Another (good) blog post on the state of youth soccer

[jomario]

I thought this was an excellent blog post (http://www.thisisamericansoccer.com/us-mens-national-team/where-have-you-gone-brad-friedel/) by Adam Spangler on the state of youth soccer in the U.S. in general. I was especially struck by this passage on the inability of MLS youth teams (or any other teams in the development academy for that matter) to recruit the best talent because of the "pay for play" nature of youth soccer:

no one I have spoken with thinks the Red Bulls, for just one example, is stocked with the best youth players in their region. On the dirty fields of the Bronx (http://chelseafcbronx.com/), on the turf fields of FC Harlem (http://www.thisisamericansoccer.com/?s=irv+smalls&x=0&y=0), and walking the halls of Martin Luther King high school (http://www.thisisamericansoccer.com/tias-special-guests/kings-of-king/), there are (I believe because I’ve seen them) 11 kids who with little to no instruction could beat a Red Bulls’ Academy team. A few of my 11 might even be one of the several players from the city that left the RBNY academy after determining that they were not getting anything out of it, especially not after hours of travel on public transportation to and from practice, which they could barely afford.

I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but definitely food for thought:

[Macksam]

An interesting read. I agree that the pro teams in MLS need to shoulder the responsibility in developing players. Starting kids off at 6 and 7 years old is vital. I'm sure a few MLS clubs are doing this.

[Stan Collins]

The myriad of people quoted in Jeff Carlisle’s youth development series know the Development Academy won’t solve our biggest deficiencies, but those issues–geography, cost, coaching, culture–are viewed as so insurmountable, that ok, so more practice, less games, less travel. But only for boys ages 15 and over. Hey it’s a start! This passage is pretty well put. I think it does speak to the belief system at the highest level of US Soccer, because when you try to go too far beyond this, you run into two big obstacles:

* the cost starts to go up exponentially
* the culture of the US in general (there are obviously pockets where this isn't true, but I'm talking about the majority here) is not such that making real sacrifices to possible other avenues of success (and I'm talking about a) academics and b) other sports) in favor of soccer is realistic at this point.

Now, the MLS clubs are "pressing the issue", slightly at this point, beyond the DA setup. Since the DA turned down a U14 league due to the twin cost/culture problems, some of the MLS clubs, and a few others as I recall, are setting up their own local versions of the same. That still won't bring about any radical transformations, but it moves the ball forward, and that's better than not doing so.