Well, I've learned that there are two characteristics of sweeping generalizations -- one is that they are sweeping, and the other is that they are EXTREMELY general. Look, there's no doubt that some teams and coaches are only interesting in winning. I could rattle off examples that everyone involved in elite youth soccer would immediately recognize. There are also clubs that view kids as long range development projects, and are looking to get kids to the right place and right situation when they are U16/U17. I could rattle off examples of THOSE kinds of clubs as well. Every situation is different, and sometimes teams WITHIN clubs have their own unique situations. It's complicated. Meanwhile, I think every club and every team should balance development with winning. More emphasis on development in early years, more emphasis on winning in later years. But in my experience, the best teams ALWAYS have a development component. They are always looking to improve their players. I will also concede that some teams are talent aggregators primarily.
How does the youth soccer 'select' team compare to say AAU basketball in terms of cost? It seems like a lot of inner city kids with little family income are traveling around playing AAU ball which seems to be an equivalent of 'select teams'. To businesses sponser the teams? How do they make their money and still develop lower income but very talented youth and why can't that work with youth soccer? I'm just asking questions not coming up with solutions right now. For all I know the two could be worlds apart.
Ooops. A family from the parish, when their kid was U17 about 3 years ago and playing on one of the 'elite' teams in the NW 'burbs of Chicago, had a yearly budget of $30,000 (yes, thirty thousand dollars) for travel. Karl knows which club and has probably met his dad.
Cadaver, there were many thoughtful points in your post. Bravo. The above point is a hard one to overlook. My son made the cut for his youth select team (u11), and though he is skilled it was his physicality for sure that got him there. It is not racism that's keeping out Latino players, it's pragmatism. The barrio kid with the homemade ball is indeed a romantic futbol image. The point is not that he has brown skin or speaks Spanish, however, that makes him iconic. It's that he's self directed. He's not over-directed by adult coaches with their own motivations (and, in the US, frequently a lack of true soccer understanding). The game teaches him. But the game ain't paying for him to buy a $200 uniform, pay team and tournament entry fees, and put gas in the family car to schlep him (or her) all over the state for the ODP scedule. So I'm all on-board w/Chivas USA and the MLS teams developing farm systems in their market (Metro, United, and Fire currently have them in one form or another, I believe). Latino, Carribean, African, Asian, and yes, European: lets find the guys and gals who can play. Those of us Americans who are invested at whatever level in the growth of soccer in this country can't get hung up on Latin style v. Euro style, or anything else so divisive. Let's be really American about it and all try to find a way that We The People get all the right kids the right exposure, and build a system that can identify and support these individuals. We can begin right here on BS. Someone with good business savvy can start a brainstorming type of thread: "How we could make it PROFITABLE for US clubs to develop youth instead of the players' families or schools"
It's costly sometimes to have a kid on a traveling soccer team, just like on a hockey team, or basketball team, or baseball team. Before we started our kids in soccer, the spectre of the 'costs of youth soccer' was always brought up to us, but, having done it for several years, I now know that THERE'S NO BETTER INVESTMENT that I could've made in my kids or my family. Our club also offers help to families and kids who need it, which is as it should be. The suburban/white/middle class model which existed even 5 years ago in our area is now quickly breaking down such that the clubs are now much more multi-racial and drawing from wider economic backgrounds.
The Fire do NOT have a farm system. They have an affiliated youth club. Those parents pay just like everyone else.
I decided my earlier plan was too simplistic and put too much onus on MLS teams to find talent. Voiding players' amateur status would obviously be a huge drawback as well. Instead, what if MLS selected top youth clubs, from their own city as well as nearby cities, and offered to "sponsor" one or two players in each age group they operated between U15 and U18. If the teams found suitable candidates for the positions, they could fill the slots at their own discretion. MLS would pay the club fee for any player assigned to one of these slots. What incentive would the club have to find "good" players? At the end of the summer, clubs would pay a fee, say $200/player, to send players which will graduate from their U18 team to an evaluation camp. The top 10 or 20 percent of evaluated players would be awarded additional sponsorships for their clubs of say $1,000 to $5,000, depending on how well they rated. Perhaps the middle 40 percent of players would have their evaluation fee returned to their club. At any rate, this would provide the incentive for the clubs to fill the slots with exceptional players. Clubs would not be required to send their U18 graduates to evaluation camp if they did not believe the player would evaluate well or for whatever reason the player chose not to attend. However, clubs that continually fail to send players to the camps or fail to send players that win additional scholarships at the camps would be placed in jeopardy of losing sponshorship slots or of being dropped from the program altogether. Conversely, clubs that do well could be win additional sponsorship slots. Teams would not be punished for not filling sponsorship slots they have, but they would be paid the sponsorship money, either. Might the program become a political hot potato between MLS and youth soccer leagues and clubs? Quite probably. I don't know how to solve that problem. Would the relationship be "legal" under the terms of amateur sports? I can't say. I know amateur status rules are VERY strict. Would it solve transportation problems? Obviously not. Would Paul Gardner see value in it? I can't answer that, either. It certainly seems like the potential is there for MLS to benefit greatly from this type of program. Would the benefits outweigh the costs?
Hey guys. I am curious if anyone knows whether Paul Gardner posts on the Big Soccer boards. This question actually would alsopretain to Graham Jones (LA Times), Robert Wagman, Jamie Trecker ... You see where I am going with this. These guys all must know by now that Big Soccer is the definitive meeting place for soccer supporters in the U.S. and I would love to read them defending their own opinions in front of big soccer members. I would suspect that it could get ugly. Maybe that's why they avoid these boards or perhaps they post in the form of "sock puppet " IDs.
I thinka avoiding these boards is a good idea. Who wants people like me running them throught the ringer? Now to the topic at hand. Concerning youth soccer. It is a term that is used a lot on these board but I suspect it means different things to differnt people depending on what part of the country you live. I want to tie in with gardners views as well. We all have this view that there is a stark difference between the youth soccer environment in the cities and the burbs. Is there any gray area? Is there any strutcure between the kids like me who only played around the way and in school and say the kids in the burbs who had more disposable income to utilise for their pursuits? In this age of urban sprawl is there something in between the inner city kids like me (back then) and the kids out in the (virtual) boonies? Or is the system just black and white as it is so often portrayed? Also its easy for people like Gardner, me and every poster on bigsoccer to blame US Soccer, the clubs ODP or whoever. But how exactly do we solve this problem? The problem of getting more kids exposed to quality training thereby bringing them into the system where their talent may be recognised. Not the problem of developing more talent for MLS exactly. Is it purely a money issue? The money exists in the burbs but wouldn't these kinds of programs be somewhat cheaper in the cities since mass transportation is available as well as the number of high schools most cities have? There wouldn't really be the need to establish clubs since a team and league struture would already exist (high schools). The equipment costs would probably be lower since the high schools already pay for that anyway. What can be done to effect even some change.
I understand that many youth coaches are under a lot of pressure from nutty parents' to develop their children for college scholarships regardless of ability or lack of. That kind of stress could well account for such large salaries.
He mighr ne alluding to the fact that these are essentially part time. Then again I don't lnow anything about youth soccer.
Sorry KC, I thought I was referring to the $70 to$100k message. That seems a pretty high salary considering the few hours involved in coaching youth soccer. As I said before, there are hazards in that sort of job, such as dealing with wrongheaded lunatic parents defending their children's lack of skill or poor attitude.
Wait a second here. Few hours? I agree with the rosy colored glasses on the parents, but few hours? We don't practice 5 days a week like some travel programs, but we do have three 1.5 hour practices per week. Add in the game each day weekend at almost 2 hours now that they play 2X40. And we need to play the double game weekends because of the tournaments we play--the whole day each day. We have 2 more outdoor games to play, and we start indoors this Sat. And I only coach ONE TEAM. If a coach has more than one team, he will need to leave one game go to the next. You spend A LOT of time in your car.
Good to hear from an actual youth coach CUS. On the surface it appears that a youth coach has a pretty good job compared to many of us on these boards. However, that doesn't seem to be the case in many instances. Do you coach teens intent on earning a college scholarship? If so, I'd like to hear your experience in such a situation. I've read some bad accounts from other coaches through the years and wonder if these situations are widespread.
If that were my job, I couldn't afford to pay attention I work as a programmer. My coaching and training pay for a couple of vacations for my wife and I as exchange for the time suck soccer involves Anyway, when I started 'officially' coaching these guys about 5 years ago (they are now U14) my goal was to prepare them for high school. What happens from there, I guess we'll see. Recently, my senior team club announced an agreement with the youth club for training purposes. So now, anyone from the youth club will have an opportunity to play in the National Soccer League. So, that now the training takes on multiple directions (We have one guy from an older team make the jump already). There might be 2 guys make the jump and play some NSL ball next year (these guys are getting BIG real fast) As more background, no I don't have kids in the club, I have E, D and National D licenses and have attended KNVB Coaches Symposiums, and I have played in the Metro league and the National Soccer league, as well as a few house leagues here and there.
Thats not true.. In High School my soccer coach was a gringo college student that was volunteering, and its a inner city school so he was the only gringo there. Anyways i never heard any of my mates doubt the coach. Only thing i did notice was that when we would pratice give and goes he would scold at me for doing a back heal pass or a spin a rooney before returning the ball. So i eneded up requesting a five pack after each game and practice session and since beer isnt allowed on campus i quit the team and joind the rec league team, were my new coach didnt have us running around like Horses, heh..
PVancouver's brainstorming is all going the right direction in my opinion. Economics issues aside, what I thought were strong points of his second post ties into the "blend" issue mentionned on many of these posts. Integrating the cream of the talent pool that's not currently served with the structure that is currently in place is the correct short-term step. However, above and beyond whatever cultural bigotry exists from both sides, a Latin-style player will be challenged to integrate his/her skills at first.... But the question of costs is a good one. What is the cost of this undiscovered talent P.Gardner refers to? Currently, zero dollars: it's theoretical. Searching for and developing that talent does come with specific costs. This I think begins to touch on another subject Gardner discussed, the single entity MLS system. He sees it naturally evolving into independent clubs over time as the league becomes a more stable financial entity (if I read correctly). I'll throw out a wild prediction that the financial incentive to scoop talent (and then sell it at transfer fee to Serie A, EPL, etc.) will be what begins to break apart the single entity system. I wonder if the end of the loan period that Landon Donovan has from Bayer Leverkusen (this is his last MLS season under original agreement) will provide an impetus for the league to look a lot harder at how individual teams can identify, attract, and retain youth talent.
Just curious about the alleged "undiscovered" talent. I believe there are currently about 300 US colleges that run soccer programs from Divivision 1 to Div. 3. With roughly 20 scholarship and walk-on players per side, this amounts to 6,000 kids playing the game for a de facto compensation. Forgetting for an instant about the teenage phenoms, it seems to me that the problem lies not in the pre-college soccer dropouts but in college programs that don't graduate their potential stars into pros the same way the NCAA football, baseball and basketball programs do. An average NFL draft produces ~ 150-200 newcomers every year. What do all college programs produce combined, 15-20? And that's for MLS, A-league, PDL and all the foreign majors and minors in the world.