The Koreans should recruit from their diaspora. Seems they don't. Many Koreans around the world. But they would have to do military service I hear. We need to study Croatia. And Serbia since they do so well in various sports for a small country.
My kid is 8. I started teaching him kicking form at around 5 and he became a solid scorer and his club always played him at the 9. I was kind of against this as everyone says you should learn every position, but now maybe I think better to embrace it, lean into it and see if he can continue growing at this position. Then maybe he'll become the 9 the US needs. But even what I taught him was basic. There are many ways to kick a ball, many ways to finish, many ways to score. But I was never a striker. I can't find much resources for this position. I would like to know more about the bio mechanics of striking the ball (eg freekick with curve, knuckleball, low with a small loop, etc... many ways).
What a lot of you probably don't realize is that Croatia and Serbia both outperform countries many times their size in MANY sports, not only football. Part of that equation is that both populations are tall. The bigger part, though, isn't really reproducible except situationally, and that's that both are fairly poor countries by western world standards with very rich sporting culture and institutions, with well-trodden pathways to both wealth and power (political power) in both countries, and that no one is ever very far from those resources and those people with sports knowledge and influence. I know one family who not only have had one golden boot winner and another current Croatian national teamer, but also a pair of coaches/scouts who used to play professionally that I know of, and they are socially connected with everyone in their town. If there's a kid in that town that shows any aptitude for soccer, they know him, and they know exactly how to nurture him and to whom to hand that kid off for everyone's mutual benefit. They also have personal connections with about a half-dozen clubs that I know of, both in Croatia and in the rest of Europe. That's not a situation that can be reproduced en mass in the US. Certain small networks in the MLS and USL academies can and hopefully should be growing and looking to people like that as an example, but there's no way that we can grow that kind of network nationwide like that. It's just not possible. That's down to the local culture.
To your comment about that existing across a variety of sports in the Balkans, that really DOES exist in the US and is a big part of our athletic dominance. And we've just sort of kinda-sorta plugged men's soccer into that network as an avenue people are vaguely aware of, and lo and behold talent is exploding everywhere.
No, it doesn't. Not really. I don't know of any NFL football coaches or any MLB baseball managers or NBA coaches who personally know just about every kid with talent in their home region, can personally mentor them, are so personally invested in doing so, and have such a track record of successfully getting them into the major league of their sport through one avenue or another. That exists in Croatia and Serbia... and it even exists in Bosnia. What's more, it exists in other sports besides football. In countries that are in essence small and medium-sized US states.
Not necessarily the richest and most famous NBA players, but there are a lot of ex-players of note involved in exactly that way on the AAU circuit. The broader point, in America we culturally value the incubation of athletic talent, we value sacrificing other things we otherwise consider important for children in order to strive for athletic success.
You and I are talking apples and oranges. I'm not saying that what you're saying is "wrong," but I honestly do not believe that you are really aware of the situation that I'm talking about, which has few parallels in America that I'm aware of (and to be frank, I was never an elite athlete, I never played in ODP or had a college scholarship or anything of that nature). But I'm quite sure that if you'd known the people that I knew in the Balkans (and everywhere you go in the Balkans, if you're working at a high level you're surrounded by former famous or successful athletes), you'd agree that we just don't have anything of the sort here. Not on anything even approaching the scale. And they're so close to the ground, with so little ground to cover, that a kid with any soccer talent, or basketball talent, or tennis talent, or handball talent, or swimming talent, or water polo talent would have to literally try to hide from them to avoid them, not the other way around.
Well all the better I guess since if we produced soccer talent at the per-capita equivalent of Croatia we'd rip the fabric of space and time.
The Pay to Play academies are still prevalent and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Here in the Philly area there are still prominent P2P clubs. When the Union first started their academy system they tried to go with a hybrid model where they would affiliate with all of the clubs in the area that they could. Kids would still play for their club, but the best would then train a few days a week with the Union's Academy. In the beginning this was a good strategy to form partnerships and build relationships with the local clubs. Once the Union got more established in the area they were able to evolve their Academy setup and approach. Then YSC evolved and the Union embraced a true Academy setup, coupled with them moving on from Coach Hackworth (the architect of the original setup). There aren't as many P2P clubs as before. Some have merged to form new clubs in order to survive. IMO the P2P clubs will always have a place. After all better coaching, and facilities need to be funded somehow. In MLS markets, MLS Academies are definitely having an impact on the traditional P2P clubs.
Yes, indeed, but this is one of the reasons why some small nations habitually hit well above their weight. For another small soccer nation that we often don't actually think of as a small soccer nation, just look at Netherlands. I mean Belgium, too, but Belgium were only great during their golden generation. Holland isn't in a golden generation now and they surprise nobody by going out only in the quarterfinals on PKs. Or Portugal. Lots of great and good pros close to the ground who spot these kids, mentor them, and hand them off to the right people, people with whom they have worked and who they know personally very well. And they are not the only people those kids are likely to meet who would know how to coach and mentor them, either.
The existing P2P coaching networks are a little like the Iraqi Republican Guard in 2003. The only thing worse than allowing it to continue existing would be to disband it.
Coaching. How to manipulate the ball, create space, shield, as a youth. Same as a young basketball player developing their handle. And allowing kids to try shit in a team setting. That's where creativity is born. Then tactical acumen when teens. We create a lot of robots for lack of a better term. Players, but with no real personality.
You're probably right. The situation that Jakoz illustrates, about the academies in some markets influencing the P2P clubs and forcing them to compete and evolve, however, is what we want. That's evidence that something's working. We just need to expand that influence beyond a handful of academies that have successfully gotten themselves off the ground. We need a dozens instead of a handful.
They attract the kinds of athletes we have difficulty attracting. People, Croatia is an elite soccer nation now. In terms of which tier they are in, they are in the top tier.
Yes of course in the NBA there are many Croats and Serbs. I think quite a few in football too (at least ones who migrated young, eg Belicheck). True, we don't have the culture. Let me ask this too though - I heard about this "solidarity payments" system. So if a club, lets say in Croatia... or anywhere like South America, develop a young lad who is later bought by say Man United... whenever there is transfer fees, a piece of that goes down to those clubs that developed the player. This would be an incentive then for any local club to focus on talent finding and development and not worry about if the parent is willing to "pay to play".
honestly i've looked. i watched tons of YT videos on soccer. a lot about kicking in general, but don't find many that go deep into the subject. or there will be a "how to be a striker" video but it's by a soccer guy who is a general player and has videos on every position on his channel. i would pay to have a "how to be a striker" by a real pro striker like Lukaku or Lewakdowski. the vids on youtube are just basic surface level stuff, but useful sure, but i digested those quickly.
It was interesting to hear, at 14:30, that in Germany they play 8v8 until they are 15. No refs. No offside. More "free flowing"
Developing players is big business in Croatia. I've heard people explain that every time a player from Dinamo Zagreb gets sold on to a big club, the ownership builds another high rise. And whomever Dinamo got him from gets a piece.
The crazy part about Croatia is that they've led basically led matches for 45 minutes this entire tournament and they're in the semifinal. [Essentially the 2nd half of the Canada game is it.] A bunch of 0-0 draws and games in which they came back from 1-0 down to tie late (and go to penalties). They're soooooooooooooooooooooo anemic offensively at times. But they've got just got an extremely intelligent and solid midfield with a strong backline. Good keeping too. You can't just win 0-0 over again and wish for set piece goals. Is that really going to work against Argentina and France? Maybe. I guess. If the US played like this 2022 version of Croatia, people on this board would be whining endlessly about it. And by the way, Croatia has now made the semifinals 3 times. That's the 3rd most of any nation that hasn't won one (after Holland and Sweden). And if you give Croatians partial credit for the 2 times Yugoslavia made the semifinal.................you start to realize that Croatia really is a power. It shouldn't surprise anybody to see them do well.
Croatia also has some seriously clinical finishing. I haven’t looked at the statistics, but their strikers are efficient to the naked eye. They bury chances and they understand their role very well.
I would suggest we need to improve everywhere. Competition drives improvement. The question should be where don't we need to improve?
Quantity isn't everything and I'm sure there are a lot of ways to look at this but you have to wonder. "The statistic shows the share of children aged 6 to 12 who participate in outdoor soccer on a regular basis in the United States from 2008 to 2020. According to the source, 7.7 percent of children participated in soccer on a regular basis in 2019, down from 10.4 percent in 2008" https://www.statista.com/statistics/982274/participation-kids-soccer/
Currently USA is a quarterfinal top 8 team of the world. Current talents and pipelines are already here. Just need to grow a highly tactical level coaching in the ford.