Yeah, I feel like an evangelist or one of the disciples in the early church, bringing the Word to the heathens. ha ha. It's hard to fight the status quo when things are going great. I've said before, maybe in other forums, but the Federation needs to do a better job of selling these ideas of development over winning. The players that come to our clubs will do what what is asked of them. It's the soccer parents, since they are the "money," that need to be convinced a different route needed. Buy advertising in tournament programs, TV spots during USMNT/WNT/MLS matches.
I laid out specifics. I asked for input. Take my specifics and tell me why they won't work. Give me specific ideas that are better. If I put myself on the line with specifics, and you don't think they are viable, tell me why not. This is taking on a "lets talk solutions through a business model concept." Am I wrong? Do we not need to break up the Wild West and get a real Sheriff? Or do we need to "apply a business model to middle class players" and .... I have mentioned specifics where I believe that there could be some element of enforcement. It would require the (English) gangster that is in control of my State Association to actually do something every now and then, he would actually have to earn a portion of the 70-80 grand he gets for... I don't know of anything he's done. He would have to evangelize clubs conducting a technical academy, that somewhat adheres to a player development curriculum, one day a week. That's it! Read my previous post. Shoot it down. But, business models to solve this problem? Please...
The USSF is a private organization. It cannot force anyone to do anything. All it can do is deny affiliation to organizations and its sanction of events. It does not have money to fund large scale programs. It does not control the majority of soccer played in this country, only roughly 20% of US players are affiliated. Since this was supposed to be about training U-Littles, I will point out that this age category is where USSF has the least control. U-Littles can effectively develop in academy style organizations without the need for leagues or tournament play. If USSF approaches the problem like USSR dictator Joseph Stalin telling organizations that they must do things for which they have neither funding nor desire, the USSF will fail just like the soviet 5-year plans failed. The organizations will simply not affiliate with USSF. Any approach must be heavily based on volunteer coaches and dependent on the education of volunteers and parents. To successfully execute, the USSF must convince the organizations (and the source of the funding) of the merits of USSF's plan. Passive aggressive resistance will otherwise doom the plan to fail.
Agreed, but the majority of parents on my team probably wish I would just leave already, and a couple just tried to make it happen. Simply for fear their exceptional little A team won't stay together if people start looking for more skill-based opportunities. Mind you, this is exactly 1 month from tryouts when our team might blow up anyway, especially if a couple anticipated "studs" from another local team decide to try out and make our team (and, maybe, even push their own kid out). Could happen, but their focus is on me and my eurosnob speechifying. Silly and stupid. But that's perhaps the definition of American soccer itself right now, isn't it: silly and stupid? So that's how the re-education process is proceeding on my team in a very big club in a very typical soccer hotbed community. And please, let's keep it civil. I know there's a lot of leftover anxiety from the days of the infamous "soccerbs" clown that used to troll here, but we're all on the same side, I think.
Just for the record I am highly critical of the cirriculum. It was supposed to be for zone 1 (U-Little) players, and somehow got sidetracked into zone 2.
Very sorry, I wasn't referring to you although I brought that up in response to your post. Apologies. I thought Pete might have gotten a little more direct than necessary into his questioning of elessar's post than might have been warranted. Which he is entitled to do, and I don't begrudge anyone their passion, but on any board a lot of good discussions get sidetracked by stuff. This is a good one and I didn't want it to devolve. My bad for not being clearer. Play on.
Pete, my response above was directed at De Kromme. I don't believe I ever said that you're ideas were invalid. I think the business model, however out there, is a valid one because as we all seem to say the parents and their demands as the consumer are the problem. If we change what the parents demand then maybe we can make progress. Parents are kinda dumb when it comes to this, they spend around $2,000 a year for ten years or more to put their kid in the position to gain most likely a partial scholarship. I don't know about you but $20K is a good start to a college fund. I think your ideas about training are fine/good/excellent. I subscribe to them myself, although I don't have the licenses you hold. My soccer bible, it seems, is Bert Van Lingen's "Official Coaching Book of the Dutch FA". I've read a lot of books on the matter and I keep coming back to this method because it teaches technique and game concepts within the CONTEXT of a game. I think that's important from a learning standpoint, a fun standpoint, and an efficiency standpoint. As far as I'm concerned we, as coaches, can only affect those kids in front of us. USSF has a curriculum and I'm not all in for it. It follows some of what I already do and where it doesn't I don't feel is appropriate for my players. If we can't attack a problem one way, we must attack it another way. If the source of the money is the issue, change the source of the money.
You have hit it right on the head. Until the parents change, we are all just blowing smoke. I see progress from when I played club soccer in the 80's until now, and I hope when my grandkids are playing in 20 years there will be more progress. I just think it is a very slow process and until parents are more educated it won't get any better. Unfortunately, I think the only way the parents will get more educated is for this generation of players to become parents.
I have to say, I don't know enough about it so I don't have any specific suggestions to help enforce the curriculum. One thing that I have noticed in my area, however, is that two of the local clubs are feverishly competing to attain USSF Developmental Academy status. I am guessing that getting that status would really increase their standing and therefore their player enrollment (read income). Seems to me though that player development is not the primary incentive to attain status but rather winning competitions. If USSF is serious about this, this is one "stick" that they could use to get clubs to comply. Can't say I'm optimistic.
USSF basically already controlls the cirriculum of the USDA clubs, to the degree it wants. This curriculum was supposed to be a zone 1 (U-Little) players' development curriculum. The USDA is USSF's solution for zone 2 players' development. The USDA clubs were not required to have U-Little players, although it was anticipated that the natural demand for elite zone 2 players would encourage zone 1 development to fill the needs of the USDA clubs. Player development was supposed to be one of the more important factors in selecting the USDA clubs. It may appear that results are important, but you would naturally expect some correlation in zone 2 clubs between good development and good match results. That is because you are teaching team tactics in zone 2.
Got it. Yes, I did expect some correlation between results and development at the zone 2 level. Seems like merely encouraging zone 1 development is where they fail, since the clubs seem to continue business as usual (just win, baby) in zone 1, and rely on recruitment and consolidation later.
I think that's a HUGE part of this. Club XYZ (on the girls side, at least) is the leader on this, and guess who's perenially ranked highly on the girls side in the country (names removed to protect the guilty). They have 6-8 (10?) locations around My City, seemingly everyone who signs up for one of their teams thinks they're signing up for "Club XYZ, Regional and National Champions" when in fact, if you aren't one of the best 2 or 3 players in your age group at your particular XYZ location, you'll never get a sniff of one of the "superteams" they make from the best of all their locations. And if you don'thappen to be one of those players, I think you can imagine that you might get a little less attention (read: development) than the others since they already have enough (when combined with the 2-3 from every other location) to form the superteam for an age group. The rest are simply there as income, and seemingly much more so than other clubs. Unfortunately my club seems to be patterning themselves off of them. And this is simply what XYZ does in-house, with their own players. Your issue about recruitment and consolidation from other clubs is only the final dirty (but perhaps the dirtiest) element of how XTZ and teams like them get to be where they are.
It's so sad that there's even an "old boys club" to speak of in American soccer. It's so young and hasn't really accomplished much. Who gives these people so much clout?
And we've come full circle in the discussion. Who: Idiot parents who know nothing about the sport and trust their children are developing real soccer abilities because they 1. these vaunted coaches tell them so and 2. they win a few soccer games and go to amazing tournaments. If these parents were being sold this line of bs in a sport like baseball, they'd see right through it, wouldn't they? And the Fed is complicit because they keep the general population in the dark about the true essence of the sport. What was the biggest story that came out of the World Cup? USA's comebacks, and Landon's amazing goal. They never talk about the ridiculous early deficits, Ricardo Clark, the poor overall play by the US, Spain's simple genius, etc.... So to these parents, we seem like we're on the cusp of international glory, so why change anything, right??? They are being played, and they are willing rubes.
And this is a good segue to my earlier point that the Fed needs to embark on a propaganda campaign. Get the message of development over winning early, skills over tactics at an early age out to the general public and not just to the "choir". Every USSF sanctioned tournament brochure should have this message. Every USNT match should have this. Every USSF participating family should be made to sign a sheet outlining the Federations objectives. To augment what I said before, change the source of the money or change the expectations of the money. Now there is a the discrepancy between every club preaching development but doing otherwise, but the goal in the is instance is to educate the consumer. A lot of money was probably invested in developing and producing this curriculum but equally as much money should be spent on "re-educating the source of the money".
Just eliminate keeping scores in league games and these fancy cups (State) that really mean nothing - and right then and there every league will be purely development-based. Sure, send the kids to tournaments and keep scores there - but for league purposes where you have squads of 18, and inevitably 2-4 kids sitting on the bench getting token playing time ... eliminate the scoring system and all the kids play as the coaches relax, and all the creativity starts to come out. I suggest this for u16 and down. I'll give you an example: In the first half of the season I just coached, "elite" u11 soccer, the Sept-Dec schedule was "no scores being kept." My teams didn't do particularly well - I was keeping track myself how the results were going because.... In the second half of the season Jan-March scores were being kept for a cup. All of a sudden we are winning week-in, week-out. Did my team change the way we played? NOPE. BUT, our opposition sure as heck did. All of a sudden teams that before christmas that were playing expansive, attacking soccer, were sticking 6 defenders (8v8 game) in the box trying desperately to keep the scores at 0-0 and hit a counter attack. Our opposition became afraid to lose - and as a result, they did exactly that. (except one team, they kept winning! they were really good! our nearest rival - nice team)
Well I don't know how much I agree with not keeping score over U7. There are other lessons within the game that need the context scores to teach. Does a team play the same ahead and behind in goals?
Agreed. But expect the backlash that I've been facing from parents not wanting to hear the truth. Interestingly, I just found out last night about a situation on my daughter's club. They are affiliated with (check my info). The board of the youth club are parents. Allegedly (awaiting confirmation) the big club has apparently decided to disassociate itself from the youth club because they are fed up with idiot parents (my words) not delivering what the big club needs in the way of soccer, i.e. too much non-soccer bs regarding politics, money, control etc.. that hampers the development of talent the big club expects. Sound like the parents we're talking about, ruining the sport in all possible ways? So the parents on individual teams are an issue, and then become a bigger issue (with more power) when they join the boards of these clubs. It's a disaster.
Things have changed abroad somewhat, but largely scores are not kept until early teens. I'm all in favor of this, but we'd have to have a happy medium for the hardcore parents here in the states. I'd say u12 and down no scores, no tournaments until u14 except perhaps as a specific, earmarked funding mechanism for enforcement of Fed developmental guidelines as I suggested before.
I agree with those recommendations too. In my perfect world there would be no standings for U14 and below. Scores wouldn't even be reported to a central commissioner so there'd be no way to check it without some detective work.