This series hasn’t taken off as I thought it would, so I’m not going to do all 32 teams.
But we just have to do one more …
James Bond and British Rail
Python and Holy Grail
Love Actually
If we can win the Cup
We’ll tear our Brexit up
But we’ll more likely (bleep) it up
Mo-ost def’nitely
Two vital reads today …
At SoccerWire, RSD podcast guest Charles Boehm chats with U.S. Soccer Director of Coaching Education Programs Frank Tschan and Manager of Coaching Education Dan Russell about coaching education and rondos.
One comment from Russell about the former, specifically whether the Federation can reach everyone:
It’s not just U.S. Soccer, it’s not just those within these walls, it’s coaching education reaching out to our state associations, reaching out to US Club, US Youth, United Soccer Coaches, to be a part of this program, this movement as we like to refer to it, to offer more grassroots education opportunities, get more people into the pathway and offer them opportunities to progress within the pathway.
The answer here seems obvious. If U.S. Soccer can’t reach everyone, then maybe it needs to give more respect to training programs from United Soccer Coaches and AYSO.
On the “war on rondos,” something Charlie has already addressed, Tschan gives an answer that’s far too long to quote. I’ll attempt to summarize and translate:
Holistic grassroots environment directional purpose
But he did not say “leverage our core competencies” or “monetize our assets,” at least.
To try a bit more seriously, it appears Tschan is saying pro coaches could maybe use things that grassroots coaches shouldn’t. And grassroots coaches need to listen up and do “reality-based” exercises that include going in a direction.
Objections:
It’s one thing to point out that you might not want to do rondos to the exclusion of everything else. You really don’t want to do anything to the exclusion of everything else. The U12s who can’t receive a pass also can’t shoot or play a long pass to switch the point of attack. If you spend the first six years of player development dribbling and juggling, you’ll have a bunch of kids who can dribble and juggle, but they can’t play soccer.
With that rant over, let’s switch to another problem that isn’t directly related but also demonstrates what can happen when youth soccer is in the hands of stubborn bureaucrats — the sobering overemphasis on academy recruitment in England. From When Saturday Comes:
The academy of a current Premier League club – renowned for bringing young “local” boys through their system – used [a loophole] to bring in players from distances of 120 miles away. This meant two-hour round trips just for training on school nights, four-hour round journeys for children for “home” matches and longer for away games.
Aside from the travelling involved, many young hopefuls don’t realise that academies only really pinpoint one or two players from each cohort that are likely to make the grade but they need a team of other players around them. As such, the attrition rate for academy players is eye-watering, with less than one per cent becoming professional players. …
[T]here are more serious consequences – a research study carried out by Teesside University in 2015 found that over half of the players released were suffering “psychological distress”. There have been stories of players committing suicide and others turning to drug dealing after being dropped from academies.
As with the rondos, perhaps letting kids see there’s more one direction to go isn’t a bad thing.
This is the first in a series of “case studies” examining how a particular club, country or other organization runs youth soccer. It’ll be limited a bit because I, like too many people who’ve come through the American education system, don’t have a lot of foreign language skills.
So, of course, we’ll start with England. Common language. Relatively easy to find information. Somewhat. Actually, I’m happy to crowd-source here. This is based on deep dives online and a couple of conversations, but if you can point me toward other information, I’ll update this post.
I’m trying to get beyond what’s supposedly obvious. We all “know” professional European clubs have academies, and the smaller ones make money selling players to the larger ones. And there’s no “pay to play.” Right?
Well, maybe.
Here we go …
THE EPPP
That’s the Elite Player Performance Plan, which changed everything in 2012. It’s a joint project of the FA, the Premier League, the Football League and the ever-popular “other stakeholders.” The major leagues stem from this plan, as do the three defined “phases”: Foundation (U9-U11), Youth Development (U12-U16) and Professional Development (U17-U23). It also defines the four academy categories — a Category 1 academy needs a full-time “Coach Developer” and sport scientist, while a Category 2 academy can make its Coach Developer part-time, to give just two of many examples.
Want more rules?
Training compensation is also spelled out in vivid detail, and please note the following: “in all the above cases, the Training Club held a valid licence to operate an Academy in accordance with these Rules (or to operate a Football Academy or Centre of Excellence in accordance with the Rules pertaining to youth development which these Rules replaced)” (ENPP 275.6). So if I’m reading this correctly (and my reading matches what I’ve heard elsewhere), clubs only get training compensation if they operate an Academy.
What’s an Academy? From my reading, it’s a club with a license to operate in one of the four categories mentioned below.
Which means, if the same standard applied (however inexactly) to the USA, Crossfire Premier might have trouble getting money on the Yedlin sale.
See the ENPP documents in 100 pages of glory from one of the links here.
THE TOP LEVEL
All pro clubs have academies that compete in special leagues.
Almost.
Start at the very top — England has 24 clubs that meet the Category 1 criteria, and they get two privileges:
Premier League clubs are also responsible for the education (school, not soccer) of all full-time scholarship players aged 16-19.
Category 2 clubs — most of the rest of the EPL and Championship along with a couple of League One and League Two clubs — play in the U23 Professional Development League and the U18 Professional Development League. One major exception: Huddersfield is moving to Category 4, which means it’s shutting down everything below U17. Also, Bournemouth as of a couple of years ago was the only Category 3 club in the EPL.
Category 3 has most of the rest of the clubs in England’s traditional top-four League tiers, plus a couple of fifth-tier (National League) clubs and even one from the sixth (York). Category 4, as mentioned above, is only U17 up. But both Category 3 and Category 4 play in the Youth Alliance.
I found three League clubs — Wycombe (returning?), Crawley and Brentford — that have closed their academies and, as far as I could tell, not re-opened them. It’s hard to say, though, because some clubs seem to close and re-open academies frequently. See Torquay, currently a fifth-tier club. Clubs with no full-fledged academy may have “football education academies” for people age 16-19 looking to go to university in the UK or USA. Yeovil, now in League Two, closed its academy for a couple of years.
I only found two Category 4 clubs — Newport County and Dagenham & Redbridge. The latter moved to Category 4 after being relegated from League Two. The country certainly has more than two, but others don’t seem to advertise it — “Hey! We’re Category 4!”
Younger leagues
There’s also a “games programme” for U9 through U11 teams from Category 1 and Category 2 academies, then a separate one for Category 3 academies. Those leagues will not have published league tables, and travel should be (but isn’t always) less than one hour. Futsal is a big deal in winter. (ENPP 123-125)
In this “Foundation” phase, players may still play for school teams.
At the early “Youth Development” phase (U12 through U14), they still don’t produce league tables. Travel time is roughly limited to two hours.
At U15/U16, the games programmes are split into Category 1 and Category 2, and they still don’t produce league tables.
Another note on these age groups: The maximum number of players in each academy drops through the years: 30 in each year from U9 through U14, 20 in U15 or U16, then 15 per year. So a club could cut players and still have a U18 group developed entirely within the club. (Given the scope of recruiting, that probably doesn’t happen often.)
THE NEXT LEVEL
There’s also a National League U19 league for clubs that are non-League — in other words, not in the Football League but rather the National League.
Let’s try that again: There’s a National League U19 competition for clubs in the fifth and sixth tiers. Some clubs have multiple teams; some have none. I also counted 10-15 first- through fourth-tier clubs that entered a team either directly or through an affiliated program (“West Ham United Foundation,” etc.). The competition also has more than 20 teams from seventh-tier clubs (Northern Premier, Isthmian and Southern top tiers), more than 20 from the eighth tier, eight clubs from the ninth tier (Wessex, Hellenic, Spartan South Midlands, etc.), one from some sort of youth academy (FootballCV Reds) and one college team (Manchester Metropolitan University).
The latter shows the goal at this level. A handful of players will get a shot in a pro academy as a young adult. Others are aiming for education, perhaps with a scholarship in the USA.
One sample program here: Dartford FC, currently in the sixth-tier National League South. They’ve partnered with a school that’s literally next door to their home ground, Leigh Academy. They also have a pre-academy that reaches down to U7, with some players still playing for local club teams and others signed exclusively for the pre-academy teams. The site mentions prices — £30-50 per month plus playing kit costs for 1 1/2 to 3 training hours per week.
THE NEXT NEXT LEVEL
The Junior Premier League has an ambitious goal to be a bridge between the grassroots game and the pro game. Its clubs are a mix of pro academy affiliates and independent youth organizations.
REC-PLUS
It’s not quite the Wild West as it is in the USA. Leagues can apply to be recognized as an FA Charter Standard League. One interesting criterion: An FA Charter Standard League must be “linked” to another league — youth-to-adult, mini-to-youth, adult-to-vet, adult-to-adult (promotion/relegation).
To find a place to play, there’s a “Full Time” site with searches for leagues, clubs and teams. Then the clubs can try to find each other for friendlies through a non-FA site.
These clubs are diverse. You have Essex Road Giants, which was founded in 2013 to “get young children into football and off the streets” and planned a four-day trip to see all 20 Premier League stadia. Then Crown and Manor FC sounds a bit like Boys & Girls Clubs — “a safe haven for boys and young men” offering football, table tennis and other activities, where football players are required to go to at least one educational activity per week and parents better behave if they go to games. A more Americanized entry is Soccerscool FC, where you can get a franchise or take a “free taster class” before talking about prices. They use the “play-practice coaching method,” attempting to have the freedom and creativity of street football (soccer?) while developing technical skills.
Can you be in an academy and play in one of these leagues? Camden and Regent’s Park Youth League says if you’re with a Premier League or Football League academy, you can’t play, but if you’re with an academy in Steps 1-6 of the league system (fifth tier on down), you can.
Also note from that league: The age group cutoff is August 31, NOT birth year. That’s also true in the FA Youth Cup (see section 15j). So that argument that U.S. Soccer had to change its age groups to birth year because the “rest of the world” does it that way? Yeah, not so much.
“ORGANIZED PICKUP”
“Just Play!” is a national effort to do what more local U.S. clubs should do — reserve some field space, send out a coach just to organize things (and maybe identify some talented players), and just let players play in a low-stress environment.
The site is a searchable directory of these pickup sessions and local clubs. So it’s marvelously open-ended. I did a couple of different searches and came up with some youth clubs in Highbury and an organized weekly kickabout in Torquay.
COST
A couple of costs are already mentioned above. Here’s a sample of a few others that contribute to what a youth player is paying:
All of this is obviously much lower than the cost of a typical U.S. travel soccer experience. The main mitigating factors appear to be (A) geography and (B) low pay for coaches.
Next case study: How can I do this more efficiently?
You’ve read about the pro/rel pros, the history of the U.S./Canada debate, and the major players in the U.S. (including U.S. Soccer).
Now it’s time to read about why promotion/relegation can be a bad idea.
Yes, promotion/relegation has pros and cons. That’s heresy in some quarters.
But what doesn’t have pros and cons? The U.S. sports system has pros and cons. Capitalism has pros and cons. Representative democracy has pros and cons. Going outside has pros and cons. We simply have to weigh them and decide what’s best.
Pretending that pro/rel makes everything better is simply dishonest. If you read all this and decide pro/rel is the best system in Europe (probable), the best system for U.S. amateur leagues (also probable), the best system for U.S. lower divisions (quite plausible) and the best system for the entire U.S. pyramid (more problematic, but not easily dismissed), that’s your prerogative.
So let’s take a look …
PRO/REL CONS: GLOBAL
Con #1: Can’t count on division status when planning long-term investment.
See Reading, which will expand … or not … well, maybe … if they can win their way into the Premier League.
“But smaller clubs will invest in their academies to produce players to compete,” we hear. Wrong. And if you’ve read Raphael Honigstein’s Das Reboot: How German Soccer Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World, you know the federation had to force the 36 Bundesliga clubs (well, not all of them, but they felt compelled to impose the rule) to run academies. They weren’t all happy about it.
* * * *
Con #2: “Pure” pro/rel based on “sporting merit” usually takes a back seat to “other criteria,” anyway.
England is the birthplace of soccer and the birthplace of pro/rel. So take a look at what they’re doing with their women’s leagues: Top tier will go pro-only, second tier for semipros. And that’s perfectly legal under FIFA Statutes, Article 9, which a lot of PRZ (Pro/Rel Zealots) incorrectly cite as proof that the U.S. system violates FIFA’s holy word.
This isn’t something new. Consider how England did pro/rel between its amateur (“non-League”) and professional leagues for generations. The last-place team in the last League division stood for re-election against everyone who wanted in. Usually, that last-place team stayed in.
Then there’s the Netherlands. If someone can explain the contortions they’ve gone through in the last few years to try to institute pro/rel between the amateurs and pros better than Wikipedia has, please tell me.
And if you want to go back a ways, join Dan Loney for a deep dive into the erratic history of pro/rel in Brazil, which rather thoroughly refutes the Deloitte claim that no country with a “closed league” has won the World Cup. I’ll add one thing: Before you complain that Dan focused only on the state leagues, bear in mind that Brazil’s national league didn’t start until 1959.
* * * *
Con #3: People who have nothing to do with the soccer side of the business can lose their jobs.
Farewell, Aston Villa employees. Goodbye, Newcastle backroom staff. Have fun collecting unemployment, locals who sell food, merchandise, tickets, etc.
Sometimes it’s years of mismanagement than lead to relegation. Sometimes it’s a couple of injuries and one bad bounce. The flip side of that wonderful moment when the ball fell to the foot of Carlisle United goalkeeper Jimmy Glass is that Scarborough went out of the League, which in those days was a horrifying drop.
“But that’s capitalism,” the PRZ have argued over the years. Sure. And it’s why capitalism is regulated and constantly reformed. Look, we all went through our libertarian phase in high school or college, but at some point, you have to grow up and realize we aren’t in ancient Rome giving thumbs-ups and thumbs-downs for our morbid entertainment.
* * * *
Con #4: Pressure creates ugly soccer.
How do you make someone miss a shot in basketball? You ramp up the pressure. Even Woody Harrelson knows that …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgJ2CaTfaxU
What do you think of when you think of do-or-die situations in knockout tournaments and relegation battles? Beautiful plays? Or “grit”?
The latter. And yet the PRZ tell us over and over that the USA will suddenly learn how to play with skill and verve.
* * * *
Con #5: Clubs make “survival” their only goal.
Self-explanatory.
* * * *
Con #6: Clubs in relegation danger have little incentive to give young players a chance.
Again, the PRZ insist that pro/rel is the key factor in player development. But in which country are you more likely to see young players thrown into the fray and given a chance? England, where clubs live in constant fear of relegation? Or in the USA, where clubs near the bottom of the table can start building for next year?
* * * *
PRO/REL CONS: SPECIFIC TO THE USA/CANADA
Con #1: Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits!
You think MLS owners who’ve made nine-figure investments (add up expansion fees for newer owners, capital calls for older owners, stadiums, academies, etc.) are going to go quietly if they’re told their investments are going to be at risk of being devalued?
* * * *
Con #2: The PRZ have poisoned the well.
Take a look, if you happen to be unfamiliar with the last 15 years or so of public discourse on the topic.
* * * *
Con #3: The USA and Canada have unique challenges with soccer fans spread over a giant land mass.
I’ll wholeheartedly agree with one thing in the NASL lawsuit — the notion that a second division has to be in three time zones is ridiculous. (The way they’ve argued it is hilarious — gee, you mean England doesn’t require teams in three time zones? — but that’s another rant.)
The USA was hostile to soccer for generations. Read … well, anything — David Wangerin’s books, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism, Soccer Against the Enemy, etc.
In some ways, it might be easier to build up pro leagues if we built them around pockets of soccer fans — Cascadia, California, the mid-Atlantic, etc. But then those leagues would struggle to get TV deals, and we’d leave nothing for fans in the rest of the country. If Kansas City can fill its stadium for MLS games, then Kansas City should have a danged team.
Pro/rel would put us in danger of removing a major market from the top division — Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Washington, etc. That’s not the case in England, where it’s virtually impossible to be more than 150 miles from a Premier League club unless you’re in Cornwall or unless you’re at the very fringe of East Anglia during a down period for Norwich and Ipswich.
* * * *
CONCLUSION
So do the pros outweigh the cons?
I’m on record as saying yes, with a whole lot of asterisks. I’m disappointed when MLS commissioner Don Garber — who is surely speaking for a strong majority of MLS owners — brushes it aside.
But any good system is going to have to account for as many of these issues as possible. Figure out a way to mitigate the financial risks, not just for unsympathetic oligarchs (not all of whom are horrible people) but also for people who work in MLS club offices. Come up with a format that adds excitement without leaving us with a bunch of grim, grinding soccer games.
Piece of cake, right? Especially when we’re having such rational discussions about it.
In the soccer equivalent of watching an aging heavyweight champion win a split decision over an outclassed journeyman, the U.S. women beat England 1-0 thanks to a Lauren Holiday cross, an Alex Morgan goal, and an errant flag.
The general themes were:
Here’s how it played out on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Sarah_Gehrke/status/566313050182279168
https://twitter.com/TheStuartPearce/status/566336053460860929
(Maybe they knew England was going to be uncharacteristically passive today?)
https://twitter.com/Sarah_Gehrke/status/566335970799521792
(Somewhere, message boards exploded …)
https://twitter.com/Sarah_Gehrke/status/566336076026220545
(People liked the DiCicco-Whitehill point/counterpoint. As did I.)
https://twitter.com/emmalucywhitney/status/566338897052200960
https://twitter.com/Sarah_Gehrke/status/566346085372006401
(Commentators — I forget which ones specifically — faulted Holiday and Brian for being flat. So that tandem didn’t work at all against an attacking French team, and it was caught out by a non-aggressive English team. But it’s great against Martinique.)
https://twitter.com/Sarah_Gehrke/status/566346283599011840
https://twitter.com/thrace/status/566353760851869696
(Yay! We … lost by fewer goals!)
Having failed in my effort to explain the World Cup vote using When Harry Met Sally, I’ll now explain it using a scene from NewsRadio in which Dave (Dave Foley) is England, the USA and Australia, while Bill (Phil Hartman) is every FIFA voter who claimed to be voting for said countries.
In this episode, all employees secretly told Dave they were voting for him as news director. The results: Lisa (Maura Tierney) won a unanimous vote.
Bill: Lisa and you were both strong candidates. There was really no way to choose between you two.
Dave: Then why did every single person vote against me?
Bill: Joe voted using a random number generator. Beth voted against you because Lisa gets fewer phone calls and doesn’t like coffee. Matthew is a lifelong Republican, so he had no choice.
Dave: And why didn’t you vote for me?
Bill: I still think I did. I guess this is one of those things we’ll never know the full truth.
You can also watch the non-embeddable video or get the Season 4 DVD, which is probably the best of the show’s excellent run.
You may have heard something about this game.
Your hosts are Beau Dure and Jenna Pel, who covers the worldwide women’s game at All White Kit. Others from our rotating band of panelists may stop by.
USA-England, 2:30 p.m. ET
ABC/ESPN Deportes/Univision
[iframe http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=c13556fd6a 500 600]
Duresport.com 