Post-match: Trinidad & Tobago vs. USA - November 20, 2023

Throughput is an end measure. Imo, it should be the focus. The cultural or societal excitement of the sport increases the input. Coaching, peer groups, visibility to professional or monetary rewards- are all things that increase throughput.

Its one reason I saw the inputs as mostly the same across countries in type but that changes through the stages.


Kids starting soccer --> kids playing competitive soccer --> kids attached to academies--> pro career

There are dozes of way to divide out the throughput but even in this crude way- you can see how each of these segments would create different sampling pools. And the better throughput we have, the better athletes we get from the beginning to the end.

Some of that is coaching. However, I think the biggest benefit good coaches do is retention more than anything. Bc imo, the very elite athletes- the 3 standard deviations from the mean- comparatively to 150 IQ--> are already very rare and need the least instruction. They are also quickest to gravitate toward bigger, harder challenges that historically soccer would struggle to provide without competitive travel.

IQ of 130 to 160 is 1% of the population. If the sampling pool gets weaker at each stage, diluted by retention issues then the athletes that match that 1% level to the overall population gets harder to find and much, much lower than 1% in each sampling pool.

By U16, we likely have very few if any left at that level. That's not a judgement on the inputs. That's a judgment on the throughput.

The goal if we want more players playing for Real Madrid or Bayern, isn't to get the most out of a talent who is 2 standard deviations from the mean. The goal is to get some (if any) that are 3 standard deviations. Really good coaching, imo, helps to maximize an athlete who is 2 standard deviations.

In short, the trick to having more of any top athlete is better throughput. The trick to having more MLS quality athletes and lower EPL athletes is better coaching to maximize the 2 standard deviation athletes. The trick to every finding or producing a Haaland, Messi, Ronaldo- is throughput and keeping those extremely rare athletes in the sampling pool at each stage.

 

I played in Alabama. There are large, invested pool of good athletes in pockets in Alabama. The US has pockets all across the US. Think of these as gold pockets. We don't even mine really mine them. We ask parents to move their kids from those pockets across the country.

Again, imo, the primary problem is getting better retention and throughput from kids starting to play to soccer to viable paths to the pros. Chris Richards had to move to Texas to join FC Dallas at age 16. In no other sport, do we ask young athletes to do that much so early.

IF they have an equal path and interests in football, basketball, baseball,etc- they'll just stay local and pursue those sports.

We require way more intensity for soccer for young athletes to progress than we do other sports. If any of you are parents, can you imagine flying your kid to Spain at 16 to try out for a club? With the possibility of your son living abroad at that age? That's asking A LOT.

We need a system that supports young athletes where they are.

 

I disagree. As long as we're asking players to move from NC to Saint Louis (Busio) or Alabama to Texas at ages around 16 - we're going to struggle.

 

Every place is going to have some level of variance that will create little trends.

Alabama is more interesting now as all those players came up before the Legion, Nashville or Atlanta, or for that matter, Orlando, were really in place as academy options.

 

I think that’s part of the same issue. We’re a large country that is far less dense than our European counterparts (by a fairly dramatic amount) and we don’t have the level of interest in the game to support professional clubs with academies in lots of areas in our country.

 

It's related. IF the MLS academies were more strongly incentivized, I think they could cover more ground. Nashville SC is close enough to build a lot of connections, clubs, etc in Alabama. And they are probably doing that a little. With much greater incentive and reoccuring funding source, I think they could mine and support those pockets better.

I don't know how much larger we can expect MLS to get. Most of our pro leagues are around 30 teams (NFL, NBA, MLB).

I think we need MLS much more invested, incentivized and driven to find and develop youth so they can really be a backbone for youth development. It's the only way I know of really improving the pipeline.

Our other sports really rely heavily on our school systems (bolstered by travel and competitive sports leagues). NFL relies HEAVILY on college scouting, recruitment and development. Colleges use the funding from being a minor league football league to drive scouting and development.

I don't know that will ever be the right path for soccer for a variety of reasons. We also will never have (imo) the levels of teams that Europe has with multiple divisions of soccer. Again, if we want that then we are requiring far greater enthusiasm for the sport across our very large and diverse culture than any other sport we have. Our other "minor" leagues are mostly built into colleges OR are part of the pro team. I think being connected to the pro team is the path.

The path, imo, that I can see having the fastest impact, can be interwoven with successful business models, and can get plugged into the world demand for the sport (to fund our infrastructure) is MLS academies and youth development.

But MLS would have to go hard into being a farmer league imo. They would have to emphasize and reward domestic youth development, promotion, and transfers.

Then they would be incentivized to build larger nets. Nashville SC could cover alabama the way our colleges scout regions for youth athletes.

 

Nitpick: Richards actually moved to Texas to join the Houston academy. FC Dallas was not interested in him after his trial.

 

I think those three did build the culture. They showed that soccer is an alternative to football, basketball etc to make a career.

That happens in every sport. Top players in a place with lesser teams will move to high school factories so they can have their pick of universities. Didn't Matt Turner change high schools for that reason (not for soccer)?

 

It can happen but its really the only viable path for soccer. If we're looking at things from a throughput model, we're examining factors that create drops in numbers at each stage.

Kids playing --> Kids playing competitively (registered or clubs) --> kids in academies --> pro teams

So say we're at 4 million at the inputs and goes something like this.

4 million --> 2 million--> 6000--> 60 (made up numbers for demonstration)

If we're using a throughput model for improvements, we want to diagnose the largest impact at largest drop off points to get better numbers at each segment. I would say requiring 16 years olds to travel across the country and (many times) live on their own is a HUGE reason for drop offs.

To Bob's point earlier though, if we can diagnose that the 6000 youth at academies is a significantly different pool of athletes in the US than in England, then we need to back up a step and try to get better throughput at that stage. IF we diagnose that the 2 million number is significantly different from counterparts to overseas, then we need to focus on that segment to improve throughput retention. I personally, want to make the whole pipeline MLS's problem to solve. So that they are looking to increase retention at the beginning and not just mining those 2 million to try and find the best 6000.

I also want MLS incentivized and funded well enough so that the MLS academy segment has capacity for a lot more than 6000. (again- the numbers are for demonstration and not estimates to be real).

 

I think the thing is a single like Nashville isn’t even enough to cover the entire state of Tennessee if you had enough grassroots interest in the game. Look how many professional athletes a state like Tennessee produces. One team shouldn’t be able to cover a state with a population of 7 million (which is roughly the same as Serbia and more than countries like Denmark). Do you know how many colleges are scouting a state like Tennessee or Alabama? It’s a ton and they are filling 85 man rosters at the D1 level.

Look at a city like London and how many pro teams it has versus New York.

College Football is a great development system for the NFL. But there are 850 plus college football teams in this country, all with fairly large rosters. It has nothing to do with funding from being a development league and more to do with the fact that the TV ratings are far beyond anything MLS can produce and have led to massive TV contracts.

We just don’t have the same level of pro teams or the ability/interest in soccer to support that at this point in time.

More than MLS we want to see the growth at the USL level. There’s never going to be enough MLS teams to adequately cover our population but expansion and improvement of USL has the potential to help tremendously.

 

We don’t have to match the scouting of college teams unless we are trying to match the volume of athletes produced. If we did all of that - we’d be competing with all of Europe - not single countries in Europe. We don't have to match the number of pro teams in London unless we want to match the volume of talent out of London with a single US city. The US can try to match the output they get out of London with multiple cities as large as London.

Right now we just want to improve the throughput from kids playing with a path to the pros. It doesn't have to be as efficient of throughput as NFL or England soccer. It just has to be a lot better than it is now.

The key for it to get a lot better and to increase the scouting range and increase the impact MLS teams can have on the pipeline is money and incentives.

 

Even if we accept your contention that coaching isn't as important for 3-standard-deviation athletes, good opposition is very important. 3-standard-deviation athletes may be able to develop skills quickly, but they're only going to do so if the opposition is strong enough that they can't rely on their existing skills

I'm going to go back to Jordan Morris, who is exactly the kind of athlete who would have benefited from a better soccer culture and a higher density of young soccer players. Morris was 17 when MLS academies expanded to age groups younger than U-15/16, so his early development was all in the old US youth club system. I'm not necessarily arguing that he's a 3-standard-deviation athlete, but I do think his nose for goal and his ability to drastically improve his left foot as an adult, along with his physical attributes, would put him well past 2 standard deviations from the mean. He probably would have had much better technique (especially with his left foot) regardless of the quality of coaching if he'd needed it as a youth player. But as long as he could get away with just running past opponents, that's what he learned to do. That's not to single out Morris as deficient, because that's exactly what other American youth players did too. Morris is just noteworthy because his improvement in technique at a later age suggests that he would likely have become a much more technical player in a better soccer culture.

 

Regarding culture, I don't think there's a country that has won anything of note that does not have a through and through diehard soccer culture in their country. There probably isn't some cut and dry statistics that say, "This much 'culture' produces this high of a result." But since no non-die-hard country has ever won anything, I think you can say it is a major factor. Culture and passion obviously have some kind of major impact on developing world class players. It's just hard to quantify it. We have the money and population, but we lack that key ingredient. So, our money and population have to have an even bigger impact than it does with the countries we are competing with who have that culture component.

 

There's nothing to say players can't develop technique later. In fact, I would suggest Morris is an example of that. His developing with a left foot has been quite good over the last few years.

Studies have also shown there is not age where you can't develop these things. You just do so earlier and faster. Maybe with coaching and more competitive peers, he would have had a more significant window of interest sooner.

 

Well.................since 1950, it's no accident that the nations with the top 5 Euro leagues are the ONLY ones that have won a World Cup (France, England, Germany, Spain, and Italy). Where are the two best South American leagues? Where? Argentina and Brazil. Only two nations from South America to win since 1950.

So yes, how does that USMNT keep advancing. Its MLS. Its MLS/USL building our domestic culture and infrastructure. Youth development, coaching development, etc. etc.

Who was in the most recent U17WC final? Germany and France. Imagine that. Who won it in the two previous editions. Brazil and England. Imagine that. Who was in the most recent U20WC final? Italy and Uruguay. Two nations that have won a World Cup. Imagine that. What was the final at the Olympics in 2020? Oh, look at that: Brazil versus Spain. And the previous edition in 2016? Oh, look at that. Brazil versus Germany. In recent times, a very select group of nations wins everything. Yes, there are interlopers that advance deep like Morocco and Croatia at the recent World Cup. But the trophies are all held by the same small group right now. And its no surprise that its the group with the top domestic leagues.

The USMNT isn't going to win a World Cup without MLS being one of the 10 best leagues on Earth. We need that culture.

 

The season after his second ACL Morris’ top speed would have put him in the 95th percentile of EPL players. If we are talking about pace, power, and jumping Morris is elite. He is not as strong when it comes to agility and probably flexibility/body control. I mean most Americans with his physical attributes become college WRs or DBs or kick returners, his dad was the doctor for a pro soccer team.

 

Practitioners do not believe this. I mean Arsene Wenger said basically by the mid teens players skill growth is essentially complete. Of course he is talking about a cultural context where soccer is omnipresent and there is widespread high level professional development and quality instruction for kids.

From what I’ve observed I only see minor improvements in skill in the 20s. The biggest area is ball striking and weak foot stuff. I put a lot of that down to a lack of prior effort. I think a lot of what people attribute to fundamental technical/skill improvement is due to a better mental game (decision making, pattern recognition, and focus).

You also have to think practically. If kids can make much larger gains than adults, per hour of training, it is much more efficient to train them then. You also get the benefit of them having those skills earlier in their careers and then the slower growth that comes after it. It seems like there is a bare minimum skill level required and if a player doesn’t pass that bar who is going to invest the time and money to get a guy over that hump? How many of those guys are going to have the time and resources to devote to fundamental skill training? I’ve also heard that a conclusion is that foot-eye coordination is even more specialized than hand-eye (because we do more hand-eye stuff naturally day-to-day) which makes it less amenable to later in life training.

I think truly elite talents are born, and they are easy to spot. The role of the developmental system is to provide opportunities and competition for these players along the path. The role of their coaches is to provide shortcuts and refinements to increase their pace of development and the likelihood that they come close to their ceilings. It’s also to create team contexts that aid in development. I don’t put McKennie or Adams in that category. They are more the complimentary guys who have good to great athletic packages but not the full set of attributes that creates a potential for greatness. Those guys are also fairly easy to spot because athleticism is easy to spot. Skill is fairly easy to spot. Mental attributes and the interaction between them and the other attributes are harder to spot because of competition level and the need to have some understanding of what a smart player looks like at various levels.

The amount of potential elite talent a country has is a function of the number of players sufficiently exposed to and interested in a sport. How close that sub-group comes to hitting their ceiling depends on environmental factors and their particular mix of internal qualities. Culture is a major environmental factor.

 

Funny that we're talking about this in the T&T game thread.

We didn't lose this game because of our domestic development programs. Or our soccer culture in the US.

We lost it because our born-and-raised Dutch right back got red-carded when he lost his mind.

And we started this game with a players raised in England at forward, midfield, centerback, and left back. (Balogun, Musah, Carter-Vickers, and Robinson). We brought two players born and raised in Germany off the bench (Maloney and Tillman).

So................yeah. Our soccer culture isn't the reason we lost this game. Our development systems aren't the reason we lost this game.

I will say that the inferiority complex we have is incredible. We're the #12 ranked team in the world, and just made the round of 16 at the world cup. People act like we're garbage. We've made the quarterfinals of the U20 World Cup four times in a row. We're the only team in CONCACAF to qualify for the most recent U17WC, U20WC, Olympics, and World Cup. Our programs are really healthy. No reason for any kind of pity party. We lost a game. Sports teams lose games. No reason to try to tear everything down in a fit of rage. We're on track.

 

Overall we're on the same page.

 

When talking about US density and size - i found this relevant and funny. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT85TwD1K/

 

It’s pretty simple. Ignorant people don’t know what the don’t know, and act in false confidence. Knowledgeable people realize they don’t know shit (the more you know the less you know) and hedge their beliefs in percentages and chances they have it right or wrong. This forum is full of posters talking in absolutes like they know shit they have no way of knowing. You are correct in that we all do it..... just some much more than others.

 

Send me those studies.

I find it quite useful to separate athleticism from skill because when people talk about those things they are talking about distinct categories.

 

I've been humbled too many times to state anything as an absolute. I've watched as things with a .001% happen. I've even seen times when things happened I didn't even know were possible.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7109330/

You can use that to find others like it.

I think separating athleticism and skill is normal. I also think it creates a false narrative. By separating it, there is an implication that its learned. And because its learned, then the pace of learning it is the same for anyone and anyone can learn it. But I've found that simply not to be true. Athletic kids (especially those predispositioned to a particular sport) learn it much, much faster than anyone else. There are some I could teach how to strike a ball in infinite detail and they'd never get it. There are others than can be told a very rough idea of how to get a curl on the ball and get it first time with no real instruction.

I could get the best instruction in the world and never shoot the ball like Curry or trap the ball from 50 yards like Pulisic. Whether that's athleticism or skill is semantics but the idea that some are born with elite, innate ability (or potential for that ability) is important.

Looking at skills as athleticism reminds me of trying to find a qb in the nfl. I've said before I've been a Tennessee Titans "fan" (not very fanatical lately). And they've tried for decades to find that elite qb. They can measure jump, sprint speed, arm speed, etc. They struggle quantifying what is needed in the head game. (not the same as skill, but bear with me)

They tried the wonderlic and it correlated a little but wasn't predictive. Now they have a new measure called the S2. https://wonderlictestpractice.com/s...arying defensive circumstances, and improvise.

This one looks better. But non data oriented ppl will call this stuff "football instincts" in a vague catch-all way. It's not. Its the mental aptitude for the position. We don't' understand it very well so ppl just call in "instincts." It's a black box. We know something is in there but we don't really know what.

Skills are like that. They are a blackbox. I don't know what attributes, specifically allows Pulisic to catch the ball like that. I don't know what specific attributes allow Curry to shoot 3's like he does. But its more than learned behavior.

I think its also important to note that ppl learn better how to bench press, squat, jump, and run fast too. There are skills within any athletic performance.

All to say, it can be semantics and I can agree there's a usefulness in separating general athleticism, skills, and mental aptitude but those lines blur. I'm honestly not sure what the difference is between skills and athleticism bc I don't really know with certainty what "skills" really are at that level.

 

I think this is likely true. I also think it not only needs to be one of the top leagues, but it needs to do so with a lot of Americans playing key roles on many teams. We could easily see MLS become a top league just by throwing ridiculous amounts of money at the problem and importing all the talent but that won't matter so much to American player development nor would it mean much for the national team. For the US to be a contender we need MLS to be a top league and we need this to happen through improvements in American players. That to me is one of the big questions about MLS. Do we want it to be the best league it can be regardless where the players come from? Or, do we want it to feature a large number of American players? Because if we just want it as good as the Premier League for example, we have less than a dozen players good enough to play regular roles there. Does USL become the place where Americans play if MLS is a top league in short order? For me, this is a really big question I seldom see people grapple with when they say they want MLS to quickly become a top league. That's only happening quickly if we spend a boatload of cash and jettison most of the Americans playing there. Not sure that's really a great solution. The other way it happens is slowly over a long period of time as American players get better, but no one likes the slowly part of that answer.