That's a good start. I meant passion as in kids playing, I don't think a lot of money is necessary to get involved in the sport but maybe find a way to get the young kids more interested. How does a kid choose soccer instead of football b-ball or baseball. If that question was easy enough for one person to answer then the U.S would be a lot further along. There's no one correct answer but exposure helps, there are a lot more games on TV now than when I was growing up.
get your city's recreation dept to build futsal courts everywhere, soccer fields and futsal courts need to become ubiquitous throughout the country,thats a good start,then it will take on a life of it's own. Mls players can make surprise visits and play in pick up games,etc..
Futsal is a real hard sell. Particularly considering how pretty much any community where youth soccer is a thing will have an indoor soccer facility already. And I don't think building courts will automatically create demand.
Wait. Have I been misled? I thought it was pro/rel that was supposed to solve everything. Actually, I like the idea of futsal as a way to build ball skills, and futsal courts as a place where kids can run their own games (the great example of that is The Courts in Harrison, N.J.), but I agree with bigredfutbol that they have to be a response to demand rather than as a way to create demand.
Ohhh, that's right! Can it be both? Futsal is great. But forcing it by just commandeering parks and burning a pile of money is not going to work in any sense.
The indoor soccer place I play at also had a futsal court. Nobody used it. When the local youth soccer clubs came to this facility in the winter, it was to have their kids play indoor. In the in the end, the owners added walls and a turf floor and made it a second, smaller indoor court. Now it gets used all the time.
Well, youth soccer clubs (most of them, anyway) are really run by the parents, and they at least have some passing familiarity with the traditional turf-and-walls version of the indoor game. Futsal seems weird and foreign to them. Around these parts, there has been off-and-on success (driven by totally insane ideologues who used to play for a university who just recently axed their program) with futsal. One facility hosted a tournament that featured some Pittsburgh elite academies a couple years ago and the place was full on weekends and certain nights. Not sure what happened since, but the building housing it and other sports is no longer in use for sports. There was talk of building a court in Akron in some park, but the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly. Not sure what happened there, either. Some gyms will run futsal nights, especially at the University of Akron, and it's apparently successful by some measures.
Galaxy just built some futsal courts in Zardes' hometown which I think is great. I think they're good depending on the region, unless it rains it's rarely ever too cold to play outdoors. I've had to settle playing in tennis courts before but even then cops in the area would sometimes kick people out, in an area where people rarely play tennis, go figure.
Yes, but around here , at the older ages they have professional coaches and are ostensibly about "development." But, old habits die hard.
I tell you what, at the old people's levels (O-30 and up), some of the most popular indoor leagues are run at facilities that go part or all of the winter without walls and with a much larger surfaces with 7v7 formats. I don't think the kiddie clubs have caught on to that.
My kid's team plays futsal one day a week instead of having a regular training, it's a nice change of pace. And they use gyms at the local junior college, ain't really need to have a fancy futsal court when there are schools everywhere with basketball courts.
IMO, I don't think you have to necessarily make futsal a standalone activity for it to spur growth domestically. I played soccer with a club in Brazil for half of the year. Our training week consisted of (2) field training sessions, (1) weight/conditioning day, (1) beach soccer day, (1) court/futsal day, (1) match day and (1) day off. Our futsal days took place on a basketball court. And when we were not in championship season, some of the players went to participate in futsal, beach soccer or footvolley matches. I think by introducing futsal as a part of your weekly training as a soccer player, athletes can begin to understand and appreciate the benefits that it offers.
make soccer mandatory in school like china http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...urriculum-but-can-he-secure-the-10071110.html
Things that are mandatory in school are really popular with kids. Soccer could become almost as popular as multiplication tables or diagramming sentences.
soccer paradise http://www.evergrandefs.com/schoolscenery.htm?menuCode=99&menuLevel=3&url=schoolscenery.htm
Interesting how those schools are described as being like Disneyland or a "magical place" like the Harry Potter school. The U.S. would most likely be mocked pretty hard for attempting to sell the game in that manner.
As an outsider, I do not think US soccer is underachieving. It is precisely, where it should be - it develops at the right pace, and has made good progress since the 80's. USMNT is no push over, and no one really laughs at it anymore around the world - it is a solid, competitive national side, which can on a good day cause some troubles to the best. MLS has become an interesting and growing league, with good attendances, and able to attract some recognized players from around the world. Also, young people are playing it more often now, and awareness of Americans about the sport has improved. Soccer is doing well in the US and I think it heads in good direction. I remember how USMNT was ridiculed around the world in 80s and early 90s - no serious soccer fan would do it anymore.
If anything, I've thought that since the late 1990s the USMNT has gotten more ridicule from Americans than from foreigners. A lot of Americans don't realize how competitive we are today. Advancing from the group stage of the World Cup once may be luck, but doing it three times in the last four World Cups suggests a legitimate top-20 national team. But what happens in the era of easy access to European leagues on TV is that new American soccer fans think we're terrible because we're not a top-5 national team and don't have a Messi or a Ronaldo. Also, they lack perspective as to where we came from. As recently as the late 1980s, the USMNT played home World Cup qualifiers in front of crowds that rarely exceeded 5,000, and beating the island nation of Trinidad & Tobago to qualify for the 1990 World Cup was a big upset.
This. There seems to be a divide in how satisfied a person is with current American achievement in soccer, depending on how long they have been an observer of American soccer. Those who saw with their own eyes the dismal state that American soccer was in 30, 40, 50 years ago are quite happy with where it is now, a level we thought back then that it would never reach. Those who have only seen American soccer for five or 10 years are, understandably, less patient.