In club soccer a successful team is an indication that the level of competition will be higher than a less successful team. While I would encourage a parent to look at how a team wins, do they play soccer or kick and chase, if you want your son or daughter to get better they need to train with the best players available. With the right coach and the right teammates a player will improve. At the same time, if the team gets results they will be in higher brackets in tournaments, get invited to better leagues etc. and therefore be facing strong competition. So, in my view, the result of any one game is inconsequential however winning and losing are good experiences for young players and a team that wins is more likely to attract and retain talented players. You don't get better unless you train and compete at increasing levels of play. When assessing an individual player, the record of the team is unimportant. I would submit for the parent or player, the record of the team is important as long as it aligns with the family's sensibilities regarding travel, playing time and cost. The footnote to that is the burnout question, if a family chases the sport too much then the burnout factor increases. I'd suggest a talented player, with a competitive nature will change teams 1-2 times between U8 and U17 provided there are other quality teams in the area. I think players should know what it is like to be on a team for a few years and develop friendships and relationships. At the same time, it is unlikely the player will reach maximum potential if they play with the same players/coach/team for too long a period. The mercenary families who prostitute their kids to be on the 'best' teams are the other end of the spectrum...the 1-2 moves mentioned above should not be for the wrong reason, if the player has demonstrated the ability to move to a 'better' team and the move is done in a transparent manner then that may produce the best outcome.
True, the vast majority of kids won't play at a collegiate or above. Game needs to be accessible to them. It's why I don't like the movement to birth year. Kids want to play with their friends that are in their class. As for attendance, yes it is counted on tickets distributed. Always has been. Read through the MLS attendance thread. Nothing slow about it over the past 10 years, unless you follow the Fire like I do.
Not sure what growth you are speaking of. Says JLeague has declined, despite large deal. China growing fast but current financial model might not be sustainable. If you are stating that p/r is good for lower league teams, I can see that though it's not the end all be all. I just don't think it makes the top league any more enjoyable for the fan. Some may disagree but that has been my experience.
Well numbers disagree with you however. Rec still stands as a fun activity into keeping kids active and in some cases - a use for babysitting. I in fact was at open play last night for 10-14 year olds and in speaking with a DOC he mentioned that most of his parents on the rec side openly admitted to using soccer as a point o drop off to run out for groceries. Additionally - I know of 3 other coaches who are having a god awful time getting rec kids to play indoor. That's because they are not commited to soccer - even in the least. Playing with the walls - although some may say is not a good thing from a development perspective, is one activities that many kids just love - parents typically like it as well because it is faster and more physical. But where are the kids? IMO I don't think we are building passion at a young age. It's not at all hard to do - soo why not?
This is totally off topic, but the gist is: Most Americans don't give a shit about who the biggest loser is. And no owners of soccer clubs in America are going to buy into a system with the potential to drop into a lower division, so you might as well abandon the idea that pro/rel is EVER going to happen here. If Europe was to scrap their system and start over my guess is club owners would prefer to do away with it entirely.
Look, don’t get me wrong, I like promotion-relegation…but it isn’t the magic pill you think it is… We’re just not ready for it; it won’t work given the state of soccer in this country right now…not sure it ever will... The soccer pyramids you see in those other countries took generations to build and evolved over time…you can’t rush passion, tradition, culture, etc…
"magic pill"? wow, I forgot how good people are at failing to read and making broad assumptions on this board. You can't rush pro-rel? Look at Japan. Look at Australia demanding it. You can't rush, but 20 years and a large 2nd/3rd tier in Canada/USA shows it's time. Have to start somewhere.
Canada and the rest of the world use birth year - no one cares about this "being on a team with my classmates" thing anywhere.
Actually I do, my point is that it's a completely foreign concept to American sports fans and I could see that as being a common interpretation. As somebody who grew up watching those sports and only started watching soccer as an adult I found pro/rel interesting but I still don't particularly care about which minor team with a boring playstyle completely outmatched by the teams at the top of the table happens to be going down/up (again) this year. People watch sports because they enjoy watching sports, the structure of the league is absolutely secondary to that fact. And again, it's just not gonna happen, so let it go.
Australia is not demanding it at the W or A-League level. There are no other national leagues to relegate to. It already exists in some states at the state level (premier league) for the older ages groups only. U12-U16 loss/wins don't count so that teams will focus on development not winning.
I respect your advocacy for pro-rel…once again, I personally like and enjoy the setup; I enjoy watching those scrappy little English teams in the relegation zone fight for their lives; it can make for great games and storylines… I just don’t think we (US soccer/MLS) are really for it yet… Whereas I respect your stance, you come across a bit the zealot….I get it, I am a bit of a high school soccer zealot myself… The zealot believes so much in the rightness of their stance, they can’t fathom another intelligent person not agreeing with them…it’s not a good place to be; it diminishes both them and their argument….
The rest of the world doesn’t have the tradition/culture of school based teams/sports like the US does…
I apologize for the quote fail in post above. To fix it. I don't think rec soccer is just glorified babysitting. At the younger age groups, rec is the gateway and where skill development starts. In our program, rec is really the options before U9 (for this year the 2008 birth year kids). Kids that want to can join skills clinics but that is a small number of players. In our rec program, coaches are supposed to be working off practice plans developed by our Director of Rec Soccer. The Director and his staff also spend time educating coaches to help make their practices useful. I definitely see skill development happening in our rec program and there are always some kids that move from rec to travel as their skills improve. We run our rec program through the end of HS so kids that don't want to/don't have the skills to play travel still have a place to play. On a different note-- once teams get the 3rd grade and above, we do have promotion/relegation across divisions in in our rec programs.
Didn't mention Canada or anywhere else nor what they thought. Discussion is about what is best for our kids in our system. I have already seen numerous kids quit the sport because they weren't playing with their friends. For the vast majority of kids, playing with their friends is a key reason to play any sport. Soccer is just shooting itself in the foot with some kids with this rule.
Results do not matter for competitive player development generally. Two marginal exceptions others have noted. First, a team's record may allow the team to play at "State League 1" instead of "State League 2" and compete regularly against better teams and players. Second, keeping track of results and having promotion/relegation builds in an urgency to games which will cause some players to rise to the occasion and some not to do so. That pressure is useful for player development. For rec players and leagues, results matter and are of use because it is ... fun! Most of us are on these boards because we care about player development. However, 90 % or more of the kids and families involved in soccer see it as a fun, safe, outdoor/healthy activity where their son or daughter learns about teamwork, sportsmanship, and fitness. Part of the fun is to play an exciting game on the weekend and with family and friends cheering ,etc. "Winning" a league also is exciting at the rec level, so results are worthwhile. Nothing to do with player development really -- those families want something else which is perfectly valid.
I don't necessarily disagree, but from what I saw with my son--he ended up bonding with, and becoming better friends with, the guys he played school soccer with than with his club teammates, for the most part. Part of that might be a function of living in Northern VA, with several different clubs, where it's common for kids to not necessarily all play in the same club as their neighbors do. So club teammates often live in different neighborhoods (even different counties) and go to different schools. My son played club soccer from the age of 5 up, and played travel from U9 up (his U8 team was pretty much a travel team unofficially, for that matter) but in the end it's the guys he played HS, and even to some degree MS, soccer with whom he played pickup and indoor with outside of practice. He's home from college. He's been playing pickup and indoor a lot over break--with guys from his HS team, mostly. I think he still sometimes gets together with one former club teammate for pickup sometimes, but that's about it. His experience isn't universal, I'm sure, but even though he was older and his entire club "career" was under the school-year age group system, the friendship aspect didn't really factor in.
I assumed he was talking about rec soccer, where the social aspect definitely is more important. My kid played rec his first two years and they organized the teams by what elementary schools they went to, that was nice (and we dealt with the reverse issue, schools were organized closer to birth year and soccer according to Aug-July; wasn't a big deal, they still had some friends on the team). I have seen clubs that organize around a neighborhood or school but they're definitely the exception, most of them take in kids from a much wider area and thus very few of them tend to go to school with each other anyway.
I was speaking more of rec soccer and certainly at the elementary school age. That is when kids decide which sports they want to play. From my experience, albeit limited, is that one of the big factor is friends. As kids get older and chose a sport I assume that bigredfutbol's son's experience is pretty typical. I hope it didn't come across that I thought it would kill the sport, just that it will limit some participation.
Our rec program has dealt with the school age/soccer age by explicitly organizing by grade. If you are in 2nd grade you play 2nd grade soccer--regardless of when your birthday is. We do make an exception for kids that were held back and let the family decide which grade to play with. We are also organized by school so generally kids play with their school friends.
Not sure if this is in the spirit of the thread, but last season my son's U9 team strung together about 50 passes during a match and scored 3 pretty, team goals. The other team put together about half that many passes and scored 4 goals off medium- to long-range bombs and 1 pretty, team goal. Our team lost, but many parents from both teams understood who had the better team. Our boys played a proper match and maintained that flow through the rest of the season; the result didn't matter. (Now, if that had been a tournament loss, then, sadly, the result would have mattered.)
I think at u9 you are going about it right - sounds perfect! I'd argue that in a year or two, your group will be 2 paces ahead of the team that beat you in terms of division play. Enjoy.