USSF Development Academy In-Depth

Oh good, looks like USA is finally starting to make up that athleticism gap we have with the rest of the world.

 

Yeah, how about they test whether kids can possess the ball under pressure or make one-touch passes.

 

You need coaches who actually understand that your qualifications are important, and how to look for them...

...you also need the few coaches who understand this to not be afraid to develop those abilites. Remember, winning tournies matters most, and big and fast beats skill at young ages.

 

The USSF can spend money on this SPARQ Program, but they can't help the parents out with travel?? Do these kids really need this SPARQ Program? And when they're done testing all the boys, do they turn the results over the MNT coaches for evaluation of players? Ignorant as I am, I would love to learn how this is going to help the boys?

 

I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of the sparq tests. It isn't being run so that the results can be turned over to coaches and decisions can be made, it's a way to personalize a conditioning program to each athlete so they can get the most out of their work instead of just mindlessly running and wasting time working on the areas that they already excel at.

 

I don't think you know how Big Soccer works so let me explain a few things.
You have to take any decision made by our Federation particularly youth development and not think of ways its a positive step forward but rather always take a contarion viewpoint.
It's always I repeat always due to incompetent dullards within the USSF who don't know anything making decisions for their own benefit within the politics of the organization rather than any true love of the game of advancement of soccer in this country. It's up to us to know why all decisions and problem solving criterion are made and know that they are simply wrong. Then you conclude all posts with that's why we don't have any world class players. Thanks for educating you on how to go forward from here.
Reminder to tune your sarcasm meter on high and re-read.

 

Whether or not the YA system will be effective is a jury that will be out for sometime. There are new rules that have been incorporated into the system that may well turn out to be good for the game.
Whether or not the USSF is making good decisions based on models that have been effectively in place in other parts of the world for a generation is yet to be seen.
After all, the re-invention of the wheel has seemingly been a hallmark for the USSF for the last 15 years.
Many of the teams that have joined the new system are not necessarily pleased with the progress so far, maybe that's because of their previous experiences with a federation that has made most of their decisions based on political expediency and not on an overall altruistic philosophy.
That's not sarcasm, that's simply the truth, and whether Big Soccer was around or not, that would still be the truth.
There's the simple matter of trust that first has to be established.
The fact that there are few that benefit from any program set forth within the USSF may lead to inevitable cynicism, human nature, after all, does have it's pitfalls.
There have been many roads the USSF has gone down, most have been paved with good intentions, unfortunately they are all paved by the same people; so again, one only has to look at the beneficiaries of these "paved roads" to end up at the same bitter conclusion time and time again.
It's always interesting to read quotes from the same people over and over and hear the same bullet points reiterated ad infinitum.
Soccer coaches in this country aren't necessarily a fraternity, there's plenty of jealousy to go around, and some out and out hatred

There's no doubt that John Hackworth is excited about the new testing system, it's something concrete that he, evidently, can put his hands around, which means any abstract, creative thought, can be replaced by what appears to be empirical certainty.
The problem with soccer, or any sport, for that matter, is that there are intangible elements that can be seen by some and never understood by others.
So, in the end, if you fail geometry, so to speak, you can't go to the next level.....why?, because the standardized test says so.
Hey, in Japan, if you don't get into the right kindergarten, you don't go to college.
So because no one can agree as to what is, or isn't, a player to watch, some litmus test needs to be established to allow for across-the-board equality in the evaluation of players.

It's easy to say that everyone is an idiot at the USSF, why? because we love to over-simplify everything into one category, even though everyone isn't.......in the same category, that is. There's different levels of idiocy.
Okay, that's a cheap shot, but it is easy.

Why hasn't the US produced any world-class players?
Wasn't that a thread on Big Soccer somewhere?

The first item that needs to be addressed is getting the right people involved in incubating the eggs, that is the responsibility of the USSF; and the jury is still out on that one also.

 

The jury is still out?

You are to kind sir.

USSF of the last decade was a farcical/political/ignorant/isolated/self absorbed/clueless operation at youth levels.

Silver lining? Even with complete incompetence, the wrong agendas, or politically motivated ones, we have produced enough youngsters to show respectably, and as this generation matures it will cement itself as a solid, fairly deep side. Can you imagine if ANY tactcial knowledge was imaprted to these kids? I do mean any.

A good step for US Soccer, but it has been in spite of a retarded/selfish/limited/out of date mentality and system. Think Cuba.
USSF was the Cuba of functionality.

We saw the first two hires recently that were not of the old poltical/self absorbed/ignorant type - Sundhage and Wilmer. It's a step. Finally.

People with actual REAL F'N credentials for once. Will they succeed? Don't know, but it was clear the ignorance we were hiring couldn't.

The USSF wanted to phase out/limit Manny Shellscheidt (U15 coach/evaluator)

One of the smartest/experienced coaches we freaking have because he spoke up to much against he retarded system in place. He wasn't IN with the boys crowd. Thank goodness our failures have kept him on now.

Only through our most miserable failures has Sunil been able to implement some change. Even the politicos/boys club against can't argue that much.
Boy, they do try.

The jury is not out on th elast 10 years. It was a failure overall.

I do see some decent signs now. We will see where the next 5/6 years takes us.

Unfortunately, instead of being progressive, it seems that the USSF is just being dragged up by a more aware public and involvement in our game.

It should of course be the other way around.....but it isn't. That's the saddest part.

Note - The usual USSF crew here can go scratch. We know who you are.

 

Sometimes I just feel like being a nice guy.

 

That's what I would call "inevitable cynicism".

Inevitable being the by-product of past performance.

Now that "hope" has become nothing more than another four letter word to the American public in general, we have grown to expect the worst.
When a decision, any decision, happens to go in the right direction, politically speaking, we almost put it down to "luck".
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.

 

Well, to be fair, my cynicism comes from a period when the US in general was top of the world. Mine (cynicism), in hindsight seems to be right on in a sheep infested world of - Everything is going great, calm down - attitude. Especially saw that in the 2nd 4 years of the Arena regime. Blind, soma induced happiness with little clue.

I did state that it looks like the USSF (Sunil in particular) has taken some good steps.....finally. Of course, it took terrible performances from teams that were way hyped as we were told they were doing great. Sigh.

Sunil's big blemish was the utterly predictable Klinsman debacle.

He has however taken several initaitives to move us in the right direction.

Problem is that you can't stop a supertanker on a dime and turn around once it's moving in one direction.

I see the ship starting to turn (so I do see the positives right now), unfortunately that process will take a while...a long while. With some guts and understanding, less patronage and politics, we would be farther into that turn already.

I've said it before and will say it again.

We have had the equivalent of high school teachers trying to teach or kids how to be full time working professionals in a pro environment. We act as if our one average coach (BA) was some sort of genuis. On the world scale he as a C student. Nothing more or less. We fool ourselves.....constantly.

How can people who had never been involved with, played at, coached at, learned from or been involved with upper level pro environments on any real level teach our kids to become upper level pros...

...INSANITY.

That was US Soccer of the past 10 years. Morons.

We are taking the proper steps forward now, just gonna take time to change the mentality, the politics, and the culture overall. A decade at least, but we seem ot be moving forward.

 

Imagine a brain surgeon learning his craft from the butcher at your local meat market.

 

Here's a question for the "Bright future ahead despite the failures of the last decade" fellas....

Do we know if any of the really talanted coaches of the world actually wanted to take on a role here in the USA? PErhaps it wasn't until there was enough positive momentum in the USA that we were able to attract the coaches that will take us to the top.................

Perhaps the "good ol boys" of the OLD USSF really were doing the best they could.. it's an old adage, but one of my favorites.....


People don't know what they don't know ......................until you show them.... and even then, they have to be willing to see it..............

Lets get behind the train and keep it moving....

 

Trust me. I was in it. I still donated a lot of cash until last year.

There are/were plenty of coaches with pro careers, at decent/high levels in Europe, who live here, would wanted to be involved with the USSF, who can't/couldn't get in.

JohnR talks about the Bulgarian WC player who is in club soccer. There are many in the NYC area from Italy, Germany, SA who aren't with the USSF in crowd.

They played it growing up, played it as pros, were taught by pros and they were not allowed in. They didn't play ball and were a threat to the in crowd.

The biggets culprit was Dr. Bob C. He mandated US coaches for the most part.
He was very naive, as were virtually all of the early admin in the USSF when the sport started to grow again - 88 to 96.
He built a culture of patronage/politics and placing US coaches everywhere.
Most of it based on what you did in youth freaking soccer and college.
We can learn on our own from scratch. Who needs help? Talk about arrogance.
Well meaning, but ultimately naive and arrogant. Very American.

Is it in any surprise we played like we did, or produced the limited/naive type of player we did this last decade. Instead of building a soccer culture we built a USSF boys club of underskilled, inexperienced, lacking almost everything professional, political, naive and yet incredibly freaking arrogant, with a lot of power, personnel throught the country making decisions on how to advance the game here.
Insane! People with little knowledge, who would be waterboys in real soccer countries running the show here. Joke.


You reap what you sow and when people complain about now, just look at what and who caused now.
More importantly...why.

I guess you are right. The USSF did the best with what they had. Dr. Bob C wanted Americans to lead the way here. With with limited knowledge, professionalism, understanding of the game, any real experience on the world stage or in pro leagues playing or learning, we got guys who learned out of textbooks over guys who actually knew the game. The results are there to see. We got the best out of people who knew little about the game. They were able to teach very little, so I guess you are right. Did the best with what we had. Sigh.

We didn't want pinko foreigners or latins running the show or even deeply involved. A culture of exclusionism, patronage, denial and selfishiness developed.

When unqualified people run the show you reap what you sow. Think George Jr.

The USSF reminds me a lot of what a said in a previous post. The USSF works a lot like Cuba does.

It is changing. Finally. It still stinks to know just how poorly mismanaged it all was, and how exclusionist and selfish that culture became, and just how unqualified the majority were. Painfull. Very painfull.

Dr. Bob C should be the poster boy for US soccer naivete over the last decade. Well meaning, but unrealisitc with regards to the actual real world and how it works outside our borders. Actually, that's a solid American trait to say the least.

I know some will be insulted by this post. Take of fthe red/white and blue glasses, take out the emotion, and actually try to look at the facts practically.
At least that way you can make real decisions. Ones that have a chance to work, instead of forging ahead, defending blindly and looking naive and clueless severla years down the road.

Like the old USSF guard does now. Kind of like our gov does now.

If you knew what you did a decade ago would you still act in the same manner? Would you act so quickly on emotion or flag waving? Would you look for people with actual proven qualifictaions, instead of people getting jobs handed to them or unlimited opportunities through politics? Think. That's all. Think.

 

Bad news is, U.S. youth soccer continues to fetishize boys who became men at a very early age, from U.S. National youth pool on down the bias toward fully grown 12/13 year olds is enormous. This reflects the relatively low place that tactical insight and even technique play in the talent identification process, as opposed to the purely temporary, puberty-enriched virtues of strength, explosiveness, speed, fitness, and aggression.

Good news is, at least at the national level the coaches actually seem to have an idea what they are doing. My son watched some of the 91/92/93 national pool guys yesterdahy, and he said they were playing quality soccer - excellent movement off the ball, good decision making. In particular, he noted that the defenders played in a fashion that his State's ODP coaches would have strongly disapproved of, which is a reliable sign of progress.

 

Most of the Europeans involved in the game here that I know have long ago dismissed the USSF as merely a political tool, tool being the key word here, that has always taken the path of least resistance.
That is to say that they have "promoted" only those that are fully accepting of a ruling status quo.
I hope that the these changes that everyone continues to speak of allows for the perception of the USSF to change.
For right now, it's still "I'm from Missouri".
Dr. Bob was a nice enough guy, naive, but nice.
He came into an organization that was flush with cash for the first time in it's history. At that time the USYSA had a firm grip on almost everything that took place in the USSF, which is not to say that they still don't hold an enormous amount of power.
Everything had gone from, man where are we going to get the money, to, whoa, look at all this, who wants some.
The Foundation, and I don't mean the trilogy by Isaac Asimov; was given immediate control of the vast majority of the funds received from the windfall of WC '94; and that was always the plan of the Rothenberg mafia.
There is still little to no scrutiny of the Foundation, the very people whom sit on the board are the very people whom benefit the most from soccer in this country and where these funds are dispersed. They have huge conflicts of interest, and no one seems to care, as if to submit to some artificial magnanimity, that for the most part, has never existed.
Now maybe this becomes moot if all of a sudden we become a world power, we have a tendency to accept monolithic entities if the end result is favorable; but to blindly accept mediocrity and then be constantly told that we, as a soccer populace, don't understand the complexities of the game is insulting.

I, again, hope that real change is being effected here, but when I see some of the names involved, and talk to some of the coaches from Academy teams, I can't say that I'm overtly optimistic.

 

Well, I did say I see the changes. I'm just burned out now. Just not worth my effort or money any more. I'll always be a fan but I will never forget the arrogance, naiveness, politics and stupidity. Shame.

People love to take shots at Sunil for the JK thing.

The guy has done a lot to help implement change in an environment that does not want change, and in many cases actively fights it.

Of course, complete failure at the U17's and WWC helped Sunil push his points home. He has done a lot of the small things behind the scenes that will help several years down the road, which he will no tget credit for now. That's OK.

I've talked to the guy and he truely cares. I mean really cares about improving and doing the dirty work.

Can't say that for the asshats in there for the 10-15 years before.

He gets a lot of grief for the state of our players now - not his fault.
The JK sitaution - partially his fault.
Having to many hats in to many areas - NE head, MLS board? and USSF head -
legit complaint IMO.

He is driven however, and driven to change the culture. An engrained culture where entrenched clueless morons do not want to give up their power. For that I applaud him. Long hard fight.

We need Wilmer and Sundhage to succeed. That will allow more change.

Yeah, Sunil has a couple of big obvious marks against him, but he is doing tons of the small, unglamorous things needed. I applaud him. It must be trying to run through quicksand.

Good to hear from your son.
The NYC area, which holds tons of former soccer players with experience and brains has long been ignored by th ebig club elitist isolated culture. I've finally heard of scouts here. Never happened before. That was the USSF of the past. Ignore one of the biggest bodies of players you have because they are not your type. Sad.

Again, the defenders who usually come protecting their own butts and jobs, where are they? Go scratch.

 

Excellent post! Excellent.

Problem is that many of the kids/young adults who follow today know little about the USSF and it's history. Shame.

They also aren't that cultured in the game. Enthusiastic, but not deeply cultured.

Again, that will insult some, but look what they were raised in, who they learned from, and what they thought, or was told, was quality or proper soccer, when it obvioulsy was not.

In hindsight I doubt few can say it was very good. We have enthusiatic supporters now, but we need to learn more, and we need to employ people who can teach it...at high levels.

Your Dr. Bob comment was nice. Naive but nice and clueless about the game itself.
You just described John Ellinger. 3 cycles, and they were gonna let him stay. Ha! Nicest guy in the world though. still describes 75% of th eguys I have seen or met out there at the youth level today.

If anyone reading takes one thing out of this it is this.

Your coach at the youth level, on average, knows less than the average fan who is immersed in Europe and SA. Fact. I know becuase I have lived half my life here and in Europe. Talked to the people involved and seen all levels.

That is a fact. Remember that when you are playing and you start thinking our youth champs here are great, super or special. Average to above average. thats' what we produce. Reality, not the hype or fanatsy of USSF youth soccer.

Improving. I see decent things for the next decade.

As MM10Shirt says. I hope some of the more stupid/selfish board members go die in a fire soon. Sooner the better.

The sheep, wanna believe, naive, ignorant mentality was never more alive than in the BA second term. Talk about C student understanding and thinking you are pure A class material. Sigh.

I'll end on a bright note.

I see it improving. Hurrah. I may still be alive for some real good stuff...I hope.

 

The problem with Arena is he just won't go away, he did what he was capable of doing, and even over achieved in 2002; but now, please, shut up, and allow the true evolution of the game to take place.

I'm hard pressed to understand why this sense of entitlement exists with a certain element of coaches in this country; what's the basis, where is the basic premise that empowers them? Winning NCAA titles?, or early MLS championships? ( A game played with Americanized rules that wasn't even palatable to most).
Do people really believe that Bob Bradley is the man whom has the vision to elevate the game in this country to a level that Bruce Arena couldn't?
That's naive.

 

A fanbase that is limited mentally with regards to what really matters in this game. Enthusiastic...but limited. BA is a genuis ya know. Fans who do not understand BA's clear and obvious limitations as a soccer coach and let him get away with murder because of 2002. On the world stage he is as average as average can be. As a tactician he is still a novice. He was the best we had. Enough said.


Media that are very limited also. The ones that are not are usually avoided by the likes of BA and others who do not wish to be exposed. BA will stand on his pulpit all day and preach to the likes of softball pitching, worshipping, soccer limited Marc Connelly (Marc was let go by ESPN for a reason folks. He avoids all others and derides them for daring to ask him an actual question and follow something up. A true bully. That's what BA is. The USSF baord just hides in plain sight. No one is allowed to interview them. Most fans do not even ask for those interviews. The guys who run the show have to answer to no one.

Real reporters here have it tough. They can't get good interviews and ask tough questions because they will be avoided and shut out. If they want an interview they better be real carefull with their questions, or they will never get another good one again. Cuba baby. Think Cuba.

When you read these boards you can see why these people get away with all that they do.

This is the supposed hardcore...and their limitations shine like the sun in the Mojave. If you can't ask the right questions, no one has to answer.

The USSF never has to answer.

Note - They were very intersted and very concerned when I pulled my cash after 10 years. They didn' t like my responses. Very meticulous. Named names and specific incidents. They said thanks, never responded to any of my concerns or the incidents and decided they didn't need my cash anymore. They have enough now. Why answer real questions when they have enough I guess.

That's the power of the USSF. No scrutiny. Have the cash now. Don't have to answer to anyone. A public and fanbase that is loyal and limited.
They pat themselves on the back all day as our best know nothing about tactics and have the first touch of an ox. After 10-15 years of development. Sigh.

 

So take your ball and go home....

 

Well_ I wasn't able to travel to Chicago this weekend, but I'm anxious to hear what was so "different" that these Nat's were doing in the back...I've watched them play and thought they were very good in the back, and played a European style of "building form the back" rather than dump the ball to the strikers that were all used to seeing.

 

Would you say that is how our U17s have traditionally played? That is not my memory, I must admit.

If you are saying that this time is different, well I can't argue with that, as I haven't yet seen this particular group and only have one report on this match. FYI, the U16 Nats tied Fire U16s today 1-1 in what I was told was an even match, with the Nats using mostly different players than in the previous day's match. The report I heard was that the Nats did a nice job of moving and opening up passing lanes, but weren't quite precise enough with their passes to take advantage of their opportunities. Still the same report of them playing calmly in the back, though.