Category: soccer

soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Can youth soccer be an afterschool program?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Like many kids who grew up in Athens, Ga., I’m a child of the Athens YMCA. A couple of days a week, we’d pile over to the Y to practice whichever sport was in season — football in the fall, basketball in the winter, then short soccer and softball seasons. Game days were usually Friday or Saturday.

The Y has modernized a bit with the times, giving families a few more choices. You can play soccer in the fall as well as the spring, and they have taekwondo and other programs as well.

The best part — between the Y and the schools, kids can take buses from school.

We have afterschool programs in my area as well. At my school, they can take buses to karate, taekwondo and a private school. At school itself, they have chess, science, cooking, dance and all sorts of things.

Notice anything missing? There’s no soccer.

Instead, parents pick up their kids from these afterschool programs, toss some food down their throats and drive them to soccer practice, sometimes at the schools from which they departed a couple of hours earlier.

And then the parents sigh with resignation when they realize their kids are graduating from the “one practice, one Saturday game” weekly schedule to something more serious.

The net result: They gripe that it’s overkill to have two soccer practices a week. Meanwhile, their kids are in karate five days a week, and they think nothing of it because the dojo picks them up. The parents don’t even see it. And they’re happy to pay for it because their kids have afterschool care.

Those soccer practices, meanwhile, are being run by volunteer parents who may have gone through some U.S. Soccer training program to teach fun drills — excuse me, games — but are poorly equipped to deal with 15 kids who aren’t behaving.

Why aren’t soccer and other youth sports taught in afterschool programs? Why is a volunteer parent a better coach than a part-time PE teacher who might pick up a few extra bucks? And is there a goldmine waiting to be claimed by the first people who set up the soccer equivalents of afterschool karate and taekwondo programs?

3
soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: OK, let’s back up a bit …

Posted on by Beau Dure

It looked so good in my head.

In my U8 team’s first scrimmage, they showed some aptitude for spreading the ball around, avoiding the “mob chasing a ball” mentality of U6s and U7s. I really thought we could build on it and make it a habit with a modified scrimmage that would encourage passing and using the width of the field.

So I put cones down to divide the field into thirds — lengthwise, like lane markers in a pool. We would play a 4-on-4 scrimmage in which, on each team, two players could be in the middle third and one could be in each outside lane.

The protests were immediate:

What are we trying to do? (Play soccer. Really.)

What can I do here on the wing? (Receive passes, then pass back.)

I don’t WANNA be on the wing! (We’re rotating – you’ll get your turn in the middle shortly.)

I don’t wanna wear a yellow penny! (OK, that’s an issue.)

I’d rather be doing math homework! (Oh, because you’re so good at following directions?)

(No, I didn’t actually say that.)

After about two minutes, I gave up on it and decided to use the lane markers for a simple passing drill. Form three lines, one in the middle and one along each line of cones. Each player has to touch the ball before scoring.

So while I struggled to get players into lines, the first group — the wise guys of this team — all ran to the middle of the field and literally touched the ball. Then one guy dribbled down and shot.

I finally got a group that would at least give it a try. A couple of players passed the ball back and forth, and it wound up on the feet of one player who stopped, slightly puzzled. “OK! Good job so far! Now pass it back to the middle.”

So he picked up the ball and started to cock his arm back like Tom Brady.

“No, no … with your feet.”

I gave them a water break, all the while lamenting that I hadn’t been committing this practice to video so I could email it to Claudio Reyna with a whole lot of profanity. (That would’ve been unfair — I can’t expect a youth soccer curriculum to account for kids who don’t know the word “pass” in a soccer context.)

I had already decided to yank the “angle of support” drill off the agenda for the evening. In the time it would’ve taken me to explain that one, two kids would’ve kicked half the team’s balls across the field, two more would’ve started a biology experiment with a couple of crickets they wound on the field, and the others wouldn’t be able to hear me.

First game is Saturday. Then I’ll have two days to figure out how to hold their attention and perhaps even teach a little soccer at the next practice.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Sharks, minnows and reasonable goals

Posted on by Beau Dure

I’ve been writing about soccer on a steady basis for 12 years and irregularly before that. I’m deeply immersed in the issues of the sport in the USA from the national team through the pro leagues down to the youth level.

Now I’ve got another perspective on the game. I have been an assistant coach for two years at the U6 and U7 level. This fall, I’ll be an assistant on a U6 team and the head coach on a U8 team.

Single-Digit Soccer will be a regular SportsMyriad feature in which I talk about some of the issues I have encountered and will encounter. I’ll talk about striking a balance between those who consider soccer at the U5-U9 level a critical development period and those who consider it a glorified play date. It’s the balance of teaching one-touch skills to kids who can’t tie their shoes.

The issues and debates over youth soccer in the teen years are fairly well-documented. Club vs. school.* Club vs. ODP. Perhaps letting kids take a break from overly complicated drills to shoot the ball at those odd objects with netting at either end of the field.

Continue reading →

15
olympic sports, soccer

Tinkering with the 2012 WPS calendar

Posted on by Beau Dure

Big, big issue here. The World Cup took a lot of players away from WPS for a long time this year, and magicJack owner Dan Borislow was none too pleased.

Next year could be even worse. The Olympic final is Aug. 9. Assuming WPS doesn’t want to hold its playoffs without national team players, we have three general options:

  1. Wrap up the season in late June, before national team camps.
  2. Force national team players to return quickly and hold playoffs on the same schedule as this season: Aug. 15, Aug. 18, Aug. 25.
  3. Run the season into September.

Let’s run through a few questions first. I’ll give short answers that might be debatable.

How early do national team players need to leave? This season, the U.S. players left earlier than others, playing their final WPS games May 28. Players from Canada and Sweden played for Western New York on June 3. Players from England, Brazil and New Zealand stuck around until June 12. Japan’s Aya Sameshima made a cameo appearance for Boston that weekend, and given her team’s World Cup victory, it’s difficult to argue that the extra time in the States ruined her preparations.

So the U.S. players spent a full four weeks with the national team before the World Cup. That’s on top of the training they did at other times during the season. But that’s comparable to the U.S. men in 2010, who left their MLS teams after their May 15 games, played the first of their warmup friendlies on May 25, and kicked off in the World Cup on June 12.

European players actually spent a little longer with their clubs. The Champions League final was May 22. The gap between that game and the World Cup still far exceeded the FIFA regulation (PDF): 14 days.

Realistically, assume three or four weeks before the start of the Olympics. The first soccer games are July 25, so playing games through June 30-July 1 should be reasonable.

After the Aug. 9 final, players can physically make it back for midweek games Aug. 15, but they might not be fully recharged and reconnected with their teams until Aug. 25 or so.

SHORT ANSWER: Gone from July 2 to Aug. 15, with players easing back into WPS teams after that.

Can WPS play in September or later? In 2009 and 2011, the league wrapped up by the end of August. That’s an advantage for players who have coaching jobs during the school year. But the 2010 season, which ran through September, didn’t see an exodus of players leaving WPS teams for their coaching jobs.

The media landscape in the fall is jammed with football (the American kind). But Major League Soccer still has good crowds through the gridiron months. Getting space in a print newspaper is one thing, but as we’re often told (especially by DuNord), soccer is the sport of the Internet.

SHORT ANSWER: Yes.

How many games will national team players miss? I heard Philly coach Paul Riley say national team players might be around for only eight of 20 games next season, but I’m hoping I misheard him. There’s simply no reason for that. None whatsoever.

WPS did take a couple of weeks off this season, though a rescheduled game got in the way of a clean break. The Olympics are nearly a week shorter than the World Cup, and national teams shouldn’t need a prolonged “getting to know you” period. If WPS takes two weeks off out of the six weekends that players will be gone, there’s no reason for players to miss more than four games.

SHORT ANSWER: Four, at most.

How many games should WPS teams play? This one is tricky. In 2009, teams played 20. In 2010, they played 24. This year, 18.

That’s comparable to European leagues, though top teams in those leagues also have Champions League games on the schedule. Germany and France play 22. England started with 14 this year.

From a developmental point of view, players need more games. But the national team players will get more games throughout the year. For the rest of the WPS talent pool, there’s no reason teams can’t play friendlies during the Olympic break or elsewhere during the season. Maybe even take a longer Olympic break to play teams from the WPSL, W-League and NCAA.

SHORT ANSWER: 16 might be enough during a year with a World Cup or Olympic competition. No reason not to build back to 20 or more in 2013.

So let’s flesh out the schedule options:

OPTION 1: END SEASON BEFORE OLYMPICS

Working backwards, that means playoff games (assuming the same playoff format) June 20, June 23 and June 30. Regular season ends June 16.

Now let’s say we’ll play a short season of 16 games, condensed into 14 weeks. First games: March 17. Maybe play the first two weeks in southern venues.

OPTION 2: END SEASON RIGHT AFTER OLYMPICS

Playoffs Aug. 15, Aug. 18, Aug. 25. With a two-week Olympic break, the season would look pretty much like this season did, running from April 7 to Aug. 11. With two fewer games in our proposed schedule, we’d have fewer two-game weeks.

Without a two-week break, the league would have 19 weeks, certainly enough for 18 games.

OPTION 3: END SEASON IN SEPTEMBER

Four games in April, four in May, five in June (five weekends), two in July — that’s 15 before the Olympic break. Perhaps the Olympic break could be three weeks, still allowing plenty of time for 14 games at a leisurely game-a-week pace with no midweek games needed.

Restart with regular season games Aug. 18 and 25 to wrap a 16-game season and reintegrate Olympic players with their club teams. Playoffs follow, all wrapping up by Sept. 8.

Thoughts?

9
soccer

A brainstorm on mixing pro and elite amateurs

Posted on by Beau Dure

A unique problem for U.S. soccer, on both the women’s and men’s sides, is that the vast majority of good players between the ages of 18 and 22 are busy with college soccer from August to December. Then they’re in school (and playing unmarketed tournaments) until May.

That leaves a narrow window for those players to participate in any league on the American soccer pyramid — the PDL, the NPSL, the WPSL and the W-League. They have to wrap up early to get their players back to school. (On a related note, congratulations to the league champions determined this weekend — Orange County Waves in the WPSL, the winner of this evening’s Atlanta Silverbacks-Ottawa Fury game in the W-League, and Jacksonville United in the NPSL. The PDL has one more weekend.)

And college players can’t play on pro teams. So if you want to pay your players a few bucks, you can’t have college players alongside them. College players can play against pros, but not with them.

In men’s soccer, the pro/am split isn’t that big a deal. Clubs that want to go pro can do so, either by spending megamillions to join MLS, or a good bit less to play in the NASL or USL Pro.

But in women’s soccer, we’re seeing some rumblings of lower-tier leagues that have already had a couple of pro teams exploring full-fledged pro divisions. The challenge will be getting enough teams willing to make the leap.

If they don’t, here’s a wild idea:

– Spend the summer playing in mixed pro and amateur leagues as we have now.

– In the fall, once the kids have gone back to school, play a Pro Cup. Take all the pro teams in the country, including WPS teams reunited with international stars who spent much of the summer at the Olympics, and play a short season leading to a couple of playoff games.

The advantages:

– The pro teams get enough games to make the season worthwhile.

– College players get to face pros in competition.

– The pro teams will have all their national team players together in a short season that should be perfect for capitalizing on any momentum from the Olympics, World Cup or any other tournament. (While I’m revamping things, I’d also like to lobby for a Copa Americas for Western Hemisphere teams, perhaps in odd non-World Cup years like the Euro championship.)

– Teams that want to just dip their toes into the pro waters can do so, playing amateur teams through much of the summer.

– Between the pro teams and amateur teams, we should have enough teams to split up into regions through most of the regular season, keeping travel costs down.

The necessary disclaimer: I have absolutely no reason to think this is under discussion anywhere. Just throwing it out for people to kick around. So go ahead …

1
soccer, sports culture

MLS All-Stars, overreaction and reaction

Posted on by Beau Dure

Hysterical overreaction is as much a part of the Internet as inappropriate photos and conspiracy theories.

Given that, I’m a little surprised I haven’t heard today from the dude who kept Tweeting at me last week about MLS “fixing” games by playing reserves in the second half … of friendlies. Oh no, it couldn’t be a prudent decision to rest starters and give reserves some experience in a game that won’t count in the standings. It’s a crime.

The Internet is noisy. After any event that draws hype, many people will sound off. And just as the UFC survives to fight another day when a main event is disappointing, so too will MLS survive a round of friendlies in which European elites have basically wiped the field with indifferent, inexperienced or inferior teams.

All that said, MLS fans and the blogopundits are well within their rights to look at last night’s game and ask whether the league has any players capable of hitting the broad side of a barn from the penalty spot.

The league has already set a record for scoreless ties, and it’s not even August, as Steve Davis laments in a sound analysis. Then last night, the MLS All-Stars laid a goose egg.

Yes, Manchester United is one of the world’s best teams, and yes, they’re clearly taking this U.S. tour more seriously than many teams have taken it in the past. Their attacking flair was brilliant last night, and it’s hard to begrudge an All-Star team that never practices together the four goals it conceded to Rooney, Berbatov et al.

Yet United gave the All-Stars plenty of space, appropriately enough for a friendly. No one’s getting “stuck in” on a challenge in a game like this. (Jamison Olave left with an injury, but it wasn’t caused by contact.) The All-Stars, though unfamiliar with each other, completed 86% of their passes and managed 13 shots, two more than a well-oiled Man U machine. Goals? Zero. And it’s not as if Man U’s two keepers had to dig deep to keep the All-Stars at bay.

Can we prove anything from one game? No. Is it one more sad piece of evidence to the well-supported theory that MLS players can knock the ball around all day, just as they do in those ubiquitous possession drills, but can’t put the ball in the net? Certainly looks that way.

And fans have every right to say, while supporting the league in near-record numbers, that GMs should be looking for goal-scorers and coaches should be devoting a bit more time to finishing drills rather than possession exercises.

That’s not an overreaction to one game. The All-Star Game isn’t even the last straw. It’s just a well-publicized example of a legitimate problem. The result — Manchester United winning — doesn’t matter. Overreacting to the game is silly. Reacting is not.

0
soccer, sports culture

Choke! Why there’s no double standard for women’s soccer

Posted on by Beau Dure

Let’s rewrite history, shall we?

1. 1988 World Series: The Oakland A’s choked in Game 1, when Dennis Eckerley got out to an 0-2 count with two out in the ninth and a 4-3 lead but hung a slider that Kirk Gibson, so hobbled he might have been thrown out from left field, hit for a home run. (Sure, Nate Silver lists this as a choke in passing, but we remember Gibson in that situation much more clearly than we remember Eckersley. Silver also points out the ugly aftermath of living with a “choke” — Donnie Moore’s 1989 suicide.)

2. 1982 NCAA Championship: Georgetown gave away the national men’s basketball championship when Fred Brown passed the ball straight to North Carolina’s James Worthy. Oh yeah — some guy named Michael Jordan hit a big shot before that, a shot that some report today as a “buzzer-beater” even though it hit the net with 15 seconds left.

3. 2010 World Cup: Oh boy, did Slovenia and Algeria choke!

Get the picture?

Frankly, “choke” is a term that doesn’t interest me, mostly because I associate it with insecure guys trying to exert some sort of power over the sports they watch. It’s a word for the keyboard warrior and frustrated fan, and it’s not applied with any sort of consistency to either gender or any sport. If you think it doesn’t apply to women, talk to Daniela Hantuchova.

“Choke” is sometimes used as a way of distancing ourselves emotionally from a loss that would otherwise be painful. Our college hoops team lost? Oh, they choked. Our baseball team blew a 5-game lead in September? Choke! Scott Norwood missed a difficult 47-yard field goal — or a “chip shot” in the words of revisionists — that would’ve spared the Buffalo Bills the indignity of being perennial runners-up? Choke!

So in a weird way, yelling “choke!” is just a way of saying you care. Thanks?

3
soccer

Women’s World Cup: Small step for Japan, giant leap for women’s soccer

Posted on by Beau Dure

The penalty shootout wasn’t great, particularly for U.S. fans. But this Women’s World Cup was a wonderful event that demanded attention from around the world and got it.

Certainly Japan, which has suffered so much this year, won’t soon forget it. Neither will the USA, even the cynics who would like to forget it ever happened.

This tournament was full of great teams, great players and great moments:

– Germany got a sellout crowd in Berlin’s giant Olympic Stadium, and Canada gave them a game.

– Mexico, which upset the USA in qualifying, got a draw with eventual group winner England.

– Equatorial Guinea, particularly energetic attacker Anonman, was fun to watch.

– New Zealand was level with eventual winner Japan through much of its opener and got its first World Cup point with two goals in the dying minutes.

– Beautiful cities from Dresden to Augsburg got dressed up for the Cup.

– Controversial at times, Marta is still a player to behold. (Yes, Jacqueline, we’d love her if she were American. Maybe not unconditionally. I haven’t read through all 698 comments to see if anyone made that point.)

– England, a wreck at times, put it all together for a win over the eventual champions and was unlucky to lose in the quarterfinals.

– A smart, skillful Swedish team beat the USA and shook off semifinal disappointment for a well-deserved place on the podium.

– Led by the ageless WUSA/WPS veteran Homare Sawa, Japan showed its skill in a 4-0 rout of Mexico in the group stage, showed its pluck in ousting host Germany and showed its heart in winning the title.

Then there’s the U.S. team. On paper, this was not the best team you’d want to send to a World Cup. Right back Ali Krieger still seems like a newcomer. Left back Amy LePeilbet is out of position. Central midfielder Shannon Boxx doesn’t have the spring in her step she use to have, and she and Carli Lloyd often struggled to maintain the possession essential to the game Pia Sundhage would like to play. U.S. fans knew Lori Chalupny would be dearly missed while the mysterious concussion saga goes on, and Lindsay Tarpley’s injury in a friendly against Japan was especially cruel.

And yet, as they did in 2008 without the injured Wambach, the U.S. players proved to be more than the sum of their parts. Question their skill. Nit-pick their tactics. Never doubt their heart. Americans didn’t realize it, but they were cheering for the overachievers we so often claim to be and love to admire.

For those who need analogies to other sports — imagine if Butler’s Gordon Hayward had hit that shot from a neighboring county to beat a flawed but favored Duke in the 2010 hoops tournament. That’s what happened here, with Sawa as Hayward.

So what does this mean going ahead?

In the USA, repeating one more time, WPS has its own issues. League owners might be able to work things out and harness the goodwill of this great tournament to build a sustainable league. Or we might see the W-League or WPSL step forward as the most viable model. We’ll see.

Globally, this tournament should invigorate the game in Europe, where the Champions League is taking hold and teams are getting more professional. We can only hope Germany will better appreciate its Frauen-Bundesliga, which had players on many of these rosters and is already signing players who made an impact in this tournament. The game’s profile certainly won’t be hurt in Japan, either. And maybe China will be motivated to get back into it.

So don’t look solely at WPS attendance numbers and use that to gauge the health of women’s soccer. Again, WPS has its own issues. Repeat, WPS has its own issues. Repeat …

And one thing this tournament proved is that these games can be thrilling, full of skill and heart, and a lot of fun to watch. It’s not mired in the cynicism that plagued last year’s dreary World Cup final and too many MLS games this year.

Some people, naturally, confuse cynicism with intelligence. (Yes, I read your Tweets.) No one says we as soccer fans and sports fans have to accept that.

If this tournament showed nothing else, it showed this: Women’s soccer is a game worth watching.

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soccer

Women’s soccer boom, version 2.0

Posted on by Beau Dure

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen people ask aloud whether the Women’s World Cup will boost WPS. My rote response on Twitter: WPS has its own issues that no goal in Moenchengladbach can solve.

Perhaps I should explain in more than 140 characters.

1. Big events usually don’t build leagues. The buzz always dies down quickly. The overly ambitious WUSA couldn’t build a sustainable league in the wake of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, and MLS needed to survive many lean years through patient business planning. (Yes, a book on that subject exists.)

2. WPS has had the deck stacked against it. The league launched during a recession, which is obviously bad for sponsorship and attendance. The downsizing mainstream media wouldn’t touch it. AP ignored it. A small band of beat writers (Craig Stouffer, Jeff Di Veronica, William Bretherton and others I apologize for missing) got out and paid attention.

The good news was that a hardy band of indie media — Jenna Pel, Jeff Kassouf and Jennifer Doyle, along with ESPN’s Jacqueline Purdy and the enterprising staff of Our Game magazine — jumped into the vacuum and frankly everyone’s concepts of women’s soccer. (Suffice to say I’ll be reading a lot more of Jenna’s Frauen-Bundesliga notes this year after touring Germany and seeing the league’s players in action on several national teams.) They’ll be around whether WPS sticks around or not.

3. We don’t know yet whether magicJack owner Dan Borislow is saving or killing the league. Borislow bought the Washington Freedom, moved it to South Florida an renamed it after his company. For that, he can’t be faulted — plenty of people in the D.C. area have the money and the supposed interest in women’s soccer to have stepped up to the plate and kept the Freedom in place, and they did not do it.

Borislow and the Sahlen family, which moved its W-League team up into WPS as the Western New York Flash, kept the league at a viable six teams. They also showed the will to splash plenty of cash on players. The Sahlens signed Marta and a sizable chunk of the Canadian national team. Borislow literally has the spine of the U.S. team — Hope Solo, Christie Rampone, Shannon Boxx and Abby Wambach.

The Flash settled neatly into WPS. Borislow, on the other hand, has been feuding with the league all season over everything from maintaining a Web site to putting up signage for sponsors. (He says he’s willing to do both but that the league makes it too expensive or too difficult.) He has been defiant through multiple fines and suspensions.

And magicJack has not been a typical pro team in many other senses. Coach Mike Lyons was reassigned after a couple of games, and the head coaching role has been assumed by a revolving cast of assistant coaches, players and Borislow himself. (Borislow already is the team’s PR contact, and it’s unclear whether Briana Scurry, the GM at the start of the season, is still playing much of a role.) Players have been only intermittently available to the media, and when you talk with them, they all give pat answers about how their owner is a sweet guy who just has his own way of doing things.

The cynics would say they don’t want to rock the boat when they have perks such as nice condos near the beach. Borislow has been quite willing to send players packing when they fall out of favor for whatever reason, but so far, no one has left the magicJack organization and vented about anything.

WPS has expansion prospects. But the questions are these:

– Will anyone be put off by an owner who has demonstrated such contempt for the league office?

– Will anyone be willing to spend the money to compete with someone who spends like the New York Yankees of WPS? Even in the middle of the season, magicJack simply bought Megan Rapinoe — yes, the Megan Rapinoe whose crosses in this World Cup have become the stuff of legend — from Philadelphia, which has been a viable contender this season.

– Will some owners prefer the business models in the W-League and the WPSL? The main drawback in those leagues is the schedule, which is far too short because of draconian restrictions on the college players who must fill out the talent pool. But a couple of teams have tested professional models in those leagues, and perhaps there would be enough to break away and play a season of a reasonable length. Even back in the mid-2000s, players like England’s Kelly Smith and France’s Marinette Pichon hung around in the States to give the W-League a whirl.

MLS succeeded by imposing a top-down single-entity structure with a salary cap, containing costs and putting all owners in the same economic boat. That might not work for women’s soccer — it only worked in MLS because Philip Anschutz, Lamar Hunt and Robert Kraft stuck with it after everyone else bailed out.

No matter which leagues and teams survive the Darwinian battle of business models now underway, someone has to have the patience (and deep pockets) of Anschutz and the practicality of Hunt to make this work. They paved the way for sensible owners who have made soccer work in Seattle, Portland and even the long-derided Kansas City market. A few owners opening their wallets with starry eyes after another Wambach goal or Solo save in Germany won’t translate into a sustainable league.

All that said, as Pia Sundhage says in nearly every press conference, the glass is half-full. The USA has shown it can fall in love with women’s soccer more than once. The ratings for Sunday’s final may well beat the ratings for baseball’s All-Star Game.

And if that attracts a wave of patient, rational investors with reasonable expectations, pro women’s soccer will be here to stay.

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