How much does nepotism/favortism/cronyism factor into going pro in the US?

Discussion in 'College & Amateur Soccer' started by NewDadaCoach, Sep 22, 2022.

  1. First Time Finish

    Nov 4, 2016
    I don’t know who you are trying to convince of what, have fun arguing with the person you’ve invented in your head.
     
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  2. CHIII

    CHIII New Member

    Oct 31, 2016
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    The one aspect of this I am struggling to understand is why is Ernie Stewart the Sporting Director is having a conversation with the mother of a player about coach player relations, no matter the preexisting relationship. I feel like the Berhalter stuff had to come out at the end of that convo.
     
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  3. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    The evidence is clear that nepotism plays a big role in US Soccer. Similar to other industries, so not exactly a surprise.
     
  4. JoeSoccerFan

    JoeSoccerFan Member+

    Aug 11, 2000
    no, but again per the poster above, enjoy convincing yourself that your opinion is correct....
     
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  5. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    sure, Eric Wynalda just said it, but i'm sure he's wrong and you're right lmao :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
     
  6. VASoccer75

    VASoccer75 Member

    Oct 28, 2015
    If by nepotism you mean Gregg got the job because he was teammates with Earnie, Claudio, and Brian McBride, then sure. But that happens in every industry where people get jobs for knowing other people.

    If you’re suggesting that gio is on the national team because of his dads relationship with Gregg berhalter. That’s utterly absurd as he’s clearly one of the 26 most talented players the US team has.
     
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  7. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    I just said above:
    The evidence is clear that nepotism plays a big role in US Soccer. Similar to other industries

    Which is kinda what you just said. so i guess thanks for agreeing with me.

    I never said Gio isn't talented enough.

    I did say a while back that Jordan Morris benefited from nepotism. It's not an uncommon belief that there were better picks for his spot on the WC squad.
     
  8. VASoccer75

    VASoccer75 Member

    Oct 28, 2015
    Your original point you tried to make was players becoming pros do to nepotism. If a coach is willing to risk his career on a player because “he’s friends with his parents” he likely won’t be in a job very long. The coach still needs to think the player is good enough to contribute. Jordan morris dad working for Seattle sounders had nothing yo do with him making the national team. Could there be better playeys? Maybe, but that’s all an opinion based on how I rate players, you rate players, and how Gregg rated players.
     
  9. First Time Finish

    Nov 4, 2016
    Not exactly a novel observation then, is it? This happens in every industry but sports are about as close to a meritocracy that you can possibly get (at least in terms of players). Who you’re related to or who you know might get you a look, but you actually have to be able to produce at that point.
     
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  10. Sandon Mibut

    Sandon Mibut Member+

    Feb 13, 2001
    Do you actually know what nepotism means?

    Who at US Soccer is Jordan Morris related to that is benefitting his career? What has nepotism done to get Morris picked for the US?

    4 different national team coaches - Jurgen Klinsmann, Bruce Arena, Dave Sarachan and Gregg Berhalter - have all rated Jordan Morris enough to give him caps.

    Three different club managers - including a current Premier League manager - have started Morris in league games.

    A Bundesliga club wanted to sign Morris. If he were out of contract again, today, he'd have suitors across Europe.

    Morris' dad is a doctor. Because of his son's involvement with the Sounders academy, he became a team doctor. That's not a fulltime gig. Being the Sounders' doc ain't paying for the house on Mercer Island it's a side part of his practice. No one is getting the opportunities Jordan Morris has gotten because of his dad's part-time job.

    Cronyism is a real issue in American culture. Sports are a reflection of a society. That it exists in American soccer is unfortunate and needs to be addressed.

    But that's not why Gio Reyna and Jordan Morris were on a World Cup team.

    I would not have picked Morris on my 26-man roster, just because I believe there are better players. But few people are ever gonna agree on a 26-man roster. I'm sure there's players you'd have picked I'd disagree with and vice versa. But none of those picks have a thing to do with nepotism.
     
  11. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    I don't think all sports and all positions are equal in meritocracy. For ex, you have 11 players in soccer vs 5 in basketball, so it will be much more apparent if the quality is lacking in basketball. But in soccer you can have a guy that's not quite good enough that is basically good enough to not get called out, at least not for a while, because it's harder to judge. The basketball metrics are much clearer and defined than soccer for some positions.
     
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  12. First Time Finish

    Nov 4, 2016
    I don't think what you are saying is remotely accurate or relevant. Coaches make mistakes in player evaluation all the time (it's hard!), but no coach is going to stake their reputation on a player they do not believe is good enough.
     
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  13. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    They aren't staking their reputation. 26 man roster. You can bring on a guy that's not "good enough" and you might get a few questions about it but its not gonna ruin your reputation. The guy might not see one minute of playtime but you brought him because you have some history with him. I'm not even saying that's bad per se. I can see why it happens. But yeah you can kind of put him somewhere where he's not going to really be a big risk.
     
  14. ThePonchat

    ThePonchat Member+

    #ProRelForUSA
    United States
    Jan 10, 2013
    I've Been Everywhere Man
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Who knows what is good enough and what isn’t? At the pro level, it’s not always about who is good enough.

    Do people know that there are about 5ish pro agencies in the US? Coaches and players are so driven by these agencies. Signings depend on those. Coaches won’t go against their agent or others they’ve dealt with.

    Same for the unions. Unlike England’s players union, the US barely has one (now two with USL). The English union impacts all players in the pyramid. In the US, only the League they play in is impacted. Just like the USWNT union and USMNT unions, they’ve only fought for each individual group.

    So, unless you’re involved and incorporated in these entities, it doesn’t really matter and no one benefits. None look out for new entrants or even the future of its members.
     
  15. staffstaff

    staffstaff Member

    Arsenal
    United States
    Sep 12, 2016
    Chula Vista, CA
    Club:
    AC Milan
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The USMNT coach and staff are terrible, so of course player selection is going to be a mess.
     
  16. MySonsPlay

    MySonsPlay Member

    Liverpool FC
    United States
    Oct 10, 2017
  17. ShayG

    ShayG Member

    Celtic
    United States
    Aug 9, 2021
    What are you throwing out there? That children of professional players sometimes take up the sport as well?

    There is no indication of nepotism in the article. The coach says he played well and the article itself says he can “bend it like Beckham”. No reason to think he’s going to succeed professionally if he doesn’t actually execute at a high level.
     
  18. MySonsPlay

    MySonsPlay Member

    Liverpool FC
    United States
    Oct 10, 2017
    "The 20-year-old, who has joined on loan from Inter Miami II until the end of the season," direct quote from article. Beckham is part owner of Inter Miami.

    I don't take a negative perspective on nepotism, like most, it happens in all walks of life. It is what parents do. And all cases need to be taken in perspective. But to say their is no indication is just short sighted.

    You just need to take ownership, if it works well great, if the kids a flop cut him.
     
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  19. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    He got really good training due to his dad. Easy for him to get his foot in the door. Got to play with an MLS team. Now Brentford B.
    So at a min, he gets the inside path.

    But sure, if he's not good enough then he won't make it at the highest levels.

    I'm not even complaining. It is what it is. It's how the world works.
    The kids of pros will always have a leg up.
     
  20. staffstaff

    staffstaff Member

    Arsenal
    United States
    Sep 12, 2016
    Chula Vista, CA
    Club:
    AC Milan
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The players and coaching staff at Inter Miami II were not happy about Neville and Beckham being brought into the team. Both were clearly not as good as the players on the USL squad and struggled in the USL prior to moving over to MLS Next. The Neville situation is a total joke.
     
  21. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    Beckam's other kid was good but chose to do modelling or photography or something.
    Maybe this kid will start a rock band or become an art dealer. Can pull a lot of chicks with that too
     
  22. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    Morris gave up playing in Europe because he had a dog back in Seattle.
    So no he def should not have been on the squad.
    It should be players in Europe. Who are making the sacrifices to play at the highest levels.

    Gio should have gotten more minutes. Who knows what really happened. Some speculate that Gregg was getting Claudio back for canning his son at Austin FC. Tit for tat? who knows for sure. Family feud now.
     
  23. nonchalance

    nonchalance New Member

    Milan
    Italy
    Jan 29, 2023
    American youth soccer is an oligarchic system founded on business and ignorance. Many parents are unknowingly the gullible individuals who help feeding it.

    We live in an implicit and erroneous notion that problems can be solved without questioning the causes. Sometimes we don't want to do it, often we aren't able to, the fact remains that almost always we manage to confuse the effect with the cause.

    So, let's start from the beginning, from the way in which a footballer is formed, and in doing so in the interest of time let’s skip the pre-competitive age group, meaning the grassroots and youth academy (6-12) - although a parenthesis could also be opened here, but this is another story.

    At the age of 13 the boy "finally" enters the competitive arena. And here is when the real problems begin. In fact, youth competitive soccer in this country is a perverse machine founded on business, with much more harmful dynamics - paradoxically - than the professional level. Here, not only is the system constructed in such a way that profit is the priority, but to make matters worse, this occurs at the expense of quality and growth, both of the boys themselves, and of the US soccer movement in general.

    What do MLS Next, ECNL, USYS and EDP all have in common? Tiers and divisions. This takes us directly to the heart of the problem. The goal, in fact, from age 13 becomes to win in order to maintain or climb the divisions within the league. Legit, you will say. The problem is how and why.

    Starting from the assumption that youth soccer is part of a framework of enormous, generalized ignorance, many parents find fertile ground in it, and cause real harm to the kids, by auto-convincing themselves that their child is the new Ronaldo, Messi, Haaland, van Dijk, or just simply the new Donovan or Pulisic.

    This is the fundamental premise, because all the problems, trivially, derive from here, the parents. Convinced of having the rising star of international football in their household, or even just a potential professional player (odds 1 in 5-10,000), as a parent where do they take him? Simple, in the bigger leagues and in the best-known clubs which, as such, participate in top tier championships, out of state travel leagues, and tournaments, attended by scouts, agents, journalists, etc.

    It seems not to matter that the boy is the thirty-second in the hierarchies on that team, or that to take him to training the parent must travel 40-50 miles and spend hours in traffic, or that away games require spending thousands of dollars on flights and hotels. The important thing seems to be that he is on the “big” stage - and wearing the gear of a known “top” youth club.

    Perhaps then a scout or an agent will take notice, and all efforts will pay off (when pigs fly). To their part, the youth clubs, well aware of this mechanism, knowing that in tier/division A there are three times as many young players registered as in B, and that the same thing happens for B with respect to C, try in every way possible to maintain or climb to the next tier. As such, the reward is no longer the formation of footballers, or the process, as Marcelo Bielsa would say, the way in which the individual players and the team improve, but rather materially it is to win.

    And here we are at a crucial point: how do you get the win, especially at youth level? What is the fastest and most direct way to get to the finish line? Develop a technical game with creativity at the base working individually on the boy and globally on the team OR resort to the physical aspect, the bigger / more powerful / faster boys? Which one is the most profitable system in the short term?

    This brings us to the point where players are recruited if they are 4-5 inches taller than teammates and opponents, or pacier and more athletic than their peers, often recruited in questionable ways, because they are physically dominant and win matches on their own.

    In the most important age for the technical and tactical development of the boys, often clubs cease to work on them, with the required time and the necessary patience, but rather look to cross the finish line by taking the shortest route. Apparently, everyone is happy (except the boys, but often they don't even realize it): the clubs collect money, the parents dream, the coaches win, and thus the mechanism feeds itself, but then comes the time for the professional level.

    At this point the professional club that evaluates the boy doesn't care how many games he won at youth level and instead demands an already formed and ready to compete professional player. Just like a corporation which hires a newly graduated engineer will expect him to do a job and won’t care anymore about his college grades, in a similar fashion, a professional team will want players ready to win immediately. Only this time though is for real.

    And here lies the main issue. Many US raised footballers, or better said many potential footballers, are not ready when making the jump to pro. They don’t know how to dribble in the way is expected of a winger, or mark as it is expected by a pro defender, and often are not even able to control the ball as it’s expected by a pro footballer.

    As for the others, the big/athletic ones who thrived at youth level, they seldomly establish themselves at the pro level. They were uniquely the Trojan Horse to enter the city, meat for slaughter, the mean to an end of a system founded on business and winning.

    This is part of the reason why we regularly see MLS teams presenting starting lineups where 8-9 players are foreign. LAFC, the current champion of MLS being the best example. The matter is so bad that often MLS clubs will find better value and better footballers even in places like Costa Rica, Honduras and Panama, small countries with extremely limited resources but doing enough to produce MLS level players that are better equipped than 99% of elite American youth players.

    Ever wondered why the US soccer system hardly produces talents? Why one of only few American talents, Clint Dempsey, grew up in a trailer park in a small East Texas town, where he fell in love with soccer by playing pick-up games in the street with his siblings and Hispanic kids who had no access to big youth clubs? Why the national team is mostly composed of players who have been formed in Europe like Pulisic? Simple: because in US youth soccer there is not enough time, and youth clubs want to win immediately. In fact, what happens if a 14 year old boy tries to dribble and loses the ball and the opponent team scores on counterattack? Or if a central midfielder tries to control into space and loses the ball letting his defense exposed?

    These are aspects of the game that need to be trained, and that require a lot of patience. That winger will miss ten, twenty, thirty dribbles before mastering how and when to do them; the other will miss a touch on the ball hundred times before learning to do it like Iniesta. And so I ask you, if Iniesta had been born in the US and played youth soccer for one of many big clubs in this system and not in Barcelona, where since eight year old they teach you to play that way, not caring whatsoever about winning or the result, would he have become Iniesta?

    At youth level “play to win” is synonymous of the death of creativity, personality to take players on 1 v 1, and talent, and if we add the pressure, and the responsibilities a teenager is overloaded with on a soccer field, and that “dribbles and creative plays have to be tried only when strictly necessary” it is a recipe for disaster. As why should a 13-year-old know when or what is strictly necessary? Often at that age they don’t even fully understand their position but here too we have the obsession of formations and positions, and we keep lowering the age at which the players must play under the pressure of tactical responsibilities.

    Afterall, regardless of the above, talent cannot be taught but rather it can be indulged. And it’s not only the youth soccer programs and academies’ fault. Look for instance at what happens in Spain, with no need to even mention Brazil or Argentina, considering US is much more similar to Europe on a social/economic level. You will see that at the beaches, in the small-town squares, kids play soccer. In the summer, you will not be able to find a single Spanish beach where soccer is not played, a sacred tradition that just doesn’t exist here.

    Let’s be clear, I am not trying to change reality and the country’s culture, but highlight how by playing on the street the best talents have been formed, free of expressing themselves, without pressure to win, and forced to adapt themselves to contingent circumstances (in an alley or in a park the ball never bounces in the same way, but every time you have to know how to control it). Here instead, we expect the kids to develop the same amount of talent by only playing on nice fields, when it’s not raining and when the weather conditions are ideal. Why are trainings and games cancelled when the field is wet or it’s raining? To preserve the ideal conditions of the fields? This does not happen in Europe or South America.

    Technical quality cannot be considered secondary. Physical strength, which perhaps characterizes the more developed children, will eventually disappear and level to that of the rest. We must consider the youth sector as a cradle where we build the talents of the future, as is done in Spain or in other countries. If you have a lightweight boy with a great technique and understanding of the game, you cannot discard him or play him less and favor a more physically developed one. To the contrary, you must work on his development and wait for him to catch up physically. American youth soccer needs to change. What is the point of only focusing on the more physically mature kids within an age group to win a tournament or a league title?

    So, let's all take a step back and start from the basics. Let me launch here a revolutionary proposal, which the professionals in the sector will have the pleasure of mocking but I have the duty to propose. Let’s abolish tiers and divisions up to a certain age; or at least let’s find the way for winning not to become a constant nuisance and the primary objective.

    Enough with greedy club directors and win at all costs stressed-out coaches. Let’s work on the boys with patience, let’s bring this sport back to where it belongs, and that is passion, and give everyone their needed time: to the coaches the time to teach soccer for the medium-long term development, to the boys the time to learn without excessive pressure or responsibilities, and to the youth clubs the time to work on development, which will be rewarded by training compensation if they can place at the pro levels the boys on whom they have invested time, commitment and energy.

    Finally, an appeal, from the heart to many parents: I understand you. You pour out all your frustrations on your children, but I understand you. One out of thousands makes it and so why not your son, he is so good and then come on... He's your child, he's the best. Maybe if you push him a little he can crown yours .., sorry, his dream! So take him to the biggest and most famous youth club. After all, in the small youth club by where you live, a good player will never be noticed (are you sure of this? Plenty of stories around the world tell us otherwise, but don’t worry about it). Maybe he will have a little less fun, but if you want to get there, sacrifices must be made.

    It doesn’t matter if the coach at the youth team near home does it for pure passion, if he prefers to work with the boys at cost of going home to his family late at night, if he is desperately in love with the ball. An elite youth club is elite, they have the best professionals and the right people: it is the perfect stage for your child after all. So take him there to train, grind hundreds of miles, get stuck in traffic. Waste gas, money, time, energy. Park, and wait while watching the training. Do not make friends with the other parents who are your competition. In the meantime, talk to someone that matters, intercept the coach off the field, make contacts, discuss with an agent: you are chasing his dream, you have to make sacrifices.

    But I want to ask you a question. Assuming your child might actually make it, have you ever talked to him? Deeply, not superficially. Are you sure that this is his dream, or that it always has been? Yes, in short, that it is not your aspiration, the one you glued on him years ago, when you saw that he had "talent" ... After all, most kids in US are introduced to soccer at an early age, it should be a true rebel in his blood, your son, to send you to hell at twelve. And then, are you sure that you can exploit the system and that you are not the gullible idiots who help feed it, that rotten system?

    So take a step back: be revolutionary in your own small way. Stop pouring broken dreams on your children and forget about those "elite" youth clubs in which they will have to share the playing time with thirty other indoctrinated kids. Forget the coaches with drool in their mouths, forced to win and all those who populate that version of youth soccer.

    Give up the big club gear and raise your son in the local youth club, with a coach who takes to heart your son’s growth in an environment that, if you are lucky, will still be based on passion. You will see that the boy will improve more in this environment than in the "elite" club: it seems strange, but it is so. And if he is really good, rest assured that someone will talk about it, someone else will notice, and in the meantime you will have saved hundreds of hours of traffic, thousands of dollars of gas, and above all you will not have made useless, indeed harmful, sacrifices. For today mass is ended; go in peace.
     
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  24. JayPak

    JayPak Member

    Sep 7, 2013
    I thought the above post is interesting, and possibly applicable to other American youth sports as well, particularly baseball, softball, basketball, and volleyball.
     
  25. NewDadaCoach

    NewDadaCoach Member

    Tottenham Hotspur
    United States
    Sep 28, 2019
    tl;dr

    and he just posted the same rant in multiple threads. not cool.
     
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