Month: March 2014

mind games, olympic sports

Monday Myriad, March 31: Figure this

Posted on by Beau Dure

We’re in that lull with winter sports wrapping up and not many summer sports in full swing yet. Good news for those of us who want to follow our teams in college basketball … oh … hey, cricket’s on!

Best and worst of the week …

Best good news/bad news: Nick Zaccardi summed up the USA’s performance in the World Figure Skating Championships:

No Americans won medals in any discipline at the World Championships for the first time since 1994. But the U.S. earned three spots for women’s, men’s and ice dance at the 2015 World Championships, a feat it hadn’t accomplished since 2008, and put three women in the top eight for the first time since 2006, the last time a U.S. woman won an Olympic or World Championships medal.

So they’re on the right track. As opposed to short track or long track. (Sorry.)

Best rugby comeback: Uruguay kept baiting the USA into bad penalties. Everything was sloppy and messy, and Uruguay had a 13-3 lead. Then the Eagles did their best impression of a steamroller in the second half and romped into the World Cup with a 32-13 win in Atlanta.

Best chess comeback: Vishy Anand handed over the world chess championship to Magnus Carlsen. That was it, right? The generational change? Not quite. Anand convincingly won the double round-robin candidates’ tournament, cruising past three higher-ranked opponents to get a rematch.

Best chess analysis: I feel so much smarter after watching this.

Best chess prospect:

Best gender-desegregation notes: 

https://twitter.com/livefierce/status/450433809969086465

Team USA wrap: Rowing World Cup, USA-Canada women’s boxing, U.S. Under-18 women’s hockey, gymnastics, and a lot of U.S. championships.

0
soccer

Washington Spirit vs. Virginia: Better than last year

Posted on by Beau Dure

Did we mention that it was raining hard? And yet, when we could actually catch a glimpse of the game through the water, it was a good one.

Don’t weep for Virginia’s graduation losses. The Cavaliers are still a terrific team. Morgan Brian is world-class. Danielle Colaprico is quality.

And the goal … my word. Get a good camera on it, and it’s a SportsCenter top 10. Rising sophomore Alexis Shaffer brought the ball down the right flank against Danish defender Cecilie Sandvej, saw a glimmer of space, and cracked one outside the box over Ashlyn Harris. Sandvej immediately showed a bit of frustration, but after the game, Harris had nothing but praise for the shot. So did Virginia coach Steve Swanson, who said he wants Shaffer to feel like she has the green light to take those shots. Sure enough, Shaffer created another chance for herself in the second half, forcing former Cavalier Chantel Jones to make the game’s biggest save. Be warned, ACC goalkeepers.

Harris has been fighting her way back to fitness and said she felt good tonight. Her distribution was clean, and she confidently came out of her box to direct the defense and comfortably take some back-passes. Harris isn’t one to hide how she felt about a game, and tonight, she felt very good.

The Spirit still had a few injury concerns. Tori Huster was out, but coach Mark Parsons said she should be fine. “A little knock” is the semi-official diagnosis.

Caroline Miller and Colleen Williams are out, and Parsons said the injury list was an option. Seems only fair — they’re coming off nasty injuries. I have no idea why some fans online keep writing off Miller, a prolific scorer in college who showed some flashes in her brief time with the Spirit last season. Williams had a catastrophic knee injury less than 10 months ago.

The Spirit formation is fluid. Parsons likes that. He loves the idea of confusing a right back who looks up one minute and sees Danesha Adams, then looks up another minute to see Sandvej, who looks sharp attacking up the left flank.

And the Spirit seem far more dangerous on set pieces than they were last season. That’s how they scored tonight, with Toni Pressley pouncing on a loose ball off a corner kick. Pressley couldn’t remember the last time she had scored a goal, but she expects to be in the mix on these plays this year.

The one area of concern for the Spirit might be that last pass in the final third. The team dominated possession tonight, and fans saw glimpses of the passing combinations that Diana Matheson and Tiffany Weimer make possible, but they didn’t trouble the Virginia keepers too often. Jodie Taylor had a lot of dangerous moments, but she hasn’t quite caught up to the speed of the U.S. game, often taking a touch or two too many before turning and attacking.

Parsons is still experimenting, as you’d expect in preseason. Yael Averbuch teamed with trialist Bianca Sierra at center back in the second half. Huster will likely take one of those spots when she returns. Robyn Gayle replaced Sandvej on the left in the second half.

The Spirit will have no shortage of options. Looking around at other preseason rosters, the Spirit won’t have the best starting XI in the league, but they stack up with most teams from player 1 to player 20.

Last but not least tonight — the Spirit had a moment of silence in honor of Shawn Kuykendall, a local soccer player from Madison High School (Vienna!) to American University to D.C. United. Shawn died earlier this month at age 32 from thymic cancer. Read about Shawn through the eyes of his good friend Mike Foss of USA TODAY, and check out Kuykenstrong.com.

1
soccer

Why I don’t engage in most promotion/relegation discussions

Posted on by Beau Dure

Suppose someone told you Beethoven wrote Born to Run. 

“No,” you’d say. “All available evidence says Bruce Springsteen wrote Born to Run. It was recorded nearly 150 years after Beethoven died.”

You’d think that would be the end of the argument. But suppose the original person kept pressing you on the topic. No, no — it was Beethoven.

And as you continued to point to the evidence supporting your “position” that Springsteen wrote Born to Run — a review, a Slate story showing how The Boss obsessed over the song in an effort to save his career, a story about the house in which he wrote the song — the pro-Beethoven crowd grew more belligerent. You don’t really believe Springsteen wrote Born to Run, your accusers would say. You’re just afraid of losing your credentials to Springsteen concerts. Or worse, you’re actually taking money from Springsteen to denounce people who think Beethoven wrote Born to Run.

That’s how I feel about a couple of people who put forth the following proposition: Promotion/relegation is economically feasible in U.S. soccer, the lack of it is strangling investment in the sport, it will happen if we just get enough people to yell about it on Twitter, and everything from the fourth division to the U.S. national team would be infinitely better if we would just get all those people to yell about it and make it happen.

I have explained multiple times why this proposition isn’t true. The most popular of my posts on the topic is “The NASL and periodic restatement of facts on promotion/relegation.” You may also enjoy “The semiannual restatement of facts on promotion/relegation,” which will take you back to previous posts on the topic.

But every once in a while, people repeat a couple of mindless mantras about pro/rel and then insist I (or possibly someone else in the field) should “debate” the people involved, like Bill Nye taking the stage to debate a creationist over a topic on which the scientific community is in complete agreement.

I’ve debated Ted. On Twitter. On BigSoccer. Through a lengthy private message exchange on BigSoccer in which he came close to conceding that my position was not the result of clandestine payments from MLS or a need to protect my lucrative writing career. (For the record: The fantasy columns I wrote for MLSNet were ages ago, USA TODAY rarely cared if I did any MLS coverage while I was employed there, and I’ve written very little on the league in the last two years.) I even agreed to participate in a story in which the writer was also chatting with him.

Since then, nothing has changed. Everything I’ve written is still true. Teams in the third and fourth divisions (and, frankly, most of the teams in the NASL) are content to stay there. There’s no indication whatsoever that people who have the means to make a pro/rel league happen are doing so. (No, I’m not counting an occasional “Hey, pro/rel would be cool!” comment from an NASL official as actual progress on getting it done, nor am I counting the countless amateur leagues — including mine — that use pro/rel because there’s nothing else at stake besides giving teams reasonable competition. My team was promoted against its will this season. It stinks.)

At one time, there was some sort of movement to make change happen within U.S. Soccer, thinking that if the federation simply put in rules for pro/rel, the investors would magically appear, like the profit in the South Park Underpants Gnomes episode. I’ll guess by Sunil Gulati’s recent unanimous re-election that such a movement did not come to pass.

And nothing has come to pass. People have yelled, harangued, browbeat and screamed. And the pro/rel movement in this country is still a few people on Twitter who have lined up no sponsors, no owners, no nothing. (Ted used to raise money through his site, and I’m sometimes tempted to ask what happened to the dough.)

Here’s the funny part. Ready?

Personally, I would love to see pro/rel happen in the USA.

Perhaps a modified form that minimizes risk. Maybe something in which we have some interdivisional play so second-division teams will still have a chance to see Thierry Henry or Landon Donovan once every two years.

I wish Don Garber hadn’t shut the door so conclusively when he was asked about it before the season. But I have no doubt that he’s reflecting the sentiment of the people who have sunk tens of millions of dollars into rescuing U.S. soccer from where it stood in 1993, with a bit of semipro ball and nothing else. Garber isn’t going to force them to accept more risk, and I’m in no position to say otherwise, any more than I’m in a position to say I think it’s stupid for European national teams to ditch friendlies for this new “league.” (Yes, I’m bitter about that.)

And I would love to see the lower divisions toss aside their differences and form regional leagues with pro/rel. MLS is stable. The other leagues, not as much.

So what, exactly, should I “debate” with anyone on this topic? Whether or not pro/rel would be cool? No disagreement there. Whether or not it’s feasible? Not a debate.

Period.

22
college sports

College athlete unions, paying players and unasked questions

Posted on by Beau Dure

The last thing I want to do is pick an argument with my fellow Duke grad Jay Bilas. He’s a consummate pro when it comes to college basketball analysis, and he’s making an intelligent case for college sports reform.

But I think the man who wrote Toughness is capable of answering tougher questions than Keith Olbermann fed him in the wake of the decision (pending appeals) to let Northwestern student-athletes organize as a union.

Olbermann and Bilas quickly latched on the “pay college athletes” part of the union argument, and we’ll get back to whether that’s actually the central issue here. Then in the conversation on paying players, Olbermann left two statements unchallenged:

1. The “Hey, the NCAA makes a lot of money” argument. If you’ve ever been in the business world or even on a nonprofit board, you know there are two sides to a balance sheet: revenues and expenses. And college sports are expensive. Just think about how expensive one Duke education is, then think about how expensive a Duke football team’s education is.

My former colleagues at USA TODAY summed things up nine months ago: “Just 23 of 228 athletics departments at NCAA Division I public schools generated enough money on their own to cover their expenses in 2012.”

Ouch. Maybe the NCAA as an organization is making money, but the colleges, the story says, are actually subsidizing the athletics departments.

Most of us would say the expense is worthwhile, and we can point to all the intangible benefits a school gets from having a quality sports program. Bilas himself was part of the basketball team that helped turn Duke into a hot college. (This was a couple of decades before everyone hated us.) But we need to be really careful in saying college sports have a lot of money floating around, ready to hand out to athletes.

2. The free market argument. I’m stunned that Olbermann would let this Bilas statement go unchecked, particularly in the context of Bilas’ claim that the NCAA doesn’t really need a “plan” to open up a new marketplace for college athletes: “The free market seems to work pretty well for the rest of us.”

Where is the free market working well with no other regulation? Not out in the real world, where crooked bankers can crash our entire economy and CEOs get bonuses while workers are laid off. (Olbermann is probably more willing to argue that point than I am.) Even Adam Smith, he of the “invisible hand,” believed in some sort of regulation.

Does the “free market” work unfettered in sports? Not in the NFL (salary cap). Not in major league baseball (luxury tax, complex rules on player movement). Not even in European soccer (“financial fair play” and transfer regulations that need a lawyer to untangle them).

So if the NCAA is fretting that it needs “a plan” to go ahead with paying players, the NCAA is right.

In the last two minutes of the conversation, Olbermann asks for a “reality check” to counter the argument that college programs are losing money and that “dressage” (not really a college sport, though equestrian’s “Equitation on the Flat” is similar) will be hurt if football players are getting paid. Bilas makes a valid point here that coaches and administrators are making decent money in the whole business. But let’s skip “dressage” for a moment and ask how other nonrevenue sports are doing. How about Temple, which is cutting seven sports, including a couple for women?

Perhaps the money in college sports isn’t fairly distributed. But it’s also not an infinite supply. And it’s preposterous in the modern day to talk about a “free market” for college athletes without considering who loses in such a system.

Now here’s the funny part: Paying players isn’t even the main issue for the Northwestern players who have lobbied to unionize. On Mike and Mike (click the “podcast” link in this ESPN story), former Northwestern QB Kain Colter says the union decision is “really not” about playing players. Instead, he leads off with … medical care. “A lot of people don’t know that the NCAA doesn’t guarantee that any medical bill will be covered for any college player,” Colter says.

And we can think of plenty of reasonable issues to raise for student-athletes. Summer employment. Rights to one’s own likeness, the issue in Ed O’Bannon’s landmark suit against the NCAA. Sponsorships. Avoiding ridiculous travel, one side effect of these superconferences that force volleyball teams to fly halfway across the country for conference games.

Then a big issue: Why do tennis players, golfers and even swimmers have to choose between “amateur” and professional careers? Why can’t Missy Franklin collect the bonuses she earned as an Olympic champion? Why can’t a tennis player make a few bucks in an ATP event? How would those payments ruin college sports?

The NCAA is full of costly, counterproductive regulations. Bilas has a good suggestion for renewing the organization’s focus: “All they really need to do is administer athletic competition instead of lording over how everybody runs their business.”

If you get the NCAA to back off and trim its rule book, the organization can focus on those competition — encouraging school to field well-rounded athletic programs. If you ask the NCAA to administer a system in which colleges are bidding for athletes’ services, I think the organization will be even more muddled than it is now.

The next few years will be landmark years for college sports. But let’s not shy away from the tough questions, or we’ll miss an opportunity to build something truly good.

4
soccer, sports culture

Single-Digit Soccer: Your kid will never be a pro

Posted on by Beau Dure

ER doctor Louis Profeta of Indianapolis — ironically, the home of several elite sports organizations — takes revenge on all the parents with whacked-out priorities with a fun, occasionally profane column spelling things out in simplest terms: Your kid and my kid are not playing in the pros.

I’ll lay you two to one odds right now and I don’t even know your kid, I have never even see them play, but I’ll put up my pension that your kid is not playing in the pros. It is simply an odds thing. There are far too many variables working against your child. Injury, burnout, others who are better, – these things are are just a fraction of the barriers preventing your child from becoming “the one.”

The stories of misplaced priorities from his ER are frightening. Parents who are fretting about their starting linebacker being out of the game when their kid was knocked unconscious. Parents asking if a kid with a swollen spleen can just get some extra padding and play. Most disturbing of all — a kid who was roaring drunk, smashed a car and “needs” to get out of the ER before the cops come and fill out a report that will get her kicked off the swim team.

The column raises a couple of questions, and I’m not sure they’re related:

1. Are we supposed to aspire to pro sports careers?

That’s what we hear from women’s soccer players from time to time — we need a pro league so players will have something to which they can aspire.

And in soccer, we’re setting up a massive youth soccer machine to produce pro prospects and national team players. We’re supposed to funnel our best talent to better clubs in better leagues. They all need pro coaches from age 9 upward.

So in soccer, should we expect any backlash when someone pours cold water on the notion of making sacrifices with the goal of a pro career? Or a college scholarship?

2. Are that many parents and players really motivated by the prospect of going pro?

Profeta takes his argument well beyond deflating delusions of professional riches.

It’s because, just like everyone else, we are afraid. We are afraid that Emma will make the cheerleading squad instead of Suzy and that Mitch will start at first base instead of my Dillon. But it doesn’t stop here. You see, if Mitch starts instead of Dillon then Dillon will feel like a failure, and if Dillon feels like a failure then he will sulk and cower in his room, and he will lose his friends because all his friends are on the baseball team too, and if he loses his friends then he will start dressing in Goth duds and pierce his testicle and start using drugs, and listening to head banging music with his door locked. Then, of course, it’s just a matter of time until he’s surfing the net for neo-Nazi memorabilia, visiting gun shows and then opening fire in the school cafeteria. That is why so many fathers who bring their injured sons to the ER are so afraid that they won’t be able to practice this week, or that he may miss the game this weekend. Miss a game, you become a mass murderer – it’s that simple.

Suzy surely isn’t a cheerleader because she wants to go “pro.” In these cases, the kids and (maybe especially) their parents are worried about losing their sense of self if they’re not on the team.

The brilliance of the TV version of Friday Night Lights is that it wasn’t about football. It was about identity. “So what’s it like being the guy who used to be Tim Riggins?” one girl asks of the fullback who returns to town after deciding a week or two of college football (specifically the “college” part) was enough. The star quarterback adapts to life in a wheelchair. A sensitive artist is thrust into the spotlight as the new quarterback. The cheerleader becomes an outcast after sleeping with Riggins. (As if she’s the only one.)

And I see this sense of belonging at early ages. Spend some time on the parents’ sideline at a travel soccer game, and you’re in a nice little club. The players often (but not always) feel the same way.

Remember this ad?

Let me play, they all say. Let me be part of a team so I’ll feel like a part of something greater than myself. Now here’s the reality: For all our focus on sports in this country, it’s not easy to make these teams.

My local soccer club has a couple hundred boys in each of the single-digit years — U6, U7, etc. Maybe 30-40 percent of them will go to my local high school. That’s maybe 60-90 kids per year. How many of them will play in high school?

Well before that, we will have cut players by the score. They won’t make travel teams. At age 8, we’re telling them this sport won’t be a major part of their identities. They’ll either need to make a remarkable leap, find another club or find something else.

So when a child finds something in which he fits, it’s a good thing. And frankly, it’s nice for parents. They have a shared experience. They know their kids are doing something constructive together.

But at what point are we forcing the issue? Probably when we want to get them out of the ER to get back on the swim team.

0
olympic sports, winter sports

Monday Myriad, March 24: Overseas networking

Posted on by Beau Dure

As we bid farewell to winter sports for the year, some athletes are wrapping club seasons all over the place.

People who read this blog probably know all about soccer and maybe basketball. But how about volleyball? Dozens of U.S. athletes are overseas — many of them making money that soccer players are not.

An NYT story on overseas volleyball introduced me to a neat site helping athletes share information and support. Athletes Abroad is a nice simple WordPress site that lets athletes connect and share stories, with other athletes and with fans. And yes, they’ve already spoken with the ubiquitous Yael Averbuch.

Best and worst from the week, mostly overseas …

Best recent success for a new rugby player: Kelly Whiteside catches up with bobsled medalist Elana Meyers as she tries her feet at rugby. A lot of running is involved.

Sharpest commentary: Snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler calls out Sochi for its environmental impact, particularly on birds, salmon, trout and bears.

Best speedskater: The Netherlands’ Ireen Wüst confirms it yet again, winning three of the four distances at the World Allround Championships. (Yes, she won the overall title.)

Best moguls skier: Hannah Kearney, for the fourth straight season, this time in dramatic fashion.

Biggest surprise: Switzerland beat Canada to win the women’s curling world title in a match that swung wildly in the eighth end, when Rachel Homan seemed to have hit a brilliant shot but watched her shooter spin away from the center back toward the front of the house. Switzerland’s Binia Feltscher converted her shot for three, then stole three when Homan missed a difficult shot in the ninth.

Best farewell: We biathlon fans will miss you, Andrea Henkel and Tora Berger.

Best U.S. finish:

Closest finish: 

Best name to watch for 2016: Triathlete Katie Hursey was second in her first race of the season, then first this weekend.

Worst news: No more biathlon to watch this season. And yet it might snow at my house. That’s wrong.

0
soccer

Women’s soccer: Show me the money!

Posted on by Beau Dure

How much should soccer players be paid?

It’s a question that can’t be answered in a vacuum, at least not without a government that centrally plans every bit of the economy. “Should” (which philosophers would call a “normative” question because philosophers like inventing words) doesn’t make much sense in a context in which no one has demonstrated that soccer players can be paid any more than they are now. As an ethical question, you’d get much more mileage out of asking “How much should CEOs be paid, particularly after their business dumps a whole mess into a river and loses a lot of money for its stockholders along with some government handouts?”

In my idealized world, soccer players are paid enough to pursue their sport at a legitimately professional level. That means they’re either full-time players or have small part-time jobs (the Volkswagen/Wolfsburg model) that don’t impinge on their training time.

But my idealized world extends these part-time jobs (with benefits, either through the company or government) to anyone who has a talent and a passion. Violinists. Rock drummers. Curling teams. Even (ahem) freelance journalists.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that idealized world. Nor can we look at Europe and project that vision of women’s soccer as an ideal. A month ago, Deadspin picked up one-time WPS player Alison McCann’s Howler magazine story singing the praises of Swedish powerhouse Tyresö and the stability of Swedish women’s soccer:

The women of the Damallsvenskan are thriving. And a little part of that, a small reason, might be the fact that in Sweden they don’t have to worry about how to sell more tickets or carve out more time for appearances. They don’t have to worry if they’ll have jobs come next season. The Damallsvenskan will still be there.

A couple of weeks later, Tyresö revealed it was near bankruptcy, and an emergency municipal loan request had been turned down. So much for not worrying about jobs.

Earlier in McCann’s piece is a stronger demonstration of stability, from an email exchange with Malmö coach Jonas Eidevall.

Damallsvenskan can never fold as a league. If one club would fold, another one would be promoted. Maybe not all clubs would be professional, but the league would always live on.

The harsh reality is that no one has managed to make fully professional women’s soccer work for an extended period of time. England has gone in fits and starts. Germany, Sweden and France have a couple of clubs who should be close to making it work, at least on a low level. In general, I think (or hope) we’re getting there.

In the NWSL model, everyone is “professional.” But “professional” is a technical FIFA distinction moreso than economic reality. It’s especially important in the USA because college-eligible players can’t play alongside “professional” players. (They can play against them, pursuant to a careful read of the NCAA’s labyrinthine rule books.)

So as we all know, NWSL salaries range from the good (for U.S. national team players) to the not-so good (Canadian national team players) to the so-so (for top players not on national teams) to the pittance (for everyone else). No one’s getting rich on professional salaries, and most people aren’t making a living wage.

FiveThirtyEight, the latest ramping-up of Nate Silver’s data-journalism revolution, takes a look today at one of the side effects of these salaries. Coincidentally, the writer is once again Alison McCann.

The point is that the salaries force the league to skew young and inexperienced. They don’t have specific data to show causation, but it’s a sensible if not obvious point — a 27-year-old tired of being subsidized by parents, second jobs or host families is less likely to be in the NWSL than a 22-year-old still hoping for a big future in the sport. Case in point: Kia McNeill’s decision to skip the 2014 Boston Breakers season.

McCann writes:

For most players, and people in general, there are only so many years you can do the thing you love on a $15,000 annual salary before you have to move on.

Longtime MLS fans can sympathize. Mike Fisher, the No. 2 pick in the 1997 MLS Draft, opted to go to medical school instead. Tampa Bay Mutiny defender R.T. Moore left the team in the middle of the 1999 season to go to dental school. Scott Garlick abruptly retired in 2007 to go into commercial real estate.

So it’s easy enough to demonstrate that older players are likely to move on if the money’s not there. Is this a bad thing? I asked on Twitter and got this:

http://twitter.com/WizzyProbs/status/448112462429454336

http://twitter.com/WizzyProbs/status/448112702460678144

And that’s a good point. If a league can afford to have a mix of younger and older players, it certainly should.

Over time, MLS has strengthened and is better able to offer players decent money. We can hope this happens with the NWSL as well.

The danger here is in moving back to that normative “should” question. Somewhere along the way, an editor at FiveThirtyEight has done just that, picking up McCann’s description of NWSL salaries as “preposterously low” and running with that as the home-page headline for the story — “The Preposterously Low Salaries of the National Women’s Soccer League.” The story-page headline, “Low Pay Limits Player Experience in National Women’s Soccer League,” is less misleading.

In calling the salaries “preposterously low,” we have to ask: “Compared to what?” Women’s hockey players in the CWHL also have “preposterously low” salaries — basically, nil. Same for most European soccer players who aren’t part of the fortunate few at Tyresö or Lyon.

The underlying question here is this: Who’s paying? If you’re talking about the Ultimate Fighting Championship, you’re talking about people who have made fortunes in the sport they’re promoting. In MLS and a lot of pro team sports, you’re talking about people who made fortunes elsewhere and may or may not be making any money on their team ownership.

In the WUSA, you were talking about companies who thought they were going to make immediate money and pulled out when they didn’t. In WPS, you were talking about some people who thought they’d make money and some who were willing to spend a lot on an affectation. In the NWSL, you’re talking about people who are willing to endure small losses or at least a small amount of risk.

The FiveThirtyEight piece shows us what we get for that amount of spending. What it can’t show us is whether the owners’ and players’ faith in the league will pay off in a league that can spend a little more or find other creative ways to fill in the gaps in the center of that chart.

2
soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Coach better!

Posted on by Beau Dure

Before tonight’s local youth soccer club house league coaches’ meeting, I wound up in a conversation that veered from All-Star team selection to a coach complaining that his world-beating team was broken up.

“Why do they need to do that?” this guy asked.

I tried some self-deprecating humor: “So teams like mine don’t get blown out every week.”

His abrupt response: “Coach better!”

I laughed for a second. Then I realized he wasn’t laughing. Only two possibilities: He has a terrific poker face, or he was serious. I tried to find something to say that would fit both scenarios. That’s not easy. James Bond has it easy — he knows when people are messing with him.

He doubled down, saying a couple of things that made it clear he was, in fact, not joking. I thought about trying to convey that I’ve covered youth soccer issues, but I think just babbled something along the lines of “I … write … things … soccer …”

The meeting started, interrupting the conversation. While my mind wandered a little (sorry, yes, it happens), it occurred to me I could ask him afterwards which age group he coached. Surely he didn’t mean to sound so harsh and would appreciate a chance to be heard. Then I could tell him I’m working on a book on youth soccer and would value his input.

After all, parity in house leagues is a legitimate issue. Blowouts aren’t fun for anyone. But you hate to tell a bunch of kids they can’t play with their friends just because they’re too good. I like hearing from parents and coaches on issues like this.

Meeting ends. I turn and ask what age group he coached. “Why don’t you ask (so-and-so) — we did fine against his team.”

So I won’t really have anything for the book from this conversation.

On the way out, I mentioned the conversation to a friend of mine. He pointed out that if the guy think he’s such a great coach, he should be able to win all his games with whichever kids they assign him. Good one.

They say to check your ego at the door if you’re going to be a youth soccer coach. Particularly in a recreational league in which the luck of the draw may or may not give you good athletes, your “results” may or may not match your coaching skill. I’ve coached good teams and not-so-good teams, and I think I’ve done a better job with the not-so-good teams. I’ve seen terrific coaches who do everything they’re supposed to do and still lose, and I’ve seen utterly clueless coaches win. I have my clueless moments, and my teams sometimes win in spite of me.

It’s soccer. It’s about players. As a coach, you measure success by two metrics — how much did players improve, and how much did they enjoy the experience?

And if I do my job too well, my players might move (and, in fact, have moved) to travel teams. Maybe I should coach worse.

1
soccer

MLS vs. Mexico: The Goonies are not good enough

Posted on by Beau Dure

MLS teams made another predictable exit from CONCACAF Champions League play this week, and this time, one of the opposing coaches saw fit to kick a little dirt northward after the final whistle.

Toluca coach Jose Cardozo: “(San Jose’s players) were all just sat back. Here (in Mexico), they say soccer has grown a lot in the United States, but I honestly don’t know in what way.”

Ouch.

MLS fans can protest, of course. Sure San Jose plays that way, but isn’t Real Salt Lake fun to watch? And the U.S. talent pool did a bit better than Mexico’s in World Cup qualifiers, right?

And hey, the optimistic line goes, things will pick up when we get more money in MLS to develop and maintain a wider talent pool. Just wait until the Academy teams develop more players and the new TV deals let MLS teams spend more on players. And then more players will skip college to play on reserve teams in USL Pro, and they’ll be great, and we’ll come back and beat all you sorry Mexican teams and take your World Club Championship spots. Just you wait!

Maybe there’s a simpler explanation. Maybe soccer players and coaches in the USA just aren’t that good.

MLS has cast a pretty wide net. College players? Got ’em. Caribbean players? Come on over. Europeans, either big names getting Designated Player contracts or fringe youngsters looking for first-division play? Sure, they’re here.

Mexican teams are typically drawing from Mexico. Toluca and Cruz Azul certainly do. They may have more money to spend, but they’re just using that money to keep their top players home, not bring over Robbie Keane or Jermain Defoe. An exception is Tijuana, which looks a bit like old-school D.C. United — a few non-internationals from Argentina along with some skillful Americans.

And that brings us back to the Big Youth Soccer Paradox of this decade. We in the USA are taking youth soccer oh so seriously these days. The Bradenton’s U17 residency program debuted in 1999 with Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley, Kyle Beckerman and Oguchi Onyewu. A few more good ones followed — Eddie Johnson, Mike Magee, Freddy Adu and Michael Bradley. (Yes, and Tijuana player Greg Garza.) The program expanded to 40 players. We have a curriculum or two or three. We’re funneling players into national leagues and telling them not to play high school soccer any more.

All that, and the USA’s international youth tournament results have actually declined since the days of sending a bunch of unprepared kids in mullets to face down the top youth players of Europe, South America and Africa. And our MLS teams don’t look any better than D.C. United and the Los Angeles Galaxy of the 1990s.

So what are we producing? If MLS lands a megabucks TV deal — something that isn’t the least bit confirmed at the moment — and breaks open the wallet, what will that money buy?

Maybe it’ll take a combination of patience and investment. Maybe it’ll take a few more steps away from the enforced parity that MLS once had.

But maybe it’ll also take some players looking at themselves and saying, “You know what? What we just did wasn’t good enough. My performance wasn’t good enough. Forget the salary cap and TV deal for a minute — this is about me. What am *I* going to do about it?”

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soccer

Gender and soccer: Running smarter, not harder?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Researchers at Sunderland University, undoubtedly seeking a distraction from the local Premier League team’s dreary season, compared male and female soccer players in the Champions League. The conclusions:

1. Women complete fewer passes than men and give the ball away more easily.

2. Men run more at “high intensity,” though they don’t end up covering much more ground.

3. Women, particularly on the flanks, drop off in their running in the second half.

She Kicks editor Jen O’Neill didn’t dismiss the study but raised a couple of qualifiers:

The women’s game is constantly improving and the last few finals and latter knockout stages have included some fantastic matches but there are massive differences in fitness levels and playing status from team to team, even within the Women’s Champions League (only a handful of teams across Europe could be said to be ‘professional’ and this can sometimes lead to very lopsided results and hence less competitive second half contests), never mind comparing it to a men’s competition where every side contains players who are paid to play full time. It goes without saying that full time players will be able to sustain high intensity physical performance for a more prolonged period. Comparative studies between the men’s and women’s game are always riddled with such nuances and flaws because even with the best intentions they are rarely comparing like against like.

I wonder if tactics also play a part. Are men more likely to pick and choose their spot to run fast while women keep it in top gear for longer periods of time? And how different would this study be if we were comparing NWSL to MLS rather than European clubs?

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