Agree. This is where guest playing can be a great way to evaluate the coach and team dynamic. The club has to agree to let you guest for other teams. We ran like hell from the coach that tried to prevent us from guest playing at a higher level. The guy literally thought he was the end all be all of youth soccer yet has not produced a local champion team in over 5-years. Youth soccer is filled with guys who are on a power trip and really what power are they holding? Power over 12-year old girls? Power over dues paying parents? Not quite. Most of us come to the game with limited knowledge and looking for the best opportunity for our kid to learn and the best situation to enjoy the game. We aren't looking for trophies, undefeated seasons or playing them for the whole game. Having your kid workout with the team or guest play gives your child a chance to see if they are a good fit and have chemistry with the other players. It gives you a chance to see the leadership and teaching of the coach.
First, I would say many college coaches are scouting athletics first and skill a close second. The reason is that their ego tells them they can teach technical where improving speed, quickness and the ability to create space is very hard to do. Look at Alex Morgan who is an absolute freak the first 20-yards of a sprint or Abby Wambach who is the ultimate combination of athletics and skill. Alex did not start until 14 and Abby was criticized throughout high school and college as being "lazy" on technical drills and conditioning. Some how they surpassed all the Tobin Heaths of the soccer world to become the top strikers of USWNT. Second, it is common for ECNL teams to practice 3-days a week plus another day dedicated to just conditioning. Ajax trains 4-days a week once the boys turn 15. Coaches also expect all players to work the ball on their own on non-practice days.
There is NO WAY Ajax Amsterdam ever 'dedicates another day to just conditioning'.....LMAO at the very thought....Just about everything they do, every day, involves using a soccer ball...
You misread the post. I said my daughter's ECNL team trains 3 days a week plus one on condiioning. The next sentence was that Ajax trains 4 days a week. I did not mention conditioning in relation to Ajax. This came from the NY Times article in 2010. Just reread it and they actually train 5 times a week at 15. It is a great read as it explains the academy system in Europe and will help a lot of Americans understand why coaches from that upbringing are not as connected with the parents. The parents don't pay and the Academy takes over the child's soccer development. In the states, we pay to play which keeps the parents involved almost like an agent. IMHO, this is one of the fundamental problems with US Youth Soccer. Once a child gets to U14, they should start becoming their own player. In two-years they will be able to drive themselves to practice. Yet I constantly see parents hanging around with teams of U18 players at practice engaged in the same discourse as the parents of U8 players. This was not the case when our generation played sports. The fees were nominal and most parents dropped their kids and ran errands getting back to the fields with enough time to watch the final minutes of scrimmage. I am sure there are parents who feel the need to be there in case their child is injured or just to look out for their well-being. I think it is fine up until the age teens can be expected to stand up for themselves. After that age, the parents are just getting in the way of the player-coach relationship.
[quote="Soccertaxi, post: 28751094, member: 201300" ...]You misread the post. ..... I said my daughter's ECNL team trains 3 days a week PLUS ONE ON CONDITIONING. .... The next sentence was that Ajax trains 4 days a week... I did not mention conditioning in relation to Ajax.....[/quote] 1) I didn't 'misread anything' 2) There is NO WAY Ajax spends any of 3,4,5, 853, (pick a number) of days on 'conditioning'...PERIOD. ANY 'coach' who does this in relation to soccer is an idiot who has NO CLUE about this game.
Um, yeah you did. Pretty blatantly. It was even pointed out to you: First, rhrh had posted this: To which Soccertaxi--responding specifically to the notion that 3-4 practices a week is excessive--posted this: You'll note that that comment was only about the frequency of practices. ECNL teams--which have nothing to do with Ajax--practice 3 times a week plus one night of conditioning. ALSO, Ajax--which is for many the gold standard--have four practices a week, despite rhrh implying that was too many. There was no claim that Ajax do things like ECNL, just that they also practice 4 days a week. To which you responded: Which shows that you read that post out of context and missed the point. So Soccertaxi was kind enough to take time to get you up to speed: In which he/she states very explicitly that the two were only mentioned in terms of how many days/week they trained. It's not clear why you insist otherwise.
I insist otherwise because of the quote 'my daughters ECNL team trains 3 days a week PLUS ONE ON CONDITIONING'.....this one 'on conditioning' is a total joke....it is unnecessary...it is idiotic....if the girls play hard at everything they should be doing in practice they will be plenty 'fit' enough for their games...without having to dedicate an entire practice to 'conditioning'....
OK. We get it . You don't believe in conditioning workouts. You have been baiting that argument since you tried to twist what I said about the frequency of training at Ajax. I never made a conditioning claim about Ajax and went out of my way to point that out to you. Twice now to be specific. It has also been well documented by bigredfutbol who is the moderator. I am not going to get into an argument about conditioning on this thread because that is not the topic. It is clear that is what you want. Go ahead and start your own thread on conditioning vs. technical training. I am sure you will find plenty of takers.
....ecnl is way overrated. OK. Just read back through the thread and you want to debate the merits of ECNL. There we can have a discussion. You are correct in stating girls can get a full ride without ECNL. In fact, I just went to a seminar where one of the top women's college coaches stated that she regularly picks up girls from her ID camps. But to dismiss ECNL as "crap" and "overrated" is laughable. In fact, it shows a complete lack of knowledge of ECNL and why it was created. 1. It is not "a ton of $$" - Our pro team subsidizes the ECNL travel and we pay no more than any other State Cup level team in the region. ID2 is free to players while parents will pay for ODP at each stage of identification. 2. ECNL is the new standard in premier play. It is attracting the best players to play with the best players and the regional and national championships bear this out. You can't argue with the scoreboard. 3. Head coaches come to the ECNL showcases by the dozens while state cups are seeing dwindling numbers of any type of scout. At the end of the day it is the player and not the patch that gets recruited. ECNL does not promise a scholarship offer. It simply provides a stronger platform to be scouted. It is still up to the player to perform in front of the coaches regardless of College ID camp, ODP, ID2 or ECNL showcase.
My daughter's coach didn't allow her guest play for a different club. He announced anyone found trying out for another club without first telling him will be dismissed from the team. When we did tell him of our intention to tryout at the end of a season, he promptly dismissed my daughter from the team. Really!
I am sorry if you thought I implied 3-4 practices per week were too many. My son has practiced and played soccer up to five or six days per week, and on occasion seven days. I think 30 hours in one week is his record, and we try to get him to 10 or more regularly, and 15 seems about good for a teenager. My point was that is only possible in our area, that is, practices three or four times per week, with a single team if it is an academy team. I have a son so I don't know that much about ECNL. Why HS soccer has 4 - 5 practices per week and 1 - 2 games per week, and club soccer has less, yet colleges are supposed to be recruiting more from club than HS, let alone most pro clubs don't consider HS, is beyond me. Yes, training costs might be really high, but why not have club-wide or HS and younger group practices? We have had to patch together my son's soccer program, and it varies depending on the time of year. He does more general SAQ when soccer season is less, he is on three soccer teams but the practices will only be up to four per week in the spring. Power trips are a huge problem, not just coaches but certain clubs have megalomaniacal club administrators who tell parents that they know best, no matter what. Like a guy who made his first million net by age 30 (not related to soccer) and somehow that makes him a soccer genius? It just told us he was in it for the money, leveraging what he had earned by duping parents and players.
On guest players for tournaments. We use guest players for out of country tournaments you really have to when your playing against teams that are part of professional clubs like AC Milan's youth team. When we did them the club pays the expenses for the tournament and in some cases the sponser of the tourament like the Enzo Ferrari. So it was free to our players like our under 18's and our guest players. We wanted to make our team and our guest players feel like part of our team. In a tourament like this we started practicing together for it two months before the start of the tournament. A lot of clubs use guest players not only to do well in tournaments, but also to get these guys next season for their teams. That's a fact we tried to be professional about it. Like we would not even talk to a guest player comming to our club until his home club commitment ended. But if the experience was good for the player they would come to us at those times to join us.
I am not a believer in practicing more then three days a week. The body needs time to recover and other things enter into it. Those other things this s club team. We have the whole season and the off season to train. We are not even getting everything in even in that amount of time. It takes time to make your players better and you have to build a team. High school teams have only part of the year to train and practice so they think they have to practice every day to get everything in. No one can get everything in. I used to scout for an A league team they practice 5 days a week. I thought that was nuts. Plus players still have to work. They could not support themselves just with the 20k plus change they got to play. Unless they lived with Daddy and Mommy.
x2. Your daughter will be as good as the players they scrimmage against. When my team scrimmages, I tell them to scrimmage hard and I give them advice on how to beat our best players. That seems to help everyone.