Yes, passing can be picked up later. For example, let's list all of the great passers who have come through our youth soccer system. After we finish that rather short list, we can list all the big fast guys who were not too skillful but who picked up great skills later. Then we can list all the attacking players who did not play defense until late in their youth careers but who became world class defenders. (We don't need to select defensive minded players before about U-17 because we can just take a good player from another position and make him a great defender at our whim.) I can name Alexi Lalas, who switched to defense at Rutgers after being a top goal scoring forward in NJ youth soccer. Any others who made the switch that late? It is amusing (but sad) how many youth coaches in our country think that all kinds of things can be developed later: defensive mindset and skills, passing, and just skills in general. What is their actual record of doing so?
Agree and disagree. First, there have been 4 boys total from my son's team to make either nationals or regionals in the past two seasons. All are very skillful and it was their skill that got them the spot....no one was "selfish". All were mids/forwards. Second, (here's where I agree...and wonder). My son has been a striker his entire career (since age 5 ). He has always been a top scorer on every team he has played for including premier and regional teams. ODP coach has him on defense....on a very weak ODP group. He was told it is good to be a defender who can attack and will get him noticed by the regional coaches. I wonder...
Could be....my daughter never plays defense with her club, but has played well when rotated there in the ODP pool sessions and at State Camp last year. Maybe that was a plus in her selection to the Regional Camp? ODP tryouts attract a lot of strikers and midfielders, and some of these look positively lost when they are put on defense. It seems the d-mids and defenders with attacking skills really shine in the pool sessions and camps.
I don't know. There's something to be said for finding the right coach who can implement a 10-year plan. But since the reality is different, I tell him to try to learn from every coach that he gets. He has no choice but to have variety, so enjoy the variety he should.
The other stuff is fine, but given thta Rio Ferdinand, Sol Campbell, Ashley Cole, and many other World Cup defenders played forward until their mid teens, I'm having trouble with this one.
Slight correction: Alexi Lalas is not from New Jersey. He is from Michigan and went to Cranbrook Prep. He played defense in High School and defense in college. He did move forward on many set pieces. from the Cranbrook site: "Alexi was.....a ferocious defender who created confusion and panic for most attackers."
Has your son ever used a personal trainer? A good one can teach a lot and take a long term interest in the player without being held accountable for the immediate win. Costs and time (with schoolwork, team practices and hopefully a bit of a social life) can be an issue, but if those can be overcome and you find the right fit, the upside could be well worth it.
He did for several years, but now that he has become a teenager, he fired me. Actually, that's not quite true. I am fired as his technical trainer because I am too boring to play with, but I remain his tactical trainer, since we watch games together and discuss. At his age of 13, I'm not sure what I would hire a personal trainer to do. Maybe speed/strength. Otherwise, he can work on technique on his own, and I can't see how a personal trainer can teach tactics.
In addition to strength and speed and agility, a good trainer can help with higher level skills such as delivering on target and receiving long passes with both feet, trapping with all surfaces(chest, thigh etc), finishing with both feet and at unusual angles(diving headers, bicycles etc) and shooting from outside the box under pressure including creating space with first touch and delivering a strike quickly. Perhaps as important as the technical skills, at least from my view, is finding someone (other than mom or dad) who cares about the long term well being of the player and who can lend professional perspective regarding how to get ready mentally and emotionally for practices, games, injuries etc in both good times and bad times. Sorry for going off topic, but I'm not sure any coach can provide such training to 16-18 players in 2 or 3 practices a week, so this is a way to stay sharp, although not as sharp as foreign youth professionals. The problem is a lot of families can't afford it, so many of our elite players who could benefit will never have the opportunity unless a generous trainer takes them under his wing, or unless MLS clubs take over training the elite youth player. By the way, you did better than me, my boys stopped listening at 10.
I guess the question is whether "late in their youth career" matches up with "mid-teens." But my real point is that, at many tryouts up to those mid-teen years, some coaches don't really care about who the best defenders are, while others do. Some think they can take a good non-defender and make him a good defender as long as he has athletic ability. My observation is that is takes a certain mindset to be a top defender, just as it takes a certain mindset to be a top goalkeeper. Not everyone is suited to it. Out of the entire universe of attacking players in youth soccer, some could be excellent defenders, and there are many such examples, but many others would never be good at it. I think coaches just overestimate their ability to accomplish all of the things in the category of "that can come later."
Absolutely. Risk takers are forwards, risk avoiders are center backs. Midfielders are sharers. Forwards are takers. The classic story here is with Zidane and Eto'o when they were asked to pose for the cover of FourFourTwo magazine. Eto'o the forward said sure, on condition that he be the only player on the cover. Zidane the midfielder said sure, on condition that he be joined by one or more of his Madrid teammates. That's the kind of thing that is hard to determine at an ODP setting, but which an intelligent and experienced club coach will appreciate and understand. The club coaches have SO many more data points, that if they are good they can ring circles around even the best ODP coach when it comes to understanding an individual player's game, and offering guidance for future development.
My mistake. This was one of those mysterious "facts" that you remember from who knows where and when. I recalled reading about him being reluctant to switch from forward to defense as a freshman at Rutgers, but doing well there immediately; it was probably as a freshman in high school, not college. Cranbrook announcement when Lalas made the Soccer Hall of Fame
Ashley Cole made his Arsenal debut as an 18 year old striker. Sol Campbell was a striker until late in his Tottenham youth career, ages 16/17. I see in Rio's bio that he played U14s as a forward; not quite sure when he made the move to the back. That said, most world class defenders appear to have settled into the position by the start of the teens, as far as I can tell.
And how much of this is impacted by Rec coaches who get 5 and 6 year olds and sort them by big kick? Hmm, this kid is bigger than the others, can kick the ball well and with power, so he is my defender. Give the kid a couple of years with such coaches and it is hard to get them to move up front. Or to dribble.
And IMHO, these three are players that use their brawn more than their brains. Campbell has always carried the knock that he is often out of position and makes bad decsions, Ferdinand seems to still have a forward's attitude at times, and Cole loves to push forward. I would rather know when Terry made the move to the back .
The difference is that Campbell and Ferdinand play center back. Cole plays left back, which is a natural attacking position. He overlapped and attacked more with Arsenal than he does with Chelswea, but I think that's more due to the Wenger vs Mourinho style. Terry was a midfielder early in his pre-Chelsea and early Chelsea days.
As above ... Terry was a D mid in his teens. Not a center back, but certainly closer in spirit than a forward.
Dude, ok, if you were doing ODP tryouts, you'd do it differently. So what? You're not, are you. You're saying Cal North is a crap organization, and you're not involved with that either, are you? Basically, my first view of ODP tryouts was similar to yours. Not nearly as negative, but confused as to how they would make a selection. And yet somehow the cream rose to the top. Go figure. Most ODP coaches don't coach at tryouts. They evaluate. In their own way. Winnowing 100 kids down to 18. And for the most part it works, IMHO.
Involved only to the extent that is unavoidable, because CYSA-N controls State Cup. Involved kind of like one is involved with the IRS. It's not exactly optional no matter how much it sucks. Fortunately, although CYSA-N's paper-pushers have the delusion that they have, by divine right, eternal IRS-like power over all families whose kids who want to play competitive soccer in Northern California, it will hopefully be a fading bad dream very soon thanks to US Club. How do you know the cream rose to the top? They haven't even made selections yet! How do you know the cream even showed up to try out? I'd be happy to believe in the mystical power of ODP coaches to distill pearls of player-evaluation wisdom out of the muck and mire if there was any evidence that said coaches actually knew how to coach soccer properly. However, I've seen the district and state ODP teams play, and I've heard many accounts of how they practice (lots of wind sprints! the real foundation of a great soccer player!), and I can tell you that there is precious little evidence of any coaching competence above the level found in typical clubs. Let me tell you how I would run ODP: I would get rid of all the coaches and all the coaching completely. Bring the kids together to play small and full sided games for a day, in some sort of orderly yet randomized rotation, and have them vote on who they think the best players are at the end. Then arrange for the elected players to get together with those of other districts for the same kind of play day and vote. Boom! There's your state ODP team! Let them get together once a month to scrimmage against each other. Throw in a hands-off coach for a few weeks leading up to inter-state ODP competition, just for appearances sake. I can tell you that the only reason really good players care at all about ODP is the prospect of possibly playing with and against a higher caliber of player. They certainly aren't thinking, "I really need some more coaching." Don't need coaches for elite play days, just somebody to organize it and a few refs. The kids are already overcoached and ODP is notorious for the worst sorts of overcoaching. Also anything organized by CYSA-N sucks, by definition, so whatever the answer is, it involves getting CYSA-N out of the picture.
I think the ODP process should consider reviewing overlooked players who went on to play at higher levels in the college or professional ranks. This will be players who have proven themselves outside the system that really should have been included in hindsight. The process needs to know why some players are truly missed.
You'd need a detailed analysis of every kid who tried out for ODP. And you'd need someone to be able to compare every coach's analysis against some standard set of metrics. And you would need to pay someone competent to do that. The reality is that the system is not designed to catch the N best players at a given age or the N players thay will go on to higher levels. The system is designed to catch players who are close to some potential to be the best. Will some slip through the cracks? Yes. How many kids examined by the European Academies make it to a higher level? How many kids are washed out of those programs? How many players make it without having come through an Academy? What I'm trying to point out is that other systems have this problem. The difference from the European Academies and ODP is that their system is profit driven and ours is not. I'll argue that the millions of dollars you can get for a transfer fee outweighs the fees paid to ODP. Or the millions you can save by not having to purchase a player via a transfer. And if you are managing an Academy and consistently produce good premier league players, don't you think that opens doors for managerial positions?