Hyper-Competitive Youth-Soccer Industry (The Atlantic)

I can't argue with this line at all: "The sport’s top tier is organized around the goal of producing a tiny group of elite players, at the expense of kids’—and parents’—well-being."

...and I think the increasingly younger and younger Dev Academy setup is going to burn out a large number of potentially good players early as much as it's going to help develop others.

by comparison:

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Agree and I think it's as 100X as true for goalkeepers. Friedel and Howard in particular were outstanding HS basketball players.

 

“Last year, U.S. Soccer imposed a new rule that made these problems worse. The rule was seemingly innocuous: Clubs had to start organizing teams according to players’ birth year rather than their academic year, which caused a lot of roster reshuffling.”

One of the stupidest things US Soccer has done that adds absolutely zero competitive advantage vs playing by grade.

 

I've been reading about lots of players dropping out of playing in the last few years. We really have no interest in playing to our strengths and getting more instead of fewer kids involved. Make it everyone's game and we all win.

 

That was simply intended to align us with the rest of the world where "school year" has no meaning in professional academies. Kids are aligned by birth year, and of course by ability level. Kids are "played up" age groups if they can handle it.

I really think that after 5 years, this is going to be a non-issue. It was just the kids/parents who were caught up in the transition that felt unhappy about it.

MLS academies in particular aren't for the faint of heart. These are professional organizations training kids to be professional adult pros. Just like Bundesliga and Argentine academies are. Its tough. They'll dump you for another prospect if they think the other prospect has more potential. They'll cut you from the squad if they don't think you're committed. Its not an orange slices and Capri-Suns hugfest. If kids don't want that then there are lots of other avenues. They can play high school ball. They can play non-DA ball. There are lots of options. But it you want to play U19 or U17 DA ball, then you're committed to soccer as a career path. Do people think 18 year olds in Bundesliga academies are also playing on a full-time basketball team? Of course not. They are committed to pursuing soccer as a career choice. Over time the same will be at an MLS academy. If a kid is unhappy with the DA schedule because he also wants to be in the marching band, then he can do both thru his high school. But you can't be on the LA Galaxy U19 academy and also be in marching band or the yearbook club or the swimming team or student government.. Sorry.

 

And kids can still play high school ball and make the pros. Mueller and Roldan come to mind.

 

Any literature detailing the causes of this drop in participation?

Pay-to-play, at least at the travel level, has always been there. Perhaps our rec leagues, which I imagine contain the lion's share of kids, are not doing a good job retaining interest?

 

Not sure anyone knows or could know the exact reasons as they are bound to be many. But, not at all a good sing. We already seem to do more to weed out players than try to include them at younger and younger ages. For me, this sort of thing makes a mockery of having a huge country and theoretically a huge pool of players to pick from. I'd honestly rather see fewer resources per kid spent on a larger pool of players, especially at younger ages where its all really a crap shot anyway, than trying to focus resources on a narrow sliver of players, which sounds like is what is happening.

 

Here's an article about the decline:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/sports/world-cup/soccer-youth-decline.html

 

It's one thing to require that level of commitment from a 15-18 year old. It's another to ask it at the U12 level as USSDA is doing now. Our clubs aren't La Masia. The kids from the town I grew up in AND their families had to commit to 2-4 hours of commuting depending on traffic for weeknight practices if they wanted to play for Vardar or Wolves, which to my knowledge are still the only DA clubs in Metro Detroit, and as a result I saw insanely talented kids burn out early.

 

They can, but don't fool yourself, Roldan was recruited by LA Galaxy Academy. His talent wasn't unnoticed.

 

Yeah, I'm familiar with Roldan's story.

 

Not super helpful.

They identify a couple of causes: 1. Burnout from trying to play travel ball too early. 2. DA programs/travel ball is too expensive. 3. Kids who don't make the expensive travel teams don't want to keep going because they think there's no point.

I don't see anything that's an actual problem there that USSF can fix except for "hope rec leagues get better". If you don't want your kid doing travel ball at 6, don't sign him up. If you can't afford travel ball, play the infinitely-cheaper rec version, which in the article was a modest $190 with financial aid available. If failing to make a travel team dissuades kids, they're perhaps not really interested in the sport anyway.

Like, I get behind the idea that travel soccer is expensive. I wish it were not so expensive. But the fact is, it's expensive and US Soccer would never be able to subsidize it enough to matter on a national level. But the implication seems to be that the sport of soccer has suddenly become "too expensive", when it's not the sport, but the DA/travel teams, and their proliferation across the country.

 

The article didn't square the statement with the other statements that supported the argument that the game had become too expensive.

Maybe soccer had a participation bubble?

The article also failed to square the argument that there is a lack of diversity in the sport with the numerous non-white athletes matriculating to MLS and to European deals. Gloster, McKennie, Richards, KAcosta, NLima, DAcosta, Saucedo, Steffen, Wan Kurzain, Lindsey, Zardes, EPB, Roldan, Adams, J. Lewis, Jacori Hayes, Handwalla Bwana

 

Yeah, I think there's a bit of that too. To be honest, the Atlantic and NY Times articles aren't really talking about the same subject. The latter seems to be about the fact that younger kids aren't starting and staying with soccer.

 

Absolutely, and that's why I think the HS/youth club/NCAA pipeline is going to actually turn into a positive for us after we get a fully professionalized academy system in place, not just in MLS but in the top 2 divisions (my vision is MLS and D2 with 32 independent teams each, fully professional academies at all 64 clubs, and reserve squads playing in D3 and D4 respectively). The traditional US pipeline is a far inferior system to professional academies, but it has produced dozens of guys who have played at the World Cup level and the top European leagues, as well as hundreds or thousands of solid, MLS/D2-caliber pros; no other country really has a proven, competitive system in place to capture late bloomers the way we do.

 

I don't want to see the DA turn into AAU in terms of how it completely consumes a kids time year round. It's a myth that children from a young age have to focus on one sport to become great at it. Klay Thompson and Kevin Loe were good baseball players as kids and LeBron James and Allen Iverson were good highschool football players.

 

I think one problem is the mindset that expensive travel teams = better players. Just because a tournament advertises itself as a regional tournament of the best teams doesn't mean that it is true. All it means is its the best teams with players who can afford to play.

I know its been discussed over and over, but until the kids who are playing 'on the street', be it literally on the street, in the gym, or empty field for fun get an inroad to US Soccer, most American trained players won't have the needed desire and natural skills to truly compete against the big boys in the WC.

 

I preface this by saying the "If Steph Curry grew up playing soccer, we'd be the greatest!!!" takes are stupid. But it's not just getting the kids playing in the street into the setup. It's building a soccer culture where there's something approaching as many kids doing that as shooting hoops on cracked courts until it's too dark to the see the rim.

 

In elementary school, kids played basketball with each basket counting as 1 point without a three-point line or fouls. It's harder for elementary school kids to know the rules of soccer and prepare to be great players without having a coach. Furthermore, it was posted in the Referee forum when the wind blew a goal over and it killed a child. Even if Referees check that goals are tied to the ground, if kids play with goals but no supervision, what if a kid gets hurt by a goal? Even if the goal doesn't move into a kid, a kid could bang his or her head on the post.

 

I'm 95% sure this is sarcasm in which case well done, but you do see idiots saying things like this

 

It's not sarcasm. The basketball statements come from experience and the soccer goals issue is at https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/important-check-goals-before-every-match.535443/ As for kids understanding the rules, kids playing basketball don't have to know anything as important and sometimes controversial as if a handball was intentional.

 

I don't ever leave the house because I read a telephone pole fell over and crushed a man once. I don't understand how to overcome the problem of falling telephone poles if we ever expect people to leave their homes.

 

Wow.