Category: soccer

podcast, youth soccer

RSD37: Shoeless Soccer author Nathan Richardson on taking youth soccer off the long grass

Posted on by Beau Dure

Nathan Richardson, co-author of Shoeless Soccer: Fixing the System and Winning the World Cup (which I reviewed here), joins the podcast this week to talk about the radical yet somewhat globally accepted ideas in his book. Basically, instead of turning soccer into an expensive coach-driven activity, why not let kids learn by playing? And maybe on hard surfaces so they’ll learn to control the ball instead of booting it?

This conversation should give us all some ideas for how to reform youth soccer, even if you don’t agree with all of them, and it should put the term “rec mindset” to bed once and for all. We all start as rec players, and in many cases, that’s where we (well, not me) learn the things that make us better players down the road.

We ran rather long, so this will be a two-parter. (Here’s Part 2.)

Here’s Part 1:

 

Practice plans mentioned in the podcast are on the Massachusetts Youth Soccer site.

Thanks as always to Patreon supporters, and keep an eye out for RSD merchandise available soon.

Patreon supporters are:

Keith Bundy
John Stewart
Dave Russell
Jason McConnell
Tim Stanton
Bill Beane
Judith Cavill
Taylor Sorrels
Robert Hay
Rich Heironimus
Armando Diaz
Jeff Clarke

2
us soccer, youth soccer

Is soccer declining in the United States?

Posted on by Beau Dure

“Oh, soccer is doing fine!” you may argue. “It’s the Federation that stinks.”

It’s entirely possible that the second statement is true while the first statement is false.

A couple of metrics look very bad:

  • World Cup ratings are down, even accounting for the USA’s absence. You can blame Fox’s production if you like, but they’re also way down on Telemundo.
  • A household survey conducted by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which does this sort of thing regularly and works with the Aspen Institute’s Project Play (which aims to get more kids playing, no matter what the sport is), shows youth soccer participation in freefall. The New York Times has a follow-up. The full numbers of the most recent survey aren’t available, but you can check out last year’s survey and see that soccer’s decline had been comparable with other sports but now appears to be considerably worse.

As with World Cup ratings, the SFIA survey can’t be completely explained by everyone’s favorite scapegoats (Alexi Lalas, Fox producers, Sunil Gulati, unnamed people in U.S. Soccer’s Chicago HQ). We’re not talking about U.S. Soccer’s registration numbers, which have been either flat or declining a bit for a good while — see my attempt to make sense of the numbers.

This survey collects data on everyone. All those unregistered players the presidential candidates touted? Yeah, this survey is intended to account for them, too.

person jogging near soccer goal during sunrise
Photo by Flickr on Pexels.com

You can question the survey’s methodology. You can even say polling as a whole is in disrepute after the 2016 election, but if you look carefully at those numbers, you’ll see they weren’t that far off — it’s just that the 3 or 4 percent errors all broke in Trump’s favor.

Sure, it’s still possible that there are plenty of people playing soccer who didn’t answer the poll-takers. But you’d certainly be hard-pressed to look at any metric and say participation is growing. 

Here’s the trickier question: Why?

A lot of the coverage focuses on misguided Federation initiatives — birth-year registration, the DA’s insistence on not playing high school soccer, etc. More generally, the “travel or bust” mentality parents get — with considerable pushes from the local clubs — leads to burnout and frustration.

But we don’t have data to measure the impact of each of these factors. That’s not part of the survey. (Which is understandable — who wants to deal with a 100-question survey asking, “Did your local club make you want to quit? Or was it the jersey colors? Or do you just want to play xBox?”)

And the World Cup numbers are also difficult to assess. Is interest dropping, or are ratings failing to take into account everyone going to watch parties or watching on their phones? Or do Millennials really just “consume” sports by watching highlights and not complete games?

So the questions aren’t simple, and neither are the answers.

Yet we should be able to agree on one thing: We can’t take soccer’s growth for granted. We can’t turn youth soccer into a joyless breeding ground for elite players. We have to do better with TV coverage. And yes, we need to rev up our professional game in multiple divisions. (And we need to talk about the nuances of doing that — 15 years of yelling at each other on Twitter and prior forms of mass communications of done jack-squat.)

We can certainly agree on this: We’re not where we want to be. And it’s not just a ball taking a bad bounce in Trinidad or a bad call that got Panama to the World Cup. It’s not just parents who want to “win” too badly — it’s also the coaches who pick out top athletes at age 8, discard everyone else and then moan when they have no one to replace the top athletes who pick other clubs or other sports.

It’s the Federation and its ham-fisted mandates, but it’s not just the Federation. It’s everyone.

Something’s wrong. Many things are wrong. And we need to start talking about it with a good Kirk-Spock mix of passion and reason. Soon.

0
youth soccer

What youth soccer can learn from karate

Posted on by Beau Dure

Following up on my School of Rock post, here’s another one about a youth program that offers a few good lessons for soccer to follow …

1. Run afterschool programs. Elementary-school parents balk, with good reason sometimes, at having to drive kids all over the place at dinner time and afterwards to get them to soccer practices all over creation. Having a mere two practices a week can be an imposition.

Yet these same parents will send their kids to karate five days a week. Why?

It’s not because they have dreams of their kids being the next Chuck Liddell or Lyoto Machida. It’s because the karate program runs vans and mini-buses to several nearby elementary schools, and the parents have jobs that make it difficult to pick up their kids at 3:15. (Can you tell I’m speaking from personal experience here? The same kid who played travel soccer and is now devoted to School of Rock has a brown belt.)

2. Have a fun but disciplined environment. Learning to break a board with a wheel kick isn’t the most practical skill unless you’re a soldier who does a lot of hand-to-hand combat. But the discipline of martial arts will carry over into anything.

That said, your kid probably isn’t going to be thrilled about going straight from school to a boot camp. Play games, give kids some time to unwind, and then start training.

3. Divide up by skill level, not age. When the time comes to work on particular skills in our local karate program, the brown belts and green belts would go in one room, and the white belts and … yellow? blue? I don’t remember … would go in another. Age didn’t matter. Sure, age and size were a factor when kids started sparring — even with tons of protective gear, you don’t want a 13-year-old kicking a 7-year-old — but that’s easily managed.

4. Be cheaper than other programs. Maybe day care had skewed our perception of how much it costs to have people look after your kids, but karate wasn’t killing family budgets. They could also go to a local place and learn coding, but that’s waaaaaaay more expensive.

5. Be role models. You don’t need to show your kids Christian Pulisic and Alex Morgan to give them someone to emulate. Young kids are going to look up to the adult in charge in the room.

Granted, there’s not much professional karate in mainstream culture. I mentioned Liddell and Machida above because they’re the rare old-school example of karate practitioner in MMA. These days, it’s mostly wrestlers who’ve learned a bit of kickboxing. (That said, the “mixed” in mixed martial arts isn’t a bad thing, and I once walked in to pick up my kids and saw then-UFC fighter Kamal Shalorus teaching wrestling. Persia represent.)

Sure, in soccer, we don’t just want to have fun. We want to find the next Pulisics, Ramoses and Cherundolos. But if you’re bringing in first-graders and second-graders five days a week and helping them progress, that’s not exactly a bad foundation.

0
us soccer, youth soccer

Creating opportunities for all U.S. youth

Posted on by Beau Dure

In a vast country, how do you make sure everyone has an opportunity to go as far as he or she can go in soccer?

Not an easy question. Today, a lot of the focus is on inner cities, where several organizations are working to set up futsal courts and programs.

But we can’t forget smaller towns, either. Meet Chris Kessell, a passionate advocate (and someone who doesn’t just talk about it but also gets out and does it) for West Virginians:

Every community big and small deserves the ability to dream. Every child in this country who loves the sport deserves the ability to be able to dream about their place in the sport. Continue to speak up for lost and forgotten communities in this nation and advocate for #ProRelForUSA and #ReformUSSF.

It’s tough to argue with people who are doing such good work. But this argument isn’t about the work or the intentions. It’s about the overarching solutions. Pro/rel has long been called the “third rail” of American soccer, and my attempt to reset the conversation earlier this year went nowhere.

And so, with the utmost respect for Chris’ work, I’ll suggest the following:

The English system wouldn’t give these kids much of a dream. A modified pro/rel system may help, but even if that happens, we’ll need some creative programs to reach kids like the ones Chris is describing.

By “English system,” I mean a straight up-and-down ladder. That’s what England has in its first five tiers of soccer. Only then does it start to resemble a pyramid.

We can’t reasonably ask a fourth-division team to travel cross-country. And I think most people get that. So a lot of the plans I’ve tossed out for discussion have a much wider base — a national top tier, a West and East region in tier two, then tons and tons of D3 teams.

Here’s the bottom line: We want to create opportunity.

And England demonstrates that a healthy pro system doesn’t necessarily mean every club has a thriving academy. See this post, which is generally about the “pros” of pro/rel but also gets into the English situation.

Finally, the pro-affiliated academy system can’t reach everyone. The biggest club in Cornwall appears to be Truro City, which is in the National League South — England’s sixth tier. It’s in a town of about 21,000 people, not far from other towns about that size. The closest fully professional club is Plymouth Argyle, which can be reached in 71 minutes if you live at the train station. After that, it’s Exeter, then you have to go considerably farther. If you live farther west than Truro — say, Penzance, which also has about 21,000 people — it’s longer. Morgantown (WV) is actually closer to a pro club (Pittsburgh Riverhounds), even in a country that will likely never have the saturation of pro clubs that a small, football-mad country like England has.

So let’s consider options:

  • An English-style pro-rel ladder would likely put Morgantown in a sixth tier with little chance of going much higher.
  • A pyramid with no relegation from the third tier (or fourth, if we suddenly get hundreds of clubs) would ensure Morgantown has a stable pro club.
  • An NCAA-style system would mean Morgantown could be one of hundreds of “D1” clubs that can play for a national championship in any given year. No need to climb rung by rung. If they suddenly have a bunch of really good players, they can make a Butler-style run to the national final. (Yes, the Open Cup does sort of the same thing but not quite.)
  • German-style training centers in every metro area with a traffic light would be great. Germany realized its clubs can’t find and develop everyone, so the federation does more. The USA has a few programs along these lines — traditional ODP, U.S. Club Soccer ID programs, mobile training centers — but we could surely do more.
  • High schools. Consider this: The greatest college football player ever, Herschel Walker, came from a town in Georgia that had about 2,500 people at the time. The county had less than 9,000 people. Stretch out over two counties in the “Dublin Micropolitan Statistical Area,” and you might get to 50,000. Herschel was discovered 15 years before anyone knew what the Internet was.

So you can see why I’m skeptical when someone says kids can dream if only they had pro/rel. I’m not saying and I certainly hope I’ve never even implied that I don’t care about kids having that dream. Quite the opposite. I keep coming up with ideas. People keep ignoring them and telling me I’m ignorant.

Yet this is a topic I’ve been tackling in a lot of detail since I left USA TODAY in 2010. I didn’t discuss it much at USA TODAY — I doubt my editors would’ve been interested in a story on it, and I was busy covering soccer along with MMA, Olympic sports, high school sports, poker, horse racing, etc., etc. USA TODAY hasn’t had a full-time soccer writer since Peter Brewington in 2001. (Great, great guy.) They’ve been lucky to have a few people who sneak in some soccer content — not long after I left, former George Mason player Mike Foss came in and revamped their blog, making sure it had plenty of soccer.

Meanwhile, at other news organizations, you’re not going to see much talk about pro/rel. It’s not because people are told not to talk about it. It’s because the idea just isn’t gaining a lot of traction. People talk and talk — see the Chattanooga summit. And yet the UPSL, NPSL, PDL, USL and NISA are all doing their own thing. The UPSL brags about having pro/rel in certain areas — just like most other amateur leagues.

And the idea isn’t gaining a lot of traction because we can’t talk about it without egos and emotion getting in the way.

What can we do to change that?

0
us soccer, youth soccer

Why coaching youth soccer is impossible

Posted on by Beau Dure

There’s something funny about listening to a chat between the great soccer coaching gurus John O’Sullivan and Sam Snow while dodging baseballs lobbed over a bunch of Little League All-Stars and the right field fence by a baseball coach might be a little too excited over this coaching gig.

As I retrieved a ball that had sailed over my head, several yards beyond the fence on the park’s walking trail, I heard O’Sullivan and Snow talk about things that make them cringe as they see soccer coaches in action.

I laughed at the first few items. Starting a practice with laps is so 1983, isn’t it?

Then Sam, someone who has been a wonderful resource for me and thousands of others, lamented the warmup drill in which players line up, play the ball forward to a coach, run on to the square pass the coach sends them, and blast it at the goal.

Hey, wait a minute. That’s my gameday warmup.

Sam’s objection — in addition, I presume, to the fact that we coaches are supposed to avoid “lines, laps and lectures” as much as possible — is that it doesn’t mimic the game.

“Well,” I objected in my head as I continued my walk on the uphill section and started breathing a little heavier, “if you have a forward who understands playing his back to goal, you might see a give-and-go combination … OK, Sam, you’re right.”

But what I didn’t hear was what I’m supposed to do instead.

I’m sure some hotshot Self-Appointed Elite coach who only works with top-tier talent will tell me what I’m supposed to do. Maybe it’s some sort of dazzling drill in which the ball is played out to the wing and a defender applies some pressure before it’s played back into the center. Or maybe I’m supposed to do what every NWSL team does — possession drills and some sort of painful-looking exercise involving large rubber bands.

Let me explain a few things to the SAE coach:

  1. I’m not coaching D.C. United’s U-18s. I’m coaching rec league players. If I have 11 players by the time the ref calls us over to check our shin guards, I consider myself lucky. I don’t have a lot of time to explain anything. I need to keep it simple.
  2. Why do we think of finishing as dessert? (I can’t cite the originator of that analogy because it’s quite old.) Do your 5,000 short touches, juggle 3,000 times, run 20 possession drills with no passes longer than five yards, and then we might let you take a shot. And then we wonder why no one can score a danged goal.

So I hear what Sam’s saying. But then how do I learn what I’m supposed to do instead?

Google didn’t help. The first item that came up on my search was a warmup drill that’s basically free kicks with no defense. How realistic is that?

Here’s the next problem: We have so many different philosophies. John didn’t use the word “rondo” but stepped into The Great Rondo Kerfuffle of 2018 by fretting about “directionless” drills. (Granted, after seeing Spain crash out of the World Cup because it ran a 120-minute rondo against Russia and neglected to set up meaningful scoring chances, perhaps the U.S. idea of adding “direction” to possession drills will gain some traction. Or, again, maybe we should work on finishing on occasion?)

But the biggest problem was something John and Sam mentioned as a positive of older-skewing licenses. In the National Youth License, coaches are taught how to teach. They’re taught about the “psychosocial” aspects of coaching.

Those of us who coach at the earliest stages of the game are taught nothing of the sort. And yes, I’ve taken the new “grassroots” modules — at least the ones that are out now. The F license, which was discarded for reasons known only to people in Chicago, taught a bit of it, at least by the example of seeing Shannon MacMillan teach.

The licensing courses have typically focused on practice plans. Is that really the first priority for grassroots coaches? Shouldn’t we be getting our practice plans from those who have really studied them?

Unfortunately, the practice plans we get generally aren’t helpful. They’re written for other members of the technical staff, full of jargon that Coach A and Coach B might understand but not the befuddled coaches of the C-teams and the recreational kids.

The new “Play-Practice-Play” practice plans, admittedly a good bit simpler than the “Warmup-Small Sided Game-Expanded Small Sided Game Because You’re Supposed to Guess The Difference Between That and the Small-Sided Game-Scrimmage With Caveats” practice plan we were taught a couple of years ago, are interesting. But the first set of plans I saw (I’m not going to name the state association that posted them) had something interesting. I checked out the U14 plans, which had nice names like “attacking from wide areas” and “defending crosses.” Take away the titles, and every practice was almost exactly the same. Get the kids to warmup with some 2v2, 3v3 and dynamic stretching while you talk to them about their day. (The last bit is a nice touch — finally teaching us how to teach.) Then move into the “practice” phase — which is basically a half-field setup in which seven players are trying to score against six. Doesn’t matter what topic it is. It’s an odd-number attack.

Maybe we should simply admit it. “OK, coach of a team from U12 on up. You’re going to do the same thing every practice. You’re going to do small-sided scrimmages, then basically a halfcourt scrimmage. We’re just going to ask you to emphasize different points in each one.”

So instead of a bunch of diagrams that spell out the same thing every practice, you just give us a list. Hey, we can put that on our phones. Nice.

Even then, though, we still won’t have much idea how to teach a lot of valuable skills. How do you teach someone to shoot like Denis Cheryshev? How do you teach someone to drop a 50-yard pass effortlessly into the stride of a teammate? (Granted, those might be beyond the capacity of a rec-leaguer, anyway.)

I’m going into my U16 and U14 seasons with two goals.

  1. Get players a lot of touches on the ball in varying situations. Futsal is nice, but it doesn’t teach you how to switch the point of attack on a full-sized field or deal with a hard-hit ball at chest level.
  2. Learn how to move on a big field.

That’ll be tough, because my practice space is generally one-fourth of a field. But we’ll give it a shot.

I’m open for ideas. Especially a new warmup exercise for unskilled finishers with short attention spans.

 

1
youth soccer

Why School of Rock is better than youth soccer

Posted on by Beau Dure

We’ve made a decision in our household. Less soccer. More music.

Don’t adjust Project Play’s dreary stats on quitting sports. We still have soccer players under our roof. (I’ll actually be the only non-player in the house this fall, and I’ll be coaching and possibly reffing.) But the year-round commitment? Three practices and a game in the typical fall or spring week? Long drives out to the exurbs and beyond? Done.

Instead, the top activity will be School of Rock. And even as someone who has devoted most of his professional career to sports, especially soccer, I’m thrilled.

School-of-rock

As a parent, I can say with no doubt whatsoever that School of Rock isn’t just a different experience than youth soccer. It’s better.

Sure, I’m glad my kids will continue to play soccer in some form. They’ll learn teamwork in situations in which the outcome is far from certain. They have to deal with winning and losing at some point in life. Better to do it now.

Plus, there’s the whole “don’t be a slug as a child and grow up to be 300 pounds with all sorts of health issues” thing. If your kids aren’t playing soccer or any other team sport, they need to be cycling or running or swimming or something else to stay active. Then we have to keep up the pace as adults, especially when we hit 40 and our metabolism slows to a crawl.

But School of Rock offers so many things youth soccer does not.

Kids truly progress according to their own aptitude and effort. There’s no “U10” or “U12” at School of Rock. At my kid’s very first show, he was maybe 9 years old, playing a few relatively complex parts. A few other young kids were playing parts of various complexity. And a few older kids were stomping out awesome bass grooves and guitar solos while singing and strutting across the stage like they’re auditioning to replace Ann Wilson or Roger Daltrey.

School of Rock students get whatever parts they can handle. The big high school senior who plays rock-steady bass parts will be the guy who holds Disco Inferno together. The scared elementary schooler who can barely reach the drum pedals will play a simple beat on a simple song. And everything in between.

It’s not like youth soccer, where we recreational coaches toss out a kid on the field to play his required half of the game, knowing full well we’re going to have a massive hole in the lineup that will be exploited by the bigger, faster, ruthless attackers on the other team. And it’s not like a travel soccer game in which one team might not be challenged. If I Love Rock and Roll is too easy for you, try this …

Or maybe this …

Those two songs featured in the little one’s last show. He played keyboards on the first. The second was held together by a high schooler who’s a pretty good soccer player but also an amazing drummer. (And guitarist.)

I majored in music. (And philosophy, because I collect useless degrees.) My son surpassed me in terms of ear training and general keyboard skills before he finished elementary school.

And one factor in that development is this …

The older kids encourage the younger kids. One student we’re going to miss at School of Rock now that she’s graduated is a charismatic, ever-smiling singer. Earlier this year, at the CBGB-themed show, I saw her sing Blondie’s Call Me and then point over at my kid when it was time for the keyboard solo.

At the last show for her and the big bass guy, I thanked both of them for encouraging my son so much. She gave him a big hug and told him how awesome he is.

You might get that sort of atmosphere at your local soccer club. We were lucky to have a small travel club in which the older kids set a nice example and got the younger kids juggling more without even realizing what they were doing. But most of the time, the U18 team is off doing its own thing while the U9s never see anyone older.

“But this is an unfair comparison,” you might say. “You can’t throw elementary schoolers on the same field as high schoolers, and team sports teach kids to deal with adversity.”

Sure, but you can find ways to mix the age groups without having a 16-year-old run over a 10-year-old. And as for adversity …

School of Rock teaches kids to deal with failure. Every once in a while, a song turns into a train wreck. The drummer’s concentration wavers on a difficult part. The singer can’t quite hit all the notes and is rattled to the point of missing a few words. It’s just as painful to watch as a parent as a defensive breakdown or a whiffed shot on the soccer field.

So what happens next? You play the next song. It’s not like soccer, where if you have a bad game, you have a week to deal with it. If you know a season’s going down the tubes, you’re SOL. Gotta stay in that division for the rest of that season — or longer, if you have the misfortune of being in an “elite” league with no promotion/relegation or other mechanism for pulling an overmatched team out of the fray.

And you have to try out to make the top bands. We have a “House” band that’s basically the opposite of “House” soccer. It’s the best of the best. There are some damn good musicians in the “JV” House band and some more who, like a recreational soccer player, simply can’t make the commitment to the extra practices required here. Kids might try out and not make it.

So you’re not sheltered from anything at School of Rock. Even on an individual level, the frustration of not being able to nail a difficult part is just as hard to handle as the frustration of missing that crucial shot or failing to meet your juggling goals.

So what can youth soccer learn from School of Rock? 

A few things:

  1. Don’t get locked into age groups. Let kids progress according to their abilities, a plan I fleshed out at SoccerWire a couple of years ago.
  2. Foster a sense of belonging to a club. The “club-centric” model is ridiculous for leagues but not a bad idea for the occasional showcase, especially if it’s set up so teams in the same club can actually watch each other play. Have pickup games or mixed scrimmages so kids can get to know players in other age groups. Have club-wide social events.
  3. Teach better. Work with kids both one-on-one and in group settings. Let them explore their strengths and weaknesses.
  4. Embrace diverse approaches. The School of Rock teaching style, basically tailored to each student, is a refreshing change from the pedantic egomaniacs who pontificate on coaching youth soccer the “right” way and scoff at everything else. They’ll always teach ear training, just as any good soccer coach is going to work on foot skills in some way, shape or form, but if Student A learns a part differently from Student B, that’s fine.

Maybe then, youth soccer will rock almost as much as School of Rock. Almost.

rocks

 

 

1
pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

SafeSport, SUM and other U.S. Soccer issues

Posted on by Beau Dure

Funny thing about engaging with Soccer Twitter: You can find yourself assigned a lot of volunteer work. A bunch of people who will never donate to your Patreon page or buy a book from your Amazon affiliate links (in some cases, they even think it’s an imposition to go to your blog, where you’ll make 0.01 cents on their visit) will demand that you do X, Y or Z, just because you’re a soccer journalist.

But every once in a while, there’s a legitimate question that I can answer. That happened this morning …

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1012297332124258304

Good question, and I did some recent reporting on it that was trimmed from a story — not for any nefarious reason but because it was a long story, and this didn’t fit that well.

So here’s the part that was trimmed:

(START)

The U.S. governing bodies for several other sports — gymnastics, volleyball, taekwondo and swimming — are dealing with horrific sexual-abuse scandals. Congress has responded with the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 was signed — despite the name, it was signed in 2018 (Feb. 14).

A month later, U.S. Soccer member programs manager Caitlin Carducci discussed the law with state associations and affiliates. A couple of weeks later, U.S. Soccer issued a statement on the basics, specifically the need to report abuse allegations to law enforcement within 24 hours.

U.S. Club Soccer has gone a few steps farther, requiring online SafeSport training of its members.

U.S. Club’s Kevin Payne stresses the urgency. A well-meaning coach, he says, could end up violating federal law by taking internal steps without meeting the 24-hour window to report to law enforcement.

“People who’ve devoted their lives to youth sports will have their lives destroyed because they didn’t report something quickly enough,” Payne says.

So the U.S. Club effort here is essential. It costs a bit more money, but it’s one soccer expense that is absolutely worthwhile. Better to pay a little more now than defend a lawsuit or deal with the horror of abuse.

(END)

So there you have it. Some info compiled from public statements, then a bit more from an interview, along with some context and even a recommendation. Do with it what you will. It’s a good question, it’s an issue I’ll keep pursuing down the road, and everyone else should feel free to keep asking as well.

Then there’s SUM, on which I get stuff like this:

https://twitter.com/duresport/status/1012287440571297795

https://twitter.com/duresport/status/1012288098519146497

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1012289261532581888

https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1012296841592000519

Good grief. We know immigrant children are being separated from their parents. We don’t know SUM, USSF and MLS are doing anything objectionable beyond the things we know about (to which some people have objected — some reasonably, some a little tinfoil-y).

I think that’s reasonable. And perhaps people can come up with good ways to apply pressure for more transparency. Carlos Cordeiro said he’d be more transparent, and he actually has worked as VP to change the governance. That may not be enough, and there’s nothing wrong with pressing USSF to open up a bit more, especially when the next deal comes up.

I might be able to answer other questions:

From my reporting before and after the election, the full board (including people who aren’t part of the supposed cabal) has always approved everything with SUM —  unanimously. I even specifically asked if the “unanimous votes” were all shenanigans, like the local hospital board I once covered that had a split vote (roughly 6-3 or something like that) but immediately moved to let the record show that the vote was unanimous. I was told — again, by people in and out of the supposed cabal — that the votes were legitimately unanimous.

Now — you could argue that the board shouldn’t be holding so many executive sessions, or that the minutes should reflect what was discussed in executive session. (Not “we all ganged up to silence a Youth Council rep and then gave a national-team coach a negative performance review,” but perhaps “the board then went into executive session, where it discussed the renewal of Soccer United Marketing’s contract and the latest complaint from the North American Suing League.”) I’d frankly like to see a delegate raise that point from the floor at the next Annual General Meeting, if not sooner.

But yelling at one freelance journalist (which, to be clear, Nick isn’t doing) isn’t going to get us very far. I’m actually in less of a position to get to anything than, say, this guy …

Good on you for asking, Chris.

And yeah, perhaps it would help if people with full-time journalism gigs would ask. So go harass the people swimming in venture capital at The Athletic.

Because from my perch on the thinnest branch of the U.S. soccer tree, I see things this way:

  1. It’s a lot easier to get answers when you’re (A) inside the organization or (B) working for a major news organization.
  2. In terms of major issues facing U.S. Soccer right now, I consider the January formalizing of the SUM deal very far down the list. For these reasons:
    1. USSF and SUM were demonstrably acting with a deal already in place well before 2018.
    2. At some point, we have to ask why we’re so angry about a deal that provides USSF a considerable amount of money. Same with Copa Centenario. You’re welcome to argue that the SUM deal and other USSF governance oddities give MLS too much power, but you don’t need me to spend a month investigating things for free to make your case there.
    3. Youth soccer is a freaking mess, and that’s where every U.S. player starts (aside from those we import from Germany).

Besides, there’s a lot of nastiness in the world today. I often think about ditching soccer journalism entirely to do something that might help turn back the fascist tide in this country. That might happen one day.

In the meantime, if it’s OK with everyone on Twitter, I’m going to get back to youth soccer.

After the morning World Cup games, of course.

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youth soccer

A U.S. youth soccer reform update (FourFourTwo piece and beyond)

Posted on by Beau Dure

My FourFourTwo piece from yesterday gave a multi-part plan for rescuing youth soccer from the pit of despair or some other dreary place of your choosing, and it features input from Kyle Martino, Kevin Payne and two U.S. Soccer officials.

The intro:

“Promote a more unified Youth Soccer landscape where our members—rather than fighting each other for players—work together to bring more young people into our ranks as registered players and where we focus on Youth Soccer less as a business and more as a way to develop talent on the field and nurture our next generation of young adults.”

So read the platform of Carlos Cordeiro in his successful campaign for the U.S. Soccer presidency.

Cordeiro has spent the first four months of his presidency traveling the world on behalf of the ultimately successful USA/Canada/Mexico World Cup bid. In the meantime, youth soccer has progressed from a moderate level of chaos to a full-fledged tropical storm mixed with a Nor’easter mixed with Memorial Day beach traffic.

This piece had a long gestation period, but the timing is good. The World Cup bid effort is finished. Now it’s time for Cordeiro to look at the rest of his agenda. His platform has plenty of ideas that look good on paper — I didn’t recall any other candidates arguing against diversity, stronger adult leagues, etc. — but will require some effort to translate into reality.

But with all due respect to the other issues on that platform, youth soccer needs to be his first priority. (The transparency/diversity issues should be addressed concurrently, and other issues certainly shouldn’t be forgotten. Hopefully we can drop the nonsensical idea that Cordeiro’s next priority needs to be rescuing the NASL. We have a functioning Division 1 league and a functioning Division 2 league. If Cordeiro is going to devote a second of his time to any pro league in the next two years, it should be the NWSL. Period.)

One of my goals here is to keep asking questions and providing analysis. The outlets through which I can do so are dwindling. This sort of thing is a little too esoteric for The Athletic — and besides, I need to reach parents.

So I’m going to be working hard over the next few months to build Ranting Soccer Dad into a substantial brand. You can help on Patreon if you like (I’m going to make magnets and T-shirts!), but anything you can do to share my work would be appreciated. Especially if you can share it with parents. Maybe not parents who sit and watch every World Cup game like you do, but any parents looking for a good youth soccer experience.

At some point soon, I need to write about the next contested election. U.S. Youth Soccer holds its Annual General Meeting on July 28, and I know of at least one challenger to incumbent chairman (and USSF Board member) Jesse Harrell.

 

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podcast, women's soccer, youth soccer

RSD36: Player pathways, college and elite leagues, with Lesle Gallimore

Posted on by Beau Dure

Lesle Gallimore has been head women’s soccer coach at the University of Washington since 1994, and she’s the current president of United Soccer Coaches.

In this conversation, we talk about how college coaches adapt their recruiting to the new “elite league turf war” environment. And we talk about how players adapt and whether they *can* adapt.

For example: Could Gallimore’s most famous player, Hope Solo, work her way through the system today and be discovered?

Coincidentally, Solo made a lot of news this week, and I discuss that before the interview (which was recorded before all that news happened). The Gallimore interview starts around the 10-minute mark.

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pro soccer, us soccer, youth soccer

When will the soccer “change” movement get serious?

Posted on by Beau Dure

This will start out on a personal level, but bear with me — it’ll get to big-picture stuff. And we’ll talk about the desperate need to change a few things in U.S. soccer and at U.S. Soccer.

I think the state of the soccer “change” movement can be summed up (pardon the SUM pun) in three conversations I had this weekend and another one in which I did not participate.

One: Someone on Twitter was surprised to learn I am not paid by MLS or SUM.

This person apologized.

I asked why he made the assumption in the first place.

“Likely because I’ve seen folks attribute that to you on Twitter.”

Not the first time I’ve had a conversation that follows this path:

  • Person attacks me, thinking I’m a paid MLS/SUM shill who hates open systems or any criticism of MLS.
  • Person learns I am none of those things and that I’ve actually put forth several plans to work toward promotion/relegation (or, failing that, a wide-open “Division 1”), few of which have gained any traction because everyone’s so firmly entrenched these days. (Some on Twitter insist pro/rel is all or nothing, which will come as a great surprise to people in the Netherlands, where they can’t seem to open a full gateway between the second and third tiers. Maybe that’s why they didn’t make the World Cup, either.)
  • Decent conversation ensues.

For those of you who are new, here’s my restatement of facts (skip to the next bold type if you know all this):

  • The only time I was ever paid by an MLS/SUM affiliate was when I wrote fantasy soccer columns for MLSNet, the forerunner of MLSSoccer.com that was run by a different company. They also hired Eric Wynalda, who suffers no accusations of being an MLS shill today though he wrote far more than I did. (And used to play for the league. Him, not me. Obviously. I played U14 and beer league.)
  • Yes, I wrote a book called Long-Range Goals: The Success Story of Major League Soccer. I was iffy on that subtitle at first but agreed to it because the standard at that time was survival. I would agree that it’s fair to set a higher standard for “success” today. MLS gave me access but paid me nothing. The book is old now and barely sells, so whatever MLS does next isn’t likely to affect my bottom line. (Maybe I’d write a sequel if something substantial changes, which means my self-interest would be in change, not the status quo.)
  • I am not personally against promotion/relegation. As a fan, I’ve enjoyed pro/rel drama since I was an elementary schooler watching Soccer Made In Germany. As a journalist, I’ve simply found occasion to explain why it hasn’t happened so far. I believe it’ll happen when the marketplace is ready for it, and I believe calamity will ensue if any entity tries to force it to happen in a way that harms MLS while its teams are investing in facilities and academies.
  • Summing up (again, sorry for the pun): I have absolutely no interest, financial or otherwise, in the status quo.
  • The fact that people claim otherwise about me should make you very suspicious of those people’s motives.

newsletter

Two: Respected people in soccer continue to associate with and even amplify anonymous Twitter accounts that regularly slander people. 

I’ve actually learned who runs one such account. Not a well-known name, but it’s hilarious that it’s someone who has played and coached for “Christian” schools. I guess they’re soft on that whole “bearing false witness” thing, though the school’s site does say good people of the Bible should not engage in “profanity” and “lying.” They list those two right before “homosexual behavior.”

When I spoke with a particular supporter of such accounts, someone I certainly respect, I got a deflection to a conspiracy theory involving Kyle Martino.

Which was far from the strangest thing I heard along those line this weekend …

Three: Someone in a position of responsibility in U.S. soccer (not the Federation) lumped together most of the presidential candidates and a few other folks into a conspiracy theory.

This theory — again, offered by someone in a position of power whose actions certainly affect others — included the following people:

  • Sunil Gulati (no surprise)
  • Don Garber (also)
  • Kathy Carter (yeah, OK)
  • Kyle Martino (again, not the first to say that)
  • Merritt Paulson (MLS/NWSL owner, OK)
  • Grant Wahl (SI writer — stretching here)
  • Steve Gans (wait … what?)
  • Hope Solo (whoa … seriously?)
  • Eric Wynalda (OK, hold on here …)

I asked for proof. I was told this person had been advised not to offer proof at this time.

But this person, apparently in an effort to demonstrate insider knowledge, pointed out to me that he/she said back in December how everything was a setup.

For Kathy Carter.

Who didn’t win.

Four: The conversation in which I didn’t participate involved the consternation that Rocco Commisso was unable to get an audience with U.S. Soccer for his “proposal.”

Hey, it’s tough to get an audience with U.S. Soccer. Much tougher than it should be. Believe me, I feel your pain. I won’t go into details here, but I’m starting to think it’d be easier to get an interview with Prince that it would be to get some specific information I’m seeking now. And yes, I’m aware that Prince has passed away. (Dammit.)

But when NY Cosmos owner Rocco Commisso told U.S. Soccer he wanted a meeting to discuss a possible $250 million investment (expandable to $500 million when others join in) if they let him have 10 years to build up the NASL, the response should’ve been the following …

Dear Mr. Commisso,

Thank you for your letter. Unfortunately, we are not able to discuss anything involving the NASL or the Pro League Standards while we are engaged in legal action, some of which you initiated, on each of those entities.

If you would like to make a significant investment in an existing league (NPSL, USL, UPSL) or a newly proposed league (NISA), you are welcome to discuss the matter with those leagues.

Unfortunately, U.S. Soccer dragged this along, letting Commisso and his apologists dictate the narrative.

Which brings us to an important point …

federation

The Federation needs change. 

When the U.S. Soccer delegates who had just elected Carlos Cordeiro left the room in Orlando a few months ago, the path forward for changing the federation seemed clear.

Voters had rejected the anointed MLS/SUM candidate, Kathy Carter, in favor of someone who masterfully claimed the “outsider, but with experience and willingness to delegate to experts” ground. A few delegates spoke from the floor, urging the “change” candidates to stay involved. The soccer community was plugged into all the issues on all levels — youth, adult, pro, even a few words about the oft-neglected Paralympic, futsal and beach soccer sectors.

Stodgy old U.S. Soccer had gotten a wakeup call. Fans demanded change after missing the men’s World Cup. Parental ire over misguided youth soccer mandates had finally reached the Board of Directors. Every issue was in play:

  • Accessibility for all to play youth soccer at a level determined not by their money but by their ability level.
  • Clearer pathways to identify and develop all talent.
  • Getting the NWSL to fill its long-vacant commissioner position and build up the league’s standards and wages.
  • Making coaching education affordable and available (and good)
  • Easing the tension in pro soccer and helping lower divisions grow.
  • Hey, don’t we have national teams that need general managers and/or coaches?

I’d add one issue that has popped up since the election: Figuring out the role of state associations when youth and adult leagues are crossing state lines and ODP is being devalued.

And then … it all stopped. Mostly.

We have a few exceptions. The Chattanooga summit failed to unite NPSL, NISA and UPSL, let alone all the other factions in U.S. soccer, but at least it brought a few good issues to the fore with some rational discussions. “Change” candidate Kyle Martino jumped to the board of Street Soccer USA to do some of the grassroots work he had hoped to do as president. Surely hundreds of youth coaches and administrators have been energized to do more work at the local level.

But the national discourse is firmly in the hands of a different group of people. I’m not just talking about the usual toxic stew on Twitter. That’s been around longer than Twitter itself, and it hasn’t done a bit of good. (If anything, it’s hardened attitudes against promotion/relegation from people who otherwise would’ve been ambivalent or receptive.) I’m talking about the people who actually have influence.

And what we’ve seen from a lot of camps are purely symbolic gestures. Yes, that includes Commisso’s proposal, which I’ve often called, in Seinfeld-speak, an “unvitation.” He had to know there was no way USSF would or could meet those demands, and now he gets to claim (as Silva did before him) that the Federation has turned down easy money out of sheer stubbornness. A similarly PR-related proposal came up at the Annual General Meeting — more precisely, at the USSF Board meeting the day before the National Council meeting in Orlando. John Motta proposed cutting registration fees, currently $2 per adult and $1 per youth player, in half. That wasn’t going to fly, given that many presidential candidates had their own plans in mind (evening out the fees between adults and youth players may come up again). Sure, Sunil Gulati was unnecessarily condescending in his response, but the result was never going to change.

Is there a chance that soccer’s would-be reformers are self-sabotaging? In some cases, maybe. Much of the public discourse is designed more for status (as superior thinker or as victim) than for solutions.

Perhaps that’s not a surprise. For generations, being a soccer fan in the United States has meant rebelling against the norm. We are the “other” — by choice. A lot of soccer fans are like those tedious people we 40-somethings knew in college who used to be into R.E.M. but thought they sold out with Automatic for the People.

myspace-stewie

So as soccer has grown more popular, that hipster “outsider” status is harder to achieve. And we all love victim status as well, which means we need an oppressor. Generations of soccer neglect are harder to personalize than That Guy Who Said Something You Don’t Like on Twitter. Or That Guy Who Had More Impact in the USSF Presidential Election Than You’d Like.

I can’t tell other people how to move forward. I’ve tried, perhaps too hard and too harshly. All I can tell you is how I plan to proceed:

  1. Muting more conversations on Twitter. I still plan to block only the incorrigible few.
  2. Getting back to work on youth soccer issues in particular.

If I had any pull at SiriusXM, I’d lobby to get Eric Wynalda back on the air. If I had any pull at other media outlets, I’d suggest more investigations on where the “change” agenda stands now. And if I had any pull at U.S. Soccer … where do I begin?

If you want change, pick a spot and get to work.

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