge.

In California, if you took the skill players from a HS football team and put them up against a boys team from MLS Next/ECNL (or any upper tier teams) and had them compete in a variety of athletic events, the football players would destroy the soccer players in any strength events, but the soccer players would dominate the skill/coordination and endurance events. Speed events would probably be closer to a draw, but I'd still favor the soccer players overall. Football players prevailing in the strength events is because that is a big part of their training, where there is very little of that in soccer (although I believe it should take a larger role in soccer).

When my son started playing football in high school, I was surprised at the much higher coordination levels of the soccer players vs football players.

 

[Grace T.]

In California, if you took the skill players from a HS football team and put them up against a boys team from MLS Next/ECNL (or any upper tier teams) and had them compete in a variety of athletic events, the football players would destroy the soccer players in any strength events, but the soccer players would dominate the skill/coordination and endurance events. Speed events would probably be closer to a draw, but I'd still favor the soccer players overall. Football players prevailing in the strength events is because that is a big part of their training, where there is very little of that in soccer (although I believe it should take a larger role in soccer).

When my son started playing football in high school, I was surprised at the much higher coordination levels of the soccer players vs football players.

For speed, the math would be interesting and would vary depending on how good the program at the HS. If it's a good program, the WR might pull up the average to make up for the offensive and defensive linemen who tend to be heavier set. Really the overlap on the football field of athletes really are the WR, TE, QB, RB...maybe a DE.

 

[watfly]

For speed, the math would be interesting and would vary depending on how good the program at the HS. If it's a good program, the WR might pull up the average to make up for the offensive and defensive linemen who tend to be heavier set. Really the overlap on the football field of athletes really are the WR, TE, QB, RB...maybe a DE.

To be fair I'm just talking about FB skill players.

This kid goes to a school in our league. He has offers from every top FB in the nation. He's a phenom.

https://fox5sandiego.com/sports/high-school-sports/mount-miguels-brandon-arrington-breaks-back-to-back-san-diego-section-records-leads-nation-in-100-and-200-meter/

He has the fastest time of any American, any age, in the 200m this year.

 

[Socal-Soccer-Dad]

There are other things (coaching, culture, field time, player identification, etc).

I do think coaching is a big problem. I'm not saying all youth coaching is bad. But for a country our size, we need MORE top level coaches and we simply don't have it.

There are about 1.5 million kids playing organized soccer between the ages of 13-17. The pool is huge.

So since we are trying to field a USMNT team vs the best of the world, I'm going to discount most of that 1.5 million.

What we need is more academy teams. In London - I was talking to a coach who moved from there - there are like a dozen fully funded teams. Was talking to a different French guy and same thing - dozen or so fully funded teams in and around Paris.

And due to smaller size of the countries, these academy teams play each other all the time. Whereas in our big ass country, we get a national showcase a couple of times a year. Yes, LA Galaxy and LAFC play other MLS Next clubs but minus a couple other teams in each age group, it's really not a challenge.

But we can't force more academy teams... force more MLS teams... there needs to be a demand and we simply don't have the demand for it in the US... I've posted somewhere else but it's FARRRRR behind other sports in terms of popularity and money vs NFL NBA MLB and even behind college football and basketball...

 

[Mosafie]

In California, if you took the skill players from a HS football team and put them up against a boys team from MLS Next/ECNL (or any upper tier teams) and had them compete in a variety of athletic events, the football players would destroy the soccer players in any strength events, but the soccer players would dominate the skill/coordination and endurance events. Speed events would probably be closer to a draw, but I'd still favor the soccer players overall. Football players prevailing in the strength events is because that is a big part of their training, where there is very little of that in soccer (although I believe it should take a larger role in soccer).

When my son started playing football in high school, I was surprised at the much higher coordination levels of the soccer players vs football players.

As a College Track coach who has trained many youth soccer players for speed, I can with 100% certainty say that soccer player are nowhere close to football players in sprint speed. Most soccer coaches don't know how to coach speed and the aerobic nature of soccer practices can kill proper sprint form.

The top youth football skill position players are way faster than soccer players.

Sorry but for strength, speed, and agility the comparison is not even close. Take any MLS pro put them in the NFL combine against WR and running backs and they would get destroyed.

Football trains, recruits, and pays lots of money for speed.

 

[watfly]

Most soccer coaches don't know how to coach speed and the aerobic nature of soccer practices can kill proper sprint form.

This is so true. It's one of the biggest failures in our soccer development. Soccer coaches believe speed can't be taught, which is completely untrue. You won't go from slow 100m Olympic level, but you can dramatically improve speed through training. Even if kids were just taught how to improve first step, it would make a big difference.

I'm still taking soccer players in agility, which is still more important than straight line speed, although still very valuable.

 

[whatithink]

This is so true. It's one of the biggest failures in our soccer development. Soccer coaches believe speed can't be taught, which is completely untrue. You won't go from slow 100m Olympic level, but you can dramatically improve speed through training. Even if kids were just taught how to improve first step, it would make a big difference.

I'm still taking soccer players in agility, which is still more important than straight line speed, although still very valuable.

There was a Ronaldo program a while back where they measured multiple skills of his. One was speed and he was up against an Olympic (Spanish I think) sprinter. Straight line, he lost, but they also did a zigzag, which he won. Combining Ronaldo was "faster". He is exceptional mind ...

 

[whatithink]

For speed, the math would be interesting and would vary depending on how good the program at the HS. If it's a good program, the WR might pull up the average to make up for the offensive and defensive linemen who tend to be heavier set. Really the overlap on the football field of athletes really are the WR, TE, QB, RB...maybe a DE.

Cornerbacks and safeties are built for soccer.

 

[whatithink]

I do think coaching is a big problem. I'm not saying all youth coaching is bad. But for a country our size, we need MORE top level coaches and we simply don't have it.


So since we are trying to field a USMNT team vs the best of the world, I'm going to discount most of that 1.5 million.

What we need is more academy teams. In London - I was talking to a coach who moved from there - there are like a dozen fully funded teams. Was talking to a different French guy and same thing - dozen or so fully funded teams in and around Paris.

And due to smaller size of the countries, these academy teams play each other all the time. Whereas in our big ass country, we get a national showcase a couple of times a year. Yes, LA Galaxy and LAFC play other MLS Next clubs but minus a couple other teams in each age group, it's really not a challenge.

But we can't force more academy teams... force more MLS teams... there needs to be a demand and we simply don't have the demand for it in the US... I've posted somewhere else but it's FARRRRR behind other sports in terms of popularity and money vs NFL NBA MLB and even behind college football and basketball...

So how does a country like Croatia have such success over such a long period with a population of just over 4M. Its pro league has 10 teams in it, and obviously its best talent plays in the top Euro leagues. What are they doing with a similar or smaller number of players and yet they can get to WC semis, finals etc.

 

[Grace T.]

So how does a country like Croatia have such success over such a long period with a population of just over 4M. Its pro league has 10 teams in it, and obviously its best talent plays in the top Euro leagues. What are they doing with a similar or smaller number of players and yet they can get to WC semis, finals etc.

It’s the intersection of the best athletes and academy theories. The country is fanatical about soccer and has a very robust free to play soccer tykes Rec program around ages 5-9. They are also an eu member so the academies from Germany, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands are prowling down there for prospects. And those academies also trust the Croatian academies which have a knack for developing talent. They don’t do it here because they can’t even if the fifa rules became more flexible due to the immigration laws.

 

[whatithink]

It’s the intersection of the best athletes and academy theories. The country is fanatical about soccer and has a very robust free to play soccer tykes Rec program around ages 5-9. They are also an eu member so the academies from Germany, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands are prowling down there for prospects. And those academies also trust the Croatian academies which have a knack for developing talent. They don’t do it here because they can’t even if the fifa rules became more flexible due to the immigration laws.

I don't know, I just checked a few of the better-known (to me) players and all of these played their youth soccer in Croatia - Modric, Livakovic (GK), Perisic, Gvardiol, Kovacic, Brozovic. Certainly, some do go abroad, but it doesn't seem to be that definitive. From my very brief reading, its seems that Dinamo Zagreb & Hajduk Split develop the talent, and they are renowned for that.

Certainly, Croatian are all in on soccer, but they are also all in on water polo! It seems to me that they have an excellent identification and then development system in place, with clubs relying on it to help them financially.

 

[NorCalDad]

There are 18,000 youth professional academy players in England. They play free. Of players given scholarship at 16 less than 2% are still in any of the 5 English pro leagues by 18 years old. Less than 20 players make it to the Premier League.

20 kids out of 2.4 million kids that play are world class in England.

I think England is an interesting example. During the 00/10s they were struggling internationally. My understanding is the EPL was being dominated by foreign born players. A consortium of different orgs, including EPL, formed the EPPP in the early 10s help develop home grown talent. I think in recent years that plan is finally bearing fruit given their star studded roster.

Also, no doubt soccer is more popular in England, but I don't think that 40% number is super comparable to the US. I believe there's about 15k academy players and about 1.1-1.3m grassroots. Anecdotally I've heard grassroots is starting to show some signs of what club soccer is doing in the US -- just through conversations with friends. That 40% number includes playing on playgrounds at recess, etc. That all said, the participation number in soccer is definitely higher in England, but like the 00/10s proved, they too are vulnerable to low level playing internationally.

Finally, I think without a doubt pay-to-play is a massive problem for us in the states. I think we lose far more players to pay-to-play, poor player identification, development priorities, and BS politics most clubs have. The number of players we lose there far outweighs the number of players lost to other sports. Even all that said, I still stand by that there is absolutely no reason we couldn't implement something EPPP. There's still a large enough pool to do it. The challenge, of course, is who's going to pay for it.