There has always been the debate at one time or another in just about every soccer forum I've ever read, but probably most frequently here in BS, that the US will never improve internationally in soccer until soccer in the US attracts the best athletes. The assumption is that the best athletes are going to more traditional American sports. I am one who has said this is hogwash and now I think I have the proof, the SPARQ training results from the U.S. Development Academy’s Winter Showcase. From Soccer New England: http://www.soccer-new-england.com/Local-Youth-Players-Show-SPARQ.html
I beg to differ. I contend that OVERRELIANCE on athleticism is the problem in US soccer. We've got an abundance of players in US soccer who are athletic and competent. What we need is more creativity, more flair and more savvy understanding of the game. This is achieved by encouraging the kids to play more, especially in un- or minimally-structured environments, not by doing more sprints and plyos. The athleticism has gotten us to a point where we can beat the smaller countries and be competitive with the mid-range countries. But if we ever want to have a shot of breaking into that elite group of soccer-playing nations, we need to stop being so one-dimensional. Athleticism by itself has taken US soccer as far as it can. We need to take the next step.
Repped. I was just thinking about this--again--yesterday while watching my son's team scrimmaging against another team from our club. Specifically, I was noticing how the same one or two kids--on the older end of the age-group spectrum, probably more "athletic" in the narrow sense of being faster and stronger than some of their teammates--were often racing their own teammates to the ball, being very vocal about what everyone else needed to be doing while treating their own positions as suggestions, and generally assuming that all attacks needed to involve them. The problem in this case isn't the coaching, since the coach in question is a soccer guy...it's, IMHO, the parents and the broader culture. These kids is "effective" and successful right now because these boys are young and are not, for the most part, facing tactically sound defenses. They're winning lots of one-on-one battles in no small part simply because at this young age, being a few months older along with being more naturally "athletic", along with a decent but no means spectacular level of technical skill, is enough to terrorize opposing defenses and score rather regularly. What happens, though, is that field awareness and tactical development gets stifled simply because nobody is thinking long-term. Nobody works much at off-the-ball movements because the athletic superstars do so much dribbling and so forth. And again, this is in spite of the fact that the coaches are guys who "get it"--but they're swimming against the stream of wider opinion. Nobody really cares about how good the team will be playing in five years, or how much foundation is being laid for future development--they want to see their kids winning and scoring NOW. I'm fairly certain this observation is not at all original to me. And we are in a fairly ideal situation--a patient head coach who selects players for long-term potential rather than immediate impact, a fairly stable group of kids who know each other pretty well and are friends off-field, a group of parents who get along as well as any, etc. I've seen plenty of teams where the emphasis is explicitly on "athleticism" and the difference shows. It's just really, really hard to get a bunch of non-soccer-savvy parents to appreciate that scoring buckets of goals at the U-11 level does not (necessarily) mean a great player is in the works.
I don't think we disagree at all. The point I'm trying to make is that the athletic ability of the pool of players we have playing soccer in this country is more than sufficient to produce top level international players. I agree wholeheartedly that what they lack is the same technical and tactical abilitites as their foreign counterparts. I can't imagine that there would be too many that disagree with that accertion. Although I do not have a problem with teams receiving some physical training, what is at issue is the percentage of total training. IMO many times, the focus on physical training is because it is the easiest way to see team results and this tends to lull us into believing that type of training is more important than it actually is, especially when speaking of pre-puberty athletes. The problem with focusing on this type of training too soon is that we are limiting our ability to produce top level soccer players and raise the standards of soccer at every level of soccer in this country. There is a very good book written in by Laureano Ruiz (coached at Barcelona, and Racing Santander), Soccer Secrets to Success that I continue to recommend reading. He contends that attempting to improve the athleticism of youth players can wait until after puberty. He also contends that soccer players are but average athletes anyway when tested against athletes in other sports and uses a number of studies to support his opinion. This again relates to the point I am trying to make. I take issue with those who believe that we will never be able to compete internationally until the Michael Jordans and the Reggie Bushes of the US play soccer. As long as we think along those lines, we are doomed. My contention is, and always will be, that if Michael Jordan and Reggie Bush played soccer we'd never even know who they were, because despite their natural athleticism, they would not receive the training they need (and that training includes not only structured training, but unstructured) to become top international level soccer players.