Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial I think the English influence in the game is greatly exagerrated. I haven't been with a good club in 5 years and even then there were plenty of Latin coaches and teams that played the ball on the ground (Northern California). I have been coaching my players to do that (if they can ) for 10+ years. Lots of guys love to point out the problem. How about a solution? I was watching the youth championships on T.V. and there were plenty of Latino teams (Arsenal from SoCal is one I recall). There are more and more Latin kids in our national programs but don't just assume they are better. Even the Latin teams were playing one spastic tempo even though I only saw highlights. Nice skill but no rythymn and no possesion. Paul Gardner never, ever, ever offers a solution and is spewing the same crap he did when I cancelled my subscription to SA ten years ago. BTW, there are some thing I love about the English game, fair, hard and attacking. Ideally, you would love to incorporate the best traits of all different styles. BTW, I smacked heads in training the other night with a guy on my team and my first thought was if we were in the WC that would have been 4-5 rolls and a ten minute water break. Shockingly, we just got up, saw we wern't bleeding and went back to playing (he is an Aussie though and they love rugby and other violent sports) It just never hurts that much in soccer, it really doesn't. That is a part of the Latin game I detest. BTW, my solution? No state championships and all that other crap at young ages. That way we can just train kids to be players at 16 instead of trying to win at U-10. I think that is the difference. The systems like Ajax train to make soccer player not win youth championships.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Not to sound disrespectful but there is a world of difference between Argentina and Mexico as far as soccer is concerned. Mexico is just coming to age where as Argentina has a long history. Mexico has hundreds of aregntinian and uruguayan coaches all over their country from the big clubs to small soccer schools. Even Marquez who comes from Zamora, attended a soccer school run by an argentinian. In Argentina your grandparents are all soccer gurus, and in Mexico mos grandparents played baseball. The mexican league 7-10 years ago was not very competitive, for years brazilians argentinians and uruguayans thought of Mexico as the place to retire. Tradition weights on everything
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial First I haven't seen the kid play in at least a year so your first hand knowledge is better than mine in that regard. I just talked to a few coaches who said he was the best in a region that is not as strong as others. Its very likely there are many kids at a similar age running around the US like him as well. Second, you dropped your numbers by an order of magnitude. I would not question that River Plate has a youth team his age with many players of similar ability. I'm fairly sure you would with me that the training system for serious soccer players aged 14 - 18 typically far exceeds what similar players in the US are offered. I think you would also agree that Messi was a key factor in Argentina's success in the world cup. I think you would also agree that a U20 national team should provide a reasonable reprsentation of the youth players in that particular country. Yet without Messi on the field, the kids Argentina put on the field were not noticeably disimilar to the kids the US put on the field. If Argentina had several orders of magnitude more good players at 13 than did the US and provided them far better training in the next 6 years, I would expect a vast difference in talent on display. The fact that it wasn't there, leads me to believe there was a fair bit of hyperbole in your characterization in the amount of players of similar ability at his age. One other point is that you claimed that Argentina had more institution knowledge of the game than countries like Mexico and the US which are still coming up the learning curve. I also agree that this is probably true. This also would imply that the U20's playing for the US were probably as a group further behind development wise compared to 13 year kids in the US today.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Yes, but that was the first game in a tournament that eventually Argentina won... Usually, it is best to start a little shaky and get better as the tournament moves on, rather than playing your best on your first second game. Messi is very different, so it is easy to pick him aside, but that U-20 team had players that are, will be playing in Europe for top teams, Agüero (then 16 years old), Gago (likely Real madrid), Zabaleta (Espanyol), Biglia, Ustari. I wonder how many of those US players will end up in Europe, for what kind of money, what league, team, etc... Another factor that historically happens in both Argentina and Brazil is that there are conflicts between the U-20 championship and club schedules. So a lot of times the clubs win over and keep the player (gallardo, tevez). Another times players will have the age to play U-20 but won't because it doesn't make sense, they are ready for the nt. Ex:Agüero, Messi (could play next year), or Cambiasso , Aimar Gallardo on their days. Regarding my numbers, if you count all the players in all the clubs, Buenos Aires, Rosario, the countryside, I will stick to my figure of hundreds. The problem is that you still field eleven, so it doesn't really matter how many yo have. United States it seems to me is at a crossroad. Needs to find an identity, are you going to play what style and how? Are we going to be a mix of European and South American, more european, less?
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial There is an amazing article about the kid's tryout on topdrawersoccer.com. All I'll say is that West Ham really liked him.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial American born, wants to play for the US! Thank god he's not another Rossi.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Excellent response! If I may summarize in diifferent terms, it all comes down to chance and the total number of kids dedicated to the sport. The US has the numbers. Theoretically, the numbers are so large that they should yield 1 or 2 Wayne Rooneys or Ronaldinhos per year. The fact that we are not seeing those players indicates that there is a lack of follow through from the young ages. Plenty enter youth soccer, but too many are a) not noticed, b) not encouraged, or c) siphoned off by other things. The latter category includes all the enticements this society has for kids to help them avoid commitment to a single sport. And, in most other countries, it really is a single sport--soccer. Every kid wants to play soccer and be a pro. That helps keep them at it while at home, in the school yard during recess and after school. They play pickup constantly (I know one guy who played with 60 kids and a tennis ball during recess--the guys who really wanted the ball got it; being successful with it was even harder), invent games and tricks, while developing skills without adult restraint or guidance. And they practice on their own for the fun of it. From this process emerges a few very talented kids who can actually transfer their backyard abilities to a large expanse of grass while coordinating with 10 other teammates trying to do the same thing.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial THe most disturbing part of that article was where it said he didn't do ODP because of the cost. Fortunately, he was on a club team that had connections so he got to both the US U15 national team and the trial with West Ham, but what if he was toiling on some club that was sans those connections? I know it's not breaking news that ODP's cost discourages a lot of poorer kids, but I thought we were making progress in that direction and obviously we aren't.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Little secret... it was John Murphy, not Nicol that did the scouting... Look at our last draft
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Well, I saw him on the field for about 20 min vs. Brazil and he looked as good as any other Argentine midfielder and better than Riquelme. In other words, the guy looks to be already there.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial West Ham will need a replacement for Tevez when he goes to Man U. Come on you Hammers!
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Agreed, not breaking news, but needs to be re-emphasized. Cost/opportunity, imho, is the primary reason we don't see more minorities succeeding on the highest level.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial That was a very good piece by TopDrawer. I liked reading about how Spector spent some time talking to him about West Ham and the US National teams. The kid could do a lot worse than going to the West Ham academy, that's for sure.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial How many do you friggin' want?!?! Our nation is about 2/3 white. But Reyna, Mastroenni, Beasley, Gooch, and Pope, all starters in our first Cup match, are minorities (counting the first two as Latinos.) Whites made up 56% of the team. Eddie Johnson was one of the subs. Biggest fallacy around is that minorities are underrepresented on the Nats. They're OVERrepresented.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Nice try- but that's where your wrong. We all know Reyna and Mastroeni's backgrounds. The Mexican immigrant population specifically is under-represented. I'm also referring to tapping into under-privileged, low-income minorities. They're under-represented in soccer. Straight stats can be easily distorted unless you look into the trends behind them.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial You're also making the assumption that a 2/3 white nation should translate into a 2/3 white national team. Try applying that logic to the NBA. If we did as good a job recruiting inner city kids for soccer, and tapping into immigrant Latino talent, we'd have nowhere near a 2/3 white team. And I'd be fine with it....
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Are you claiming that whites aren't as athletic as blacks? Besides, the Italians and French might have something to say about that where it comes to soccer. Taking that aside .... officially if we had more Latinos, I'm guessing we'd be more like 2/3 white than you think. Officially, the USA is: (from the CIA World Factbook for the USA) white 81.7%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.2% (2003 est.) note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial In certain ways yes. Are you offended? My larger claim is that in particular soccer is easily accessible to affluent whites, and less so to lower socio-economic status people, which are predominantly minorities. Other sports do a better job of tapping into them in the US. That's nice. Let's poll some other countries too. Soooo, given that Latinos are not part of your stats, is there a point?
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Yes actually, if you are making a claim that whites are inferior athletically. While you have a point that other sports do a better job taping into the lower socio-economic status people, that is a much broader topic --- and I'm not sure we want to go there now. There is a reason that the NBA has a disproportionate number of black players compared to white players. On what? For the purposes of a soccer discussion it isnt' really pertinent --- I just named the 2 teams from the finals of the most recent World Cup. Latinos aren't part of the stats? What part of "Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent " didn't you read? Officially - in the USA, Latinos/Hispanics are either White, Black, or Asian.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial 13/23 France World Cup Roster were definitely black (few I wasnt sure). http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/team/squad.html?team=FRA Loads of the Senegal squad from 2002 played in France. If anyone looooves their black players its France. But I agree with you. Race has nothing to do with being a good soccer player. Italy won the world cup and they had 0 black players. Zero. http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/team/squad.html?team=ITA Nice and pasty.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial No, I'm making, well, not an assumption, but pointing out the straight mathematical fact, that a nation that's 2/3 white whose national team is 6/11 white isn't underrepresented by minorities. I mean, words have definitions. We're all writing in English here. You can't just make up definitions to fit an agenda, and based on the English language, minorities are NOT underrepresented, full stop.
Re: 13 Year Old Yank gets West Ham Trial Of all the words I've ever heard to describe Italians, this is the first time I've ever heard "pasty." Yeah, I know many of the Northern Italians look like they were spawned by the Hitler Youth (joke, don't get all upset) but the vast majority are a tad too swarthy to be considered pasty.