I agree with that. Our recent problems are probably down to "growing pains" in adopting the new system. Obviously it would be nice to be at full strength. However, we rarely are and my problem is that we blame personnel for problems that are deeper than that. If the "national style" experiment yields dividends down the road then it will all be worthwhile but I'm inherently skeptical about grand projects. I'd prefer if we adopted systems that fit our players than the other way around.
I've been away for a long time and see that the only progress we have made is the MLS youth teams. Which is HUGE IMHO but it took a long a$$ time for that to happen. I think having the Spanish coach Perez on board(even if the players don't like him) is HUGE as well. I liked the job Cabrera did as well. I'm not Hispanic but my favorite team is Real, so perhaps I am a little biased. I think getting these coaches to commit to come over here and live is a LOT harder than some think it is.
It isn't hard to get coaches to come over here. We have tons of them. Our problem is that parents mostly just want to win the next game in front of them. They could care less about their kids learning about the game of soccer so, for the most part, they are interested in getting the biggest, fastest, early developers and hoofing the ball up to them. The coaches that come over here tend to cater to these parents because that is what these parents want. Many of the coaches that stay away are the ones that are good at teaching the game. The ones that come over for the purpose of teaching the game are few and far between because they have a very limited audience in this country. Trophy ball isn't what every single parent wants, but the majority rules to the point where it is hard to change the culture. I certainly wouldn't even attempt to change it from within. I tried once and it was an exercise in futility. A ton of people in youth soccer like the culture the way it is and consider attempts to change the culture to be disruptive - look at all the opposition to the 10 month season in the DA. Bottom line - our lack of passion for being good at the actual game of soccer itself hurts us much more than a lot of people realize. That is why we rely so heavily on immigrants or the sons of immigrants. They bring the passion for being good at the game from another country and we take advantage of it before that passion for the game itself gets diffused away. It is hard to tell a lot of parents that there are more important things than winning the game in front of you at all costs. The long term costs is that we don't produce really great players because we don't attempt to do so. I heard a great comment the other day - Our national team pool are a bunch of Johnny Evans. Johnny Evans has carved out a solid career at Manchester United and he works very hard, but he is a guy that will never, ever be on the field if there is a really good soccer player available. He is a guy who gets on the field when the really good players are all injured. He isn't bad. He just isn't really good and never will be. Obviously we have a few exceptions to that rule but, for the most part, I thought that was an accurate description of much of our player pool.
Yes, and he was lighting up the league. He also had an American passport in his possession. I pointed this out only to refute the idea that passing over Boyd for the 2011 U-20 qualifiers was a mistake. That's, IMHO, revisionist history and shouldn't count as one of the (many) mistakes that happened that cycle.
But we need more of them AND the money to pay for them. Until pay-for-play is gone, we'll always have a problem getting enough coaches (and immigration policy doesn't help either). We need more dads who have a passion for the game.
What I meant by my comment was that he wasn't really in the mix for the U20 team if memory serves and I seem to remember him being benched by the coaching staff there for weird reasons.
Although related to the premier league, I thought this would be of interest in this thread. Mostly because I liked seeing the percentage of playing time given to U21 players in the major European leagues. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22687663 The playing time of English under-21s in the Premier League has fallen to its lowest level. English under-21s made up 2.28% of the total minutes played in 2012-13 with Manchester City, Chelsea, Swansea, Stoke and Wigan failing to field an English player under 21 all season. The new figures fall behind Italy (2.38%), Spain (3.40%), Germany (6.22%) and France (7.32%). What are the reasons? The same that we talk about in this thread regarding MLS. Stoke have failed to field an English player aged under 21 in the first team for the last three seasons, a fact that owner Peter Coates is aware of. He describes the new figures as "disappointing" but believes there is an urge to develop young English players. "We have a difficult transition between 18 and 21 [That troublesome age group we talk about with MLS] and only the very exceptional players get the chance of playing Premier League football at that age group. So it does represent a challenge," he told BBC Sport. "It's an issue that's well known, it's much discussed and my own view is that we are going to see improvements in this area but there is a lot of pressure on managers for results."
FCD played Montreal in the reserve league yesterday. Montreal beat an academy-laden FCD team 5-1. One will note that Jonathan Top appears to have gone 90 minutes for FCD (along with homegrowns Woodberry, Ulloa, and Baladez). Zimmerman didn't play it seems. [MLS/Yank Abroad fans will be interested in seeing Paolo Delpiccolo playing for Montreal] http://www.fcdallas.com/news/2013/06/fc-dallas-reserves-fall-5-1-montreal-impact Lineups: MTL – GK-Evan Bush; D-Karl W. Ouimette, Wandrille Lefèvre, Calum Mallace, Amine Meftouh*; M-Paolo Delpiccolo** (Dominique Morin* 76’), Zakaria Messoudi, Blake Smith, Maximiliamo Rodriguez (Jérémy Gagnon-Laparé* 68’), Sinisa Ubiparipovic; F-Victor Ndiaye (Andrew Wenger 65’) Unused subs: G-Maxime Crépeau *Academy players **Trialist DAL – GK- Kyle Zobeck; D- London Woodberry, Stephen Keel, Victor Ulloa, Fernando Laverde* (Alejandro Dominguez* 84’); M-Bobby Warshaw, Marco Carrizalez*, Marco Ortiz* (Bobby Edet* 76’), Ramon Nunez; F-Jonathan Top, Bradlee Baladez Unused subs: GK-Chris Seitz
Marky Delgado went 90 for Chivas' reserves today in a 3-3 tie with the Caps, seemingly at right back. In the highlights, he has a cross into the goalmouth that was headed off the post (and should probably have been finished), but his defending looked pretty lackadaisical. Unsurprisingly, no Salgado for the Caps. Also, no Caleb Calvert for Chivas, but academy 95 Brian Kennedy went 19 mins off the bench.
This question doesn't really interest me since the EU makes nationality irrelevant within the member countries. English clubs can snap up young Belgians and Dutch players and utilize them. I'd be more interested in which leagues use U-21 players period.
Right. But the graph is specifically the percentage of English U21s playing in England. If England's not going to care about developing their players, who will? And I watched the English U21 team at the Euro's yesterday...............and they were god awful. What's interesting is look at Germany in 2009-10. Over 10% of available playing time in the Bundesliga was taken up by German U21s. Do we think that German clubs and the German national teams are now benefiting from this 3 years later? I don't doubt it. More than any other major nation, I've felt that the German FA and their professional league are in cahoots pushing in the same direction.
I think that Bundesliga clubs are simply better at developing young players than Premiership clubs. Germany has produced dozens of Bosnian, Turkish, Serbian etc internationals. Additionally, Bundesliga clubs seem to have some level of confidence in their own development system, which means they aren't going out and trying to scour other leagues for 16 year olds like England is. The bigger problem is simply developing young players in general in England, not specifically English players. That's why I feel a graph depicting U21 players in general would be a better indication, because a graph like that for MLS would be like saying which clubs are playing young players from their own state.
These points are valid to MLS and USSF. Its key to build an infrastructure with very good coaching to #1 develop talent worthy of starting in MLS at age 18-19. #2 Being able to keep the US top talent at MLS academies rather than having them go overseas. #3 Having the budget and roster spots for them to be able to be signed. In a sense we are still comparing why we don't have young players starting in MLS when we don't have a way to do it.
Remember that the German FA instituted minimal spending levels for youth development at all BundI and BundII academies. And the German FA also instituted a quota system in which a percentage of players at those academies must be Germany-eligible (I forget what the percentage is.) So while it's true that they're good at developing players..............it's not an accident that they are. They've put an emphasis on it. I've always felt that part of the problem in England is that a large number of clubs are are owned by non-English gazillionaires like Abramovich. What does Roman Abramovich care about the development of English youth players? Or Randy Lerner, the Glazers, Stan Kroenke, etc.? I heard recently the percentage of clubs in BundI and II that were majority owned by German groups. It was a huge number. In other words 100%......because of the 50+1 rule.
Exactly what I am saying is that German clubs have invested into their youth systems and that is why you are seeing young Germans playing in the Bundesliga, but you're also seeing young Bosnians and Croatians etc playing there. In England meanwhile they are so bad pre 16 that those clubs have to look abroad for talented players like Pogba, Hazard, Cesc, and so on... English clubs are still playing young players, but they just have to buy them. I would argue that English clubs are more willing to play younger players, but simply that English players generally aren't good enough. Italian clubs on the other hand are still developing players, they just don't give them early opportunities. ...and yes, Germany has almost all clubs owned by their fans. The few exceptions are company teams like Wolfsburg (Volkswagen) and Bayer Leverkusen (Bayer). The only way to own a foreign team in Germany is to create one yourself. I'm not sure this is so much of an influence as the knowledge that you can save money developing your own stars than buying them outright. In otherwords, if you don't have a sugar daddy owner, you can't afford to sign Mario Gotze (Bayern are just that rich) for $30 million or you end up like Borussia Dortmund in the nineties. As supporter owned clubs that need some level of financial stability, it's a smart move to develop your own players. I honestly don't think the nationality factor is nearly as big an issue.
Lets be honest here I don't think this is a huge problem in USA and MLS so far. We havent even really had U-21's good enough to play in MLS. And many of the ones who were good enough were in college. We're just starting to have that luxury.
In Germany they keep their top youth players in the Bundesliga. MLS does not have to money to entice our best youth, nor the roster spots to sign them hence Europe/Mexico skim off the top layer of players who have that increased liklihood of playing early.
I donno about this. Europe and Mex def skim some off the top but as has been discussed the players going to Europe almost always have EU passports and the players going to Mexico are almost always of Mexican descent. That leaves a decent size youth population for MLS to sign. And of course you will always have some guys like McBean (EU) and Villarreal (Mex) sign in US even though they have alternatives.