To be perfectly fair to both arguments, all the accounts of soccer players not playing other sports is anecdotal at best. It doesn't prove or disprove anything that we know that the some of the best started and focused at an early age. We just don't know enough of the story.
I don't know much about the way professional clubs in Spain, Uruguay or Netherlands select which young players to work with. Outside of the goalie and CB positions, it would seem to me they are preselecting based on technical ability, game intelligence and low center of gravity. Athleticism really isn't a priority as it can be developed with proper training.
It is not anecdotal at all. It is a well known fact that majority, if not all, of the best players in the history of soccer didn't play other sports, but instead specialized from early age. Majority of the medium level players did the same too. The thing to keep in mind though is that many countries around the world, kids may play and/or be exposed to other sports in school during gym classes (those classes are actually known as "physical education"). Some of those other sports include: basketball, handball, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball, skiing, etc. However, there is no american football or baseball, as they are not considered major sports in most countries around the world. But kids in those countries do not commit to multiple sports in organized fashion (outside of school) like the american kids do. Many countries focus on this physical education for kids in school and I find it strange that in US there isn't more emphasis on that (in schools). I have a few friends who are gym teachers (immigrants from Europe) and they tell me that the gym classes/curriculum is not enough. As a result many american kids do not have the body coordination as kids in other countries do, despite the fact that american kids are committed to many organized sports outside of school's gym classes.
Even for CB positions there is a preselection based on technical ability and intelligence. In fact, the preselection is almost never divided by positions. Also, the criteria for selection is the focus of work as well. But it must be noted that speed is valued in the selection process as well. You know the Ajax's famous criteria for selection is TIPS - technique, intelligence, personality and speed....in that order.
Think about what you're saying. All the professionals in all the leagues around the world did not play any sports other than soccer. Off the top of my head, I know both Cesc Fabregas and Diego Forlan are pretty good tennis players. Forlan was actually split on whether he should pursue a professional track in tennis or soccer, but Diego Maradona convinced him to pursue soccer.
Not to mention some of the better athletes in the US played soccer at a young age. Wonder why that didn't inhibit their ability to become pro basketball and football players.
Readers should understand that Ajax's model is not simply four words, but a highly detailed approach to player evaluation. These four words happen to be a English translation. In each category 10 things are evaluated. And age is taken into account. What they are looking for is a player who is ahead of his peers. "Technique" doesn't simply correspond to the "technical" pillar in our player model. For Ajax it includes tactics too. This is the most important factor overall. (But without superior technique a player is not going to be able to stand out by dominating older bigger, stronger, faster players. So that is going to probably be true of any evaluation system.) "Insight" is probably a better word to use than "Intelligence." They are looking at how a player anticipates and solves problems. "Personality" is intuitive. Soccer is a team sport and the evaluation is for potential candidates for their academy. Dedicated and well-adjusted candidates are obviously desireable. So is love of the game. This aspect is pretty important as its "pass/fail." Ajax doesn't believe it can be improved through training. "Speed" is not intuitive. For the young players they are absolutely not looking at who sprints the fastest in a straight line. They are looking at running technique rather than just stop watch times, as times are misleading. Faster times could simply be due to a temporary physical superiority.
The player's character - social skills, ambition, determination, work ethic, behavior, etc. Why you ignore the rest of my post? As kids, some of the players (depending on in which era and country they grew up in) possibly played some other sport.....in school during gym class. Very very few of them have played other sports as they have soccer or as kids do here in US. And if any of them, such as your example of Fabregas and Forlan, have played other sports, it mostly likely has been just one other sport, not more or every other sport. For Cesc and Forlan that other sport has been tennis - good sport with good future incentives, but also an individual sport unlike soccer. How long have Fabregas and Forlan played tennis? Do you have any more details about that? Any official links, etc.? Not that I don't trust you, I just wanna read about it. Anyway, there are exceptions. The fact is that even them two have specialized in soccer from early age. There is nothing wrong with specializing in a sport. But people in US freak about it too much. On the other hand, parents have no choice as street play and social life for kids is dead. I haven't said that it is just four words. Yes, it is more than that. No, it doesn't include tactics. This is where tactics are included. Insight or intelligence - same thing, really. Where did you read that? It can't be improved through training on the field, but it can certainly be molded and improved. No, they are not timing with a stop-watch who runs the fastest in a straight line, but they do look at physical speed as well as at technical and tactical speed. All speeds within the game and in the context of the game.
Maybe this is apropos of nothing, but I was watching Real Sports and they were analyzing the phenomenon of South Korean Female golfers. I don't recall exactly what the stat was but there is a high percentage of female SK in the top ten of the sport. An astonishing phenomenon since the country is relatively small in size and population and only took to the sport en masse since 1998 (the year Se Ri Pak won the US Open). Without a lot of avenues available to them, a huge number of girls in that country have taken to the sport. With a "lenient" laissez faire school system it's not unheard of of girls training 7 days a week for 8 hours a day. At that rate, they can hit their 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in a mere 3.4 years! It seems to be working for them!
How distant? When I was growing up in the 70's-80's, everyone played multiple sports, though usually only one each season. Nobody played a sport year-round. Now many sports want a year-round commitment. I think soccer pushes most for specialization, but baseball/softball does as well. When my son was 7-8, he played soccer ten months of the year, as well as football, basketball, and baseball during their traditional seasons. He dropped everything but soccer by age 10. I think he was probably overly influenced by early success on the soccer field and the readily availability of professional coaches instead of parents, but we always just let him decide. After all, it's my job to develop a happy, healthy child, not to raise the standard of soccer in the US.
Depends on the country/continent. Organized (travel) sports or on the streets and parks? I grew up during the 80s and 90s (granted, in a different country), when kids played whatever sport they wanted as much as they wanted....on the streets and parks, without adult supervision. Of course, in my neck of the woods, soccer was played most often. I grew up in Eastern Europe, so we didn't play football or baseball. I played mostly soccer, with occasional basketball and volleyball. But I only played soccer in organized fashion. 99% of my friends chose to play only one organized sport, but multiple un-organized sports. My friends and I had a lot of free time though, unlike the kids in US. That's on a travel level. Rec sports do not require year-round commitment, at least not in my area. Kids do not have to play all sports or multiple sports and not kids can do it. Because soccer requires the most specialization, especially early specialization. Rec or travel? What if the kid is happy to play just one sport from early age?
Orangized. All football was basically travel although it wasn't called that at the time. It was Fall only. All other sports were rec. I only heard of one travel baseball team when I was young, and even that was Spring only. In the parks, we mostly played football regardless of season. I don't really consider anything we did in the park actually playing a sport, but park soccer is probably much closer to reality. Then again, I never knew anyone who owned a soccer ball, at least not that they'd admit to. My son played travel soccer (year-round), travel football (Fall), something in-between for baseball (Spring) and rec basketball (Winter). Soccer may require the most early specialization to create a star (many here would apparently disagree), but I doubt that's why travel soccer requires a year-round commitment. How many kids playing year-round travel soccer have event the slightest chance of becoming a star, or even playing in college? Is anyone telling them to play three months a year, have some fun, and do other things with the rest of their year? No, because youth soccer is a more of a business than any other youth sport I know of. Somebody has to pay all those old pro soccer players who didn't make any money while they were playing. We encouraged our kids to try different things to find out what they enjoyed. They didn't have any preconceived ideas, but soccer is the first major sport that you can kind of do at a very young age, so they tried that first and it stuck. If they really loved a particular sport without having tried any, I'd probably still encourage them to try multiple sports, but I never forced them to play anything. This seems to be going way off topic, but I guess that's the norm for this forum. My point was just that, for better or worse, I see much more specialization in soccer than was true in any sport when I grew up.
The difference between you growing up in US and me growing up in my country, is that in my country (multiple) sports were played in unorganized manner on the streets, with the main sport being soccer. If someone was more serious about a particular sport, then they committed to it in organized form, i.e. travel. Playing rec sports in US is not really the same as playing unorganized sports on the street. The other difference is the fact that playing soccer for me in my country was free, because organized youth soccer in my country is/was connected with either a pro, semi-pro or amateur men's team - the adult team sponsors the youth team in order to find and develop players. IMO, this is too much. I have two sons and neither of them plays that much. My older one plays soccer year-round and basketball in the Winter, while my younger one plays only soccer. A friend of mine coaches baseball and wanted my older son to play baseball, but I said no because it conflicts with soccer. I told my son to choose - if he wants to play baseball he would have to give up soccer. I'm not wasting my money to pay for both soccer and baseball when my son would have to always miss attending one or the other (due to conflicting schedules). I don't understand parents who sign up their kids for multiple sports that overlap and have conflicting schedules. The kid is forced to always miss one or the other, the parent and his kid do not get their full value for the money. If I know my kid has soccer on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday (2 practices + game), then I'm not going to sign him up for any other sport that also requires him to be there on the same days as soccer. He can play something else or do something else on the remaining 3-4 days (Tue, Thu, Fri, Sun)....if he wants to. Soccer doesn't require the most specialization just to create star players. The reason it requires it is because it's a complex sport/game with many skills and techniques that have to be mastered in basic form early on in order for one to play even at a decent level (at each age) and have fun with it. Not only soccer, but all youth sports are business in US, designed for someone to make money and earn a living. Do you know why? Because kids are not allowed to play sports on their own, like it should be. There are so many parks, fields, courts for all kinds of sports, more than anywhere else in the world. But it is very rare to see kids (especially caucasian kids) play on those parks, fields and courts on their own. It is always with some coach, parent or adult. If you see kids playing on their own, it is most likely Latino kids. And what do they play? Soccer. That's why they are better youth soccer players. African-american kids also can be seen playing on their own - they play either basketball or football. That's fine and all. But not all sports should be tried and played in organized manner, especially when schedules conflict and all of them cost money. When I was young, my parents never told me to play any sport or one sport or all sports. I played what I wanted and my parents never paid for me to play. When you say "specialization" I take it you mean the kids play only soccer, right? Nothing wrong with specialization....in any sport.
I agree wholeheartedly. Rarely does playing in the street teach you much about the sport itself. Not where I live. Aside from soccer, all of the major sports, even at the travel level, are run by volunteers and coached by parents. Fees are in the hundreds, not thousands, of dollars. Soccer clubs are run by paid staff and coached by professional coaches, most of whom don't have other jobs. I know this is a forum for soccer fanatics, but I think your view may be biased. I see many people playing soccer at youth level, high school, adult leagues, etc., with no skill at all and having a blast. Some would argue that MLS is an example of this. At the same time, I think you fail to appreciate the complexity of other sports like football and baseball. Go to any forum dedicated to another sport and try to convince them that soccer is more complex than their sport of choice. Basketball seems pretty simple to me, but I'm humble enough to expect that's only because I don't know enough about it. Yes. I know you think that's a good thing and others disagree. Personally, I don't know the right answer or even if there is a right answer for everyone, which I why I haven't taken a position. I'm simply stating an observation that specialization increasing, not decreasing, in the US.
The thing that makes soccer an early specialization sport is that the window for being a top level player comes much faster than other sports, such as baseball. In soccer, you hit your peak at a much earlier age before the physical demands of the sport begin to take it's toll. Whereas in baseball, it requires you to be an early specializer just to get in the door of the pro game. After that it takes time to learn the intricacies of the game and how to make it through a season. People don't pick up baseball as a freshmen in hs and advance to the professional levels. Nor do they in soccer. However, in soccer, you need to be at the upper levels by 21 or so whereas in baseball it can be as late as 25 or 26. Soccer is similar to gymnastics, which is on the extreme, in that you better commit early to be an Olympian because hitting your stride at 23 is way too late.
I don't really buy it. The structure of the European/South American system pushes the players towards early bloomers who are ready to play at 18/19/20. Those are the ones that get the big fees. Clint Dempsey, for example, would likely have been lost in that system, as he seems to be a physical late bloomer. Early specialization also tends toward a lot of injuries fairly early in the career. Early bloomer + early injuries and its no surprise that careers end early as well. The U.S. is going to have to find another way to create soccer superstars then the completely dedicate your life to soccer at 12 that the Europeans do. College is just way too important to most parents, and there won't be unlimited numbers of poor latino kids in the future, because immigration is going to be down.
It's too bad Wayne Rooney wasted all that time on boxing. He might have made something of himself as a soccer player if he had specialized earlier.
Actually, playing on the streets can teach you a lot about a sport. Most parents and volunteers can teach sports like baseball and football, but not that many can teach soccer, for example. And still, regardless if a sport costs hundreds or thousands of $$$ to play, rec or travel, it is still "pay to play" and it's a business. They play with limited skills, not with "no skills". I don't deny the complexity of other sports, but soccer is simply even more complex and requires more skills.....with the feet. Football, baseball and basketball are played with hands. There isn't a general right answer regarding specialization. It depends on the sport and on each individual. I do not think specialization is increasing in US though.
I will disagree with this. The system in Europe and South America doesn't push the early bloomers in terms of physique. The system is designed to develop and promote players who are developed in all aspects of the game (technical, tactical, physical and mental) by the age of 18. Speaking of Dempsey, my guess is that he would be the player he is today at 20-22 if he was a product of a European or South American system. There isn't another way to be found for US, especially when the rest of the world continues to produce ready players at 18, while we send ours off to colleges.
So, if only a young Dempsey had found his way into the youth teams of Zimbru Chisinau or Sport Boys, he would have been in the top five Premier League scorers by age 20-22. You bet. Considering that only one out of last season's top 20 EPL goalscorers was under the age of 23, I'd say your guess is fairly implausible.
I'll just make an argument about the complexity of soccer.In no particular order: -More players. There's a graphic floating around out there on why 4v4 is idea for young kids and the main reason is it's lack of complexity. There's a small amount of choices that must be processed. The graphic keeps becoming more complex as it goes up one player from 5v5 all the way to 11v11. I think this illustrates the complexity of soccer over 5v5 basketball -American football is 11v11, but it's a relatively static game. The other team is nice enough to set up for you before action starts. Additionally, you have a bunch of specialists. WRs do not perform the same tasks as RBs/QBs/Linemen or the defensive side of the ball. Yes, football players have to memorize copious amounts of plays but as any teacher will tell you ROTE memorization is the lowest form of learning. Conversely, soccer players have to be generalists with a small amount of specialization. Take a player like Mascherano, midfielder at Liverpool, Center back at Barca, and if he went to MLS I'm pretty sure he'd be a decent striker. Ashley cole started out as a forward, moved to right back but bombs forward enough that he'd be a decent midfielder for a midtable side. -Baseball? Try executing in a state of oxygen deprivation . . .