Man, a Cael Sanderson reference. I remember him from the Olympics! And that's exactly the kind of thing USSF can do. We shouldn't expect every youth coach to be good enough to know this. But through the youth orgs, we can make it recommended practice and communicate the why and what coaches should look for. It's not going to work with everybody. But it'll be more than if we don't.
No what I mean by travel leads is that they aren't necessarily making the kids better players and they're not focused on development. With so much money being spent on the travel leagues and the coaches and everything, it puts a greater emphasis on winning over development. I think this is a legitimate concern and I think it's a lot about what age kids get involved in travel league. For instance in baseball, there's been a lot of concern about these travel leagues because kids at a younger and younger age are having Tommy John surgery because it learning to throw her balls at a younger age. They probably wouldn't be throwing curve balls until I guess late high school early college and get throwing them in early high school and by the time they're in college you've already had to have TJ surgery. So with all these travel leagues, the questions are we placed in the right value on development? Are we making kids learn to use both feet? Are we letting certain players dominate and not actually learn to read the game or make smart decisions in terms of shots and passing.
There are plenty of Mexican kids playing for fun in So Cal. Unless picked by traveling teams they go nowhere, and you will never hear about them. I bet that's how Pepi started, but then his family decided to make sacrifices for their kids future. On another hand Donovan started playing for fun, and according to rumors, there were equally good or better players around him, that still keep on playing for fun in public parks.
Penn State are ankle tugging stall merchants, but their mentality to win is tippy top. Awful for the sport but they are super strong mentally.
Get with 2023. He is using ChatGPT in a coordinated attack on US Soccer. Actually, may be I should ask ChatGPT how we can produce better player for USMNT!
I had the privilege of "coaching" two soccer professionals and one of my sons who went on to play college football. I coached at all levels of soccer (club, rec, school) and your note about free play is so important. I will add a fun component. All three players loved sports. I coached one of them at practices only when he came out to my teams practice because I was coaching his brother. My football son used to go to his older brother flag football practices just to be around and get a chance to watch and possible play with the older kids. On the other hand, my oldest son played in the Development Academy about fifteen years ago. Great athlete, but he didn't love the game. He just liked the recognition and plateaued in high school. At least 10-15 years ago (I have since retired), I do agree that there is a lot of sameness with the teams. Makes mistakes and trying stuff needs to be allowed in a safe, fun environment. We are getting there, just not fast enough for some.
Gotcha. The solution to that is tough. One inroad is simply pro academies. We have about ~40 now that are all or mostly free, I think, and development is the priority. Those don't always go young enough yet, and there aren't a ton of them. There's really no good way to fund past that at scale. There's some that get sponsorships. But you are going to have pay to play for a while, and the only way to get that more development focused is for those coaches to sell on development rather than winning. That shouldn't be that hard of a sell, but apparently it is. There's been a decade plus of direction from USSF on youth teams to focus on development, including rules about the ratio of practice to games, playing out of the back, etc. There's recommendations on style of play and skills to develop. There's probably not enough education on drills or that sort of thing, but eventually too much direction becomes restricting. If parents value winning, and parents pay your salary... and there's really no one else to pay your salary (US Soccer does not have that money at scale)... it's tough to truly correctly prioritize. And that's before you also have a whole slew of parents as coaches who just value winning period. Youth sports parents are freaking insane. Even people that you wouldn't think go freaking nuts over winning a game between 6 year olds. How do you change that?
why is it so important for some of you to spam the hell out of any thread relating to wynalda how dumb he is and how much he doesnt matter? why dont you just not bother since he doesnt matter and is so dumb? agree, disagree with whatever the topic is but start an i hate wynalda thread or something, ya bunch of trolling babies. its not like theres a pro-wynalda side youre even aruging with, youre just making noise.
But wrestling is also a solo sport. Don't think it's fair to compare solo sports (where you are the only one who loses if you try something that doesn't work) and a team sport where the whole team can be affected.
If you live in a massive metro area or the NE where there are tons of high quality players and teams close by then yeah, traveling is something to discuss. But if you're in Utah, Denver, Phoenix, El Paso, etc you're going to have to travel to get quality competition. Europe is way more geographically dense then the US and there are 700 professional soccer teams in Europe (Got that out of Soccernomics I'm now reading). There is no logical way to compare our soccer infrastructure with theirs. I mean, there's what 3-4 teams in London in the EPL. Liverpool's teams are 3 miles from each other. Same with Manchester's. You can drive anywhere in England in a couple hours.
Just cause I saw Christian Pulisic mentioned, Puli did donate a lot of money to his old youth team for a new training facility. http://www.paclassics.org/the-pulisic-stomping-grounds This opened after the Nation's Lague win in 2021 and Puli took a couple hours to talk and coach kids. I played for Classic about a decade before Puli and have taken a trip to see the facilities. The training offered now is leaps and bounds what it was when I played there. And I can also tell you this, Puli being from Hershey has been huge for youth soccer in the area. I do think steps are being taken I'm the right direction. I think people like Wynalda just aren't showing patience. Should we arguably be a bit further along in our youth development? I can see a good argument for that. But we are still fairly recent into focusing more on youth development no? It's why you are seeing more and more young kids get opportunities in MLS and USL as well as more and more kids being invited to train abroad.
You'd read that article and some of this thread and think.........................we're Andorra. We're the 2021 Gold Cup Champions, the 2021 Nations League Champions, Round of 16 at the World Cup with one of the youngest teams in the world. We're the only CONCACAF nation to qualify for the U17 World Cup, U20 World Cup, and Olympics. We've developed a pipeline of young players being acquired by European clubs. Recent departures include Slonina, P. Aaronson, Wynder, and others. We are night and day from when Eric Wynalda first came up in the sport. SURELY he sees that. Are there things we can improve? Of course. And there are people working on it, investing in it, developing the right systems. Should I upload a montage of recent trophy celebrations of USMNT players in elite club soccer? Let's just upload a Champions League trophy as a start. Frickin' Eric Wynalda was most successful in the German 2nd division with Saarbrucken. He's not fit to hold Christian Pulisic's socks.
Wynalda absolutely over exaggerates how bad we are and honestly a lot of that comes from him not getting chances. He and a few people on Twitter say its cause he speaks his mind which is BS. Legit even in US Soccer if you are good at your job people will put up with you. He just hasn't shown he is worth the headache. My comment in particular was more generalized because I honestly do think that a lot of criticisms towards are current youth development just comes down to impatience. I'd honestly argue as a whole our u 20s this cycle are further along at the same stage as the last cycle was. But I legit listened to a podcast recently where someone said dead seriously that in MLS you have to have 3 to 4 kids every year who are ready to be integrated into the first team. Which is also insanely rare in top European academies. I actually think you are seeing the fruits of the focus on development now more than ever in the US as there are more and more teenagers getting shots in MLS and USL... but you're also hearing about kids making huge jumps in MLS Next. But again not to sound so disjointed, to me a lot of the criticisms about current development speak more towards impatience because... well it's youth development. It really did not become a focus as a whole until fairly recently if I'm not mistaken. It's why some teams are so far ahead than others (see Portland basically being dragged kicking and screaming to invest in the youth academy). End of the day recently I think people just like listening to Wynalda because he bitches about Berhalter and USSF
"The difference between Americans and the English is that the English think 100 miles is a long way, and Americans think 100 years is a long time."
Even AYSO has rather dramatically changed its rules from the U10s on down to encourage play out of the back (the "build-out line" rule). AYSO. Pretty much the last organization in the pyramid to prioritize player development.
I’ll go on record here as saying that the biggest problem with American developmental soccer is that the parents hire the coaches. I think that’s the core malfunction at the heart of the kernel. It doesn’t prevent growth completely, but it does eliminate the kind of environment by which Brazilians are able to get comfortable expressing themselves with the soccer ball. The best coaches I had as a youth were both fired because of grievances of parents whose kids did not play the positions they would like as often as they would like. That story plays itself over and over again in our youth systems and even embarrassingly just played itself out with our mens national team. How could little Pirlo have time to hold the ball and try audacious passes if Steve Smith over here whose sons Brad and Chad are bigger, stronger, and faster and want the ball all the time? Steve’s going to effort to can the coach who gets in the way of Brad and Chad.
Youth soccer has changed rules many times over the years. They went to very small sided at U4/5 with gradually more players until U12 (I believe) about 20ish years ago. They do get ideas and technical instruction from US Soccer along with coaching licenses. Not sure what age you're talking about but in youth (not club or pay to play) it's difficult to get enough coaches and lots of times just not backing up when everyone else does gets you a coaching gig. Once it's paid coaching it depends on the clubs. Many would rather kick out unruly and obnoxious parents while others cater to them.