Curious About Your Thoughts and Opinions on Article

Discussion in 'Youth & HS Soccer' started by MonagHusker, Dec 4, 2017.

  1. bustos21

    bustos21 Member

    Aug 13, 2004
    NJ
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    This is definitely one reason why America is lacking in soccer. It is not yet ingrained in the culture yet. Kids at schools can play in mornings before school, during school recess or even after school. They don't even have to play an actual soccer game they can play other type of soccer related games. I remember growing up we would always try to nutmeg each other. That was the game and we went crazy when someone pulled it off. It was fun. I just don't see kids doing that that type of stuff. I do see the basketball courts full all the time at the schools.
     
  2. StrikerMom

    StrikerMom Member

    Sep 25, 2014
    @bustos21 I'm sure that primary/middle soccer-mad school kids are playing soccer at lunch, before school and with their friends on weekends. It may just be 1v1 and not 11v11, but that's just as good.

    I can only speak for the girls-side, but for me the problem is lack of good technical and tactical coaching at younger age groups (12/13-16). Super teams that win Surf Cup do not in general produce creative players that can compete on the international stage..
     
  3. StrikerMom

    StrikerMom Member

    Sep 25, 2014
    Oops - I don't mean 'child' I meant 13/14+ -

    2 team practice nights a week and 1 or 2 games on the weekend at this age is not going to produce a player who can compete at a very high level unless they are super gifted.

    It all depends on you and your child's soccer and life goals.
     
  4. MonagHusker

    MonagHusker Member

    Liverpool FC
    United States
    Feb 25, 2016
    Omaha, Nebraska
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I think the connection to school is important and not sure if has the same importance in other countries. Take my own kids -- my oldest soccer playing daughter is on a rec team and a select team (made up of many girls she could play in the rec league). Her rec team, which is made up of primarily her classmates, is by far the one she looks forward to more. These girls have been together since 1st grade. One of the girls plays for one of the bigger clubs in the area as well. She actually had to make a decision in the fall between the rec team or the same club that my daughter is part of. She chose the latter, but for the spring she is back to the rec team. She just missed the chance to play with her friends.

    I wouldn't mind the select club environment building those same connections, but I just don't see it yet. For my daughter they are all getting more comfortable, but it's all soccer related. There hasn't been a real bonding moment for them. They at least talk more, but it's people they see a couple times a week and not a lot of down time for just hanging out.

    Maybe if a club did something nationally it would get recognized, but the HS teams are having their scores read out on newscasts or in papers.
     
    bigredfutbol repped this.
  5. StrikerMom

    StrikerMom Member

    Sep 25, 2014
    #355 StrikerMom, Jan 26, 2018
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2018
    Just curious - how many trainings do they do a week for their high school team? Do they have gym/weights or sprint sessions too? Are the sessions worthwhile?

    Believe me they will make connections in a travel/select team. With all of the practices, tournaments and over night games teams do. Lots of girls on my daughter's team hang around together to watch the first half of the next team because it's usually an older age group.

    However, she was once on a team where the parents were very jealous of other girls's success, playing time, goals scored etc. The atmosphere within the team was awful too. No team bonding there!
     
  6. johngonole

    johngonole Member

    Barcelona
    United States
    Feb 15, 2018
    PAY TO PLAY
    I don't really see that as the boogie man for youth soccer in the US. The bigger problem is travel. In my area and I assume lots of areas to get good quality training and competition you must also have the time and capability to travel. In the other sports such as baseball and basketball a kid can develop and in all honesty fine quality coaching and competition locally all the way through high school. Just to play out games we have to travel on average three hours a weekend. I know kids that travel three to four days a week just to practice. So in my mind we need to develop the local youth leagues better so its not just the big cities that can have local competitive leagues.

    OVERTRAINING
    I laugh that my area now has travel baseball and football at young ages. First it is expensive and totally un-necessary. But yes in baseball their is an over training epidemic. Parents don't get it either and the coaches do not care. In soccer you often see people referring to girls soccer. Sadly I think people are simply finding out that their might be something different with the knees of female athletes that makes them more likely to have torn ACLs. Could this be from over-training or is it just anatomy?

    SOCCER TRAINING
    I think two to three days a week of hard core training is more than enough. Then at home a kid can however often he or she wants work on their technical abilities by doing footwork drills, etc.. I really don't see this as overly taxing on the body. But I would not suggest kids scrimmage every day. I do know that a lot of professional soccer players have some kind of hip related ailment that pops up and for most of them it was because their hip growth was affected while their skeleton was skill growing. Too much cutting and sharp running movements from playing U10-U12 soccer.

    Just my opinions.
     
  7. Terrier1966

    Terrier1966 Member

    Nov 19, 2016
    Club:
    Aston Villa FC
    I wouldn't say that overuse or fatigue couldn't cause ACL tears but I do know that the structure of the knee is a factor. We had one daughter with a knee injury and the ortho was quick to point out that her knee lined up quite well and therefore was less succeptible to ACL injury. Not to say she couldn't have one but it was interesting that was the first thing they checked and relayed.

    Training doesn't have to be full-bore all the time and it doesn't have to be 30 weeks of the same thing. But, two nights a week with parts of those sessions being warmup and discussion of last/next game often leaves players with 2 hours of training a week. Men's league softball teams train that much.

    Recovery days, tactical drills and skill building can occur with low impact to the body, if clubs/teams want to... I'm pretty sure Barcelona doesn't run full field 11-11 all week.
     
  8. johngonole

    johngonole Member

    Barcelona
    United States
    Feb 15, 2018
    Good point. The low impact stuff is equally important as the athletic stuff. My son has been growing by leaps and bounds mainly because of the technical practice he does on his own at home. Not the two, two hour club practices. Those are important mind you. But to develop touch the kids really just have to want to do that on their own.

    This might be going off topic a little bit. But when I look at my kids U12 club team. They are a pretty typical average club team. Maybe only once or twice have they lost to another team because the other team was athletically more gifted. And occasionally they will lose to another team because the other team passes better. But the vast majority of the time when the lose it is because the other team simply has better first touch or the other team understand positioning better.

    It might be a very simple concept but doing these little low impact ball dancing, and other touch drills at home is a very easy way for individual players as well as the the entire team to get better.

    When I watch MLS teams compared to some of Europe's elite clubs it is usually the first touch skills gap that I notice the most.
     
    bigredfutbol repped this.
  9. CornfieldSoccer

    Aug 22, 2013
    Interesting thought. Of the three times in the past year and a half my son's now-u13 team -- which is not amazing but pretty good -- has really been soundly beaten, twice the opposition's big edge was what you note above, better first touch (giving them the advantage of immediately having the ball under control when they receive it) and positioning. And the third team's edge was related -- that team that just moved the ball along from one player to the next at an unreal pace and always knew where the target of that next pass would be. That last team, as I recall it, did almost no dribbling, relying almost entirely on taking no more than two touches and making a quick pass.
     
    bigredfutbol repped this.
  10. CornfieldSoccer

    Aug 22, 2013
    There was some discussion earlier in this thread on the degree to which kids play club, high school, ..., in soccer and other sports. Saw this today from the NCAA (not surprised that in basketball, soccer and baseball almost no college athletes are purely high school players -- hockey is also interesting, with almost a third play exclusively club and a decent chunk playing neither HS nor club):

    [​IMG]
     
    bigredfutbol repped this.

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