I posted this in another thread and I wanted to (spin it off) it into an American topic: "The German FA invests around 17mil annually in their youth system (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/b...-germany-flair) nationwide. Jogi Low has the easiest job in the world because those players have been so well coached all their lives, all he has to do is put them in place. Thats the most any country invests, in the world that I know of. So if Guus Hiddink, Jogi Low or Jose Mourinho did come here to coach the US it may help, but only so much because our players did not get the same level of attention at the grassroots level the Germans did. IMO What we need is to invest more into our youth systems. Germany is smaller than Montana with a population of 83,000,000. The US has a population's is 310,000,000. That should give you an idea of how much we need to invest via scale if the German's invest 17mil per yr.
the total turnover of the USSF is something like 25 million- for EVERYTHING! Women, men, youth, AYSO. Do you have a billion or so to give? If so, the endowment could bring something like 50M per year.
That's just the DFB money. Add the investments of the pro clubs, and you're somewhere around 100 M Euros a year.
So Germany has 1/4 of our population, but spends 3/4 of the USSF ENTIRE budget on their youth development. Also, Size of Germany: 137,847 sq. mi. Size of United States: 3,794,101 sq. mi. So I'm gonna guess scouting is a little easier for them. And people wonder why the U.S. aren't world beaters yet...
I'd also like to add that in countries like Germany, they're more efficient about their talent pipe line. The better clubs don't waste their time developing kids they deem don't have pro potential AND their main focus is on the boys. Here our resources are stretched (although not negatively). Half the financial resources are spent on the women's game. Many many good coaches are pulled from the men's game to coach girls/women's teams. We spend way too much time and money developing kids that don't have a future as pros. Again, not a bad thing, but it's inefficient when your goal is to make top flight professionals and/or win a world cup. It's a hard line for me to make considering I'm currently coaching girls and I don't think it's wrong for us here in America. I'm just saying that other countries don't have to deal with this. Sure Brazil and Germany have women's teams but they have plentiful of resources for the men's game (money and coaches) that we don't have here.
Of course they do. You need 20 boys to make a team, even when you're convinced that 15 of them don't have a future in pro soccer.
Yes, that's why clubs like Ajax send players that they deem have reached their ceiling away annualy and sign new players that they feel they can develop. I'm sure the top German clubs do similar things.
Most of those kids who dont have a future are still paying for the system, so ultimately we arent spending a penny on developing them.
Right, but opportunity cost: that coach could be coaching someone WITH potential, coach could be more focused on THOSE with potential, In this country, any one with money can find a team to play on. In the serious soccer countries, money can't buy you entry onto a good team. The DC area is a great example. There's a division 5 team for U12 girls with a former French national team player coaching them. And that's kinda common. If resources were more focused, then that coach might be one among a highly qualified staff coaching one team.
unfortunately our system is set on making money rather then developing to make money. That kid WITH potential typically finds their way onto some team, even if its developing through rec or YMCA then fielding the HS team. Its a broken system that needs fixing. Academies like the Cosmos are free from U8-U19 allowing them to hand pick who they want on the field, rather then who pays the fee. The system is changing, but at this point, it is what it is. Teams with the "former French National team Player" coaching them tend to cost $$$. Would he be better suited coaching the top talents rather then who pays? Of course, but the fact remains is without Sponsorship, without the chance for our youth clubs to profit on developing, Pay-To-Play will always cause this dilemma.
No, they don't. Very different market. The top German clubs can't find an unknown 17 or 18 year old player who's better than their players somewhere in the forest; these prospects have already been identified some years ago, and play for the academies of other clubs. The top players at lower tier clubs are (at a certain age) worse than the "mediocre" players at the top academies, so there's no reason to exchange them; you won't win anything. I mean - it's simple. Let's just take the 18 Bundesliga clubs and their academies; they all produce something like 15-20 U19 players every year. Most of them can't make a pro squad, there's just not enough space. The situation in Holland is just very different; very few top academies, and Ajax can more or less pick every Dutch prospect. Bayern can't; they have to compete for every top prospect, not the other way around.
I'm pretty sure that Ajax has either a self or KNVB imposed recruiting "district" of 60km radius around Amsterdam. Now, do some people move into the Ajax area? Sure.
So from what I gather from reading this thread. 1. The system just needs to change. 2. Than after it changes we need to have about 30-40 teams so there are enough scouts to cover the huge landmass that is the United States. 3. Then they need to not waist as much time coaching up "roster fillers" and spend more time with potential stars. *Another thing I have a problem w/ in the US is: In Germany you have to have 12 Germans on the roster at all times and only 5 non Euro's are allowed. Why not implement a rule like that in the MLS if you are trying to build US Soccer?
Germany doesn't have a non-EU limit, and has no roster limit. A Bundesliga club could sign 25 Brazilians, and give "pro contracts" for 30.000 € per year to 12 youth players.
Ding Ding Ding! Every time USSF goes to the lower-income communities for these soccer clinics. What you would notice is in every camp, half and even sometimes more than half of the kids are females. Now this is just spreading the game to the unreached areas, but you get the point of sharing resources. What your doing is your limiting yourself by X2 of finding the next super-star player that can change the image of soccer in the United States...A.K.A. Tiger Woods for Golf. The Boys side is a National Emergency. Nobody outside of maybe 4 other Women NT will ever be able to touch our pool even with very limited resources. Something what you will notice, is that Football and Baseball show no love for females in ths country unlike basketball and soccer. Guess what the supposed 2 biggest sports in this country are and half the crowds are females................you guesses it! So you dont need to have an Amazing USWNT to get the females into soccer , you just need the sport on the Males side to get more popular. So i do believe at the moment, some more pumping of resources need to go into the male side.
I guess I miss understand this: TSG: How easy is it to transfer? Preston: My contract is to the end of the season. Obviously, it’s much more difficult to transfer if you’re a foreigner. There’s more incentive to sign a German guy. Each German side needs twelve Germans on each roster and allows only five non-EU players. This is something I struggled with at Hamburg. It was somewhat hopeless there and led to that ill-fated Austrian move. Link: http://theshinguardian.com/2010/10/26/as-told-by-preston-zimmerman-part-i/
It was 5-non-EU when he signed there. It isn't anymore. As to the youth (that is, in this case, literally being wasted on the young), the USSF and MLS have managed to reach enough talented athletes. What these athletes often don't get, for various reasons, is quality coaching and, in fact, are often taught a bastardized version of the real game of football.
It's probably not going to happen (shifting resources to the men's side). The explosion of women's soccer in this country coincides with the implementation of Title IX. Even if MLS blows up, I think monies will still by distributed equally. I think one positive about the women's game is that, at least in theory, we're educating a next generation of very informed mom's/parents. Making it doubly important that we're teaching the right things at the right time to players (proper technique at early ages, before tactics).
Again no it doesn't. The population of Amsterdam is just over 1 million. The Dutch population totals 16 million. Seriously Lascho you're talking nonsense here. The Dutch FA has a youth academy classification system. The vast majority of professional football clubs have three stars (that's the highest you can achieve). Youth development in general is of a high level in the NL, even at the amateur level. The youth academy of my club Twente currently has over 25 German youngsters. And Enschede is very near a whole bunch of Bundesliga clubs as you hopefully know. The days that Ajax dominated youth development in the Netherlands are long gone.
Yeah, we're now getting to the point of even having some Mom's along with the Dad's who played ODP and college soccer coaching the U littles instead of years ago when it was a Dad volunteer who never played the game. Add to that qualified trainers and academies and youth coaching is definitely building momentum from where it was 20 yrs ago. Not perfect or the quality of Germany and Netherlands, but definitely improved.
Interesting article from June of this year on the changes and pressures involved with youth development/recruiting in the Netherlands. From NYTimes magazine... How a Soccer Star is Made http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html