In the new ESPN “30 for 30” documentary Of Miracles and Men, we see footage of Anatoli Tarasov, the man given the unlikely job of starting Soviet ice hockey from scratch. In a 1992 interview, he says he was told he would have little to see of other countries’ games and would need to “work on his own hockey.” “They were right!” he exclaims.
More footage from his coaching days shows him imploring players to smile, have fun, and love each other. He borrowed more from ballet than Canadian hockey.
His daughter, Tatiana Tarasova, picks up the thread in the present day with a brilliant quote:
“If you follow someone else’s road, you will never get ahead.”
Does this apply at all to U.S. youth soccer?
(Tarasova, incidentally, coached and choreographed figure skaters such as Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Johnny Weir, etc.)
England’s vaunted soccer pyramid is a relatively recent phenomenon, at least in expanded form.
“League football” — the professional tiers, back in the days in which the FA maintained a clear distinction between “amateur” and “professional” — expanded to four tiers in the early 1920s. The League continued the practice of making its bottom clubs stand for re-election, while clubs from the “Non-League” ranks could apply to take their places.
After World War II, the door was nearly deadbolted. Four teams joined the League in a small expansion in 1950, then only seven more teams joined in the next 36 years. Six teams lost their spots; one (Accrington Stanley) resigned its League place midseason. Some teams from the patchwork Non-League landscape would run year after year and be denied. (Click the bottom divisions at footballsite.co.uk for year-by-year vote counts.) Two teams admitted in this period (Wigan, Wimbledon) reached the top division.
Here’s how everything changed:
1979: The Alliance Premier League collects the top non-League teams, putting forward only one candidate each year for Football League election rather than the vote-splitting five, eight, 10, umpteen each year. And yet, it doesn’t get any more teams promoted.
1986-87: The APL is renamed the Conference, and it gains one automatic promotion slot (assuming the first-place club meets League standards, which wasn’t a safe assumption).
2003-04: The Conference gets a second automatic promotion slot, this one settled in a playoff. The next year, Non-League soccer gets a full reorganization. The divisions are called “Steps” — the Conference is Step 1, Conference North and Conference South are Step 2, three leagues are Steps 3 and 4, then a whole bunch of feeder leagues are at Step 5. Raise your hand if you actually say “Step 3” rather than “seventh tier.”
So now we’re in the modern era, with the Conference as de facto fifth professional division and you can rest assured that the Wessex League Premier Division is two divisions ahead of the Leicester Senior League Premier Division.
Perfect time to do a little research to see how teams have fared as they pass through the League/Non-League gateway, right?
Naturally, I overcomplicated it. Every answer led to more questions. Some of the clubs that have gone down and/or up were reconstituted and may or may not be considered a new club. Digging back to see how far some clubs have climbed means figuring out which step the Kent League and Kent County League were in a given year.
But I came up with a few factoids of interest out of my muddled spreadsheets:
Dropped from first tier to fifth since 1987: Luton Town, Oxford United.
– Luton Town, the first employer of U.S. national team goalkeeper Juergen Sommer back in the early 90s, was in the first tier for a decade ending in 1992. Three successive relegations, the last prodded by a 30-point penalty for financial irregularities, saw the club drop from the Championship (2nd tier) to the Conference (5th). They were a nearly perennial playoff team in the Conference before winning their way back to League Two last year.
– Oxford United fell more slowly. The club last played in the top tier in 1988, last played in the second tier in 1999, last played in the third tier in 2001, and spent 2006-10 in the Conference. They’re back in League Two.
Other top-tier teams to drop out: Bradford Park Avenue, Carlisle United, Grimsby Town.
– Bradford Park Avenue is one of the the grand old names of English football, but that’s really all it is. The original club was in the top division just before and after World War I but was in the lower tiers from 1950 to 1970. The club finally folded in 1974. A phoenix club claiming the old history started in 1988 and was promoted three times to reach the sixth tier. It dropped twice more but is now back up in Conference North (sixth tier).
– Carlisle United barely qualifies for this list, having spent one season (1974-75) in the top tier and one season (2004-05) in the Conference.
– Grimsby Town was in the Football Alliance for its whole run: 1889-92. Like most Alliance clubs, it was assigned to the Second Division when the Alliance merged with the League. It had a couple of runs in the top division, most recently in 1948, and one season (1910-11) out of the League entirely. Relegations in 2003 and 2004 dropped them to the fourth tier (League Two), and their century of League football ended in 2010.
Dropped from second tier to fifth since 1987: Bristol Rovers, Cambridge United.
– Bristol Rovers was a perennial third-tier club with a couple of spells in the second tier, the last from 1990 to 1993. In 2001, they fell to the fourth tier (Division 3, then League Two). They went back up in 2007, back down in 2011 and finally out of the League in 2014. (They’re almost a sure bet to make the playoffs.)
– Cambridge United was one of the few teams to make it up into the League via election in the postwar years, getting the golden ticket in 1970. They had a couple of spells in the old Second Division, placing fifth in 1991-92 to come close to being in the Premier League in its first season. Then came a couple of drops, one bit of back-and-forth movement, then relegation to the Conference in 2005. The club also went into administration but stabilized in the fifth tier for nearly a decade before earning promotion via the playoffs in 2014.
On the way up: AFC Wimbledon, Crawley Town, Dagenham and Redbridge, Fleetwood Town, Yeovil Town
– AFC Wimbledon is the club you might know, rising out of protest when the original Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes. The new club was promoted five times in nine seasons, up from the ninth-tier Combined Counties League through two Isthmian League divisions and two Conference divisions up to League Two.
– Crawley Town spent decades in the Southern League, worked its way up to the Conference in 2004, then shot up with back-to-back promotions in 2011 and 2012 to reach League One.
– Dagenham and Redbridge formed in a 1992 merger in the Conference, dropped to the Isthmian Premier League in 1996, then returned for a long spell in the Conference before moving up in 2007. They’ve had one season in League One, the rest in League Two.
– Fleetwood Town is the bullet team of English football. They formed as Fleetwood Wanderers in 1997 but quickly changed to Fleetwood Freeport, playing in the 10th tier in the North West Counties Division One. The rest of the story: Promotion to the NWC Premier in 1999, changing the name to Fleetwood Town (previously used by two defunct clubs) in 2002, then going up in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2014. The leagues: Northern Premier League First Division, Northern Premier League Premier Division, Conference North, Conference, League Two, League One.
– Yeovil Town was a founder member of the APL in 1979 and bounced between the fifth and sixth tiers until earning promotion to the League in 2003. They moved up to League One in 2005 and got all the way up to the Championship for one season (2013-14).
Gone since 1987: Aldershot Town, Chester City, Darlington, Halifax Town, Maidstone United, Newport County, Rushden and Diamonds, Scarborough
The good news? Most of these clubs have had phoenix clubs return in their place.
Here’s one of the spreadsheets in case you’d like to dive into more detail or tell me something that needs correcting:
The World Championships are all over bar the shouting. And people are shouting about Qatar — the country you know as the dubiously selected FIFA World Cup host in 2022 but now known as the country that bought a bunch of ringers for its handball team, bought a bunch of fansfor this tournament and got so many questionable calls in its favor that one beaten opponent sarcastically applauded the refs.
That was after the powers that be realized Germany wasn’t in the tournament, so Oceania champion Australia was unceremoniously dumped so the handball-watching country could get a wild card.
Like South Korea’s soccer team after the 2002 World Cup, we need to ask whether Qatar will be able to duplicate this performance away from home. You have to figure refs in Rio won’t be quite as amenable to Qatar’s whims as they were in Qatar.
That said, I’m already second-guessing myself for omitting Brazil, the only team to place in the top 16 in the last two World Championships that isn’t listed here. They were 13th in 2013, 16th this year. So they’ll have fewer performance points than anyone else on the list, but if I gave them a five-point adjustment (as I did for Poland, based on more or less a gut feeling not related to them sarcastically applauding the refs), they would move ahead of Egypt.
But they’re a long shot in any case. France has won the last two Olympics and three of the last four world championships, the last by silencing Qatar in a tense final. They’re the obvious favorites.
Denmark has been a consistent European medalist and took silver in the 2011 and 2013 Worlds. They took fifth in Qatar, rebounding from quarterfinal disappointment to win their next two games.
The team that beat Denmark is Spain, which also managed to beat Qatar in group play. They lost to France in the semifinals and dropped the third-place game to Poland.
Croatia and Germany, both perennial powers, won their groups but lost in the quarterfinals. Germany, though, has had some qualification issues in recent tournaments.
And qualifying isn’t easy. Only 12 teams make it, including host Brazil, one team from the Americas, one team from Asia, and one team from Africa. That leaves a maximum of eight teams from Europe, and any team that makes it from there has a shot at a medal.
So we’ll need to revisit this after qualification. At least one team with more than a 30 percent chance of qualifying will miss out.
Until then, here’s the chart of contenders, with projected medalists: France, Denmark, Spain.
If all goes well, Indy Eleven will play in a soccer stadium with a unique canopy that somewhere between the Bird’s Nest in Beijing and, appropriately for a town known for auto racing, a tire with a fancy tread.
It’ll cost $82 million and will be paid off by a tax on tickets for the stadium. “If you don’t go, you don’t pay,” says the stadium site.
The FAQ at that site answers a few good questions, but a couple haven’t been addressed.
First, what happens if stadium ticket taxes DON’T cover the $82 million cost? The text of the bill doesn’t answer — in fact, if you read the bill, you don’t really get the impression that a stadium is being built at all. It’s all about the tax mechanism.
Second, what happens if the NASL really manages to expand to 24 or more teams and implements promotion/relegation? The site commits Indy Eleven to the NASL for now, while not explicitly ruling out an MLS move at some point. For all the talk of possibly going first division, either in MLS or in a post-apocalyptic world in which the NASL reigns supreme, suppose the team ends up in a third division?
Perhaps that’s an academic point. Maybe Indy Eleven, as one of the better-funded and best-run (as long as they have Peter Wilt) NASL clubs, will never be relegated. Or maybe the people making sure this stadium will be financially guaranteed should call the NASL leadership into town and make them state, bluster aside, what they really intend to do with their league.
You can’t help rooting for Indy Eleven. Indianapolis is a great sports city, home to the NCAA, USA Track and Field, and Andrew Luck. Wilt is one of the most beloved soccer executives in the business. The stadium looks fantastic.
And it’s a good time to ask the NASL what’s really going on. Will it spend itself silly trying to compete with MLS, or is that just a fans’ fantasy? Will it simply be a strong, well-rooted second division as the A-League so nearly was before declining in the 2000s?
Might be a good time to answer those questions once and for all. They’re going to be asked in a few other cities as well, particularly in cities where clubs may ask for actual public money rather than a ticket tax.
The brilliance of the TV show Friday Night Lights is that it’s not about football or Texas or even Taylor Kitsch’s abs. It’s about identity.
Jason Street is the All-American QB with his college and pro future neatly laid out for him until an accident leaves him in a wheelchair. Matt Saracen is a quiet, nerdy guy who is thrust into the spotlight as the team’s QB. Lyla Garrity’s perfect life is shattered by boyfriend Jason’s injury and the gossip that pushes her away from cheerleading. Tami Taylor is tired of being “the coach’s wife” and nothing else.
This may be our developmental system’s biggest problem. When losing a game or losing your starting spot means losing your identity, you panic. Your fight or flight system kicks in and stress completely subverts all your best intentions and reasonable considerations. Quick, accurate decision-making and performance is impossible. Fear makes us forget what we know. Those thoughts don’t even make it to the frontal lobe once the emotional brain gets hold of them.
Seems like a bad idea in general to tie one’s identity to one thing. Even worse to tie it to something as ephemeral as athletic ability. And even worse to start tying it to one sport at an early age.
(Granted, it’s a bad thing to do as an adult, too. I say that as a flimsy excuse to play the following video for comic relief:)
And this is in highschool. In soccer, we’re asking whether our players should be specializing at age 8. From my research so far, the answer is surely not.
A high school sports blog has a good list of benefits from playing multiple sports and quotes on playing several sports from luminaries like Wayne Gretzky, Larry Fitzgerald and the ubiquitous Alex Morgan.
I’m not sure how to verify the “42 out of 47” stat. Is it Meyer’s first two years at Ohio State? The two most recent years? Ohio State did have 47 recruits in 2013 and 2014. Ohio State’s site doesn’t always list every player’s extracurriculars, so I was only able to verify these:
LB Raekwon Macmillan
WR Johnnie Dixon
ATH Marshon Lattimore
CB Damon Webb
OT Jamarco Jones
LB Dante Booker Jr.
DE Jalyn Holmes
OG Demetrius Knox
S Erick Smith
LB Kyle Berger
ATH Noah Brown
WR Terry McLaurin
DT Dylan Thompson
OT Marcelys Jones
K Sean Nuernberger
OT Brady Taylor
QB Stephen Collier
DE Darius Slade
CB Eli Apple
CB Gareon Conley
LB Trey Johnson
S Vonn Bell
ATH Dontre Wilson
DT Joey Bosa
TE Marcus Baugh
OT Evan Lisle
LB Mike Mitchell
DT Michael Hill
S Jayme Thompson
DT Donovan Munger
WR Corey Smith
LB Christopher Worley
DT Tracy Sprinkle
S Darron Lee
DE Tyquan Lewis
OT Tim Gardner
That’s 47 recruits. Somehow, that doesn’t include punter Cameron Johnston, who played Australian rules football.
Also, “invited walk-on” Khaleed Franklin was all-city (Columbus) in basketball. Another invited walk-on, Logan Gaskey, played basketball and has a black belt in taekwondo. (At 295 pounds, that’s not easy.) Joe Ramstetter considered college baseball.
And from the year before, Pat Elflein was a distinguished wrestler and participated in track and field. Cardale Jones, another recruit from the year before, played basketball.
For comparison’s sake, I decided to look at a good women’s soccer program with a good website. Hello, Virginia:
GK Morgan Stearns: HS basketball
GK Kelsey Kilgore: HS and AAU basketball
D Megan Reid: All-conference basketball, track and water polo
D/M Meghan Cox: Starting kicker on football team; also played basketball, field hockey and softball
M Tori Hanway: HS lacrosse, basketball and track
M Morgan Brian: All-state basketball
F Kaili Torres: HS track
M Campbell Millar: HS track
F Mary Morgan: HS basketball
D Julia Sroba: HS cross-country and track
So that’s at least 10 out of 24, including a couple of the better-known players and one U.S. national team player.
Now if only we could find enough programs for the kids who can’t make multiple varsities.
The Palm Beach Post reports today, in a story behind a paywall that required three incredibly frustrating efforts to sign up, that Dan Borislow’s estate has not been settled because of several lawsuits and claims.
The lawsuits and claims against him:
$674,000 to Palm Beach Kennel Club, where he won $6.67 million and change on one race card in May but placed many more bets last year. Borislow’s wife has disputed the claim.
$3.3 million to one Michael Ciprianni of Palm Beach Gardens.
$6 million to the IRS. He and his wife challenged that claim in U.S. Tax Court in 2011.
$200 million against Borislow and his former company, magicJack, from a Miami company called NetTALK.com, claiming infringement on NetTALK’s technology to make magicJack Plus. That was filed in 2012. Borislow scoffed mightily at the time.
But Borislow had a couple of suits going the other way as well, though they’ve both been settled:
Against Canaccord Genuity Group for negative remarks from one of their analysts.
Against magicJack for $20 million. Yes, his former company. The suit is posted at Scribd and is worth a perusal just for the opening reminder that magicJack “would not exist and would not be successful if it were not for Borislow’s Herculean dedication, investment, effort, and ingenuity for almost a decade.” The company’s CEO also said “would not exist without him” in an earnings call soon after Borislow’s passing.
There’s not much else to say. I spent a bit too much time on Google and my favorite legal sites, and I can’t really add anything. We can only hope for the sake of Borislow’s family that this all wraps up soon and brings them some peace.
You can’t take public statements too seriously during a difficult negotiation. It’s posturing time.
But the apparent stumbling block of real, honest-to-goodness free agency is a concern. And this quote from MLS president Mark Abbott, a tough negotiator and the architect of single entity, is a puzzler:
“Because we function in an international market and the clubs that we are competing against for players are not subject to our salary budget, to have free agency within the league doesn’t provide us with the certainty that the union says it does,” Abbott explained. “When the union says they can offer cost certainty under free agency, it’s not true because we have to compete against clubs all throughout the world.”
I cannot make heads or tails of this argument, mostly because free agency within MLS has nothing to do with the realities of the global labor market. If FC Dallas is bidding against Pachuca for a particular player, it hardly matters whether D.C. United is also bidding.
So no, MLS can’t have “cost certainty” because it’s a global market. Globally, players are free agents, whether MLS likes it or not. MLS cannot control the market. And that’s a good thing. If the league could control the market, it might have lost when players filed suit in the league’s early days.
MLS won that suit because it claimed, correctly, that players had other options. The USA alone has other leagues — in those days, the A-League and indoor soccer; today, the NASL and USL. Mexico is raiding the USA these days. Then there’s Europe. Qatar. China. Australia. That’s why the idea of decertifying the union and suing again is a non-starter.
But it also means MLS has less leverage than the typical U.S. sport. The NFL gets away with all sorts of cruelty in its player contracts because players have almost no other options besides the Canadian Football League, which isn’t really comparable. The NBA and NHL have to spend enough on players to keep their status as the world’s top league in their respective sports. Major League Baseball had to bend to free agency to avoid antitrust problems, and cost-containment ideas haven’t gained much traction.
So the idea that MLS would risk a work stoppage to prevent free agency, when it’s already participating in a free-agent market globally, is horrifying and foolish. In a worst-case scenario, with MLS never conceding the point and players sticking together, you’d just see all the players going elsewhere. (Disclaimer: I have not reviewed the legalities of whether a striking player under contract can find another job. Someone with more legal expertise and no ties to either side in this negotiation will have to decide that.)
Even in MLS “wins” on this issue, it loses. From college graduates to mid-career veterans, players will be less inclined to sign with the league.
It’s also a matter of perception and confidence. When David Beckham signed his megamillion deal and other European stars followed, it was the sign of a confident league striding forward — a good step to entice broadcasters, sponsors and fans. That confidence is undermined when the league is going to such pains to prevent two of its teams from bidding Bobby Boswell or Brian Carroll’s salary up to $200,000.
Fans also are more demanding these days. Most people were willing to see some compromises to get the league up and running. Today, no one wants to see any vestiges of the days in which Sunil Gulati played hardball on salaries across the league. Clubs make their own personnel decisions — taken to the ludicrous extreme when Frank Lampard apparently signed with neither league nor club but some other completely different entity — and that’s the way fans like it. Players, too. Homegrown players are nudging draftees out of the spotlight on new talent, and that’s a big statement for club pride.
I’ve heard one mildly reasonable argument against free agency. The issue is that teams would end up paying more for their top players, excluding Designated Players, and would therefore have less to spend on the rest of the roster. Fringe veterans would be much more likely to end up in the NASL, which will be happy to snap up more Aaron Pitchkolans and Carlos Mendeses. The 15th-25th spots on the roster would get a little younger.
But that’s not the argument the league is making. And it shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, anyway.
Does the league have some other super-secret reason for digging in its heels here? Or are some league officials just sentimentally attached to a system that, crucial as it was for the league’s first decade, is now outdated and redundant?
On Saturday, I had the honor of speaking at the NSCAA Convention, presenting what I’d put together toward my Single-Digit Soccer book, sharing ideas, and making bad jokes about my youth team being named Athens Applejacks.
In case you couldn’t make it — or in case you weren’t writing things down — here’s a synopsis. It may even have some things I forgot to mention. U.S. Youth Soccer will also post slides later.
About the book
Single-Digit Soccer is an exploration of issues, a guidebook for parents, a collection of fun stories and so forth — all in the U-Little age groups (U10, U9, etc.).
The book will come out sometime this year, but I’m still seeking input. Please chime in and let me know what you think.
About me (writer)
USA TODAY, Long-Range Goals, Enduring Spirit (if you’re on this blog, you already know I can be found here). My youth soccer work started in earnest when I covered the unveiling of the U.S. Soccer curriculum for ESPN.com.
About me (parent coach/player)
Yes, I was the starting sweeper for the U14 Athens Applejacks 1970. As a player, it’s been all downhill from there, and I recently retired from indoor soccer goalkeeping because my hand didn’t recover from a couple of saves.
As a coach, I’ve been involved with House league, All-Stars and a “crossover” program in which our U7s and U8s sign up for extra training and play against teams from other clubs. I have an “E” license and will get my “D” this year.
The age we’re talking about
I love this video:
Mixed messages
There’s a chasm between what we say and what we do. U.S. Youth Soccer says we shouldn’t have competitive tournaments, tryouts or a split between “recreational” and “competitive” at U10. Then we have U9 State Cups.
Tryouts
We worry about kids not having enough fun, getting too serious too soon, and then quitting. So at U9, we’re telling kids they’re not good enough. You don’t get to train with the great coach. You don’t get the fancy warmups. You can’t play in a tournament.
The kids who make it
Then we tell other 8-year-olds they’re hot stuff. These kids strut around school like they own the place. “Hi, Coach Beau! I’m really good — I made travel!” Then coaches wonder why these kids aren’t devoted to improving themselves. It’s like Nuke Laloosh with the quadraphonic Blaupunkt.
Trickling down
And it trickles down even lower. U8 ID Days. U6-U10 Tryouts. And if your club isn’t doing these hyperserious things, the club next door is. In our “crossover” league, we took 48 kids who just signed up, split them into four teams and took them into games against teams that had tryouts for the top 12 players. It was House players who signed up for additional training vs. a travel team in everything but name.
ISSUES
The idea here is to frame the discussion. Some of these issues don’t have simple solutions. Some are just things to weigh in the balance when making any sort of decision about soccer — how to set up a club, how to coach, what parents should look for, etc.
How much is this going to cost?
Big issue, especially for parents. Travel teams can easily cost $1,000 per season not inclusive of tournament fees, uniforms, postgame stops at McDonald’s, etc. And one elite league in my area has a four-hour, 35-minute drive between clubs. For a league game.
How much time will this take?
Again, see that travel distance. Now all these other commitments. Welcome to the U9 Academy, where you’ll spend three days a week training for your 30-35 games in a 10-month span.
What do parents really want?
Not that simple. Some are chasing college scholarships. Most just want their kids to do something fun and healthy. Some hope their kids can play high school soccer. Some hope their kids get the social experience of playing travel soccer with other kids who love the sport. And some don’t want to drive more than five minutes to practice.
Should we play year-round?
Probably not. That’s what orthopedists and psychiatrists would say. But parents are terrified of their kids being left behind. Or they play indoor soccer in the winter because they get something different from that than they get from their house leagues — they can play with their buddies.
Winning vs. development
The big one. Entire rooms at NSCAA tackle this issue. And we all say development. Are you rotating everyone on defense and in goal? Are you selecting only small numbers of players, like some teams do in our crossover and All-Star tournaments? Are you teaching your players to foul, dive and do other acts of wanton gamesmanship? I saw it at a U9 tournament.
Fun vs. development
Some kids are content playing “Mr. Wolf, What Time is It?” Some want to play actual soccer. And then there’s the whole notion of keeping score. A lot of kids want to do it.
Fun vs. structure
How many of your clubs have time set apart for free play, where kids can come in and play in mixed groups with parents and coaches told to shut the bleep up? We say the game is the best teacher. We warn against joystick coaching. Is that message getting across? A program near me has three training sessions for every game at U8 — the games are every other week, and they just play other kids in the program. I can’t think of a kid I’ve coached, and I’ve coached some very good ones, who would enjoy that.
Fun vs. parity
Kids like to play with their friends. Some groups of friends have greater interest in and aptitude for soccer than others. So the typical house league might bust them up. Fair? Perhaps. Fun for all? Maybe not. Are there other ways this house league could be fair without splitting up all the groups of friends?
Development vs. parity
Are unevenly matched games a good challenge? Or a waste of time?
What kind of development?
Some clubs and curricula think we should teach passing at early ages; some insist that you can’t. When Claudio Reyna unveiled the curriculum, he warned against “overdribbling.” Coaches at the back of the room were puzzled. (I bumped into Reyna soon after the curriculum presentation — he used Barcelona as an example of a team that takes 1-2 touches and then passes, rarely dribbling.)
Tracking/segregating
Do “A” players need to train apart from “B” players? Will it drag down the “A” players to be around other kids? Should we ban them from playing at recess with their buddies? And what’s an “A” player at age 8 anyway? Can we do it differently, perhaps putting everyone in one pool and only pulling them out for voluntary extra training and merit-based tournaments?
Burnout
Are we burning these kids out? Mentally and physically?
RADICAL IDEAS
This part will work best when you can see the slides. I list the issues on one side of each slide, and I highlight the ones that are addressed by each idea.
These are not Commandments. These are discussion-starters. Some of them actually contradict each other. Some may make sense for one club and not another, depending on your geography, your schools, your staffing, etc.
Tailor practices to your team, not vice versa
By all means, try to follow a curriculum, but meet reality at some point. Your curriculum may tell you to do a completely different set of exercises each week, but your kids may not have that kind of attention span. The kids I coach usually don’t, and I can’t spend half of every practice explaining the new exercises.
Put more coaching education online
This is actually happening — through NSCAA, U.S. Soccer, AYSO and others. That’s great. We need to train parent coaches, and they can’t always drive 90 minutes for two weekends a year to get a “D” license. We’re asking them to volunteer as soccer coaches, not join the Army Reserve.
Don’t push specialization
We need to make what we say match what we do. I’m not sure how. Maybe just talk to your parents. The trouble is that if you don’t offer something, they may sign up for a program somewhere else. But we can encourage kids to do other things. Basketball will help teach team tactics. Swimming will keep them fit. Martial arts can teach discipline. Chess, music, acting — everything else will make them well-rounded people. That, moreso than a singular focus on soccer, will help kids at college admissions time.
Teach positions, or at least basic tactics
My first youth sports experience was at the Athens YMCA playing four sports a year, mostly under the guidance of football coaches. In football season, we ran plays. The coach could call “32,” and I knew it meant a running back was going run into the hole between me (the right guard) and the center. Then in the spring, we all played 11v11 soccer, and it wasn’t a total train wreck.
One reason this is important: “Magnetball” can easily drive skilled kids out of soccer. They can’t get the ball, so they can’t use their skills.
Do programs through school
We ask parents to pick up their kids from school, take them home for an hour or three, then drive them back to a soccer field that might be right back at that school. Meanwhile, the local karate school is picking the kids up in a van. Parents who strain to make one soccer practice a week will gladly sign their kids up for five days of karate. It’s not because they’re chasing a karate scholarship.
Don’t travel more than 90 minutes for league games
Some people in the audience objected because their geography demands such travel. That’s understandable. In the metro D.C. area, it seems ridiculous.
Part-time travel
This is what I see in our local baseball, and guess what? We produce a lot of good players without segregating people. The players all play Little League. A few of them also get “elite” play on a travel team that just plays a handful of games.
Group by skill level, not age group
Another idea borrowed from baseball. If you start playing at age 7, you don’t just get tossed in with U8s who have been playing for years. You’ll likely start at Rookie baseball while more experienced 7-year-olds play Single-A. People progress through the ranks at their own pace. By the time they’re 12, they’re all in the same league.
Doesn’t that sound better than splitting into “recreational” and “competitive” at a tryout at age 8, with little opportunity to bridge the gap?
Have a program between “House” and “travel”
Another idea for keeping late bloomers in the game and for rewarding players who are serious about soccer but can’t match the elite players’ athleticism. Ideally, give everyone who wants professional training and evenly matched competition the chance to get it – maybe not every day or every week, but at some point each season.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL: Be inclusive
The one thing of which I’m firmly convinced is that THIS is the ultimate goal for all of us who care about youth soccer. We need to meet the needs of elite players with good competition, at least on occasion. We need to meet the needs of those who are not elite yet but might be. We need TOPSoccer. We need basic rec league for people just starting out. We need to give all players a good time — these are our future soccer fans and our future youth club volunteers.
And I want this project to be inclusive. I want to hear from you. Comments, email, Twitter, skywriting — anything’s fine. (But get a move on — I’d like to get this book done!)
Duresport.com 