You can't compare the US soccer program and England's program. It's like apples to oranges.That's ridiculous. The licenses are just as expensive in England and it hasn't held their national team back.
US Youth Development
- Thread starter QuigrNYCFC
- Start date
you can compare it, because the english people come here and corrupt our youth system.
still up there...if gonna pay alot i might as well pay to learn italian and travel to italy to go to coverciano and get coaching degree there
English soccer culture and US soccer culture are completely different animals. Neither fee amount is acceptable.
We're not talking about coaching youth soccer in a country with over a century of soccer history/popularity and the best and most profitable domestic league on the planet.
It's not the same environment.
yet, they're basically at the same level. and the english have been doing it since day 1.
We are not at the same level as England. England has their own issues but to compare us to an English side that has finished top of their group in qualifying is a little bit of a stretch.
In Iceland, every coach U4 and up is UEFA certified, every u10 and up has at least a UEFA B license. US Soccer has to stop trying to make $$ from courses and make them as cheap, available and high quality as possible.
Good article which sum up one of the the problems with youth academies in the USA.
https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/so...-mens-national-team-fc-dallas-academy-problem
https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/so...-mens-national-team-fc-dallas-academy-problem
The free FC Dallas academy and NYCFC Academy are part of the solution, not part of the problem. Now that these academies are starting to field U12 teams we have a system in which the top prospects in each MLS metro area have an opportunity to play and train with top coaches and programs for free (probably free-ish). US Soccer's failure in 2017 is an inditement of US Youth Soccer structural problems from 10 years ago, not today.
NYCFC/MLS has to figure out a way to get $$ from the Geo Reyna transfer bound to happen other than having his father be the GM. SKC just signed a 15 year old -- that might be the answer.
There’s a really good article on The U17 reaction to the Senior team’s loss and interview with Durkin. Evidently he’s been loaned out all season to Richmond and credits those minutes with his newfound comfort in the 6 position and his preparation to fight for a 1st team spot next year. It reinforces that NYCFC is once again doing a disservice to the lower bench players by not having a legitimate USL connection.
England have always (well, except for the occasional blip) been strong qualifiers. The thing that makes the English national side a joke is that it absolutely crumbles - or to be more accurate, it totally loses all creativity and intelligence - when playing in major tournaments. That's not just down to mentality, either; it's no small part down to having very few players who can light up a pitch and create things out of nothing, but either way you shouldn't just look at England based on their qualifying results. Both teams have their own problems, and while the problems are different both of them could be helped by improving youth training.
I'm not a fan of pay-to-play academies so maybe I'm biased with my conclusions, but I would argue that this only goes so far. Sure, the NYCFC Academy et al. give you "a system in which the top prospects in each MLS metro area have an opportunity to play and train" etc etc but all the same the majority of their recruitment - at least in NYCFC's case - ultimately comes through pay-to-play feeder teams. How many high potential kids are there right now playing on the streets or representing local district youth teams where they can play for free coached by one of the player's dads on a voluntary basis, who will never be found by NYCFC because they can't pay to play for a bigger-name side and will get no exposure at the level they are at?
I spent years running a youth soccer club upstate. What we did and what I am sure at least some of the feeder teams do is run leagues below the competitive level with all volunteer parent coaches for players of all abilities to play cheaply. (We found people don't value free and kids/parents don't go to practices if they aren't paying something). The coaches scout the games of these 'house' leagues for players with the potential to develop into competitive soccer players and try to move them into the competitive program -- kids with the potential don't go into competitive level for a lot of reasons -- one of which could be financial.
With all of its problems, US Youth soccer is predominantly made up of clubs who build a pyramid structure with as wide a base as possible. Unlike other countries/cultures, there isn't a ton of street/pickup ball but you are right than everyone who is becoming good by playing pickup only may never hookup with a Club. The biggest problem 10 years ago was that the only way to play soccer at the highest level between the ages of roughly 12-17 was pay to play. If you couldn't then maybe you would eventually get an opportunity to play at a high level at the College/Junior College level, but by then it is late for many players to develop into true professional level players. If you live in an MLS metro area, that biggest problem from 10 years ago is not nearly as bad as it was.
Wouldn’t this be solved by paying a handful of “in the know” guys a relatively small amount of money to scout the parks and schoolyards of the tri-state area? It shouldn’t be that hard.
Yes, exactly. For all the failings of the youth systems of western European countries (by which I basically mean England, as it's the only one I know in a decent way, but I believe the system is fairly ubiquitous to this side of the continent) I would say that one thing that is absolutely done right is that it feels like the system is set up - and this is something the system almost created by itself, rather than being planned - so that if a young kid has enough talent and plays for a youth club at some level then he WILL get scouted and be invited to trial for a professional club, and so become part of the system that will set him up with the chances he needs if he capable of taking them.
The whole thing works like a spider's web, too. The pro teams will have one or two dozen part-time scouts trawling the local youth leagues every Saturday and Sunday, sure, but also each pro team will have a group of amateur youth teams they heavily subsidise to act as local talent pools, and each of those teams will have unpaid scouts watching games at an even lower level. Then on top of that, it always seems like at least one kid's dad at even the most junior level will know a guy who knows a guy who used to scout for one of those teams, and even if that six-degrees-of-separation link does not exist then if a player is tearing up a junior league then you can bet that he will get talked about by a dad who saw him roast his own son alive etc etc and so even the leagues where scouts can't habitually attend will occasionally see a scout appear on the back of a rumour that has been passed to him. It really is set up so that if you have real talent, you WILL get scouted, even if you need to get passed up the chain two or three times before a professional scout sees you. It's for exactly this reason that you occasionally hear stories of, say, Barca signing up a 4 year old - because players with the talent will always rise to the surface in a set-up where scouts are EVERYWHERE.
The other thing I find to be insanity about the US system - and I understand why this happens, but I hate it all the same - is that each MLS club is only allowed a 75 mile (or whatever it is) exclusivity area. Sure, I accept that that means that maybe 70% of the population of the country is inside those areas, and I understand that something needs to be done to let USL/PDL/whoever else clubs have a chance too, but it really feels to me like the clubs with the money to invest should be actively encouraged to set talent centres up in areas further away from the bigger teams in order to make sure that players aren't slipping the net in those areas. I get that there are always going to be logistical issues and so on, and that the system may have to be thought out quite carefully to avoid it becoming a white elephant ridden with problems, but there really is no excuse for large swathes of the country going without active recruitment of young players.
This is an underlying truth that only about 10% of the people debating the issue right now seem to grasp. Even Sciaretta's article about the lost generation discusses that one reason we have an abundance of good young players after 5 years of close to nothing is that's when the various youth academies started in earnest.
In other words, things have gotten a lot better over the last 15 years or so, but we are only just beginning to see those players graduate into the professional ranks. That's not to say the current setup is without flaws, but there has been, and continues to be, a lot of improvement. It just takes time for the benefits to flow.
When thinking about how we can set up a system where the academies are finding and developing the best players outside the pay-to-play model, I go back how this country usually gets things done. We create financial incentives to motivate the desired behavior. If you create a system where the academies can profit from finding and developing the best players, you will see them materialize out of thin air to do it.
