Kids leave home at young ages all the time. Some go away to boarding schools overseas some are gymnasts and need to live away nearer their coaches Which is still not in any way shape or form a reason to deny promising players quality coaching. Of course. We all look forward to your extensive reprot detailing your travels where you cataloged this I am sure I am not the only person in this thread who finds this hard to believe. Club managers do not exist on a plain that can in anyway be considered "similar" but you want us to believe that all youth coaches (who are far greater in number) are all on a "similar" level. This defies basic logic about how things occur organically in life. Listen it is clear that you are emotionally invested in this argument but please don't make stuff up. In terms of technical ability there are far more Phil Nevilles in england than there are Ryan Giggs. Neville is still in the premiership because the coaches at Man U were able to teach him how to use what basic skills he had effectively. He know how to trap a ball he knows how to make a basic pass (he doesn't know how not to give up free kicks at the most inoppotune time). He is a basically competemt player. If what you say is true we would see the other Phil Nevilles in the lower divisions display a similar level of basic competency. But it is not true and that is why we don't see that. Thanks for the chuckle though Am I the only person who gets a smile on their face everytime this poster tells someone they are ignorant and don't know as much as he does? It has become quite the reocurring theme in this thread.
I don't see anyone here doubting the quality of croatian coaching. It is nonesense because that will not happen. I have already given examples of players who had a choice to train at a highly regarded academy. One said yes one said no. That is what will happen. What will also happen is that the teams that have been sitting on their duffs will now be motivated to imporve their coaching or fear losing the best players to other teams. There will be no thousands of kids moving.
Rommul, normally I agree with your point of view, but on this I think you are seeing things too much in black and white. One of the biggest problems in the US is that kids spend way too much time traveling which takes time away from training. No pre-adolesent kid should spend more time in a car then they do out on the field playing soccer. Young kids need to learn to control the ball, and that isn't going to happen inside a car whether at the end of the trip that kid has access to a good coach or a great coach. It may become a necessity as kids get older, but as they get older they are mentally ready for that change. This is a very important part of developing young athletes that you overlook - the psychological side. Ask any child psychologist and they will tell you kids have a whole different sense of time then do adults. What might be merely an hour and a half ride to you is like an enternity for a 12 year old. I know because I have a 12 year old. The quickest way to turn her off from playing soccer would be to expect her to sit in a car for a 3 hour round trip to attend 90 minutes of training multiple times a week. And on that point, you need only ask any sports psychologist the correlation of having kids enjoy what they are doing to their advancement as athletes. This applies just as equally to the player whose potential may be as an international level soccer player as it does to kids that never leave the ranks of recreational soccer. And BTW, your example using gymnastic training is a very poor one. Any familiarity with that sport will tell you a lot of what is done to kids in that sport verges on child abuse.
But you’re questioning England’s, right ? They have the second best group of players in the world at the moment.
Excellent post which outlines many salient points that would be considered by any team seeking to recruit kids from afar. What people need to realise is that no one would ask kids from Exeter to commute to or even move to Manchester that would be too inefficient. These big teams would want to cast the widest net possible and the most obvious method would be for them to partner with teams like exter of peterborough or shrewbury to bring those teams coaching staffs up to a higher level providing that Man U had first choice on any talents unearthed (in exchange for a modest transfer fee of course). This is exactly the way Liverpool got Le Tallec and Sinama Pongolle. In essence money generated in the most well organside and professionally run league in the world (money put up by english paying customers) is going to pay for the development of french players (as well as other nationalities). I think it is quite ridiculous that it is permissable to to this internationally but not permissable to to this on a national level. And I am not even a professional who gets paid to think about solutions all day. I am sure people in the buisness can come up with even more elaborate and effective ways of bringing more elite players under the tutelage of better coaches. I am simply annoyed by this nonesense about "uprooting 12 year olds" since it is simply a lazy way of thinking and ignores all the possibilities out there. There is no good reason why teams can't be allowed exactly what I laid out here if it means that more kids get to be exposed to quality coaching. Agreed
Uh isn't it clear that I am praising the level of coaching at some teams in england while criticising the level at some others. Have you been reading the thread?
Well, people in business came up with what you have used as an example. Basically, anything soccerwise outside of England but within EU functions in a free-market atmosphere. And if this is the way it works, then it's the best current system devised. Any artificially elected means of controlling the free markets will by definition be less efficient than the free markets themselves. Sometime down the road, another system will be introduced challenging the current set-up. That's the nature of the beast. The business models evolve constantly. But they evolve by profit-seekers into better, more competitive models. Under the central planners, however, they de-evolve, becoming more inefficient with every step, consuming more resources for the same unit of output. PS. And if Chelsea gobbles up every 15-year old Croatian and then spits them out 2 years later, then the following group of Croatians will be smarter and will go to PSG and Ajax instead. Anticipating that ahead of time, Chelsea will treat its cadres in a way that would not endanger its success in the future. To argue otherwise would be akin to suggesting that Microsoft can easily get all the best programmers on the planet and come up with an absolutely greatest software ever written while denuding its competitors of ever being able to create anything of similar quality. Or that no one could design chips as good as Intel. Or make donuts as good as Krispy Kreme; et cetera, et cetera.
I have been speaking from direct experience with the FA Premiership Academy system. I have stated facts. You may cynically look forward to reports of my travels, but therein lies the difference between your opnions and mine: I've seen what we are talking about. Every thing you have posted is an opinion with no facts or experience to back them up. You say that the coaching quality varies from one club Academy to another. Could we have some specific examples please? You say that it is perfectly OK for a 12 year old to be uprooted from his family. What child development experts can you cite that agree with this opinion? Sure, maybe they go to boarding schools to get an education. How will that happen if they are removed from their families to play football? Who makes sure they stay on top of their schoolwork? Who makes sure they don't fall in with the wrong crowd? Who makes sure they eat and sleep properly? Surely you don't want this to be the responsibility of the Academy coaches? Why don't you try to read my comments before replying to them? I didn't all youth coaches were of the same quality. I said all Premiership Academy coachers were of similar quality. They may have different methods, and everyone understands that there may be some better coaches than others, but the quality does not vary that much. Every one of them has the same responsibility: to develop professional players. You said you find this hard to believe. Well, that's is a problem you'll have to come to terms with. And it was the league clubs that could subscribe to the FA's charter scheme, which covers everything at the club from coaching, to facilities, to child safety. Maybe you ought to watch some lower league level players before comparing them to Phil Neville. He's more than a competent player: He's an England international who has been capped 50 times. He has been playing for his country since 1996. There's thousands of players that would kill to be that competent. I'm sorry your opinions do not match mine. But I'm awfully glad that those whose job it is to develop the best soccer players don't go about it the way you feel it should it be done.
Yes yes i think we have all got the point. You are knowledgable. We are ignorant. I think we all get it now. I don't I need to state examples. I just need to examine the end products produced by the teams themselves. That should be a clear enough indication of the quality of coaching that exists. Then again I have no direct experience so when you tell me that the level of coaching at Cmabridge is on a similar level as the coaching at Chelsea I have no choice but to defer to you in spite of the mountains of evidence that indicates otherwise. Well I actually stated that other other children leave home at a young age and they don't exactly turn into axe murderers later in life. At any rate this "uprooting 12 year olds" nonesnse has been addressed. It would never happen because it would be inefficient. But by all mean feel free to keep beating the dead horse. Hmmm...... https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4127464&postcount=399 Hmm you seem to be saying here that every team in england that claoms professional status has a similar level of coaching as the rest meaning that you are stating that the Cambridges and the Kidderminsters have coaching as good as premiership clubs. I don't see the word premiership in there. Are you now backing away from that statement or do you think every club outside the premiership is not professional. Which is exactly what I said he is competent. And just so you know through the miracle of bittorrent I get to see quite a few Lower League gaems as well as highlight show every week and there are lots of players with his level of technical ability but not his level of competence which is the difference between good coaching and substandard coaching. And they say I am nauseatingly haughty
There's no reason to continue this discussion with you, because you are nothing but a bastard. What a total waste of my time to have a discussion based on facts and experiences with someone whose experience comes from watching highlight shows. All you've really tried to do is argue without contributing a fact or an example, it has ruined what was once a terrific thread. So I will sign off BigSoccer and spend my time on the other forums where the participants have a level of knowledge beyond wild speculation and generally wrong assumptions about how children in general, and youth players in particular, should be developed. By the way, up until recently, you could have made the argument that the youth coaching at Cambridge was as good or better than the youth coaching at Chelsea. But you wouldn't know that from a 30 minute highlight show. You'd know it from being in England, having and knowing kids & families in the various leagues and academy youth system, and spending time talking with youth coaches and Academy directors. I do congratulate you for your use of a UK map, though I wouldn't recommend readers of this post hold their breath waiting for you to post any meaningful statements on Kidderminster's youth team. You say that you don't need to state examples? Well, you do if you want to support your opinion. In my experience, those who say "I don't need to state examples" are the people who can't produce any. I hope you enjoy whatever direction this thread takes. Maybe when Everton's U12's are back in Massachusetts this summer, you'll come and watch them play. You can speak to their coach. And when you hear similar things to what I've posted here, you can challenge him in the same fashion. You're not nauseatingly haughty. You're nauseatingly uninformed.
It is a sure sign of surrender when a person has to resort to personal attacks in response to spmeone who is just posting their own views. Bigsoccer rule #147. Seriously you need ot get over yourself.
Having previously posted on this thread, at a time when uninformed opinions were not the dominant feature, and as a parent of one of the Everton U12 kids who visited America, I find that I have to post again stating that the points made by HiFi are factual and relevant. Rommuls illinformed opinions are surely just a wind up backed by zero evidence.
What evidence do I need? 1. Some teams produce quality talent some don't. 2. As a result many promising players may be stuck with access to only inferior coaching under the current system. 3. Many of these same players would benefit from a higher level of coaching. Are either of these points even in dispute? Even your friend HiFi backed down from his claim that all youth teams have a similar level of coaching. And when I pointed out what he had actually said he satrted slinging around personal insults. HiFi spent a large part of this thread pushing how important coaching is above all else and when I actually agree with him and point out flaws in the system he gets huffy? You both seem to be too close to these systems to ever be able to make any kind of objective view of it otherwise we would have people making ridiculous claims such as suggesting that all kids in a professional youth team environment recieve coaching that is of a similar level. That defies common sense and flies in the face of all the realities of football whereby quality talent flees to where the money is. The mere idea that a coach who is a good as a a coach at Man U Arsenal or West Ham is going to stay at Cmabridge and make League Two money is beyond silly. It smacks of someone making it up as they go along simply to suit an argument that they are cltching to. You people want us to belive that good players and managers will leave for richer pastures when the opportunity arises but no the youth coaches are different they don't wnat to make money at all. They will stay in the lower divisions and toil in obsurity? This what you people want us to believe? I Maybe I am WAAAAAYYYYY offf base but does anyone buy this line of reasoning? If someone does please by all means explain it to me. Listen it seems to be a reoccurring theme that you people feel the need to be condescending to others and accuse them of being uninformed when you can't dispute what they say. If you can prove that kids in three regions I have as example have access to the same level of coaching I will have been proved wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt. But you and your ilk can't so you won't and you will instead prefer to throw around insults and try to be dismissive by using the old standby "You don't know as much as me". That my friend is a sure sign that you have no leg to stand on Give us a break please. Spare us the holier than thou attitude.
I don't like to see personal attacks turn what has been an interesting thread in to a pile of trash. I thought the basic point was that many (I don't think all has been seriously said) European Clubs fast track the very best U12s in to their youth systems and turn them in to the kind of killers that we in the states can only dream of. The Everton Academy is being used as an example. I think that yes, the Europeans do have some good systems out there. My son, when he was U14, got to accompany a US team to play the Ajax second string U14 here in Europe - and needless to say the Ajax second string was far superior to a group of US select kids (who may or may not be a fair comparison because they also had to have the money to travel). The Ajax kids all live at the Ajax Club, and consequently live soccer. I do not know that much about the English approach, or really the Dutch either, so this thread has been of interest to me. Is this the best system for our NT bound youth? If the arguement is do teams below the Premiership level give the same benefit to the top 1%, or a lesser benefit, but still greater than what we are exposed to in the states, than let us discuss that in those terms.
Interesting thread. I think the mark of good youth programs is the number of national team players they have produced. I've just taken a look at the most recent rosters of England's U16 (November 2004), U17 (February 2005), U18 (December 2004), U19 (September 2004), U20 (September 2004), & U21 (February 2005) rosters. Players from these most recent rosters were from the following clubs (in no particular order): Birmingham City Manchester United Blackburn Sheffield United Arsenal West Ham United Everton Leicester City Liverpool Derby County Chelsea Manchester City Southampton Middlesborough Tottenham Hotspur Wolverhampton Bristol City Coventry City Ipswich Town Nottingham Forest Fulham Charlton Milton Keynes (formerly Wimbledon) Walsall Rotherham United Aston Villa Cambridge Norwich City Crystal Palace Burnley Sheffield Wednesday Newcastle United Reading Preston North End Wigan Brighton West Bromwich Albion That's a pretty diverse group of teams. Interesting to note the following Premiership outfits without a player on these rosters: Portsmouth (do the kids opt for Southampton?) Bolton (do the kids opt for Man City, ManU, Liverpool, or Everton?)
HiFi "So I will sign off BigSoccer and spend my time on the other forums where the participants have a level of knowledge beyond wild speculation and generally wrong assumptions about how children in general, and youth players in particular, should be developed." One can only hope that HiFi is a man of his word.
Yes he seems to have better things to do with his time than to associaye with the likes of us. Quite a personal disposition he has.
I would think it unlikely that Cambridge have coaches as good as Chelsea, but the mountain of evidence is rather misleading. It's not as if all kids are of equal standard at 12 and coaching will be what decides whether they turn pro or not. It's also not as if the competition to sign young players is in any way equal. Chelsea will be able to lure young players from Cambridge. No London kids are going to be lured up to Cambridge. Add to that Cambridge has a considerably smaller catchment area and it's just as safe to say that even if the coaching was of equal standard, Chelsea's youth set-up would still churn out more players of a better standard than Cambridge's, purely because the raw 12-year olds they could sign would be a lot better than Cambridge's. Not really. That implies that those same players, if they'd been put through the Man Utd youth system, would be just as good. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Man Utd's youth players never hold down a regular place in the team, and many do drop down to that very same level (and lower) shows there's much more to it than just coaching.
You would get no argument from me about the disparity in coaching. You point that not all 12 years are of the same quality and I would expand that to say that there must be some number of quality 12 year olds who are not in close proximity to the better academies. Its not as if every promising kid is close to a big club there must be quality players out in the wolderness who could benefit from better coaching instead of them running around just dominating inferior players who just happen to be in their age group.. Which is the point I am trying to make. Somewhere along the line someone sat him down and said "Phil you are no Kevin Keegan this is what you are and are not capable of. You can make a breta career for yourself by playing within these limits." And he has done just that. Put some other players from the lower divisions into his shoes at 14 and the results would be quite similar Agreed. But my point all along has not been that coaching is a magic bullet my point is that the current system unreasonably forces some promising players to accept a lower standard of coaching at a younger age. These kids could benefit greatly from what instruction they can get at better clubs. Amazingly players in places like france and spain where such rules don't exist are not uprooted in greta numbers at young ages. Players like Cantona moved from Marseille to Auxerre but those types of moves are rare.
I'm sure that's true, but they are just more likely to be nearer one bearing in mind England isn't overflowing with large urban areas that don't have big club in their midst. To stick with the Cambridge example, it's a small town of about 85,000 (excl. students) with bugger all in the vicinty for about 40 miles. If young talented footballers were distributed even around the country and you were to take the best 500 12 year olds in the country, you'd still be lucky to find one who came from Cambridge or the surrounding area - compared to, for example, 14 from Liverpool. Keegan's probably the worst example you could have picked. Not only was he a player of limited ability who made the absolute most of what he did have, he also started his career at Scunthorpe. unlikely. A lot of those players have just done exactly the same thing - learned what they need to do to have a career at that level. And that doesn't explain why so many of Phil Neville's peers from that youth team had careers that nosedived despite benefitting from the same coaching an advice.
Well as a poster sated above Dovr Suker grew up in a town of 85K. Its pretty easy to say there are more talented kids in the Nortwest when there is a good system set up to bring that talent out. Population really has little to do with it. I am too young to have seen him play anyway I have to disagree there are actually players who are more talented than him who have moved on from united. He has simply struck a chord with the manager and that is why he stays around.
Osijek, pop 115,000 is the 4th largest city in Croatia and had an established top division team. so you really think Cambridge could produce as many talented footballers as merseyside, pop 1.3 million if only they had better coaches? To ignore the advantage a hugely larger population offers is just ridiculous. Coaching can only do so much. If you don't get the raw talent to start off with there's not a lot you can do. As they say, you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. I guarantee you, even if you put Liverpool & Everton's academy coaches at Cambridge United, you wouldn't suddenly start seeing Wayne Rooneys and Steven Gerrards playing in yellow & black. Both of those would have been outstanding players (for their age group) before they joined the academies. The odds of a player with that raw talent coming from an area 15 times larger than another are 15 times greater. It's like comparing a school match between a school of 100 pupils and one of 1500. The 1500 school is going to win. who?
The population argument is valid only in that you will have more kids to choose from in the more highly populated areas (obviously). A talented player could come from anywhere. And yes, then coaching plays a huge part in their development. Take a look at my earlier post listing the clubs that have produced National Team players. Yes, there are multiple players from the more highly populated areas, but there are players from clubs in the more remote parts of the country as well. And many players who have come through the youth systems of clubs thave not are not in the Premiership. This is the second time I've seen Phil Neville's name mentioned in such a way as to suggest he is not a top quality player. To say he is where he is because he "simply struck a chord with the manager and that is why he stays around" is not understanding the type of player he is. Sir Alex Ferguson does not keep players around for sentimental reasons. He will sell those he used to be close to (Beckham), or drop those that simply do not perform up to expectations (Howard). As was posted in an earlier thread, he has appeared in the England National team (capped, which means he either started or came on as a sub) around 50 times. Is it your contention that he has also struck a chord with Sven Goran Erickson and Kevin Keegan, and that is why he has stayed around the national team as well?
Well I was only going by what the poster said. Well that is not at all my point. My point is that there are talented kids out there whose talent will not be harnessed because thye are stuck with substandard coaching. The fact that there are more of those kids in Liverpool and much much fewer in Cambridge is not really relevant. What is important is that a system is in place that potentially (and in all likelyhood, actually) allows talent to watse away and not be focused at the right time. Sorry that wasn't made clear I agree totally. Luke Chadwick and soon to be Kieran Richardson and possibly John Oshea. He is not a stiff but he is not at all special either and there are better players at smallers clubs who play the same position(s) in the premiership (Michael Carrick off the top of my head). His best asset is probably his versatility and his proficieny at marking Henry. He is simply not a player who is thriving on his skill and there is no doubt in my mind that similarly limited players in the lower divisions if they were exposed to the same environment he was would end up as the same kind of product.