Hours Spent Playing Soccer

I have been reading a few soccer biographies/autobiographies with an eye towards what the players did when they were younger (Zlatan, Bergkamp, Gerrard, Owen and Me by Michael Yates (LFC Academy memoir and quite a few others). All of the information in them seems to dovetail with what is mentioned in this thread and others. I would expand the pratice hours to soccer-related activities/socialization as well.

FWIW, IMO, the US starts with a comparatively large, affluent pool of potential soccer players when compared to other countries. We also have a genetically mixed country so we are not going to produce the same physical types of players (like Norway, Honduras to some degree) (Not trying to stereotype here). We have a lot of potential players and of different physical types which is a fantastic start.

Ages 4, 5, and 6, the kids start getting interested in sports and playing. We lose a huge chunk of our potential player pool right there, because of other sports. Other countries seem not to lose as great of a percentage of players because soccer is their main sport. This is slowly changing here. More kids are playing soccer. More kids are watching soccer. But there is very little that can be done proactively to change the sports selection of young kids. Some like football and basketball, some will like soccer. It is moving slowly in the right direction.

Ages 7-12, we generally need the kids to become technically developed. Our potential elite player pool gets smaller, because the training has to come from both parents/uncles/aunts/siblings etc. and good youth coaches. We do not have enough parents who are extremely knowledgeable about soccer to teach the kids what they need to know. Books and the Internet help for those parents who put in the extra effort, but we fall behind other countries whose parents likely played soccer all their lives. The soccer organizations in the US try to provide guidance, but it could be done via the Internet in a more organized manner. Specific drills, etc. I am aware of the Player Development Curriculum (USSF produced?), but why not even more detail so the dad can look at the Internet and pick out 100 possible training programs for a 9 or 10 year old for 90 minutes of drills and games. Make it easier to find.

Ages 7-12, youth coaches are often still parents depending on where you live. Very hit and miss. We have to keep trying to make things easy for these coaches. I still see "competitive" games where the defense stands on the edge of their own penalty area even when the ball is in the other half -- very demoralizing. We lose quality players because of poor coaches not providing adequate coaching. We fall behind here.

Ages 7-12, pick-up soccer. In the southwest city in which I live, I have taken my sons to a nice suburban park for five years and never encountered other kids practicing who are the same age as my sons. Nothing down the street either. When I read all the biographies of the great players, they are playing non-stop in the street (Zlatan and Bergkamp, for example) they all play pick-up soccer far more than formal training. This is a huge difference between Europe and the US. Parents in my area are surprised at three practices per week and almost none of them practice outside of that by playing pick-up soccer. I have seen two teams in my town that have superb technique -- both are Hispanic and almost all of them are cousins and second cousins (with dads by the way who can really play). Their constant backyard play helps them and it helps kids in other countries around the world. Can we improve this with futsal courts near our basketball and tennis courts?

Beyond age 12, I am not really sure what is going on.

I am sure if we need to improve the probability of producing elite players, we need a cultural shift of interest to soccer (happening, but not much we can do to speed it up), we need more assistance for parents who lack a soccer background but who want to help their kids(we should easily be able to do this), we need more training for youth rec and competitive coaches ( we are trying but can do more), and we need to make pick-up soccer at the park as normal as pick-up basketball games. My .02

 

Good post, and check out The Sports Gene regarding the 10,000 hours application in sports. Turns out, 10,000 hours is merely a point in a range (there's a great high-jumping story in the book.)

In many cases, elite athletes will practice less often and still reach international competition levels. Strongly supports the "losing similar athletes to other sports" theory.

With regards to our player development, I'm of the mindset that tactical awareness is our biggest hurdle. I believe individual technique is much improved for strong youth players over the past 30 years. What we're missing is the application of that technique in a game situation.

 

I would agree that (as of now) each of those players are outliers with a very low probability to replicate that special something that made them exceptional in our pool, but my intent in focusing on them was to try and find the commonalities. The 50-80% factor in their development as youth players. If we can agree that their exceptional traits are that unique, un-replicable 10-20% factor that sets them apart, then the rest is hypothetically the common development experiences that might be repeatable for the mere mortal kids. If we then know that most youth prospects are basically doing many of the same things at the same rate that an LD or Dempsey did at that age, then we should be able to say with greater certainty that the creation of elite talent isn't necessarily an intensity of regimen failure or coaching failure, but simply a numbers game of not getting enough unique/special athletes coming through the pool.

I would also say that despite these guys being outliers in our current pool they are in that ballpark of talent that this sub-forum seems dedicated towards finding the recipe to replicate. To take it further I would even say that the talent level of these players ideally should become the baseline standard for what we seek to develop in most full nat prospects going forward. In that sense while they may be outliers now, the hope should be that their talent level becomes more commonplace in our pool and the next generation of "outliers" are even further beyond in terms of talent. That's the idea anyway.