How an American journeyman revolutionized Japanese soccer—and why it isn’t happening in the U.S.

What's the likelihood of some random American from Iowa teaching top Japan executives methods that would greatly help pave the way for the nation's rise from the ashes of WW2 to manufacturing world leadership?

 

What makes you think it hasn't been overhauled in the last 10 years?

 

It's the culture, pure and simple. One where respect, personal discipline, self-abnegation, mental concentration and natural enthusiasm are still taught, absorbed and practiced. The other where those values are sorely absent in a popular youth culture which seems only interested in getting another tattoo. Even with a demographic crisis, the Japanese manage to do much more with their human raw material.

 

I'm pretty sure that postwar Japan would have risen to manufacturing leadership even if that random Iowan had never showed up. The same can be said about Tom Byer and soccer.

Of course, if you're an online sportswriter fishing for clicks, "American journeyman revolutionizes Japanese soccer" is probably more effective than "Japan develops some very good soccer players after the sport becomes extremely popular there."

 

Off-topic, but Deming's impact on Japanese management and manufacturing practices was massive. A diehard devotee of Hegel's philosophy of history as the unstoppable movement of social forces could deny the importance of specifically Deming as the Great Man in this Great Man Theory, but other than that, @IndividualEleven is right to cite him as an exemplar in this context.

 

Does methodologically developing technically proficient (emphasis on 1v1) soccer players pay off?

 

There would have been aviation without the Wright Brothers, yet they played a significant role in its development. The Japanese have given credit to Byer and Deming...

 

So if Deming's plane had crashed on the way to Japan, the country's economic future would have been decisively different? That's pretty implausible. You don't have to be a diehard devotee of anything to conclude that the history of economic development doesn't work that way.

Anyway, the relevant point from the analogy is that if one wants to be viewed as a revolutionary, transformative figure, it helps a lot if you're attached to a revolutionary transformation that's already happening independently of you. If Tom Byer had decided to launch himself as a youth soccer guru in, say, Pakistan, I'm fairly sure that there wouldn't be any discussion of him here, and that Japanese soccer would have done just fine without him.

 

I'm not qualified to be teaching history after 337 AD, and probably not really qualified to be teaching history before that either. But the perspective in the quoted paragraph sounds pretty damn Hegelian to me. You might want to check with actual professional historians, of which I seem to recall there are quite a few at BigSoccer.

Norman Borlaug is the clearest counterexample to the idea that "the history of economic development doesn't work that way" (oh, great, another Iowan). All he had to do was patent his wheat varieties and millions of people would have died of starvation, which I daresay would have led to decisively different economic development in a number of countries.

 

Does anyone know where I can find more instructional videos like the Byer one (see below) linked in the Slate article? I'm talking about simple exercises like that aimed at teaching young kids basic technique and ball control.

I'd like to find some to use with my 6-year-old nephew, and any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

Seems likely that Byer, like any good entrepreneur, was smart enough to find a market with demand for his services and the rest is history. To believe anything else you have to subscribe to Supply-Side Economics ("If you build it, they will come") which we all know is farcical. Though I know little about it, Great Man Theory sounds a lot like much of the post-Enlightenment pre-Modernist thinking that fetishizes the role of the capitalist entrepreneur in social/economic development, much like Supply-Side Economics itself.

 

The question was whether 'methodologically teaching technical proficiency' pays off, and more so than not methodologically developing technical proficiency?

It goes without saying that being technically proficient in all the necessary areas is very valuable.

 

I am a little late here but from reading this thread I would have to agree with someone that said we keep recycling our coaches and the politics are killing the development. I can compare it to the NFL and NBA. Where coaches get recycled but this is similar but on a smaller scale.

I don't think these guys that are running soccer in the USA really care since they have to compete against the other big sports. Their idea is that soccer can't be big so they milk it for what it's worth.

We do need to get some fresh blood in there. Someone that has passion for the game and want to see our game succeed. Heck, I can probably round up 100 guys from this board and give them positions in USA soccer and we would probably be better off.

Our organized system is killing the development of kids. The kids need to be playing sandlot games on their own. They need to learn creativity obviously because the fundamentals that they are getting in organized systems aren't working. They need to love the game as well. It almost seems like a chore to go to soccer practice or play on weekends because the parents want them to. The great ones are the ones that kick the ball around and play on the streets during their free time.

 

This thread deserves a timely bump.

Nimble, technical and awful all describe Japan this summer.

 

Need to update my numbers a bit:

Japan WC 1998-2014 31st, 9th, 28th, 9th, 29th

US WC 1998-2014 32nd, 8th, 25th, 12th, ??(at least 16th!!!)



That said, we'd really love to have Japan's technical skill.

 

Not that I have any skills to speak of, but when my husband was coaching, I tried to integrate Coever method skill development into the practices of the 10 year old boys. What a freaking disaster at the rec level. They just wouldn't stay interested. Maybe for the travel teams, but I'm worried there would be too many concerns that the skill development took away from the other elements of the practice that are for winning games.

 

The priority should be developing touch and learning movement, how to make yourself available to your teammates, not on winning.

When the priority is winning, the biggest issue is the type of player coaches pick will be the wrong ones at youth levels. The smaller, technical guy will be left out as the larger, more athletic guy will give a better chance of winning this weekend. That's what we need to get away from.