Might take another 10 years to develop talent to match teams like Belgium

That's interesting. Apparently this started in 2004, did it take a while for the recommended practices to percolate? I would imagine the 19 to 23-year-olds could be affected somewhat.

 

I mean look at the age of players like Kompany and such. Then look at the players 21-24...those players were 13 about 8-10 years ago which would be 2004....

yep seems to have an impact.
Jurgen took over in 2011. 10 years from then will be 2021. So it takes time to notice a difference.

 

The bolded part is tautological.

To save Belgian Guy the work, you can look through this thread among others if you really care. I'm sure there are places where you can find even dumber predictions.

 

But, if the one article I and others are drawing info from is correct, there is a huge difference between what happened in Belgium and what happened here.

Coaching was mired in outdated soccer dogma — 8-year-old girls were being asked to play as liberos, sweepers in the Beckenbauer mold, because Belgium’s professional teams had a thing for playing three central defenders at the time.

...In practice, G-A-G means standardization. All over Belgium these days, boys and girls grow up playing soccer the same way. Every school, youth academy, and village team plays the same formation — 4-3-3, with classic, dribbling wingers — and follows the same progression up to the 11-on-a-side game. Kids under the age of 7 play 2-on-2; under-9s play 5-on-5; under-11s play 8-on-8. They never use more than half the field. It is only when they’re 12 years old that boys and girls are finally introduced to a full-size pitch and the idea of a long pass.

...When I spoke to coaches of Belgium’s professional teams, no one disputed the impact of Sablon’s plan. It was there in the PowerPoint presentations they showed to parents of boys entering their academies, and it was there when I walked into King Baudouin Stadium the morning before the Ivory Coast match and saw the Red Devils running their drills. ​

What happened here was we got a famous ex-player as a figurehead, a reshuffle of the top youth clubs, and a best-practices PDF that most people ignore.

Meanwhile, 6-year-olds (at least in my town) are playing 9 on 9 with goalies and assigned defenders, dribbling slowly through cones, passing in lines...

 

As far as I know every single US national youth team plays a 4-3-3. Not sure how the MLS academy does it. Here in the states we can only recommend. I am hoping that some people choose to go the 4-3-3 rout and we continue the futsal training. In time maybe the teams that choose 4-3-3 develop more players become more successful and more begin to copy it.

It will have to be in that way.

 

Fair enough. Thanks for the link. I chuckled at your "tautological" comment and I felt like that might be coming to me. There are essentially two factions on this website. The pro LD/Anti-Klinsmann crowd and the crowd who are ok or excited about the direction Klinsmann is taking this program. Of the first group, many of these people amended their expectations for WC2014 again and again as we met them. The kept moving the goalposts and were waiting for us to miss the target. These are the majority of the ones who had stated whimsical expectations about USA-Belgium. Those of us who were generally pleased with the direction of the program had tempered our expectations and did not expect us to make it to the QF. We had hope but we knew a GoD escape was a victory for USSoccer.

 

To find a dumb prediction, you never have to go far on Big Soccer. And, during a World Cup, it's more likely that a dumb prediction will find you. Just check your alert status.

As to Belgium vs. the US - I'll repeat, the devil is in the detail. No matter what you might teach in Belgium, it's taught by the demanding pros. If you don't take to their teaching, you'd be quickly recommended to pursue a career in the academia or, for the lucky few, in serving coffee to cute girls in the local Sterngulder. And there's always an eager guy snapping at your heels, if not kneeing you in the backside.

The US is a different milieu. You folks cough up $300/mo for you to kick the ball and kick the ball you will. You may not be accurate enough to kick the broadside of a Melissa McCarthy's ass but a smart coach knows that his bread is buttered by the Lexus driving parents and so you'll kick the ball some more. After all, your daddy paid for your new uniform and your coach is not about to to let it go to waste.

 

THIS IS THE WINNING RECIPE:

If we want to be the best in the business then this is what we HAVE TO do... and it's feasible.

Player Development:

More Minutes for Young Players:

-All players under the age of 23 signed to a professional contract must play at least 900 minutes of gameplay a year. These minutes may either be with the player’s team, a loan to another team, reserves, NASL, USL pro, PDL, or NPSL. Exceptions may be made if a player was injured for an extended period of time which made reaching 900 minutes unreasonable. If the club violates this rule, the player has the right to void his contract, and the club pays the remainder of his wages to the league.

Technical Directors:

-MLS teams are to appoint a territorial technical director over each territorial claim, and a chief technical director to oversee the entire academy system.

-The territorial claim of each territorial technical director will not exceed a radius of 75 miles (up to 120 with approval from MLS board) from their designated area. Teams are free to establish as many territorial technical directors as they feel is needed.

-A technical director's maximum amount of territories to oversee is four.

-The role of the technical director (and staff) is to improve the quality of youth development in their area by serving as scout, advocate, educator, mediator, consultant, and coach. Technical director evaluates quality of players in his/her area and provides reports to chief technical director over academy system. Technical director advocates for local clubs by discussing needs, strengths, or barriers, and weaknesses to chief technical director over academy system. Technical director serves as mediator between chief technical director and the coach at the local level. Technical director provides education and available resources to ensure that coaches have the highest available level of licensing for coaching. Technical director consults with coaches to improve quality performance of their clubs, and to help implement styles of play. Technical director also establishes and coach an “all-star team” of their designated territorial region.

-Model:

MLS Atlanta, a technical director would be hired for: 1. Atlanta, GA, 2. Macon, GA 3. Athens, GA 4. Columbus, GA 5. Augusta, GA 6. Savannah, GA 8. Valdosta, GA 9. Greenville, SC, 10. Columbia, SC, 11. Charleston, SC, 12. Asheville, NC, 13. Charlotte, NC, 14. Greensboro, NC, 15. Raleigh, NC, 16. Winston-Salem, NC, 17. Wilmington, NC, 18. Chattanooga, TN, 19. Knoxville, TN, 20. Nashville, TN, 21. Birmingham, AL, 22. Tuscaloosa, AL, 23. Huntsville, AL, 24. Mobile, AL, 25. Montgomery, AL, 26. Jackson, MS, 27. Biloxi, MS, 28. Pensacola, FL.... and all these areas would serve as Atlanta's "territory"... where we can sign any of these players to a HGP contract... which would not count against our salary cap.
-Ideally, there would be a separate technical director for each area. However, in the early years, it would be acceptable to have one technical director be in charge of up to four territories. For instance, one technical director may be in charge of Jackson, MS, Biloxi, MS, Pensacola, FL, and Mobile, AL, and there may be only one technical director for Atlanta, GA considering that it is a larger area.


Collegiate Soccer and U-23 National League Overhaul

-The NPSL and PDL have served their purpose of being a development league for young players, but it is not organized and the structure is poor. The other issue is the lack of quality development with collegiate soccer. Therefore, there needs to be a complete overhaul of this system. The focus needs to be on establishing quality U-23 teams in the major college towns. College soccer serves its purpose and players are able to play for their college in the offseason, but play with their club team for the rest of the year.

 

Dempsey didn't come up that way. MB did. I agree that p2p is the root of all evil but make no mistake. The gap in the rich and poor is real and the youth with the best ball control and understanding do not intersect lexus owners in general.

When greatness faces greatness you get this result. Comparing us to argentina is not an apples to apple comparison.

 

Talent doesn't care how much money your parents make ... either way.

I'm not sure how good Belgium really is. We made them look like Brazil '70. Playing 8 1/2 defenders plus no speed for the counter, plus team shape out of whack with Cameron in for Beckerman. So we had no way to hold possession, no way to threaten on the attack, and some confusion on shape.

 

The difference was in the midfield. Argentina got a flukey goal but they generated only one more shot on goal themselves. Terrible game. If Di Maria can go then I like Argentina with the crowd vs Netherlands. Argentina is getting some players back as well. This was actually a very even game statistically. Both teams struggled to control the middle and final thirds. and both Keepers went largely untested. I think that second shot on goal from ARG was Messi's at the very end.

 

Great post.

Though it bears mentioning that fundamental structural changes, like the MLS academies, preceded Jurgen by several years.

 

Oh come on. It was freaking Argentina, in a South American cup game. We would have gotten destroyed, as would any "mid-tier" European team.

 

Hard to know with this Argentina team. They are sorta like Spain 2010. Sit around, figure they won't concede a goal because they have a lot of the ball and are so sound defensively, and then will eventually win 1-0. They sat back a lot today nursing that lead.

I mean, I don't know. Maybe eventually they will be exposed, or maybe they will kick it up if they need to.

 

I believe they can but you are right about the Spain comparison. Tiki Taka the ball around and eventually unlock the defense once then go back to playing keep away. If these 1-0 gritty performances is what it takes then so be it. Maybe they are just smarter than everyone else.

 

There are always exception to the rule. Justin Mapp was and still is a technical genius compared to your average US player. No one's been able to explain what made Justin so good with the ball. It just happened.

As to Dempsey, his soccer youth is a bit overrated. Furman had a solid soccer program then but it was still Furman. Then, as if to prove that Furman is no more than solid, he was only drafted 8th in the 2004 Draft. 8th isn't bad per se but, considering that picks 3-4-5-6 were Joseph Ngwenya, Matt Taylor, Ryan Cochrane and Ramon Nunez, it didn't scream the "all-time leading Fulham scorer" either.

Now onto Belgium today, all one can say is what worked for them vs. the US didn't work vs. Argentina. Whereas, their attackers were regularly beating 1-2 US markers off the dribble - beginning on the 1st minute when Origi deposed Gonzalez - Garay, Demichelis and Mascherano were winning their battles vs. Mirallas, Origi and Hazard. (and the strangest thing is that Garay was only sold to Zenit for lousy $10M despite having a $25M TM value) Wilmots then screwed up his tactics and that was it.

 

Really? On the U.S. boards? I could see maybe cautious optimism, but in no way did I get the feeling that "countless" posters here were writing off Belgium. I for one would've been warning them off that talk if I saw anything like that.

 

Not really. No need to oversimplify.

I'm agnostic on Klinsmann. I think he screwed up the LD decision (badly) wish he said less dumb stuff to the press but think he's done a number of good things for the team. There are a lot of people who feel the same way.

The less people insist that there's some big split on Klinsmann, the more possible reasoned and pleasant discussion will be.

 

You have to change the system. Many believe that the old Klinsmann rant from 2010 was a cliche but it was, at least, partially correct.

I don't know what is definitely the easiest way to do this and I am not sure the extent to which something like this has already taken place but the USSF under guidance of Klinsmann, Ramos and Reyna - a few folks that have played at a high level and understand what it takes - should hire from half a dozen to a dozen of roving instructors that would be responsible for a given region. In this sense, it'll be a combination of an NFL scout (NFL personnel departments have 4-8 college scouts that are generally based in a given region and commute by car from college to college) and a roving minor league baseball instructor. The "roving scout's" responsibility would be to ... well, drive around from youth club to youth club and verify that clubs' training regimen complies with the USSF demands. You figure that, between all these youth tournaments and well established training locales, a single scout could cover 20-30 clubs - visiting from half a dozen to a dozen clubs per week, depending on the size of the area and a number of nationally rated clubs - and then file his reports from the scene.

Ten-twelve scouts should cover top 200-300 youth clubs. Then the national youth soccer board appointed by Klinsmann and Ramos and Reyna would review the report and revise the curriculum with the maximum penalty levied against youth organization that choose to play kick&chase without developing individual skills, which would be taken off the USSF accreditation list and suspended from participating in the USSF sponsored tournaments, etc. The scouts themselves would not be responsible for the day-to-day coaching per se but would be able to consult individual club managers if so desired.

The above set-up should cost in the neighborhood of $2M-3M per year in salaries plus expenses or roughly what Bradenton costs already but will cover thousands upon thousands top prospects in the 13-18 age group. As to the "Duivels in the detail", the scouts would obviously have to be able to tell shit from Shinola. In other words, if a club only pays an homage to the required coaching instructions and most of the time just plays kick-ball, then the scout has to file a commensurate report to the higher-ups.

BTW, the insistence on a 4-3-3 - or any other - formation is really a self-delusional criterion. As we saw from the Dutch in 1974, one can play a wildly aggressive, exciting, attacking 3-4-3 or, as we saw in 2014, one could just roll the ball on the ground for 120 minutes. The real key to development lies in understanding the tactical aspects of the game such as movement and space while fully mastering technical such as dribbling, passing and shooting.

In that sense, I would set up a series of tests - which, like any tests, can be obviously exploited - that would serve as guidelines far more strict than a mere compliance with a formation. These would not be dissimilar to what one sees at the Indianapolis NFL Combine. For example, I would set up a dribbling test where each player would have to run the slalomed course at minimum at X percentage of his straight sprint. In other words, let's say, Eddie Johnson can run a 4.5s 40 Yd dash. He would then have to run - once again, these are merely examples - a 5.5s 40Yd slalom with the ball. (now, the real Eddie Johnson would probably fall down several times, if he has to change directions while dribbling without the step-overs). A shooting test would require hitting several targets at the various distances with both feet. Then there can be a pure shot velocity test, etc.

 

Wait a minute ... aren't you the same guy preaching others on logical falacies?

 

It's not impossible to think JK has done some things right AND some things wrong.

If you think that believing LD was a better option than at least a couple of the guys JK picked rises to the level of logical fallacy, well, feel free.

 

Actually, as I had said before, I am an agnostic on the issue because it's very hard to make arguments either way based on the events of the last 6-8 months. And, in that instance, it's a coach's prerogative.

Now, he may have been better served to sit Zusi for Yedlin but it's not like Zusi's two assists (out of the three that the US had at the entire Cup) were a detriment to the team.