I don’t disagree many things need to change and that many years will be required…. It would be free (or at least very cheap) to encourage participation…and to create good will between US Soccer and HS Soccer; to open a dialog between US Soccer and HS Soccer…which might at some point down road, allow US Soccer to encourage the other changes to HS Soccer we both agree need to happen… But the idea is you have to start somewhere; you are not get all the changes you want overnight….US Soccer can’t change the season/grid, but it can help improve the coaching…while hopefully planning the seeds of bigger changes later on….
My concern though is what happens if you make those requirements and no one wants to fulfill them? Dump the program? If the coaches are just in it for the money, if you make them take classes, they're going to quit.
Well now you are on to another problem - $$$. Why would US Soccer help high school to only lose players (revenue) to it. So I guess you need to fix that before a diolouge can even begin.
If a couch refuses or doesn't want to take classes then they should not be applying for the position to begin with. So lets weed out the lazy math teacher then.
Because US Soccer is a nonprofit organization who’s mission is to make soccer, in all its forms, a preeminent sport in the United States and to continue the development of soccer at all recreational and competitive levels. US Soccer’s mission isn’t hoard all the best players in order to profit from it/them…
Well that depends on whether you believe they place more importance on building pro and national players over the rest. I would argue that they do - so there you go.
US Soccer should be encouraging, promoting, supporting better HS coaching…NOT regulating, demanding, or forcing non-compliant coaches to “retire”….we have lot of carrots we haven’t even tried yet; no need to start with the sticks…
Probably so...I guess I just wish they would change their mission statement to reelect that reality....IF they would just change it to "We don't give a shit about anything but the US National Team," I might stop expecting more out of them...
Yes and that's what has always made me upset. We should be investing from the Bottom up. That builds passion and retention which means less kids dropping out. That equates to a larger pool to develop top players and more fans to plug $$$ back into clubs - pro games and merchandising. Instead they are in a mad all rush to extract as much money from parents by building a facad for millions of kids who likely won't make it past high school or college.
Ok. Then who coaches the team? I'm assuming if the lazy math teacher is the coach, it's because no one else wants the job.
If there is no cost to the math teacher (and I am sorry to any math teachers), then why in the world would they not want to take the course - or at the very least understand the requirement? Sorry but if that's such a deal breaker then maybe they should not be teaching there as well.
So because they don't want to put extra time into their extracurricular activity (that they probably don't really want to do to begin with), they shouldn't have a job? I'm not talking about the teacher who enjoys the game and wants to instill a love (as well as win) for the game with the kids. I'm talking about the teacher who agreed to coach in order to get some extra money. How about US Soccer come out and tell the club teams they can't keep kids from playing school ball? How about they encourage clubs/rec leagues to support teams past U13? You want more fans? Keep people involved. I know the larger clubs (at least around here) have teams all the way through U18/19. Most of the smaller clubs start losing teams around the U13 U14 age group because there's not enough kids to support it. Our hometown club rarely gets a team past U14 because the talent level has dropped so much (the better kids go to the larger clubs) kids don't want to be winless.
If a Coach can't take time to get an F for an E license. Then they obviously don't really want the extra cash that much. Then they obviously don't like the game that much. I think it's ridiculous that we continue on this discussion at least in this direction. If you disagree that's fine but I would find it hard to believe that any coach who likes the game or wants the money would have a difficulty at least getting the basic courses that's offered.
And by the way I understand that both of those courses are beginner courses and that the E is more geared toward under 13 players. But it is path that an can include additional material on an annual basis.
Are they insisting on playing 11v11? If we want to keep people playing, look at starting 5v5 leagues at the u14+. U12 field, 6X18 goal.
There are. Full time professional as well. When you look at semi pro there are probably another 68 club’s where virtually every player will be a part time pro on anything between $500 and $1000 pw for the duration of the 30 week season so would probably need another job. The next 72 clubs will have a mix of purely amateur and part time pros in their squads. I do think this is where the relative cost of a College education to one in Europe comes in. No one here loses a college education because of injury and as long as they have the grades a player can apply and go to university and get a degree when their football career finishes. A pro career here sees 17 year olds on £1.5 million pa in the premier league down to £78000 in League 2. Average wage in the uk is in the region of £30k There is room in between all those numbers to make delaying your degree (or doing one part time) worthwhile. Granted they need to keep up their grades between the ages of 16 and 18 to be eligible to enter university, but there is no need to consider financial support issues in the same way as the US. The only way these young men give up their education at 16 is if they and their parents allow it. Even the Open University here is only about £5k per year so more than manageable out of the salary of a professional footballer.
Make it free to get HS coaches qualified. Throw money at the HS teams. I think getting soccer played in more high schools and encouraging them to fill the gaps between rec and elite academy has got to be the most equitable way. Get more, better qualified HS coaches and get them to develop programmes for all abilities will increase participation while keeping it competitive. It should also see those communities where competitive football is under represented for economic reasons being properly developed. To be honest I believe a HS teacher developed to UEFA B level and given additional support around tactics and talent identification would be better for the US game than an English coach who was once part of the system in the U.K., played college in the US and has a cute accent. They really are very, very over rated
Discussion among Frank Lampard and others about the pitfalls of kids' soccer at the academy level in the UK (they're talking about a BT Sports documentary on the subject -- maybe some of you have seen it, though I haven't): "The parents seem to take on this different sense of normality...""It destroys childhoods! You get released at 16 and your whole world falls apart."Set aside 8-minutes of your life for this chat on youth football in England.⚽️ No Hunger in Paradise📺 BT Sport 2🕡 6.30pm pic.twitter.com/GPEP8SXn5d— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) January 6, 2018
Really interesting and thanks for sharing. I find it fascinating how both America and England have issues that seem similar on the surface (kids getting id'd to early and then falling out too young) but are so different (ours lack of interest or opportunity; theirs failing to say on at the club for other reasons). Curious - do the Germans get it wrong ever? Do they have a documentary about the perils of youth soccer?
The UK is a special case, as it is a class society, with seperation between those with all the opportunities and those that are on the wrong side of the line. Pro soccer for the latter is a chance to escape a situation more or less locking you in "poverty". When you dream about escaping it when you're in an academy and you're told you're not good enough at 16-18, you're basically thrown back into an environment with few chances to progress. That 2 tier society doesnot exist on the mainland. Germany and the Netherlands are far more egalitarian societies with far more social mobility. So those issues from the article are actually foreign to us. Edit: I posted not so long ago this in here as an example of how we deal with academy players: Gogle translate this: https://www.feyenoordacademy.nl/academy/missie-feyenoord-academy It shows how Feyenoord (and all Dutch clubs for that matter) take responsibility for academy players.
I don't know if you have ever looked at the stipends paid to scholastic coaches of any sport, but they are not large. I have been teaching/coaching at the HS level now for 15 years and can easily say that if a teacher wants extra money, coaching is not the best way. Teachers coach because we love working with the kids, love the game, and enjoy the competition. If you have a teacher without experience coaching a squad, it is because they want to help kids and the school has not been able to find a more experienced coach. I am SURE that they would love the aspect of coaches development. The NFHS and state associations facilitate this now, but it is not a focus of USSF and the organizations do not have good working relations. I will contrast this with USA Hockey. It has excellent coaches development at all levels. They work very hard to make sure HS coaches have their USA Hockey certs, even though hockey has a much smaller HS population and much larger barriers to getting hockey in HS's. Yet they are open to it, encourage the growth HS's and facilitate the process. I think it is because USA Hockey has recongnized that in order for the sport to grow developmentally you have to have it embraced culturally, and that means that fan or community development is as important as player development. Agree 100%. How to make that happen is the challenge, especially when key decision makers are not familiar with or even overtly hostile to the US scholastic model.
While soccer is a very skill intensive sport that I would compare with hockey or baseball in terms of requiring long term exposure and skill development to meet the elite competitive level, I think your perception of the amount of training required to acheive the professional levels of gridiron or basketball is wildly off the mark. I can assure you that there ZERO players in the NBA with 'zero discernable basketball skills.' The competition for one of 12 roster spots is ridiculously intense. In each of these sports,there are physical traits that cannot be coached (height/size), but that only limits the potential participants. It doesn't mean that just a 'good' athlete can go out and do it. What is different is that the elite athletes who are identified as having the physical tools are more obvious. They themselves see the potential and no doubt folks in the system do too. Then there is sheer ubiquity of football and basketball here in the US. However, there was a recent interesting study of elite basketball players (3* and higher rated recruits) and it showed that the socioeconomic factors were just as significant in basketball as in sports that are perceived as being 'upper-class', soccer being among them. I will try to find the link to that as it was quite counter to the general perception.
I thought about starting a new thread for this but it seemed to fit some of the discussion here (and I have nothing profound to add to the numbers), but I do find it interesting that the number of kids playing HS soccer in these numbers gathered by the NCAA has increased over the five years between 2011 and '16 (though I have no idea if there's a downturn at any point in those five years) while overall youth soccer participation numbers reportedly declined over a similar period in another recent report from, I think, the Aspen Institute. Also, where my son's club is concerned, seeing that gymnastics is almost non-existent in high schools yet such a dominant force on the girls side in my area (our club has real trouble with girls' numbers and part of the reason seems to be the popularity of club gymnastics and the demands the clubs make that girls at all ages do that and that alone, practice four, five or six days a week, ...) is curious. Are the only goals for gymnastics girls either the Olympics or college, since high school -- based on these numbers -- doesn't look like a potential goal for most? No idea. The girls' participation question is one I've meant to ask about here in the past. It's a frustrating one for my son's club. We charted 5-yr high school sports participation trends. Good or bad news for your sport? (Data from @nfhs_org) pic.twitter.com/tWknFWXsKD— NCAA Research (@NCAAResearch) August 12, 2016
I know this is anecdotal, but based upon my daughters teams its seams that gymnastics is the earliest "all-in" sport. She had teammates stop playing soccer starting around 11 years old to specialize in gymnastics. Then anywhere from 14-16 Years old some girls start leaving soccer to specialize in Basketball or Volleyball or drop Basketball or Volleyball to specialize in Soccer. I am not surprised by girls La Cross having huge growth. in my area (Illinois) there have been high school girl teams for only a few years and I believe 2018 is the first official IHSA State Championship.