U18, U15 Nats at Dallas Cup (R)

(R) USA U18 Nat'l Team '86 vs. Clube Atletico Paranaense

Don't know anything else about it, but I am sure there will be some reports coming in later.

Result: US 0 Clube Atletico Paranaense 2

Here is a link for other Super Group matches: http://www.dallascup.com/tourn/sked/age/arch/U19A.html

 

When you guys write the lineups is it always a set format
ie: GK, LB, CB, CB, RB, LCM, RCM, LM, RM, ST, ST

 

Wonder when you see scores like Man U 1 - Solar 3 for the U12s what that means. Surely Man U's U12s are of an overall higher quality than Solar's? One would expect that Man U would have several future professionals in that U12 lineup (not all at Man U, of course, but somewhere) whereas Solar is unlikely to have even one.

Man U not bringing its best players? Man U not doing anything to emphasize winning? (That seems a bit unlikely.) Age differences due to the different youth calendars used by the rest of the world and the U.S.? Jet lag?

Sure, not even the Harlem Globetrotters win every game, but Man U should be scooping up enough youth talent to dominate proceedings.

Put it this way ... the good U12 players in Chicago are spread out over several clubs ... if I could make like Man U and form a true all-area U12 team I have a hard time envisioning that team losing 3-1 to any U.S. squad.

 

JR, well there are two reason.

First, at the youth level, I think we are, pound for pound just as good and in some cases better.

Second, I would bet that Solar and the American teams are bringing players with with 8/1 birthday cutoff, while ManU is bringing a true U12 team...

In other words, my guess is Solar's group has some late 91 birthdays, whereas ManUs are all 92s. See:

http://www.dallascup.com/general-info/index_E.html

for birthday cuttoff information.

Last year at U14, ManU's team did not advance. I watched them play, and they were quite good, but gave up some speed and size.

 

I'm not in Dallas, so I can't confirm, but Man Utd. has been known to bring in U-10 or U-11 players, and I suspect that this is the case against Solar. In fact, many of the foreign teams are playing up against weaker U.S. sides. That's the difference between local clubs and professionally run academies.

 

Thanks for the answers.

The "playing up" part makes sense. Have seen it work in the other direction, with U.S. teams giving up 7 months to European teams.

A side note -- 7 months makes a huge difference in youth soccer, far more than most people appreciate. I'll give an example. Our club has two "ranked" teams, at U11 and U12. If anything, the U11 team is slightly stronger for its age, being in the top 5 on the national ranking sites while the U12s are about 20th or so. But when the two teams scrimmage, the U12s win about 10-1.

So we're talking about 9 goals' difference for 12 months in age.

So even a modest amount of "playing up" could be a very large handicap for Man U's youth squad.

 

I'm going to try to track all the results and records of US clubs vs international in this thread -

https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=104152

The American U12 teams went 6-0-0 yesterday vs teams from other countries.

I guess time will tell whether this indicates this group of boys is especially good or if we just have a better success rate at the younger age groups.

 

Interesting result for the U-18 NT. From the topdrawer soccer report, they played a much better match, but could not score. It looks like a long shot to qualify now. They need to win the two other matches.


Threads Merged

 

I agree with this statement primarily. What we have found in youth coaching circles is that, all things being equal, we are as strong a footballing nation as others. This is excepting Brazil, who seem to have created some sort of Super-football noone can seem to match.

All things are equal at the youth levels. Youth are the same everywhere. If there are enough soccer playing kids in your area, you can put together a highly talented group of players. Then if your training and facilities are good, you can field an excellent playing side.

We even have an advantage in certain areas, such as our age criterion. But make no mistake, there are American players "playing up" at Dallas Cup as well.

Even the limbo period in American soccer isn't killing us. Players go off to college and are still somehow becoming some pretty good pros. If someone did the math, I would expect that maybe the #of college players/MLS pro debut ratio is similar to that of EPL U19&Reserve players/EPL first team debuts.

It's the TOP level, MLS, where things get UNequal, that takes our level as a footballing nation down. Our youth sides are excellent.

NL

 

1-1 vs. Saprissa

We were lucky to get the draw as we played down a man for about 60 minutes and the Saprissa missed a couple of sitters as well as had a goal called back for offsides. As soon as I put names to numbers I'll elaborate a bit more.

 

Not to pick on JohnR, as he did put it in quotation marks, but is anyone else bothered by the fact that there are national rankings and national ranking sites for U11 soccer? I realize that some competition is important (as it will lead to better coaching, etc. than simply having someone's dad or mom coach the team), and that the way youth soccer is structured in the US (independent clubs not affiliated with a pro team) leads to this competitiveness and sense that rankings are needed, but it seems like player development would be better served by turning down the competitiveness a little bit in the lower ages and focusing on skills, skills, skills. I have no data to back this up, but its my impression the Ajax and ManU are regarded as having good youth systems not for the youth titles they've won, but for the pro players they've produced......In this sense I really like the article on Top Drawer about choosing a youth club: http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/SetPieces/1080745002/view

And sorry for hijacking this thread. To make at least some semblace of being on topic: Go youth nats! And is anyone else wondering why Bradley is with the U-18s and not with the Metros?

 

I can't speak for JohnR but of course he is a reasonable guy and, yeah, national rankings for 11 year olds are kinda silly.

I think it is instructive that a lot of the teams you see winning state cups at later years never put a younger age team in them...most start at U13 or U14. Winning a state cup at U12 is the height (or nadir, depending on your perspective) of meaninglessness.

Part of a selecting a club for your kid requires a certain kind of due diligence that few parents have the wherewithal/energy/inclination to implement. Yet most of them probably spend more time researching the purchase of a washing machine than they do deciding what club their kid should join, where the kid might spent hundreds of hours annually. and parents might spend enough annually to replace their washing machine FOUR times in a single year!!

They never ask questions like:

Who is the director of coaching and how does he run the club?

What is the influence of parents?

What is the club's approach to development? How do they select coaches, who will be your kid's coach, and how often do they switch coaches?

What improvement does the club expect...how much and when?

Is there a style of play, and what is it? Why do they choose that one?

Who are the kids he is playing with? Are they good, and how good? How do they pick teams? What leagues do they play in, and what is the competition like? What tournaments do they go to, and why?

If your kid is, say, a borderline A teamer, can he practice with the better players so he can get better, even if he's not rostered with the A team? Or are teams strictly segregated?

How are tryouts structured, and how often?

Does the club develop talent or "aggregate" it?

And this just scratches the surface.

So, instead of figuring out what questions to ask, who should be asked these questions, and determining in advance what good answers might sound like....well, they look at Won/Lost records and rankings.

It's the lazy way out.

 

I disagree with the statement that U.S. youth teams are the equal of other nations. Don't let scores & results fool you. If you observe closely, the majority of foreign youth players are technically (and tactically) sounder than U.S. players. The athleticism of American players allows them to play fairly evenly at the younger ages, but by 15, 16, the gap is very noticeable, and at 18, 19 the gap is as wide as the mouth of the Amazon. And yes, skill does matter.

 

The magic team in the u-18 supergroup just smashed Chivas 5-2. The youth teams are not that much worse off. It's when you get to the young professional level when the gap really open up, really fast.

 

Taking nothing away from Chicago Magic, I'd be interested to know if the Chivas players were playing up.

I want to go back to something I observed last year that to me illustrates the difference in how U.S. players & other players are prepared, and while it is just a small window on what happens, I think it is reflective of the emphasis (or lack, thereof) placed on sound technique.

I drove out to Lancaster, CA last May or June to see the U.S. U-17 team scrimmage the Mexican U-17 team, and yes, Freddy was there. What particularly struck me was the pre-game warmup. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Ellinger had particular reasons for the warmup they had, and in no way reflects his ability as a coach/trainer, but nevertheless, I thought the Mexican pre-game warm-up was far superior to ours, and demonstrated the importance they place on proper technical development.

The U.S. warmup consisted of a lot of long chipping of the ball with appropriate trapping, turning, passing, etc. However, I saw very little in the way of ball skills, or pairs in close quarters. The Mexicans, by contrast, paired up, and every player trapped the ball skillfully with all surfaces of the feet, and then trapped & passed using many different combinations of the feet, thighs, chest, head, etc. There's no question that they've all been doing this on an almost daily basis from a very young age. The question we all need to ask ourselves is why more American youth coaches, especially at the youngest ages, do not inspire our players to work with the ball on their own, away from team practices, on a consistent basis. To be sure, there are coaches who do this, but just not nearly enough.

 

My children were trained by a foreign coach who taught them drills at a very early age. I can't tell you how many times I have heard parents ask why he was making them do all that ball work when the kids just wanted to play. The coach on the other hand, would shake his head in disgust at all the 15-18 year olds who could not do drills and had no technical skills whatsoever. Just watch a college game and check out the disparity in skill levels. Many American coaches choose the best athletes for their soccer teams because they don't know how to teach technical skills or the players in their ignorance do not want to learn them.

 

Foreign coaches also choose the best athletes, if their goal is to develop the strongest possible players.

Athletes aren't the problem, indeed they are the necessity. It's what to do with the athletes that is the issue. As you point out, some American coaches don't do much with them. But others do. There are plenty of American coaches who emphasize ball skills and technical soccer, too ... although peretz48's concern about what happens (or does not happen) away from practice is valid, as I would strongly suspect that the typical Mexican youth player has more opportunties for outside-of-club soccer than does the typical American kid.

 

This point of view has a good degree of validity. However, I would also like to point out that the US is one of the few countries in the world in which kids pay to play soccer. In most countries, the kids just do it, like the ad says. Personally, I would very much like to see kids spend 90% of their soccer time honing their own skills to their own amusement, against their neighborhood peers. For boys, at least, it's all about determining who is top dog. They learn small group tactical skills, develop novel solutions to standard problems and even, if they are truly innovative, will generate a totally new move on occasion. Any schoolyard skills that truly work must be, by definition, considered correct. I think the formal coaching emphasis on the RIGHT way to do things is incorrect. Rather, it should be on the way that is most likely to be successful, with the understanding that there are multiple solutions to every problem. Drills are great as long as they are not too rigid and don't interfere with individual innovation or skill application. And that must be evaluated on a kid-by-kid basis.

 

While I am very happy that both the Texans and the Magic are doing well in the super group, I feel like most people don't realize that the majority of the teams they are playing against are younger. Most of the foreign studs that are young enough to play in the Super Group are either playing with the first team or at least with the reserves. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 15-16 year old kids playing in the Super Group. I think the when Beckham played in the Dallas Cup with the U-19s he was 13. Even when ManU brought over their U14 squad last year, you could tell that they were younger than the opposition because of the difference in size and physical attributes. Technically and tactically they were unbelievable, but the lack of size and speed hindered them. From all the games that I have watched, most of the foreign teams are better technically and tactically but the American teams tend to have amazing athletes that allows them to compete at times. While I haven't been able to watch the Magic, I feel like the Texans are combining the best of both worlds. What I mean is that have several foreigners (3 Brazilians, 1 Venezualan, and several other Latinos IIRC) and they also have the American athletes. They have the foreigners using their technical ability and the Americans using their athletic ability. Seems like it has produced results for them up to this point. Didn't mean to go on a rant here, but just wanted to give me opinion.

 

I probably shouldn't continue this discussion here since it is a bit off topic, but I just feel so strongly about it, i.e., the difference in technical (and tactical) development. The street-style unstructured environment is the ideal setting for really developing skills that work in game situations as others have mentioned. Unfortunately, in most areas of the U.S., kids cannot simply go out to the park on their own and say, "Bye, mom, I'll be back for dinner." For better or worse, we'll have to deal with adult-supervised environments. But that doesn't mean that everything has to be heavily structured. To be sure, drills and other aspects of team practices will continue to be an important part of youth development, but coaches must still take responsibility in helping to foster a love & passion for the game so that kids on their own will watch games, emulate players, juggle the ball, try moves on their own, etc. Furthermore, why can't clubs offer free-for-all nights, where coaches or parents are present to make sure that there is supervision, safety, etc., but they just basically roll out the balls and say, "Here, Johnny or Sally, you go choose up sides and play 3 v 3 or 4 v 4, etc. We'll watch." I'm sure some clubs are doing this, but not very many.

 

http://www.dallascup.com/2004/sked/age/U19A.html
Today's Action (4/7/04)
USA u-18's crushed CF Monterrey 5 - 1. Its about time they broke out of their shell.
USA u-15's beat CJSO 2 - 1.

 

The problem with this is I don't think there's anything inherently superior about pick up soccer over a regular practice. If you offered me 90 minutes of a well run practice versus 90 minutes of pick-up soccer, I'd take the practice. (the only benefit I might see to the idea of occassionally having such a "free" practice is to try and turn the kids on to the joys of playing that way).

The difference is that there are obvious limits on the amount of time that can be spent in supervised practice, whereas 4v4 can be played from after school until dinner during the week and all day long on the weekends. In the summer? Forget about it, you could be playing 30 hours a week of 4v4...

...and THAT will do wonders for your skill level. Wave goodbye to the first touch problem of American players.

In other words, the biggest benefits of pick up soccer is that you can do it a whole hell of a lot. Of course parents now feel their kids need constant supervision all of the way until they drop them off at college (which ironically is the point where they really start to need the supervision) and only a saint of a parent is going to sit there and watch his kid play pick up soccer at the park for six hours on a Saturday.

The dilemma from a US Soccer perspective is how to organize something that is, by definition, necessarily unorganized. You can't schedule 25 hours worth of practice during the week (three hours after school M-F, 5 hours on Sat and Sun) so what do you do?