Hours Spent Playing Soccer

I have thought about that too. How much of that is the continued development of the internet allowing better opportunities for the same level players and how much of it is us producing actual better players? I am not sure what the percentage of each is, but I definitely believe that the internet (which is available to players from every country) has bridged a lot of the gaps that existed in the past.

Because players from all countries benefit from the internet (streaming, youtube, email, etc. - don't get me started on cell phones!), this would explain why you don't see more of an improvement by our national team. Is our country doing better? I think so. Yes - but not as much as we may think if we don't acknowledge how much of a difference new communication has made as far as providing opportunities that were just not there in the past. Look at all of the Mexicans and central American youth players that get scouted by European clubs now. We aren't the only country in CONCACAF that has more players on big clubs than in the past. I would say we are "part of the crowd" in that respect.

 

Intellectually I just can't make the jump you do. The comparison is with ourselves not vs other countries. I still think in person evaluation and trials are the main method of signing a player, while internet helps in scouting and getting in the door, teams still heavily use people in the scouting and evaluation of talent. We have always had players in Europe being scouted in Europe and none of them has jumped to Roma, Tottenham, and Everton. Now we do. I can not think of any players of the past that I thought were talented enough for top clubs but just didn't have the access. True access started in 1996 when world teams had a league to scout. Even before that our national teams were scouted and many college players had trials. We are getting more players in top teams in unprecedented numbers. I use my memory to remember how bad we were at international youth levels, I remember Mike Lapper, Mike Burns, Chris Armas, Cobi Jones, etc and know they were starters on our national team that just aren't as talented as what we have now.
You say access I say talent plus access. You say chicken I say egg.

 

Good Point. I don't want to discount your post but I was excluding goalies in my point and tried to emphasize contributors or starters at top 5 clubs so.....Friedel and Keller wouldn't be there. Hejduk and Lewis really weren't starters or even contributors playing in only games in the teens. Joe Max Moore had a nice run and would fall under that point so would O'Brien Reyna and Sanneh. Even though I thought Sanneh was pretty limited overall after playing great at the WC.
Overall you point is well taken.

 

If we are being honest though, how much of that improvement that we have seen in players is because players just work harder because they have better access to watch foreign games and they know that they have the opportunity to play in them as they see guys like Dempsey or whoever playing in them?

I am not saying, and I did not say, that this is the only reason for our improvement - just that this is much more of a reason for our improvement than us getting better at teaching the game. We have gotten better, but not nearly as much as you would think, and if people are wondering why our national team isn't doing that much better, this is why. Because the world provides more opportunities now, but for decades, we were doing the same old, trophy ball/high school soccer bullshit for our "player development" model. This is the FIRST season that we have academy players not playing high school soccer - EVER! The vast majority of players in this country are still playing some combination of trophy ball/high school soccer. At some point, this deadly combination was always going to kill us as others get better with the same increased opportunities that our players have. It is amazing that we didn't fall more than we did in the world rankings.

I know that a lot of people only want to spend time on the academy now that it has rid itself of both trophy ball and high school soccer, but the vast majority of our players still live with both as a reality. When we talk about "hours spent playing soccer" I think that we need to ask, "What kind of soccer?" If they are not being challenged mentally, do those hours really count? Those aren't quality hours if the kid is just doing trophy ball/"typical" HS Soccer. Dempsey was challenged because he played against Mexican adults as a kid, not because of our system.

We have just now made systematic, intentional changes to our system and they are of a very, rudimentary, "beginner" type nature. I wouldn't look for national team improvements so quickly when we still have so many bad habits in player development. Rather than look for immediate impact on the national team, what the DA and 10 month season show us is that we CAN make improvements if we want to. It is possible for us to get better if we decide to do so. The key is that we have to decide to do so and that is a very, very difficult decision to make when it means that you have to give up doing things that you are used to.

One last point - not all DA soccer is equal. The DA still has a long, long way to go, but at least there the journey toward improvement has been started. For most of the kids in this country, the journey toward getting better hasn't even begun.

 

I give you 3 kids. All are top class soccer players from a very young age exhibiting better skill, coordination, and athleticism than their peers:

Joey: Born in Boston, MA Joey plays 195 hours per year.
Luis: Born in Los Angeles, CA Luis plays 234 hours per year.
Leo: Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina Leo plays 390 hours per year.

Over the course of 8 years from age 5-13:
Joey from Boston plays 1,560 hours of soccer
Luis from LA plays 1,872 hours of soccer
Leo from Buenos Aires plays 3,120 hours of soccer
========================================

Excluding time spent on the ball on his own: My son played about 2 hours of soccer per week for the first two years (6 and 7), for 20 weeks per year = 40 hours per year * 2 = 80 hours.
Then he upped it to 3 hours of practice per week and 1 hour of games, then 2 hours of outside training. That was for one year (8), so that was 6 hours per week for 20 weeks = 120 hours.
Then he started to get serious (9) - he was playing on two teams, so that is 4 hours * 2 = 8 hours, plus 3 hours of training per week, and that is 11 hours per week, for 20 weeks. Already that is 220 hours for that year, and he also played in the summer. Two practices per week and one game per week, for 8 weeks, that is another 32 hours. For that year, it was 252 hours.

The next year (10)had more practices, games, and training: 4 hours of practice, 2 hours of games, and 8 hours of training (3 hours SAQ focusing on soccer, two 2-hour training sessions on shooting and footskills). 14 hours per week for 20 weeks, plus summer is another 8 weeks. 28*14 = 392 hours.

We had to cut his official training a bit, so he did one team (3 hours of practice plus 2 hours of games per week) and 6 hours of training for two years (11 and 12). That's 11 hours per week for 28 weeks, including summer, and then in the winter he had 2 hours per week, a practice and a game, for 8 weeks. 11*28 + 2*8 = 324 hours per year * 2 = 648 hours.

The last year, he did extra training for 10 of the remaining 16 weeks, that's 2 hours per week for 10 weeks = 20 hours more per year. That's 344 hours for age 13, which gives 8 years.

Totalling: 40+40+120+252+392+324+324+344=1836 hours, with barely anything in the first few years due to not being recognized young.

At age 15, HS soccer gives him 10 hours of practice per week and 4 hours of games per week, for 10 weeks. That's 400 hours. His club soccer averages 3 hours per week of practice and 2 hours per week of games, for every week of the year save 6 for time off and 10 for HS soccer. That's 36 weeks of club soccer * 5 hours = 180 hours. Then he gets oustide training, 2 hours per week for 36 weeks per year = 72 hours. So at 15, he is getting 652 hours per year, excluding camps (another 25 hours per weekly camp) and combines (8+ hours for a single day).

If he were in a European academy program, I would expect half of the day in school, half of the day practicing and playing soccer. 4 hours per day for 5 days per week = 20 hours per week, plus 2 hours for games and scrimmages per week = 22 hours per week; assume a month off to go home, and that is 1056 hours per year. Remember our little Leo went to Barca at age 12, so he went from perhaps that 390 hours per year, to 1056 hours per year.

My first point is that many players in the US are getting the time they "need" compared to a Leo in Argentina, up to age 13, but they need to pay for it, in most cases. In Newark, NJ, there are many *intact* soccer fields and nets despite the crime around, and kids can play pickup games at will in addition to having a robust boys and girls club program and immigrant communities that appreciate soccer.

My second point is that Messi was great and all, but turned the corner when he went to Barca. Going from an average of 7.5 hours per week to over 20 hours per week learning and playing soccer is a big difference.

In one particular week, my son did 30 hours of soccer. I can't afford that, but he loved it. What the US needs is a TRUE residential program, at the state or MLS team levels, which will serve many more kids than the U17 residential program in Bradenton. There is already a residential program with RSL, and IMHO, MLS should mandate that all teams set up plans to start such programs in the next two years.

The US's issue is not with how much time kids spend before they are identified, it is the time they spend afterwards. It is unacceptable that a player who has been identified, either by others or due to his own interest, as having a drive to compete in soccer, cannot find a program in the US that gives him appropriate quality and quantity of training. The way I look at it, there are gymnasts and swimmers *at the COUNTY level* who are practicing 20 - 30 hours per week from ages 5 - 13, and more beyond those ages, why can we not offer that to STATE level soccer players at the very least? I just don't get it. How can we use the advantage of being a big country if we can't set up a system to train our youth players comprehensively?

 

I really find that hard to believe, that NC is a bastion of soccer skill. My son has done ODP with our state, and has played against NC at ages 12, 13, and 14. There was no substantial difference between our state and NC, except that NC had huge players. I don't see anything that amazes me, I don't see anything that compares to Europe, I don't see ball mastery. I've also seen academy teams from various regions, mainly from the NYC area near me, but also others. Sure, we go to training and the kids can do stepovers and Maradonas (these are 14 and 15 year olds), but get them in a game and POOF - the skills are gone.

How many hours per week are you talking about? Four practices = 6 hours per week and one game = 1 hour per week? That's 7 hours per week, you just can't compare it to what is happening in Europe or South America.

The fallacy is that doing all those fancy things, and at a young age, is the proof. Instead, the proof is how our "best and brightest" manage to lose all that by teenaged years. Doing all the skills under pressure is the problem - why else is Messi so amazing? It's because he looks like he is still playing as a kid, and using all the skills at full speed and with top opponents.

What happened to Messi at age 12 is the answer, and you can't get 1,000 hours per year in the US for a 12 year old right now. It's extremely difficult to get 1,000 hours per year in the US for a 15 year old even. That 1,000 hours per year - instead of 400 let alone 200, is the key to becoming a top player. If instead of a class of 30 in the U17 residency program, what if they set up four regional programs in addition, bringing 120 more players into the mix? No other top soccer country picks so few for the necessary level of training. And wouldn't college soccer improve if we started to put in more residency programs?

The issue is money, but if the residency programs were aligned with MLS teams, they could do training and camps for players not in their system to offset costs. There are many public high schools which are competive academically and could affiliate with RBNY or Philadelphia Union, two teams in my area. And private high schools could affiliate and use the publicity to run camps and training. It could all work out, but with the exception of RSL, no one is taking the first step.

 

Uninstructed practice and playing time is worthless if you pick up bad habits or don't concentrate on the right things. Growing up here in LA we played at least 3 times a day (before or after school and during recesses) and on weekends, in addition to practices/games from when I was in AYSO. For example, I didn't really even understand basics like the offsides rule very well in my earlier years. Point being, a lot of that playing time didn't contribute much because we were playing with and against flawed fundamentals.

Most of us didn't spend time doing boring first touch drills and practiced fun stuff like shooting or trying dribbling tricks. The difference with a sport like basketball is that there's better chance of someone being around that can provide some correction or guidance and it's easy to watch and copy the best players in the world (something few of us could do often with soccer back in the early 90s). Particularly when it comes to developing soccer IQ, I think even watching high level play can be more instructive than logging tons of hours of uninstructed practice.

 

Futsal is great: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-futsal-20140115-dto,0,7496198.htmlstory#axzz2qTVhdNJv , but it should be accessible to all ages. I also agree that the youngest players must learn technique correctly, practice it on their own and then bring it into the futsal courts. It also doesn't hurt to have playable weather, like having it in the 80s (today in L.A.) in mid-January.

 

First of all kudos to this thread and the OP. It's an interesting discussion.

This is probably too myopic a way of looking at it, but if you take Landon Donovan as a case study and set aside his inherent athletic attributes, I have often wondered what sort of environment he was exposed to at an early age that set him apart. I know that he grew up in SoCal reportedly playing in a number of different youth environments, particular cross-culturally if I remember correctly, but to gaucho's original point, did Landon play significant hours more than other youth prospects? Was he tutored under some remarkable and unknown youth coaches that we should be trying to dig up? Did his family provide some sort of unique guidance and access to the game? For me the mystery is that Landon seemingly experienced a young development environment and process that thousands of SoCal kids are still going through year after year. You would think that the law of averages would eventually spit out one or two similar level prospects by now (all the right development exposure, the athletic gifts and the right circumstances). For this reason its hard for me to imagine that the 5-12 age playing environment and hours played is anything more than the basic price of entry. At least that's how I see it right now unless someone can point to some critical phase of LD's young development where he was exposed to something exceptional that set him apart?

For this reason I tend to fall in the column that believes that its not so much the hours and style of exposure to the game at ages 5-12 (although that is still a key part), but its the coaching, opportunities and circumstances at ages 12-18 that make up the key difference in growing exceptional talent. If we did the same sort of analysis as above for a young Clint Dempsey or young Michael Bradley, would their hours played and exposure to the game from ages 5-12 look exceptional? Did any of these three have exposure to exceptional coaching 5-18? For me there are too many variables to settle on a single answer, but I think its a worthy analysis exercise to take three of our greatest products and try and break down what combination of factors led them to excel the way they have. If its hours played then that should be easy to uncover. If its some phase(s) of exceptional coaching then that too should be discoverable. If its innate drive and self tutelage that is pretty hard to replicate, but we know its probably in the mix. My basic point being that the question of degree of raw hours and game exposure vs. coaching in producing our best players should be fairly easy to break down just by examining the soccer-bio of these three players. It probably won't give us that magical 1% factor that is either fortune or biology, but it should give us the basic ingredients.

 

First of all you cannot set aside his physical attributes. His speed and the endurance which allows him to maintain his speed (he and Frankie were the national team beep test kings) are the key to his success. Donovan also has very good technical ability. I have never talked to Donovan or to anyone that had first hand knowledge of his you soccer environment, but I've read accounts past articles where Donovan credited a trainer named Clint Greenwood.

I had heard from a many people that Greenwood was pretty well know as someone that developed players with very good technical ball skills. One year I shared a practice field with him and understood why - he practices were 100% Coerver type dribbling and ball skills - overly so from my point of view. But if you take a kid that is very motivated and is willing to transfer the type of deliberate practice learned on the practice field to a home environment you are going to get a talented player. The other thing that sets Donovan apart is his vision. I have no idea how that was developed.

Spending time in an activity is very different from spending time developing a skill. I think we can imagine the laser focus of a guy like Michael Bradley diligently improving each part of his game compared to other players of similar ability that showed up to a field and largely went through the motions. Bradley is a good athlete, no doubt. But he mastered a position where athleticism is less important than smarts and skill as compared to wide positions or up top.

 

It can't be developed. It's a speed with which his brain is capable to process information.
A mental freak + an athletic freak. A pretty rare combo.

 

The kids who are playing pick up basketball and developing a feel for the game in play grounds are really from a distant pass. yea there are guys like the Curry brothers who are legendary gym rats, but their father Del Curry and a lot of coaching also heavily factored into their development.

What I have seen change are the days when kids were playing baseball, football and basketball in the neighbor streets and parks. The streets and parks in NO VA are almost always full with kids playing soccer. If I were to take guess I would estimate at apprx 75 - 80 % of the kids are exposed to soccer, where I live, and this number would also be significantly higher than the other sports, imo.

 

This is good insight. Thank you.

My thought in setting aside the natural physical attributes of LD wasn't to discount it as a factor in how it allowed him to succeed, it was only intended to isolate it for the purposes of comparing training time, training styles and general exposure to the game that might have been unique compared to other kids. As butters later pointed out, the genetic stuff is lightning in a bottle. Despite that fact if we look at the rest of what made LD special (technical skill, timing and game smarts) it would seem to me that those are the kinds of things that could be replicated through providing a similar environment, similar training and overall approach. If we look for and focus on the key common attributes such as, perhaps, the Greenwood method, combined in part with other successful techniques or habits that our other stars were exposed to then that kind of regimen might turn out better players on the whole, and if enough kids are piped through such a program eventually a few of the truly athletically gifted kids ala Donovan might come through as well. I realize this is probably overly simplistic but I can't imagine another way to "crack the code" on finding the keys to soccer training success other than this type of analysis.

 

Wasn't his father out of the picture way before Donovan turned into as soccer prodigy? The only not your average American upbringing part was playing unorganized soccer with Mexican neighbors, but certainly not unique considering where he lived.

 

Thanks. But the article is strange. Plenty of interesting info and plenty of nonsense: Landon didn't live in the middle of the ocean 75 miles west of LA, he didn't live in the affluent community, Redlands is anything but that, and of course platitudes about discrimination of poor super talented Mexican kids. San Bernardino county has about 50% Latino population.

 

At the top end, I certainly agree. There is a biological component to everything and people are genetically endowed with different capabilities. But in this country we are so far from the top end in soccer it is not even close. Take NFL QBs. They weren't born with the ability to quickly scan the field several times to be able to find small windows of space to throw it. They got to their current level through a lot of very specific training with specialized coaches. The same thing goes for soccer players. A few kids are trained how to scan the field and what patterns to look for, most kids in this country are not.

 

The "code" actually is pretty straight forward and the process is general thought to be through myelination. Start with someone that knows the game and is pretty invested in the kids he is working with. At a young age correctly teach fundamental movement and sports skills. Encourage practice and set up a feedback loop so the player can see identify how what things make him improve. Keep the young player interested by setting up an appropriate challenges in play and practice so that the next level is within reach but never quite within grasp (think of how video games are set up). On the cognitive side, identify patterns that of play that occur at the level the player can grasp them. As the player matures and is able to chunk the patterns, bring in more and more complex patterns of play. Read some biographies about the Polgar's in chess, Gretzkey in hockey, Williams in tennis. You can also see how this can go wrong as kids are doing it as much if not more to make their parents happy as than because they have been allowed to learn to enjoy it for themselves. Agassi and Marinovich come to mind.

 

Absolutely agree. It can and should be developed. I meant that at Donovan's level you are mostly born with that,
You can't send EJ to Brazil and expect them to turn him into original Ronaldo.

 

The 10,000 hour rule is a very real thing. Of course the quality of coaching also matters, but I'd agree with the OP that hours spent playing soccer is the biggest difference. The problem is a cultural one, soccer is very popular among kids in the US now, but there are still 4-5 other popular sports dividing their time, and most soccer kids here don't walk around with a soccer ball attached to their feet and play pick-up games with friends at every opportunity. I'm not sure what can be done about that on a large scale, though, it will improve over time, but if we do catch up and surpass countries like Spain and Argentina it will be through our numbers advantage. I'll take five times the kids, playing 100 hours less per year.

Anyone who believes the top athletes in any sport are worse than those from 40 years ago..... well I won't say something impolite here (aside from a hundred other differences, the best soccer players now are at the tail end of a much larger bell curve as the population pool for soccer players is far larger than it was four decades ago). Instead of subjectively analyzing a bit of video that would be anecdotal even if it showed anything, it makes more sense to look at sports where these things are more easily quantifiable.

Baseball Prospectus once had a rather interesting article on the subject, "Myth of the Golden Age"
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5813
Basically, original Hall of Famer Honus Wagner would be comparable to Neifi Perez.

If there are still anti-intellectuals who get riled up by statistical analysis in baseball, here are some New York Times visualizations that a grade schooler could understand:

Sprinters
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-meter-dash-one-race-every-medalist-ever.html

Swimmers
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/01/sports/olympics/racing-against-history.html

Long Jump is a bit different if you look just at the best jumps, but the overall trend is the same
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/04/sports/olympics/bob-beamons-long-olympic-shadow.html

 

This is absolutely the wrong way to go about things. Whether you're looking at the best soccer player this country has ever produced, or expanding that slightly to the three best soccer players we currently have, you're dealing almost by definition with outliers and anecdotal evidence. That's one step away from Michael Jordan telling the average NBA players on his team to just do what he did.
It's a lot sexier to talk about individual players or coaches by name, but you learn far more by looking at all the data points.

Great, let's just have Clint Greenwood produce fifty Donovans per year, instead of one in his career, problem solved.