Uhm, no. It isnot European, as we donot need it. Each country in itself is dense enough with enough soccer opportunities locally to not to need it. My suggestion comes from the apparent disadvantage the size of the country has with less dense opportunities to play soccer in a way to be helpful in development.
Hey feyenoordsoccerfan - what is your take on what Earnie Stewart and Gregg Berhalter are trying to do here? Are they trying to bring the Dutch way here or is what they're doing a pale imitation or something different entirely?
I really have no clue what they're doing. There are two things in Dutch soccer, methodology and style that have an effect on the national team. The methodology, I described it as the development pyramid, was already for countries like Germany and France a bridge too far so for a continental sized country as the USA even more unattainable. Style of play depends on how the youth are being developed. That can be copied, as the Belgians, French and Germans proved with their successes after the year 2000. Earnest Stewart is very much aware of how to develop youngsters properly, as he snatched the Best Academy Award from Feyenoord for AZ Alkmaar, So it is more logical he's trying to get the development quality to the level of Dutch standards. That's achievable with the only problem remaining at what age the kids start to get that development and the number of kids in that track. Whether they really are striving for this I dunno, as I donot know what they are doing and what their possibilities to do things are.
Ernie got rid of all of the youth coaches and is slowly replacing them, yeah? He also hired Berhalter.
So I guess his new hires may answer feyenoordsoccerfan's question in some ways. Does he hire coaches that deliver on a technical youth vision or just shmoes that know him?
Not only that, but also on the tactical development. You've got to develop players capable of thinking for their selves. A couple of years ago youngsters that came over to the Feyenoord Academy in a programm in which Feyenoord's US partners send kids that are part of their academies for a week of Dutch treat, were asked about what they found the most different thing about it. They said the academy coaches during matches didnot tell them what to do, but asked them what the kid thinks should be done. It reflects the standard at Dutch clubs that kids learn to understand tactical things and one of the tools is when something needs to change during a match the coach doesnot tell it, but stimulates the kid to think about the solution, so in fact put in practice what he learned about it.
Oscar Pareja was doing something similar at the FC Dallas academy where "busca la forma" is on the walls in the dressing rooms. Means find a way.
One important point in the development of young players is minutes on a professional level, not youth play. Germany, for instance, is regressing in quality at the moment as the clubs donot give youngsters the chance to play in the BuLi or even in the second level as they used to do. So for the USMNT it is of the upmost importance to have youngsters play professional soccer to develop.
I may be wrong but since Bundesliga clubs seem to be giving similar minutes to youth that they have for the last 5-6 years and even Americans are getting minutes perhaps the Germans just don't have a lot of good young players like they did a few years ago.
Or that However in the German forum there are complaints about how the BuLi clubs handle the young talents atm.
I can see them being upset as would any country if their teams were playing foreign youngsters over their own youngsters. Also what age is the "young talent" age cutoff? Sargent, Alphonso Davies are getting time and Gio Reyna is on the bench for Dortmund. Could Germany be going through a lost generation or is this a one or two year blip?
Could be a temporary blip. 4 years ago some raving idiots in the Dutch press (hell, even respectable papers like the Guardian wrote us off for ever *) started whining we Dutch should change everything in our way of developing etc. and about three years ago the Germans started to do the same whining. My response to that was donot be idiots, it's just a transition time with kids not ready yet for the big tasks and what I said proved to be true as youngsters in both camps broke through. This is the article in which the Guardian wrote us off as a top nation: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...e-holland-dutch-total-obsession-past-football Here they had to eat humble pie as they were proven wrong within two years. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jun/06/ronald-koeman-netherlands-nations-league What foreigners donot get is that our results as a top nation donot depend on the standing of our league, the standing of our clubs or how much more money goes around in those other countries in soccer. The idiots donot grasp that has been the case since the WWII ended. We are a soccer super power because of our development pyramid (which is an intricate part of how our society functions with social clubs with members and volunteers running all age clubs for the joy of the activity it was founded for) that is found nowhere else (maybe apart from Iceland), and as long as we keep that cultural trait we remain a superpower. The value of our development pyramid has been proven in the last 15 years when our top talents at very young age were grabbed by the epl clubs. Those kids were taken out of the pyramid. It signalled a decade of no top players on our side as all those that went abroad at 15 etc. without any Eredivisie experience were never heared of anymore. Since it dawned on the young ones that going abroad for the fast first high pay ment you never were going to make it into the high pay category, they stayed put and presto...the Dutch superstars are there again...from the Eredivisie.
[moved from another thread] I think it's amazingly optimistic to spin the USSF culture in a positive manner. It probably goes hand-in-hand with being optimistic about the program's recent development.
Sounds like Jay Berhalter is the biggest problem in both performance, mood and at the very least a conflict of interest. They need to tell the brothers that one of them needs to move on if they can't decide themselves to make the choice.