If you haven't seen this yet, it's a great series about the broken development system in the US through the eyes of one player's mother. The kid now plays in Germany after seeing how flawed the US system was at just 11 years old. Great perspective. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
It is a great series of articles. Be sure to continue reading the series for the son's article (No. 4). The only problem I have with the title and comments is that there is no youth training "system" here in the US. Never was. Our culture cuts against it. The closest thing we have to a national system is the USDA, but it is only for select players, one gender, limited locales and limited age groups. ODP is mainly about identifying elite players, not training, and run primarily at the state level. Everything else is too fragmented to be a network. "System: ...a group of devices or artificial objects or an organization forming a network especially for distributing something or serving a common purpose." --Merriam-Webster.com The articles do illustrate the real difference between the US and other countries. Except for minor portions of our population, our youth players do not have parents, siblings, friends, and relatives, who know how to play the game and can coach basic skills. The articles illustrate how this is a huge disadvantage to developing our young players.
Part 4 Excellent takeaways ranova. I think the biggest takeaways especially from part 4 is just how much of a difference the cultures are. He can walk outside and people will be juggling or practicing but in the US he can't get a friend to pass the ball with him.
To be fair, the kid lived in the middle of nowhere in Northeastern Pennsylvania, two hours from strong clubs in Philly or NYC. The US is a huge country and some areas are less conducive to soccer development than others. There is a reason that there is a high concentration of kids on the recently named boys U17 US world cup team from California, Texas, and Florida and very few northeasterners. At my kids' middle school in Los Angeles, he plays pick up soccer every morning before school and every day during lunch.
I think you are missing my point. It is not about where he lived, but whether he had ready access to free coaching for basic skills. You and I play soccer, so our kids have ready access to coaching for basic skills. His parents didn't play. In Germany you can walk outside your door anytime and get access to free coaching. I didn't as a kid. I played pickup soccer in the school yards in Michigan in grade school daily but there was no organized soccer and more importantly nobody I ever met or heard of, until I was 19 and at a university 120 miles from home and met some foreign students from England and Latin America, had ever played organized soccer, much less knew enough to coach basic skills. And no, none of the foreign students would even kick a ball around with someone from the states. (If you think there is a disparity now between US soccer and the rest of the world, this is nothing today. Today we are just upset that we are ranked in the top 10-15 percent internationally, instead of no. 1.) So I still had no access. Today there is some organized soccer in my home town, but the experienced players available to coach basic skills are rare.
Just to show how messed up this country is: Someone posted the link to the articles at this forum: http://www.pennlive.com/forums/youthsoccer/ There was some discussion about it, in similar vain as here, and then tonight the moderator deleted the entries!! It is like the mother said: no one wants to hear criticism over here .... Anyway, I am now very curious to see what happens to him over the next few years!
I thought of another way to view it. On a large scale we wonder why the US with its GNP and population fairs so poorly in men's international soccer in comparison to other countries. The reason is that, for 80% of our population, soccer is a "zero." Zero playing experience and zero interest in playing.
Although I'd say that still leaves 60 million (30 million if you count only men), it's sad we can't find 9 more properly trained players. I say 9, because we usually have a good gk and a "legitimate" "star" like Reyna, Dempsey, McBride, Donovan, or Harkes(?). The counter argument to that counter argument is that we can't get that 30 million in the hands of good coaching. Holland has the best players in their 15 million total population surrounded by good coaching.
It's all about evolution in soccer terms, and we're just out of the "primordial ooze" stage right now. Thirty years ago I was ten. In the third largest city in the state we had no soccer, and in the two biggest ones it hadn't been around long. If it weren't for the efforts of a kid's dad (who was first generation Hungarian) to start a youth soccer league, who knows how much longer it would have been before any of us were exposed to the game. Our dads picked up brochures with the basic rules of the game and we did the best we could with what we knew. We had no soccer to watch to see how it should be done. In my high school, there was no varsity soccer until my freshman year. Our coach checked out all the soccer books in our library to learn how to coach it. The only way to see the game was if you were lucky enough to have a big C-band dish to watch Spanish language coverage of Mexico '86. There were no clubs. The first select team we had in our area was at U-16. That was the first time I had been taught by someone (from Greece) who had actually played and knew the game. We've gone light years since then, but we still have a long way to go.
I was actually responding to the notion that he didn't have anyone to play pick-up with. My point is if you live in the sticks, especially in a cold weather area, don't expect to have many soccer playing kids around. However, once again, in LA, in my neighborhood, if you walk outside you will have access to one former pro player, at least three adults (including myself) who still play regularly, and lots of soccer playing kids. If we go to the park on the weekend, there will be at least 1-2 adult pick-up games from sun-up to sundown. Kids are usually playing on their sides while their Dads play. There is also often at least one kid doing a private training session with a professional coach. None of this, of course, means that these kids are getting access to good coaching. The pick-up games are often devoid of passing and while most club teams are heavily focused on the short passing game, there are still some kick and run clubs out there in Socal. Still, the point is that you can't really generalize from one location in the US to the rest of the country the way you can in the countries in Europe which are all much smaller and more homogenous with respect to their football interests.
I am focused on developing basic skills. This is where the US falls short. In Holland every player has access to good coaching for basic skills from family and friends. This coaching and training goes on informally in addition to organized soccer. When I grew up it was like Holland for sports like football, baseball, basketball and hockey. Dads taught their kids how to play catch and bat starting as soon as they could sit up. I watched my Dad's softball games. Families with toddlers skated together so that kids learned to move on and off the ice at the same time. You can't play hockey, if you can't skate. You can't play soccer without ball skills. Same situation, but different sport.
Anti-American snobbery, and completely biased based on a family that had MORE than enough means to send their son overseas on optional trips as a kid, then actually sent him overseas completely (to low-level academies likely below the level of the MLS academy he left). I hear her frustration, really I do, but I find the actual backup articles on the kid very telling - talking about the honor of playing for his HS team. Then how he had to switch to homeschooling because "soccer is too much of a commitment". As if there aren't other kids who attend HS full-time in person and belong to academy teams. Self-indulgent tripe for people with more money than they know what to do with. Comments like "he wasn't taught how to receive a ball" and how THAT is related to his coaching are total BS - you learn that by practice, practice, practice. This kid is ranked 4 stars by Top Drawer (which published the series), he's not all that. He was invited to the U14 BNT camp and never went back to any ODP. If my kid is dissed, sure I'd be mad. But this lady is silly to take HER (no, not her kid's) specific circumstances and apply it to the country. Are their sucky coaches in the US who are just trying to make a dollar? OF COURSE! But is EVERY youth soccer coach in the US bad and detrimental to youth? Of course NOT! She even notes a bunch of former internationals that her son found in the US who taught him a lot. My son has had English, Dutch, German, Brazilian, Portuguese, and American youth soccer coaches and trainers. When we weren't happy with his training, we found a training program outside of his team to help him out. IT'S NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A CLUB COACH TO TEACH A CHILD TO RECEIVE A SOCCER BALL! Just like it is not the responsibility of a Little League coach to teach a child to throw and catch; the parents are supposed to work with the child, or the child finds a friend to work with. Why don't Americans want to practice and work hard for their goals? Why is there Americans so enamored of South America and Europe that they discount any resources we have here? I frequent a UK youth soccer coach board, and if you see ANYTHING different than a US youth soccer coach board, it is worse. No refs, players poached frequently, skills lacking, etc. etc. etc. My son practices soccer every day, by himself if he has to. If your kid doesn't want to do that, don't blame his club coach.
Some links on "his story" from earlier in his "soccer career": http://www.abingtonsuburban.com/sports/weighing-his-options-1.280714 "I’d like to go to a regular school again, but it’s what I have to do in order to achieve my goal,” he said after celebrating a victory at a teammate’s house." “It’s a big thing playing for your town or school. There’s so much honor in it. All your teammates are cheering for you and everyone in the stands are cheering for you, waiting for you to change the game.” http://www.timesleader.com/AbingtonJournal/sports/Shiposh_has_bright_future_11-05-2008.html "After school, Shiposh hopes to make it at the professional level, possibly in Scotland. He enjoys the game and wants to continue playing as long as he can. He likes the people and weather in Scotland. “I always have played better in rotten conditions,” Shiposh said. “My parents say that it suits my personality.”" http://academy.demosphere.com/teams/17276140/17297507-17276234/12014875.html For some reason he made ODP and never did it again. Hmm. And in the last article in the series on Top Drawer, the mom says: "but they're getting more development and attention from these foreign systems than our own country and as a soccer mom and an American, I find that very sad." which clearly points to the problem that her son was on the U14 BNT, and was not invited back. I have to love the first comment on it: "Great article! How does one send their kids to Europe for soccer training...". First step, make enough money to do so. Second step, throw your kid out of the house. I just wonder how many parents of ODP and academy rejects feel that the system is messed up, because it didn't put their child on a pedestal. This player clearly was "hot" as a U14, and slowly the rest of the kids caught up to him. From the first article: "When he came to the realization that he wasn't 'the best' anymore, Zack didn't quit soccer, but he wanted to and unfortunately for him, his father and I were - and still are - sadistic about not allowing our kids to quit on a commitment." SHE is what's wrong with the US youth soccer system, EXACTLY. I am surprised he didn't leave home at 11.
This is primarily a parent's forum. I agree with you but was trying to discuss the issues without pointing fingers at any specific parents or parents in general. The situation is what it is. I think the mother agrees that her ignorance was a problem, and I admire that she took steps to cure her ignorance. Identifying the problem is an important preliminary step in problem solving, but assessing blame never solved a problem.
There are hundreds of threads in Big Soccer that assess blame, including this one. The only difference with this finger pointing was that is was specific to one person, a player's mom (or dad). We all know youth soccer development sucks in this country, but as long as we can blame some monolithic structure, we can get some closure around the issue. Me, I think that the fact that we are about as good (or maybe better) than Mexico, which is rabid about the sport , shows we ain't so bad.
Not to mince words, but we get results against Mexico. But we still don't produce players who can feature for Man Utd or Barca.
By plane is usually the best route. Grand finale: The Last Word "Why would we not take the training and development methods of a proven youth player development system - that just happens foreign - and implement it here in the U.S.? If our coaches and trainers have really become that arrogant, close-minded and xenophobic, then quite frankly, as a 'soccer nation', we deserve to fail." While she may be correct to a certain degree, she sure makes a ton of generalizations that every coach won't use a top club/country's system because of their pride. I'm sure if a coach had a Real Madrid training guide, they would work their butt off to implement it, but it isn't that cut and dry!
rhrh, looks like she hit a nerve with you. You should cool down and take a deep breath. I know parents who took their kids out of the DA system because it cost too much. Some are free; the majority are not. That + the fact that they had to travel for 2 hrs each way to get to a decent club all was taken into their decision making evaluation. Each case is different: the point is that she showed us all that it is possible to adapt, get good schooling, get into a nice host family and get overall superior and more disciplined training abroad. For that a lot of us applaud her.
Not plural. Singular. Mexico isn't sending them by the boatload either, but I get your point. All that I take from that article is a kid moves to Germany or Brazil or finds a coach that grew up in an area like that and it is a culture thing to eat, breathe and shit soccer. Just like the US has for baseball or basketball. Brazil, and Europe turn out just as many crappy players as we do per capita, even having it ingrained in their culture(s). The million dollar question that is not answered in the article is how are these clubs in Germany or wherever funded? How much is the family paying this club to train their son? Or how does this club pay to train players?
yeah - with the penn forums as well it's a case of "if you throw a stick into a pack of dogs, the one who gets hit, will bark." Interesting about the articles is they come right out and say "hey, my son wasn't good enough." Usually what I hear is "My son is the best and politics are keeping him out of his deserved status. And in now way is she saying it's all bad here or all good over there. Pretty nuanced articles actually, including the part 4 written by the son. But there is a lot of entrenchment out there, it probably is the biggest obstacle to really breaking through as a soccer nation.
"IT'S NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A CLUB COACH TO TEACH A CHILD TO RECEIVE A SOCCER BALL! " actually, THIS is a big part of the problem. Now I HAVE seen everything.
Alex_K sheds some light on Zack's team and the level of the men's first team. FT Braunschweig is pretty much a high level amateur team in Germany the players are not paid a salary. There are tons of kids in Germany who were born in America and moved to Germany to play for youth teams (Bobby Wood, Carlos Martinez, etc). So in a way what Zack is doing is nothing new but the level he is at currently isn't very high at all. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1750157