Maybe. My soccer knowledge when you really get down to the professional nitty-gritty doesn't go very far. I've actually seen written baseball scouting reports, though, and they're eerily specific. These guys talk in very specific terms about what body type a teenager is likely to have as an adult, how much room for growth and improvement his mechanics will allow, how much his mechanics can change without destroying his abilities, which pitches that are not in his repetoire he is likely or unlikely to be able to develop, and how he will or will not be able to get professionals out (sometimes in a very different way than he does as a high schooler). A lot of it is very saber-metric, down to numbers. A lot of it is down to a gut feel based on extensive knowledge of vast numbers of players who play the game, the nitty-gritty mechanics of the game, and how so many guys who looked and played just like this particular guy turned out. (I would love to have seen the scouting assessments of a guy like Greg Maddux as a high-school player. I wonder if anybody ever imagined that this guy would win 300 MLB games on almost pure control.) Some of that I'm sure has to translate. But some of it I think is just this weird gut-feel/numbers game voodoo that is such a part of baseball culture for those entrenched heavily in the game that doesn't really have a direct counterpart in soccer culture.
At that age level you shouldn't care where they are playing on the field. In fact, they should be getting experience playing in different roles.
Scouting baseball like any other sport becomes much easier the older the player is, obviously. Baseball pitchers are evaluated on arm speed, mechcanics - the ability to repeatly repeat the throw, ball movement - 2 guys throw 90 and one has movemment while the other's ball stays on a straight plane and mental make-up. I think soccer players also share some of the same traits..mental make-up, coachability, the inherent ability to see things before they occur and and mental speed of play.
I remember reading that too. It definitely requires substantial capital. However, it does not seem to be working out in all cases. Just throwing money at it does not solve the problem. I remember Rafa Benitez complaining about Liverpool's Youth Academy. They were spending something like $7 million per year on an academy that had not produced a first team player in many, many years. Same thing goes with Arsenal. How many first team players has Arsenal gotten from its youth academy in the last 5 years? 10 Years? I could be mistaken, but I think it begins and ends with Jack Wilshere. Wenger's poaching of young talent from clubs that actually produce players such as Auxerre does not count.
Yea i recently read that the "famed" Arsenal academy is all hype no product. Wenger is known throughout the soccer world as a poacher of young talent from other academies.
I really think the thing that got the scouts was Hawkin's enormous size. Major league scouts love big pitchers. He was as big as a house whereas my buddy was only 6'0 or 6'1". I would love to see the high school scouting reports on Greg Maddux. The Wikipedia on Greg Maddux is enlightening. Maddux was not offered a college scholarship!!! LOL Wiki: "Mike Maddux was drafted in 1982. When scouts went to observe the elder Maddux, their father Dave told them, "You will be back later for the little one." Despite having a successful high school career, Maddux did not receive many athletic scholarship offers to play college baseball.[6] This prompted Maddux to declare eligibility for the 1984 Major League Baseball Draft after graduation. Some teams were unimpressed by Maddux' skinny build, but Chicago Cubs scout Doug Mapson saw past the physique. Mapson wrote a glowing review that read in part, "I really believe this boy would be the number one player in the country if only he looked a bit more physical.""
A big part of it I think is the resiliency factor. The thing I think every scout is afraid of is advising the organization to shell out a big bonus for some kid with 90+ mph velocity and an exploding slider, only to have him do his rotator cuff while still in the minors. Even so, look at the current example of Tim Lincecum. He's under 6' tall (I think he's listed as 5'11") and skinny as a rail, and arguably the best pitcher on the planet. But probably not for very long. That body won't be able to recover from that torturous delivery for very long. I honestly don't know if he was a bonus baby when he was first signed to a pro contract, but I do know that he was identified as the #1 prospect in the Giants' organization very early on, well before his rookie season.
You are right about developing skill set, especially at that age. However, we should not dismiss other measurements that is used in other sports. As a matter of fact, Klinsmann talked about how he borrowed some of our sports technology and used it in Germany.
I have the highest respect for a guy like Klinsmann. That being said, it he told me to use a 40 yard sprint to asses 8 year old soccer players I'd tell him to go f#ck himself.
That's the thing. Baseball thinks and probably has good evidence that bigger pitchers are more durable. That said, according to Baseball Reference: Greg Maddux 6'0 170 lbs Tim Lincecum 5'11 165 lbs Pedro Martinez 5'11" 170 lbs I have doubts Martinez was even 5'11" And I met Maddux once. He didn't look 6'0 to me.
I disagree. At the u15-u18 The way to develop better players is to increase the intensity of practice to foster an environment where players have to compete on a duly basis to keep their position in the club. Our Academy systems are not set up for that kid of competiton. The Crew academy team in Cincinnati charges $5,000 to play and travel with their club. Who can afford that? Certainly not inner city kids or lower income families. Wealthy suburban kids are not making the daily sacrifices to become an elite athlete, or at least not enough of them are. At the u11-u14 ages Coaches need to encourage development over results and encourage kids to have the confidence to take on their opponent instead of playing safe all the time.
But the culture is definitely TRENDING that way. Americans in their 30s are more often interested in soccer than those in their 40s. Those in their 20s are more interested than those in their 30s. And so on.And an increasing number of Americans are Hispanic. And on top of all that, there's the slowly growing media presence.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nb9jJg_wIU"]YouTube - Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.- You Don't Have to Be a Star‏[/ame]
Neither do I. I saw him warm up and pitch at eye-level a few times and we're close to the same size. And... I'll admit that even though I knew he was a 20 game winner, I was still tempted to think that I could hit this guy. His velocity and stuff were not impressive at all. It was all control and mind games, and he was a master of both.
But that is precisely how a market-driven development system will work. If Arsenal or Liverpool's academies aren't producing the quality needed, then those clubs use their financial resources to buy talent developed at other club's academies. When you have the resources to both try and develop your own pros, but ALSO take those developed elsewhere, you have a lot of options we simply don't have in the US amateur development (non)system.
Sounds like the Jimmie Johnson school of thought...put your fastest guys on defense, so it is not inconceivable that this information might serve a useful purpose on the soccer field. Besides, we all know what a great "football" coach Jimmie was.
He was a master. He basically proved that at the end of the day its all about control and changing speeds. 97mph fast ball? Not necessary.
Yeah, the cultural interest does seem to be on its way. I'm old enough to remember when no one knew a thing about soccer and if you were ever to hear it talked about in public it was either to denigrate it or on rare instance where someone decided they were interested, you were called upon to explain the rules or maybe someone would agree it was a good sport for kids to play or for real athletes in the off season. Unless you were around a more global group of people where most of them would then find it cute and funny that you tried to know something about their game. In the last several years, especially with the last World Cup, the number of people who talk about the soccer world in casual conversation has grown tremendously. I am probably engaged on the subject regularly, especially when around people younger then me. It is pretty common these days for someone to want to talk a bit about the latest big game or ask an opinion on this player or that team. I'm not saying all or even most of these conversations look like more than surface level curiosity, but the cultural winds do certainly seem to be blowing more and more in soccer's direction.
I was waiting for someone to raise this point. To me this is the biggest difference between the US and other countries. I don't travel to Europe often but in the short time I have spent there I have always noticed groups of children just playing soccer by themselves, including on the streets of Paris where there was no grass to be found anywhere. I never see that here in Atlanta. Everything regarding US soccer seems structured. I think that may be what Wynalda was getting at when he mentioned overcoaching.
It's not difficult whatsoever. (this is a redux of what I have written here many times over) First of all, this is highly unlikely to be the case, as there are plenty of ex-soccer stars from the lesser economic powers (Brazil, Argentina, ex-Yugoslavia, Russia) that have been producing the world class players for decades. Additionally, there are vast numbers of coaches from the "developed" nations - Netherlands, France, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Belgium - that have produced world class players for as long as they has been professional soccer. That should have been the first place Bradenton should have looked for. Instead, it went the totally opposite way, hiring the grossly incompetent Ellinger and Hackworth. Instead of Bela Karolyi, they hired a Bela Lugosi and the outcomes were expectantly horrific. The shortage of money isn't a trifling issue but there are ways of overcoming it, i.e., being more efficient with the capital that is available rather than lamenting that one can do nothing with what already has been provided.
What you say is true. It is market driven and the cream rises to the top. Trouble is, clubs like Arsenal and Liverpool can employ the best youth coaches money can buy. They employ the best youth scouts money can buy. They have the resources. Every kid in England gets seen by these top scouts looking for young players to cheaply sign on to the academy with the hope of being a first team regular one day. And yet, these two clubs have hardly developed a squad player in ten years. Then do the math. $7 million per year X 10 years X 2 clubs= $140 million in youth development. $140 million and all those two clubs have produced is Jack Wilshere plus a few players sold to lesser clubs who were not good enough for the first team. Call that $40 million. The numbers are sobering and explains Wenger's penchant for robbing the cradle when he can. The Academy at Arsenal is a sinkhole.
I'm well into my 30s and I am very, very familiar with both the "before" and "after" that you've mentioned, having been a fan through both. Which is why I really can't get my mind around people honestly concerned whether the time will come that we produce top players, and overly concerned about whether current coaching trends and hires will eventually produce or stifle player development. The wind of culture, clearly, has already changed direction (in our favor), and whether you can see the clouds yet or not, the storm is most definitely coming.
I don't know. Go back to the Chris Klein position (and despite this being a USN&A thread, it's the local level that's going to be responsible for producing a star). I don't know what Klein gets paid, say 70K. We need to find a Romanian (or whatever) coach who speaks English, can deal with the attitudes of American players, can deal with the organization of youth soccer, wants to move his family to LA and isn't a flake. All for 70K. I'm sure such people exist, but when you went to interview some Romanian coach he'd probably say, "The job isn't for me, but you should talk to my cousin Bela". Which is his way of pawning off his useless cousin on the Americans because they don't know the difference. The Galaxy already screwed up by hiring Ruud Gullit because they didn't know what they were doing. It's not hard to hire good people when you know what you're doing. When you don't know, and you're hiring people from different environments, good luck.