I looked around to see if anyone posted the Hugo Perez article in soccer America so I started a post here. For background most of the knowledgeable soccer people I spoke with about him praised his ability as a coach. At the 14-15 age group where US soccer traditional focused on finding the most physically mature kids they could find, Perez instead focused on technical and intelligent players like Christian Pulisic and his nephew that played an exciting brand of soccer. This group also included his nephew Josh who is currently on loan to Livorno in Serie C from Florentina. Yet despite selecting a very talented,, skillful group of players he was dumped from US soccer abound the time JK came in. In the article Perez is quoted saying "The only thing I can tell you is that when I was there I stood up for certain things that I felt we could have changed. I was very vocal when I saw things that I felt were not good about our vision. I felt if I didn’t say anything I would be cheating myself and the people who believe in our country. I was never disrespectful to anybody. I never went behind anybody’s back and said, look this guy’s is bad. Give me the job. No, never. No one can accuse of me of that." If want to know in a nutshell what is wrong with US soccer, it is the complete opposite career paths of Perez, who showed a lot of ability to select and coach talent to Ramos who has to me demonstrated little. Just to make sure I didn't miss any, I did a quick search on NJSA O4 alumni and almost exclusively saw non-D1 to low level D1 college listed. Not a name I recognized as a professional or even regular player at at top D1 program outside of Alex Ramos who signed Pachaca after two year at Iona.. BTW - I'm also very much in agreement with Perez that players would be better off playing up in age than traveling around the country.
I dropped it in the “what is our style” thread but deserves its own. It would be great if Hugo was brought back into the program. I think he would be ideal to be reunited with those kids as the u23 coach.
Yeah I think at a certain point the USSF became a money grab and you stayed on if you were in the clique. And if not, well look at Hugo, for all his faults was and is honest about the shortcomings of the system. Would much prefer him to Ramos.
Me too. When I was 16 I started playing in an adult league - My U-19 team (back then there was a jump from U-16 to U-19) played our youth games on Saturday and had a team in the adult league on Sunday's. I felt it had a big impact on me personally and our team as a whole.
Playing against bigger and stronger players levels out the playing field for those kids who mature early and may or may not be good players once everyone catches up with them. They can't just push around and run over guys who haven't fully developed yet and have to either develop other parts of their game or they get exposed quickly. People act like it's unfair for kids to play against adults, but lots of kids in the U17 and up range are already playing with and against full professionals. There is no reason an early developing 14 or 15 year old can't play with adults. The problem is finding decent adult leagues in some communities.
I don't see that having players with great technical ability and having tremendous athletes needs to be mutually exclusive. To use extreme examples, a team of 10 Luis Silvas isn't going to be any better than a team of 10 Brek Sheas. Ideally you find as many players as you can who are individually both, but you need a team that has both technical skill and athleticism.
Yes, Pulisic had both, along with a good mentality, which is why he's succeeded. I don't think he's a good example of focusing more on technical ability and headiness. Actual think his football i.q. is average, and athletically he really bloomed late. A better example of this is Josh Perez or Andrew Carleton. Remains to be seen how both will pan out. And regardless, I think they need other more athletic guys than them to help win the ball off the opponent and then bring it to them. You need a mix, probably more athletic guys than the other type though. And yes, in a perfect world, they'd be all of the 3 like Donovan or arguably Pulisic, but this is the real world. Have to make due with what we got.
I hope it wasn't an HR issue that pushed Hugo out, the most concrete rumor was that he was pushing kids to go to LigaMX, right?
One of several reasons why I think the whole preventing academy kids from playing HS ball (as opposed to giving them an option) is so misguided. My kid play for what often is mentioned by people as one of the elite academy programs in the US - developed much more his first year in HS and in ..... AYSO when he played against much older kids in both. Pulisic upbringing playing against older kids was very similar down to video of him playing hoops which was my kids favorite sport to play growing up. Unfortunately for his soccer career, genes were a bit different.
The only way for that to be true were if the only kids he recruited were Mexican, since that is where their system has preferences. Salvadorians like him would not are not welcome. There are a lot of non-Mexican Hispanic players in the region the got stuck because they are not on track to continue in college and not options for Mexican teams.
Playing soccer vs older terrible high school players won’t help that much. In the Hispanic “semipro” league in Los Angeles where I used to play, they had bunch of former pro and second division players from Mexico and Central America, this is where a 15 or a 16 years old truly learns, high school soccer isn’t that much competitive, a few programs are but that’s about it. I tell you this because our team actually did have a few younger teams, we had high school kids from both Chivas USA and the Galaxy academies, they all played high school ball, they were all high school stars but very few were brought into the senior team, Silva being one of them. Biggest problem 16 years old studs have in this country is that we haven’t fix the lower divisions for them.
Those that have it all are top class and world class players you see on in Champions league and top first division teams. The problem is that in order to see vision and intelligence you need vision and intelligence. A grandmother with no knowledge of the sport can pick out the best athletes . . which is why given the coaching talent we have in the country has been largely focused on the best athletes. In fairness, every coach feels they can teach an athlete things, but skill acquisition is a much longer and difficult process than people want to believe. When I selected players I certainly paid attention to their athleticism and felt I could help them see and understand how to play. and would regularly argue with a good friend who claimed intelligence was the most critical factor.
They pay pretty bad in Central America, a lot of them can make more money in local Hispanic leagues. Mexico is not an option because they will be competing with former Boca and River players for a foreigner spot.
I'm quite familiar with the Hispanic leagues in the area - from youth to adult tournaments featuring current and former pros .The fact of the matter is the a good chunk of those players played in high school. Not all High school leagues are "terriible" and some have players that are pretty darned good. When my kid encountered a field a players, bigger, faster, and sometimes just as technical and just as smart or smarter he had to learn an entire new set of skills and ideas in order to be successful.
It seems like this might also be relevant to the question of college soccer's usefulness for promising 17 and 18 year-olds that aren't ready to hang with adult professionals yet. I saw Dax McCarty play during his first few games at UNC as a 17 year-old. You could see that he was extremely talented, but he often looked overmatched and soft. He obviously struggled to adjust to the speed of play and the physical pressure, and ended up playing mostly as a sub that year. Without the (often maligned) college substitution rules, he might not have received much playing time at all. By the end of that first season McCarty was a much better player. He had added some defensive bite and hustle to his game, was harder to push around, and was much less wasteful with his touches. In his sophomore year he was the best player on his team, and the following year he was in MLS. Can't draw general conclusions from just one player's experience, of course. But in the specific case of McCarty, I think it's pretty likely that he developed more from facing NCAA opposition at 17 than he would have from playing against other 17 year olds (or, for that matter, from sitting on the bench of a pro team).
Sitting on the bench for a pro team is def better than playing at a lower level, now you don’t want to be on the bench your whole life but nothing beats the experience of being there next to the pros, training with them, competing with them for a spot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-failure/309148/ This is an article about American Generalship since World War II and how it has declined. It's really about leadership, the worst trends in our society, and why we can't win wars anymore.
College was once underrated and I once was a strong proponent, but things have changed. USL has become more stable and has integrated as a development path. There are many good reasons to go to college, but soccer development isn't really one of them. In some rare cases it can still be a better solution, and in some others a couple of years will not hurt that much, but the compressed schedule really undermines its value.
Rarely is this true - players get better by playing, not by watching other players play. The reality is that during the season the focus of training is getting players ready to play on weekends. At times when the schedule starts getting busy you can be lucky to have one good session on many teams. With that said, it also depends on the coaching staff, the player and his experience.
Absolutely not, you only get better by playing and training with/vs higher competition. Like the popular saying; “If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” Morris isn’t getting any better staying in mls. Donovan would have def been better if he stayed in Germany.