Absolutely, you find the boys who show promise in small sided games, then you train them and see which ones out of them can adapt to the bigger field. Those who make it have the ability to play well on the larger field and yet have the close control to excel in a purely technical setting like futsal.
Can we please rid ourselves of the British influence in our game? It's a major reason why we underperformc in terms of our population. Want to know why the US is on the same level as Japan in terms of soccer, despite the fact we have more resources/players? They built their game on the Brazilian model.
I think this column, by Patrick Hruby of ESPN.com, nails it: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/columns/story/_/id/5352349/ce/us/lebron-not-save-us-soccer&cc=5901?ver=us Here's an excerpt: In my opinion, when we talk about minority groups, or "inner-city kids" and their success in sports, we're talking about motivation. We're talking about people fighting like to exchange bad circumstances for better ones in a society which traditionally told them "You're not as good as we are and you never will be. You're never gonna make it." So these folks said "I'll show you" and they worked for it because they wanted it badly in a way few others did. Now, with respect the U.S. Nats, we're not talking about the big, bad world with slavery, discrimination, etc., but in the happy little world of the sport we love, American soccer players have their own unique motivation: People not just in other countries but their own tell them "You're no good and you never will be. You're never going to make it." Our players don't have the first or second touch or vision Spaniards or Dutchmen or Argentines do, but they do have that unique motivation to make it in this game that players in those countries don't. It's the same kind of motivation that's taken the program from a slapped-together side of college kids and indoor players in '90 to a team that has achieved a certain level of grudging respect 20 short years later. It's for this reason Klinsi wouldn't be my first choice to run the team; he might be aware the U.S. soccer player has a chip on his shoulder, but I don't think he knows how to give it a good tug the way the right American coach would. (While I've second-guessed him like everyone else lately, I think "Coach Bob" does.) In the meantime, there are thousands of kids in this country working their asses off right now and developing that touch and vision. In the small-town league I've coached and played in, they have 6v6 between regular seasons. Not futsal but a lot of touches. And to the knucklehead columnists who throw around words like "apartheid," my eyesight might be going, but I'd swear this soccer league is far and away more diverse than any other youth sports with which I've been involved. It just pisses me off to see the American soccer along with the athleticism and hard work of its best soccer players complely dismissed by people who've now gone back to breathlessly speculating where LeBron James will eat breakfast tomorrow.
So the two most prevailing arguments of the failure American soccer is that the "best athletes" don't play and the suburban soccer kids aren't poor enough to have the "hunger" to excel. By the America NFL combine mentality the African teams are the most "athletic" and their players come from the poorest of background and have a large soccer playing population so it stands to reason that they should dominate international soccer.
I'd take the "only poor kids can excel" dictum with a grain of salt. taking Argentina as an example, Carlos Tevez clearly came from the slums, but a great deal of the other players came from middle or upper class families. Gonzalo Higuaín can't by any measure be called lower class. his father was a top division footballer in France, his mother was a professional. Likewise Gabriel Heinze, Leo Messi, and a host of others. I think the same is true in Germany, Italy, Spain, and most other top countries. More important, I think is the role the sport plays in the society. When I see American kids on the beach playing soccer instead of throwing a Frisbee, then I''l think we are on the path. Pretty much anywhere I go in Argentina, that's the case.
I haven't read every post here, but I thought it worth noting that Juergen Klinsmann did not himself grow up poor. His family ran a small but reasonably successful bakery and had wanted Juergen to carry on the family business: Klinsmann did not say, and I'm doubting he meant, that everyone on the national team had to grow up poor. He did seem to say, however, that when you don't have that element in your youth mix anywhere, it tends to cause a lack of desire. The overall level of desire in the youth ranks was the main thing being criticized, not the income level of the players, nor college soccer. (Pity poor college soccer getting blamed for this problem, when frankly all it really does is pick up the pieces for it to the best of its limited abilities. If the NCAA weren't giving out scholarships for men's soccer over the last two decades, our national program would have been substantially worse, not better.) Those are just factors of the overall problem, which is that too many of even our best youth have played soccer as an avocation, whereas around the world they are already not that long after puberty making the transition to playing it as a vocation. Now I do agree with the point that when you look at the US Men's National Team, you're not looking at our youth system, so much as you're looking at the youth system of roughly 10-15 years ago. When Leo Messi was 12, he moved to Barcelona to further his game. When Landon Donovan was 12, MLS did not exist.
Maybe it isn't a lack of desire rather too modest goals or too much emphasis on utilitarian ethos in the coaching producing a lot of diligent role players.
You could phrase it that way and I wouldn't necessarily say you were wrong, but I do also believe that it takes a little more work when you're 13 and your goal is to become a star versus when you're 13 and your goal is to get yourself a scholarship and balance soccer with other life goals. (And the coaching thing I think is also true, but hope is changing over time.)
"We start with the U-9s. They play four-a-side, on small pitches, to encourage individual skills," Albeck said. "We then add players every year, only the U-13s are playing with full teams." Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20.../germany.reinvention/index.html#ixzz0swK1LIe7 In the US, at least in CT, U-11s are playing 11 a side, and U-9s & 10s, 8 a side. I always thought that was ridiculous and had to be boring. No wonder kids gravitate away from soccer.
Good post. I think desire also exists as far as the love for the sport. Just now wtih TV and the rights to all big leagues and all spanish, EPL, bundesliga, Serie A, etc. games being able to be seen or most here in the US, our kids have to develop that love for the sport to watch and mimic/learn from watching the best. This is something that I think many kids fail to do at a young age, and learn tactical stuff that you can see frmo the tv screen, and apply that themselves on the field when they play. In other countries i'd think especially africa, they watch the world game, and love it, because there isnt that much competition besides soccer bieng the only sport they love to watch. Not here, we got football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc. I still am shocked when i read some quotes frmo players about not really watching much soccer growing up, yet they are MLS professional players.
This is a convincing, well thought out piece from Andrea Canales, the best American soccer writer. Even if you don't agree with her, she's a great writer
I've been saying for awhile this is the direction that youth soccer needs to go in. Moving up kids to full side fields while they are still so young means coaches end up favoring those kids who have had early growth sports and are able to cover a large field. Not to mention, the more players on the field, the fewer touches on the ball, and before age 13 the only thing a player should be developing are ball handling skills. Tactics and positioning can always be picked up later in life.
I think I could add a bit to explain his background. I'm some years younger than Klinsmann, but my parents grew up in ruins, similar to his parents, after the war. Our parents' generation was very different from Germany's today's parents generation, and probably the middle-class of the US today. Klinsmann's and my father had in some way a very adventurous childhood, fascinating ruins everywhere, no limits, and lots of things to discover; their parents had just survived a "total war", had to focus on their small part in rebuilding a country, and especially a financial existence for their family. The Nachkriegsgeneration ("after-war-generation") grew up in some way very free, and in some way very conscious that you have to work very hard to achieve anything. Yes, Klinsmann's parents did establish a family business during the years. But I'm pretty sure his parents taught him that everything came from very hard work, especially in his local region of Swabia, infamous even in Germany for their hard-working, no-fun attitude, home of Mercedes and Porsche; not the drivers, but the workers. People like our parents told their kids to finish their plates - not because that's good behaviour, but because Jürgen's parents had potato soup seven days a week, before they established their bakery. This didn't completely pass their kids. I don't want to overstate this point, it's just a small part of the scenery in Germany, but German soccer went down at the end of the 90s, when the next generation kids entered the scene; they had parents who grew up in the 60s and 70s, well-fed and entertained and with music lessons and so on; parents started to say "we want to get our kids off the streets, it's dangerous outside, they learn bad behaviour, could get hurt, and we have a nice room for them at home (where we put them in front of a TV)". I'm a teacher now, I see today's kids everyday and have to deal with their parents; it has become ridiculous. They drive their kids 1 km to school, because "it's too dangerous to cross the streets"; in a small town of 30.000 people; and take them to their violin lessons and so on afterwards. A basic reason that the quality of the German youth players went down in the late 80s was that the kids used to play less soccer on the streets, in the backyards or wherever, and this problem wasn't anticipated; we've payed the bill in the tournaments between 1998 and 2004. The kids of the "mainstream society" didn't play enough soccer at a young age anymore, and the kids from a lower social background were often immigrants' kids, and back then widely ignored by the DFB (for complicated reasons, not to discuss in this posting). In short: The bakery of the Klinsmanns should not give you the idea that Jürgen grew up being a pampered kid. His parents knew how hunger feels, and taught their son the importance of hard work to achieve anything, while letting him discover his small world when he was a kid. He was not the kid of a well saturated family, when he grew up.
Another reason we should hire Klinsman: Germany had two students assigned to each of the 31 opposing teams in the world cup this summer and studied the way they played, weaknesses, and strengths. http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/new...over-England-and-Argentina-article514031.html How ingenius is that? Instead our students are worried about which player is going to do that stanky leg.
Here is a simple suggestion. Go to every school yard in the US and paint a small scaled down version of a soccer field. Like what you would see in futsal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futsal I see kids playing soccer on basketball courts all the time , but there are no lines, no goals, nothing, it's as if the sport doesn't even exist. this is in the inner cities , and I live in Queens NY. I think this is a simple idea that would have many kids playing soccer instead of basketball, or at least along side basketball. USSF give me some money and I can buy some paint and begin the move forward to bringing us a World Cup in 2022.
Do kids need lines for playing Basketball? I expect them to need just a basket, and don't care about lines very much, and lines are really not important for playing small court soccer.
just to give proof from the article: "Two students studied each of the 31 teams here. It started five years ago when Jurgen Klinsmann was coach. It was his idea."
The lines are more useful for a post player so they can gauge where they are with their back to the basket. In a typical school gym,though,there are so many lines it's hard to figure out sometimes which lines are for which game.
We definitely could use a high profile name if only to draw a little interest, but would be nice to have somebody with major experience. Also, may not be so relevant, but would be nice if we could pick up Mwanga and Najar (even though Najar I've heard for sure wants to go Honduras). Those two have started to come around even if it is just MLS, they have class that most of our young players just don't have. http://www.mlssoccer.com/videos?catid=1892&id=6603
Klinsy on the state of English soccer... just hire him already http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8789682.stm
People (and Jurgen) have commented that European players come from lower middle and lower class families and US players are spoiled rich kids. A study and article by Andrew Guest on Pitchinvasion talks about the perception and what he thinks about it. It's well thought out and worth reading, and he actually did some leg work. This was in May, and the main comparison was England and USA, but it's worth reading anyway. it sort of turns the argument on its head. http://pitchinvasion.net/blog/2010/05/17/team-usa-and-the-state-of-the-soccer-nation/