Last night, they had on Radio Unica a guy who works on US player development (for the USSF)…He talked for about 90 minutes….He is an Argentinian who works in Florida’s “section 3” (cannot recall his name), but he spoke of how they recruit and select kids 13 and older for state teams in order to select people to national teams on the different age brackets… However, after further questioning he admitted to various things that needed improvement: he mentioned that tactically and physically most American kids were great, but when it came to kids who had just immigrated from abroad or were second generation, they had a disadvantage (physically- speaking), despite in many cases being above their peers in the technical aspect….The problem, he said, was that in its current state, the US developmental system cannot afford the patience needed to keep these kids in the system. Therefore, they are not followed up to the time they reach maturity One of the hosts of the show mentioned how he had followed the US U-17 team, and how Adu seemed too often all alone/isolated when it came to using skill to beat opponents, making it easier for other teams to just pick on him…The host indicated how it’d be more beneficial for our youth teams to have more technical players that could complement each other on the field as opposed to relying on one or two per team…. I think this can be accomplished if we try to blend more styles into the various youth national teams…It would appear we already have the players to do so, but maybe not the coaches willing to try other styles besides the classic European style….(hence not giving these type of players as big a chance to participate) Any thoughts?
We're talking about this a lot on a youth thread. Unfortunately US soccer seems to be pigeonholed into 'the only place' for extremely skilled players is in central midfield. Beyond that if a guy isn't fast or big enough then that seems to be really what determines a lot of the other positions. IMHO this is why everyone wants to see Donovan and Mathis play central midfield instead of at forward. One of my key points on that thread is that the U.S. seems to have a TON of players who are not really big, not really muscled, and not really all that fast. Yet direct soccer in it's purest form favors big and fast players. For example, put two teams out there who play the same direct style and more often than not the team with the bigger and faster players is going to win. Meanwhile, look at some of the players that come through less direct styles of play---Raul, Saviola, Aimar, Veron, Simeone, Helguera, Chivu, Hagi, Karpin, Mostovoi(sp) Angel, Forlan, the Uruguayan who plays for Inter(name escapes me), Salas, Zamorano etc. A pre-knee injury Josh Wolff would smoke all of these guys in a straightline foot race yet they are the ones who play or have played on Champion's League teams. When you have a skill based style not only do the big and fast players come through the system, but also the ones who aren't quite as big or fast. Given the athletic standards of most of the soccer players I've seen here in the U.S.(smallish, lacking straightline speed), we're nowhere near the efficiency we could be at in terms of producing players. But let's keep naturalizing foreigners(Preki, Ramos) instead of realizing the fallacies of our system.... Beyond all of this, given the spring/summer/early fall MLS season, it makes perfect sense to adopt a possession oriented warm weather style of play. We play a lot like Germany, because their style works in warm weather. But they also struggle to produce creative players and are largely dependent on their physical attributes, so I think we need to ask ourselves who we want to be long term... MLS will never look like the EPL----the average high temperature in London during the EPL season is around 48 degrees.
Re: Re: Are US youth teams open to diff. playing styles? You mean cold, I believe. At any rate, yes, with U.S. soccer being a summer sport (not only MLS, but youth national championships) and U.S. summers being quite hot, a somewhat more patient & possession oriented style would seem in order, rather than the (skilled but) frantic style of EPL or Bundesliga.
We have a huge advantage over other countries in that we have several climates and cultures. We need to exploit this strength systematically. Our present ODP system cannot help us do this. I can't tell you how many outstanding players I have seen passed by because they were not what the coach was used to (usually big and/or fast). Something more in line with what Steve Sampson was doing in California-South is what we need. Memo Gonzalas was discovered by Sampson. One of the things that I thought that Sampson did best was analyze the talent base that he had to work from in his region, and set up a system tailored to work with that specific base. In Steve's case, he targeted the untapped Mexican-American talent. Steve designed a system specifically to bring in talented Mexican-American players and keep them in the USSF system. Another thing that he did well was get the word out to the grass roots people what they were looking for, and had his people make their presence known on a regular basis. Steve blundered the National Team job, but man did he do well with the California-South ODP! When he gets fired from the Costa Rica position (They go through coaches like running water down there!) maybe we could put him in charge of the national OPD program. In this case, he has proven he is ready for the challenge. I was hoping that the Super Y would do a better job with the ODP than the USYSA, but we will have to wait and see.
I agree with most of your points...We do play like Germany (not only in youth teams but also MLS) although i don't know how the tempereature or weather has to do with it.... I think it has to do with the coaching...Like the guy on radio said people who hail Latin America and Africa started coming in great numbers only in the last three decades....Although we have been able to get a few players of those ethnicities, the coaches remain primarily European...The thing that bugs me is that the coaches seem willing to mix the players from these different backgrounds, but not the styles that they bring...Here in America we have a unique chance (with the multicultural setting) and not taking advantage of it ....If the coaches need to study, USSF should give them tuition money....We might have been getting good results in the region, but we need to be more competitive with the big teams ...For example, i often see a trend: When a team falls behind (be it U-20, U-17 and even USMNT) vs. good teams , those teams with skillful /technical players and good ball possession do make us look bad because we are unable to recover the ball and create good chances for ourselves....In a situation like this physical abilities are not as important as technical ones...I really think we are lacking here and it's hurt us a bunch of times
Re: Re: Re: Are US youth teams open to diff. playing styles? I mean warm. Germany has won 3 summer World Cups, and they made the final round of this last one. Hence, their style works in warm weather.
Look at the main style of play at the youth level---it's one touch, high tempo soccer. I believe that players would play like this at the MLS level also. But warmer weather doesn't allow you to run around forever. The body heats up much faster, dehydration sets in faster, and the byproduct of that is fatigue. That's why I find it particularly funny when American Anglophiles bash MLS because its slow. Its much easier to run around for 90 minutes in 48 degree weather than it is 75. Having said that, this is not the only factor in our style of play. I definitely agree that it has a lot to do with coaching also. And that's a good point about how the coaches are European. However, Germany and England are not the only countries in Europe. Spain and Portugal are found in Europe also, and their style of play differs greatly from those of Germany and England. I would prefer to not really adopt one particular style but take the positive attributes of a few and mold them into something that is ours. The knock on German and English style is that it doesn't produce creative players. The knock on Latino style is that the players are too selfish and don't pass the ball enough. The Argentines seem to be able to mix these two styles together fairly well. They'll play direct sometimes and other times are quite capable of 1 v 1. They care more about agility and quickness than they do about size and speed over distance. Above all, I think we need to be realistic about what kinds of kids we get to play the game here. We are not getting the fastest, biggest kids to play the game here, and I think we should look at ways to maximize the numbers of creative, quality players that we put out. If adopting less of a direct style of play helps us achieve that, isn't that a good idea?
Weather & Style Well, I don't get the weather argument since you seem to be making a distinction between Germany and England and they're similar countries in both weather and soccer style ... but at any rate we can all agree that it would be nice to see a less direct style with U.S. youth soccer, and nice to see more total footballers. As for what it takes to reduce some of the directness of the U.S. style, I don't know. Karl, your kid's team had a Brazilian trainer for a couple of years. But they still played pretty directly, didn't they?
Re: Weather & Style German soccer is much more tactical and slow paced than English soccer is. When Germany attacks, they can look a lot like England, but their style is much more possession oriented.
I don't Germany's style has much to do with the weather. It's not very warm there. When I lived there, I was still wearing sweaters in July.
I'm not saying that their style has anything to do with warm weather. I'm saying that their style of play WORKS in warm weather. They will possess the ball to death after they score if they feel that their opponent is dangerous with it.
Here's an example of another poster talking about something similar(special thanks to SCBozeman): European friends of mine that follow other leagues (Bundesliga, La Liga), say that it's crazy fast. I know this isn't the forum, but it's been claimed that one reason the English NT doesn't do so well is that since every player (bar 2 right now) plays in the EPL, they only learn to play really, really fast. It also had a long standing reputation of being, consequently, a poorer dribbbling league, a poorer passing league and a poorer possession league. The EPL has also gotten better on these fronts, but it still errs towards fast playing at the sacrifice of some skill. The actual thread is here:https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45408&perpage=15&pagenumber=3 What concerns me, and some of the other fans of other types of football, is that the youth players here play almost exactly like the description above. And we feel like learning how to take your foot off the pedal and being more analytical and economical is the key to more success at the international level. It appears to us that we've adopted a style of play that has not had much success at the international level.