The team should try to minimize the physical duels. Why is a player who plays that assist defending in his own box?
smh...our 'keeper is too good frWhat a season @EricLopezGK is having. #LAvSAC pic.twitter.com/rNXcJNqzPT— LA Galaxy II (@LAGalaxyII) September 1, 2019
I know you've been wondering what became of Marcello Borges. He's with Detroit City in their quasi-professional "NPSL Members Cup" campaign. Evan Waldrep '97 popped up on Cal United FC's roster in NISA.
NTSC beat TFCII last night 2-0 Not as interesting of a starting XI as all of the youngsters are off to national team camps. But we had Nelson and Reynolds at the fullback spots. And of course the Rodriguez brothers both starting. Academy players Gibran Rayo and Cesar Garcia got into the game. I believe that's a debut at this level for Cesar Garcia (Edit: Buzz confirms on his twitter feed). He's had a cup of coffee or two with USYNTs. As far as TFC, I don't know their players very well. Don't see Ayo Akinola, is he still out injured from before the U20WC? Griffin Dorsey started for them. Miss the match? We've got you covered. 📝 You can find all the details from tonight's 2-0 win in the Match Recap 👇#WeAreNext | #NTXvTORhttps://t.co/V8ThoKMF7K— North Texas SC (@northtexasSC) September 2, 2019 Lineups: North Texas SC —Jimmy Maurer; John Nelson, Callum Montgomery, Brecc Evans, Bryan Reynolds; Alfusainey Jatta, Jacori Hayes (Imanol Almaguer— 62’), Arturo Rodriguez, David Rodriguez (Gibran Rayo— 71’), Richard Danso (Cesar Garcia — 90); Ronaldo Damus. Scoring Summary: NTSC: Arturo Rodriguez (PK) - 73’ NTSC: Ronaldo Damus (Reynolds)- 83’ .
Also in TExas………………….USL debut for George Acosta. He got an assist on a corner kick as well. Here he is, the newest Austin Bold player. 19-year-old George Acosta comes in for Kris Tyrpak. https://t.co/JjikjA7pab #USL #USYNT pic.twitter.com/Z9fbblfpRs— Chris Bils (@ChrisBils) September 2, 2019 By the way, I think this is kind of cool. There's a 4 way competition in the USL Championships between El Paso, San Antonio, RGV Toros, and Austin Bold that's been formed by the fans (kinda like Cascadia Cup or whatever). Its called Copa Tejas. With their win last night, Austin Bold pick up the trophy. The 2019 @copatejas Champions pic.twitter.com/2fy5axY5gg— copatejas (@copatejas) September 2, 2019
Akinola was starting regularly for TFC II in USL-L1 but returned to the bench in MLS for the first team the other night.
One USL debut I overlooked was in late July in USL-L1. '02 Tristan DeLoach for South Georgia Tormenta. I think he's an AM. 82'I Substitution for Tormenta..Off: Charlie DennisOn: Tristan DeloachCongrats to Academy Signee Tristan Deloach on his first professional appearance!!4⃣-1⃣#ORLvTRM#ProsStartHere#ProsAreHere#VamosTormenta— South Georgia Tormenta FC (@Tormenta_FC) July 25, 2019
NCFC sends out a lot of press releases, I mean a lot, and apparently I'm on their mailing list, which is fine. Because I thought it might be interesting as a small data point, here's their training schedule for what I assume is more or less a typical week. My guess is fitness/other physical work is not included here. (Also leaves the afternoons open for side hustles I suppose.) North Carolina FC Training Schedule Monday, Sept. 2: OFF Tuesday, Sept. 3: Training 9:45-11:15 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4: Training 9:45-11:15 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 5: Training 9:45-11:15 a.m. Friday, Sept. 6: Training 9:45-11:15 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 7: NCFC vs. Bethlehem Steel, 7:00 p.m. ET
NTSC beat Orlando yesterday, and are the first team to clinch a playoff spot in USL League One. Note that Dante Sealy is back from PSG. Whatever he was doing there, it is now over. I don't know those Orlando players at all, but Christian Herrera is the former US/Mexico youth international goalkeeper. He's a '97 still, so thread eligible. 📝 Check out our Match Recap for all the details from tonight's 3-1 victory over @OrlandoCityB!#WeAreNext | #ORLvNTX https://t.co/tNkYpCt6xC— North Texas SC (@northtexasSC) September 7, 2019 North Texas SC —Carlos Avilezr; John Nelson, Callum Montgomery, Brecc Evans, Bryan Reynolds; Alfusainey Jatta (Bicou Bissanthe — 60’), Imanol Almaguer, Arturo Rodriguez, Gibran Rayo (David Rodriguez — 87’), Richard Danso (Dante Sealy, — 68’); Ronaldo Damus. Substitutes not used — Pollo Cortes, Cesar Murillo. Orlando City B — Christian Herrera; Jordan Hill, Brandon Jon, Lucas Ontivero, Leonardo Simas; Thiago Souza, Luc Granitur (Jordan Bender— 46’), Alassane Diouf (Austin Amer— 46’), Serginho (Rafael— 74’), Tanner Hummel, William Bagrou. Substitutes not used — JahLane Forbes, Juliano Chade, Christopher Osei-Wusu, Tresor Mbuyu. Scoring Summary: NTSC: John Nelson - 22’ ORL: Brandon Jon (Ontivero) - 53’ NTSC: Ronaldo Damus - 53’ NTSC: Ronaldo Damus (PK) - 70’
trying to think of something positive after last nights debacle and i’ve settled on how potentially beneficial having a ton of different lower division clubs not only to develop youth players but to develop coaches. our tactical inferiority is astounding and hopefully this wider net quickly grows the pool of astute tacticians that would otherwise get overlooked by the old boys network
Seems like Carleton didn't just had a goal, but other highlights. A very beautiful shot on goal and some nice through balls. Hope to see some clips.
Some notables last evening in USL: '00 Carleton brace. '04 Brummett first start for Tacoma. He's the first '04 to start a pro match, having made his debut before. '02 Flores pro debut for Bethlehem. He had a few US U17 call-ups last year when with Shattuck-St. Mary's. '02 Villanueva pro debut for Tacoma. Also had a cup of coffee with the US U17s, at the Nike Friendlies. '00 Acosta first start for Austin. '02 Lepley first start for Swope Park. Late '03 Dylan Hooper was on the bench for Swope Park. He's been on the bench before, but this was the first time I noticed it. For Sunday, the most interesting USL team to watch is Timbers 2, who have had lots of YNT-eligibles in their squad lately.
I've mostly watched highlights this season but does anyone who has watched more of NTSC have an opinion on Quill as a coach? Obviously NTSC have a talent advantage but it's still a glorified U-20 team. I think that's our biggest hurdle as a nation, not just kids playing competitively at younger ages but improving our coaching pool. Does it seem like coaching is improving at the youth levels? @ussoccer97531 you watch a ton of games do you have an opinion on if this is improving overall as expansion at all levels deepens the player pool?
I know you didn’t ask me but I’ve watched a few games of NTSC and I’d say Eric Quill probably has a future at a higher level eventually. Of course he has very good players at his disposal but they don’t play ugly soccer for a 2 team and it’s not like the League One coaches are chopped liver either. TFC2 and OCB2 are getting battered. The gap in talent between OCB and TFC to FCD at the academy level is obviously but I don’t think that it’s so large that based on talent alone FCD would do so well and the others would do so bad.
Our coaching system in general is atrocious. With the amount of people interested in soccer in this country, we should easily be churning out high level coaches. Look at how many twitter analysts we have in this country! There's interest, but guess who's blocking it from happening: This is disappointing!! Acquiring my coaching licenses while I’m playing would be an ideal situation in order to pursue a future in the game passed my playing career but that doesn’t currently seem like an option. Frustrating to hear that we as players bring “no value”... https://t.co/2eQTedvnQG— Cody Joseph Cropper (@codycropper_01) August 17, 2018 At least 150, and potentially as many as 200 current MLS players qualify for & would like to take the B license course right now. Not one of them will be able to do so this year, which will be the 3rd consecutive year no B licenses are earned by 1st division players in the U.S.— MLSPA (@MLSPA) August 17, 2018 I really just don't get it. I've been through this whole thing enough times to know that nothing is going to happen, so there's no point in caring. And people who follow college sports think the NCAA is bad....
The whole system is a joke. Ask yourself, “Why don’t they have A, B, C, etc. driver’s licenses?” Because you can’t measure competence that way. You need to get additional licenses for specific skill sets only. What we do now was broken from the beginning. Growth above basic competence comes from supporting coaches with PLAYER BASED GOALS. Focusing on coaching “levels” is a system that was developed in the 1970s before people understood how coaching works.
I find it hard to judge the coaching at lower levels because so much of it is about which team has the better players. In the overwhelming majority of these youth games, one team has a lot more talent than the other, and it doesn't matter how well the other team is coached. I don't even know how much real coaching happens in these teams. If a team with less talent is well coached, they'll probably park the bus, and play anti-football. Thats not good either. The team that has the better players doesn't need coaching, and it's hard to judge much about their coaching. Occasionally, I've noticed some coaches are extremely good. The guy who coaches the NYCFC U-19's has his teams play good football and get results with average talent. I've also noticed some coaches are not good. Luchi Gonzalez plays negative football, as good as he's been for giving young Americans minutes this season. For the most part, I think it's very hard to take much out of the coaching at these lower levels. Even in USL, some of these coaches are required to play certain players and at certain positions because the MLS team sends down an order. It's not a completely level playing field where each coach can completely coach up their team to get them to play as they want and play good football to get good results. USL is a traditional lower league. Teams that sit deep and play physical often win against these teams with a lot of young players. They might not play the better football, but they'll hit on the counter or on set pieces.
Your observations are excellent. The fact of the matter is that coaching is only a third of player development and we haven’t even standardized a curriculum of what coaching soccer is. If you pay $100 to watch United Soccer Coaches’ “Principles of Play”, what you get is a random list of one guys favorite parts of the game in a shockingly disorganized presentation. There are good, hard working people in coaching but, when you have winning and losing, the growth of the profession has gotten severely stunted. When a team wins, people tend to think that everything they did was good and when they lose people tend to think that everything that they did was poor. You have correctly identified that a lot of what is going on has nothing to do with the coaching. Even if something happening on the field has to do with coaching, we don’t have any idea how to measure it because there is still no valid curriculum of the game and so we don’t even know exactly what to measure or where that might lead. There are a ton of dedicated coaches who work very hard but, to be honest, if I want to grow at my job, I don’t go to national organizations - they don’t know what they are doing, but they have to act like they do in order to stay in control. This past summer I went to Kansas University to study under Jim Knight about Instructional Coaching - coaches who instruct teachers on how to increase student achievement. You want to learn how coaching REALLY works? That is the number one place in the world that you go. They don’t have the distraction of wins and losses, yet they have the urgency of student achievement scores forcing them to get every step of the coaching process correct every single time or administrators will come and ask them why improvements didn’t take place. Raymond Verheigen has finally figured out how the game of soccer works, but he comes from the highest levels of the game (National Team or high level club) so it is unrealistic to expect a guy like that without any educational background to develop a legitimate curriculum. Tom Byer did a great job figuring out that two to six year olds need to fall in love with the ball before they fall in love with the game or else the opportunity to become “world class” is over before the kid is eight, but he has been pigeon holed into the preschool and primary age group. Your observations couldn’t be more perceptive. The pieces to put player development together and, in the process of doing that, put coaching together, are all there but I am afraid that we still have a decent sized wait before it all comes together. I normally don’t go this far off topic, but I felt that your excellent observations deserved some background knowledge.
Yup. In effect, its not the primary job of a coach like Eric Quill to win games. Yes.................we'll take it, advertise the success, and gun for the championship. But ultimately he should be judged on whether players like Imanol Almaguer, David Rodriguez, Brecc Evans, etc. develop into MLS caliber players. Its even harder for us with North Texas SC because they usually show up to the match with significantly superior talent to the opposition. Other than TFC II, most of the opposition hasn't put up much of a fight.
I am always confused when you talk about Luchi's anti-football tactics. I see his teams playing a possession style relying heavily on the defenders and midfielders to build attacks. For comparison's sake, they seem to play with much more freedom than Pareja's teams.