What Would our Evaluators Think of a young Cuauhtemoc Blanco?

I think it's a fair point. What exactly do our talent evaluators look for?

When evaluating youth talent, I think it's imperative to look for the qualities that you cannot teach. Thus kids who always seem to be one step ahead of everyone else (i.e. high soccer IQ). Also kids who seem to have an incredibly deft touch of the ball (i.e. skill). And, lastly, kids who are faster and/or quicker than everyone (i.e. athleticism). You simply cannot teach these qualities. You either have them or you don't.

Ideally the players would have all 3 qualities. More realistically, they are superior in one and good enough in the others. For example, Blanco clearly has a high soccer IQ as well as high skill level. While clearly not the most athletic guy on the pitch, he is athletic enough. To wit, he is fast enough and quick enough.

The problem with too many of our youth players, IMHO, is that coaches/scouts fall victims to their "superior" athleticism to offset the moderate levels of skill and/or soccer IQ. So they opt for the player who often looks to be the fastest, albeit not the most skilled or smartest player, thinking they can be "taught" how to play. Of course since far too much of our youth soccer is played away from the talent rich urban centers, the level of athleticism at these suburban parks may be misleading.

Hence the "superior" athlete may be able to outrun the kids at the club level but once he gets to international competition he is simply an average athlete with moderate skills and soccer IQ.

Another problem is that many of the other popular American sports, the requisite "skill" is actually easier to teach. That's because sports like football, basketball, and baseball all require hand-eye coordination much more than foot-eye coordination. The latter is much harder to develop because, frankly, rarely do we use it in our everyday lives. So indeed the American youth sports mentality that stresses athleticism over skill is a valid one for all other sports, except soccer.

So, in a very long winded way of answering your question, I'm not sure our current crop of youth coaches/scouts would be astute enough to quickly identify the talents of a Blanco. Though his play on the field may merit some recognition, I believe he is the type of player that would fall through the cracks in our current system.

 

I remember Blanco as a 19-YO player with America and Necaxa and he was clearly a major talent then and athletic enough to be considered a top future prospect.

So, of course, the US coaches would turn him into a defensive midfielder.

 

Being Mexican, our talent-evlauators would have either dismissed him for a lack of work rate or he wouldn't have been evaluated at all because he wasn't in the ODP pipeline.

 

I'm curious abt the rationale behind the first post. Considering the technical ability of players at the top level, if a player has international level talent, wouldn't it be immediately apparent that he's on a different level when compared to other good young players?

Filippo Inzaghi comes to mind as a player with no obvious athletic abilities in the areas of strength, speed, aggression etc. But when we see a young Inzaghi playing with other good young players who may be very athletic, wouldn't he appear to be a clearly superior talent?

So how can such a player slip through the selection process?

 

The level of athleticism is better than people believe. My son ran the fastest 100 meters in the State at age-group Junior Olympics 2 years ago. Those weren't exactly suburban park kids in the track meets, he was the only white kid in any 100 meter race that he entered.

He was the 3rd fastest player on his club team that autumn. And he didn't make the grade at forward one year later for the Regional ODP squad in part because he lacked breakaway speed.

 

Sandon, that might have been true 5 or 10 years back, but the ODP ranks are loaded with Hispanic players now. Must be near half of Region III and IV kids are Hispanic, even in Region II there are plenty, for example 5 of the 8 Illinois players at my son's age group.

They were unlikely to have picked Blanco if he were born in the second half of the year and not physically mature for his age, though. It is the rare player indeed who overcomes those hurdles.

 

I keep hearing this, and I know the facts bear you out, but I'm still waiting to see it translate to a greater presence of Latinos on our national teams and in MLS.

I don't disagree that there has been progress, but when I see so few Hispanics on the U20 and U17 WC rosters, particularly Mexican-Americans, it continues to raise a red flag.

 

The current U17s have Garza, Dominguez and Cruz. The U20s had Arguez and in the qualifying tournament also had Villanueva. Against Sweden, we started Bocanegra, Feilhaber, and Bornstein (Mexican mother).

 

I wonder how long it will take before Mexican-Americans make not only their playing presence felt, but their coaching presence as well.

We can shoehorn some Mexican-American players that also have traits US coaches value into teams, but can you imagine how dramatically different a Mexican coach would handle player selection and tactics for a US youth squad?

 

Pippo is actually very fast for a striker, although he doesn't run with the ball as often but instead uses his speed for the off-the-ball runs.

I'd say that Inzaghi would be a more athletic version of Preston "Der Bubi Sturmer" Zimmerman and would have no problems fitting it.

Sandon, do you recall what one of the Mexican kid players said on the YA's recently?

He tried out with Dallas but found that the team set a certain minimum athletic standard and he was never going to run as fast as other kids. In Mexico - and we certainly see it from Superliga - the speed standards are much lower than in MLS.

BTW, a more interesting question wouldn't be about Blanco, who has a terrific ball control and passing abilities, but someone like Benjamin Galindo, who seemingly had no redeeming athletic or soccer qualities ... unless you needed someone to make about 15 perfect through-passes each game. He may not have survived the US Youth system that insisted on a "quick one touch-two touch" ball.

 

Maybe i misunderstood your point but, Galindo is one of the most skilled players ever to step onto a soocer pitch in Mexico. We dont call him "El Maestro" for nothing.

 

I always thought Blanco was overated until I saw him playing with the Fire. He was usually surrounded with a good cast of players at CA, but with the Fire and playing in MLS, he blatantly stands out.

Given our current method for picking the creme de la creme, it would have been a crap shoot whether he would have been discovered. Half the elite coaches out there know how important soccer IQ is, and they would have loved him. The other half look at physical attributes first and would have ignored him. I guess it depends on who you impress.

There seems to be a notion that US soccer coaches just look for the athletic types and ignore the more cerebral player. My personal observations, although not scientific, lead me to believe that group is fairly evenly split along the athletic/ mental line. Org theory would say that this is inevitable as the dialectic forces of homogeneity and differentiation would force this type of distribution. In other words, most groups have a fairly even distribution of conformists and non-conformists. But that's a topic for another day.

 

Galindo was the smartest guy on the pitch ... but he wasn't big, he wasn't especially strong, he didn't bunny-hopped like Blanco ... and the real question is whether he would have ever fit in with the US Youth style soccer.

And I say he wouldn't.

There's the tragedy.

 

All top soccer talents in the USA should be required to take 4 years of Kung Fu. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Soccer balls don't have legs and don't move independently of the initial force imparted to them when kicked (until they hit something). Humans move in all sorts of funny and unexpected directions, and each kick has a different foot position (designed to keep you from breaking your foot) and is intended for a different target area on the body. These add up to incredibly complex moves that change from second to second while sparring.

As an added bonus, the players we head-butted wouldn't get back up. No one would mess with our national team.

 

We've cornered the market on soccer-playing Latino Jews. All the more reason to look forward to the inevitable US-Iraq matchup in the Confed Cup 2009.

 

All Kung Fu**** should be required to take 4 years of soccer.

On a serious note, there's really one way to teach skills - "Give them the damn ball".

 

Forget Kung Fu. Samba man. Samba lessons from 5 years and up.

Yes, and lots of soccer too. Just throw a ball out there, and the ol' white guys can sit in the car and watch (and shut up)

 

wuts wrong with old white guys?

 

Really, I have no idea if Blanco would be selected by the USMNT talent scouts or not.

What I do believe is, we have 1 or 2 (and probably more) U17s who have decent athleticism, and who can see the field and make penetrating passes for our runners. I don't know this team doesn't seem to have them, but they surely exist. It's not conceivable that there are none in the U.S. I do not believe that.

It's gotta come down to coaching & tactics. We have dribblers, and runners, and athletes, but there just doesn't seem to be room made for playmakers.

 

Can Messi switch?

 

Count me in the group around here who is sick of all the anti-white racism of posts like this one.