Travel Soccer teams around NOVA let's discuss

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When Claudio Reyna unveiled the U.S. Soccer curriculum, he warned against "overdribbling." A bunch of coaches muttered that it seemed like a strange thing to discourage. He pointed out that if you watch Barcelona, you don't see a bunch of people taking 10 touches on the ball. It's one- or two-touch, then pass.

All things in moderation, really.

Obviously, you did not read the prior link with Thierry Henry (Barcelona player) and Mia Hamm...that is true with Barcelona UNTIL they are in top third attacking portion of the field. Then- they let their forwards do their thing- take in players, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed that the parents who hate the dribbling emphasis the most are people you would think are probably the most sophisticated about soccer. We have a dad from Bolivia who screams "One touch! One touch!" all the time. I don't know what to think -- I can see both sides.

NEWSFLASH Americans--every with a foreign accent or S.American is NOT a soccer expert.

Idiots pay lots of $ to coaches with fake resumes that claim to have played with top teams too. It is well known in the soccer community

We have a dad in our Rec team that made (and was found out) comoletely false claims about his National team status in his home country. Quite comical actually.

Im drawing a blank but this is exactly what one of our National team players was talking about.

Rampant in travel programs. You might be just paying $ to somebody who doesn't know much more than any other HS player.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed that the parents who hate the dribbling emphasis the most are people you would think are probably the most sophisticated about soccer. We have a dad from Bolivia who screams "One touch! One touch!" all the time. I don't know what to think -- I can see both sides.

Of brother. Tell him to shut his fat trap.

[Anonymous]

One touch passing doesn't help your kid in US soccer when they are young. The coach keeps telling me what a smart player my son is because he can find passing lanes, will try to give and go, and knows where to be. Unfortunately, there are two or three fast aggressive kids who either dribble past or kick ahead and chase the ball on the team. So my son will feed them and run forward but then they never pass the ball back to him or center the ball even if he is in front of the goal standing there calling for it. The coach loves to have the defenders kick the ball forward (like kick ball) so it is a free for all. My son is now getting less and less playing time. I don't care if his team wins or not, I just want him to play on a team where his team mates pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One touch passing doesn't help your kid in US soccer when they are young. The coach keeps telling me what a smart player my son is because he can find passing lanes, will try to give and go, and knows where to be. Unfortunately, there are two or three fast aggressive kids who either dribble past or kick ahead and chase the ball on the team. So my son will feed them and run forward but then they never pass the ball back to him or center the ball even if he is in front of the goal standing there calling for it. The coach loves to have the defenders kick the ball forward (like kick ball) so it is a free for all. My son is now getting less and less playing time. I don't care if his team wins or not, I just want him to play on a team where his team mates pass.

Christ- in this scenario it doesn't even sound like they are playing positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One touch passing doesn't help your kid in US soccer when they are young. The coach keeps telling me what a smart player my son is because he can find passing lanes, will try to give and go, and knows where to be. Unfortunately, there are two or three fast aggressive kids who either dribble past or kick ahead and chase the ball on the team. So my son will feed them and run forward but then they never pass the ball back to him or center the ball even if he is in front of the goal standing there calling for it. The coach loves to have the defenders kick the ball forward (like kick ball) so it is a free for all. My son is now getting less and less playing time. I don't care if his team wins or not, I just want him to play on a team where his team mates pass.

Christ- in this scenario it doesn't even sound like they are playing positions.

The kid should learn to properly trap and control the ball before he attempts any type of 'one-touch'.

Do some of these people even know the terms they bandy about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When Claudio Reyna unveiled the U.S. Soccer curriculum, he warned against "overdribbling." A bunch of coaches muttered that it seemed like a strange thing to discourage. He pointed out that if you watch Barcelona, you don't see a bunch of people taking 10 touches on the ball. It's one- or two-touch, then pass.

All things in moderation, really.

Obviously, you did not read the prior link with Thierry Henry (Barcelona player) and Mia Hamm...that is true with Barcelona UNTIL they are in top third attacking portion of the field. Then- they let their forwards do their thing- take in players, etc.

Yep. They get it up field and hand it off to Messi and let him perform his magic (which includes lots of dribbling).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When Claudio Reyna unveiled the U.S. Soccer curriculum, he warned against "overdribbling." A bunch of coaches muttered that it seemed like a strange thing to discourage. He pointed out that if you watch Barcelona, you don't see a bunch of people taking 10 touches on the ball. It's one- or two-touch, then pass.

All things in moderation, really.

Obviously, you did not read the prior link with Thierry Henry (Barcelona player) and Mia Hamm...that is true with Barcelona UNTIL they are in top third attacking portion of the field. Then- they let their forwards do their thing- take in players, etc.

Take it up with Reyna.

Henry passed brilliantly with the Red Bulls, FWIW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When Claudio Reyna unveiled the U.S. Soccer curriculum, he warned against "overdribbling." A bunch of coaches muttered that it seemed like a strange thing to discourage. He pointed out that if you watch Barcelona, you don't see a bunch of people taking 10 touches on the ball. It's one- or two-touch, then pass.

All things in moderation, really.

Obviously, you did not read the prior link with Thierry Henry (Barcelona player) and Mia Hamm...that is true with Barcelona UNTIL they are in top third attacking portion of the field. Then- they let their forwards do their thing- take in players, etc.

Take it up with Reyna.

Henry passed brilliantly with the Red Bulls, FWIW.

Red Bulls vs Barcelona. Seriously? MLS is where the come out to pasture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When Claudio Reyna unveiled the U.S. Soccer curriculum, he warned against "overdribbling." A bunch of coaches muttered that it seemed like a strange thing to discourage. He pointed out that if you watch Barcelona, you don't see a bunch of people taking 10 touches on the ball. It's one- or two-touch, then pass.

All things in moderation, really.

Obviously, you did not read the prior link with Thierry Henry (Barcelona player) and Mia Hamm...that is true with Barcelona UNTIL they are in top third attacking portion of the field. Then- they let their forwards do their thing- take in players, etc.

Take it up with Reyna.

Henry passed brilliantly with the Red Bulls, FWIW.

Red Bulls vs Barcelona. Seriously? MLS is where the come out to pasture.

For all of his talk--even Klinsmann is urging his best National team players to train overseas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One touch passing doesn't help your kid in US soccer when they are young. The coach keeps telling me what a smart player my son is because he can find passing lanes, will try to give and go, and knows where to be. Unfortunately, there are two or three fast aggressive kids who either dribble past or kick ahead and chase the ball on the team. So my son will feed them and run forward but then they never pass the ball back to him or center the ball even if he is in front of the goal standing there calling for it. The coach loves to have the defenders kick the ball forward (like kick ball) so it is a free for all. My son is now getting less and less playing time. I don't care if his team wins or not, I just want him to play on a team where his team mates pass.

Where are you located? If you have the time, it's worth checking out other teams in the same age group during league play to get a sense of which ones have a style you think would fit with your child's approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When Claudio Reyna unveiled the U.S. Soccer curriculum, he warned against "overdribbling." A bunch of coaches muttered that it seemed like a strange thing to discourage. He pointed out that if you watch Barcelona, you don't see a bunch of people taking 10 touches on the ball. It's one- or two-touch, then pass.

All things in moderation, really.

Obviously, you did not read the prior link with Thierry Henry (Barcelona player) and Mia Hamm...that is true with Barcelona UNTIL they are in top third attacking portion of the field. Then- they let their forwards do their thing- take in players, etc.

Take it up with Reyna.

Henry passed brilliantly with the Red Bulls, FWIW.

Red Bulls vs Barcelona. Seriously? MLS is where the come out to pasture.

If you didn't see Henry with the Red Bulls, it's your loss.

In any case, neither Barcelona nor the Red Bulls is the team I think of when I think of Henry. I've got a different jersey with his name on it.

Back to the point -- hey, take it up with Claudio Reyna, who also finished his career with the Red Bulls.

And I agree with those who think "one-touch" is a little extreme at early ages. So is never passing the ball.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As to the comments about PSW's decision to remove those OLD discussion forums because we are in it for the page views is silly. We removed those forums 6 years ago and have only recently recovered our page views back to those old levels. Anyone who is in this website publishing thing for the money would absolutely have forums like this one here, and would have every headline "10 hottest..." or "7 things you need to know before...." and all that other TMZ style crap.

Hi PSW rep. Thanks for coming here to clarify things. I'd posted earlier lamenting the loss of your site's open forums, and wanted to follow-up on your comments above.

Can you tell us why you decided to remove the open forums? You seem to indicate above that they help make money, and as you can see, DCUM is extremely successful without having to resort to tactics like posting "10 hottest..." etc. I think you guys have done a great job retooling the main page of your site, and I visit it frequently for news and for the news stories and articles. But I definitely don't like the idea of being limited to posting comments only on the content you decide to post. Especially since most of the articles, while quite good, are prettty earnest--I just dont' think there is that much to say about most of them, educational though they may be. If you think that feature is important, why not allow both the article commenting and have open forums for other discussions folks may want to pursue?

With respect to the forums, it hasn't been anywhere near 6 years since they were removed. Probably more like 2 or 3, and as you can see here, many of us are still mourning them. There were certainly some lunatics posting there (which most of us found entertaining), but there was also lots of really thoughtful discussion. I'm going to paste below one of my favorite posts from the PSW forums to give people a sense of the sort of comments people made back in the day. This was posted in 2012 (I think), and I sent it to my husband because it pretty much nailed the experience we were having with club soccer at the time.

In response to a question about tryout etiquette for U9 soccer, one cynical but funny PSW forum poster had this to say:

"Having gone through this in the not too distant past, and having experience with a couple clubs, here's some info that Soccer44 might want to have:

In youth soccer at U9, you have two types of clubs.

Large, Academy Clubs: Usually run a U8 Academy of some sort, so the U9 players are already largely selected. Those tryouts were last year, and they now have 75-100 kids in the U8 Academy that they will select from for U9. Unless your kid is exceptional, you will find you have already missed the opportunity for a large club. The U9-U11 teams will remain pretty stable. The A team will excel, the B team will be ok, and C and D probably should never have been created as a travel team in the first place but that's 24 more players paying coach fees. At U11/U12, players start moving around after Divisional placement, so that's your next opportunity to get into one of the large academy clubs. The C/D teams will implode at this point, going largely winless from U9-U11. If you have an A or B team player in U9-U11, you will be pressed to go 'help out' the C/D team in U9-U10 by guest playing when you don't have a game or in tournaments, in what will be a futile attempt to get those teams some wins so they don't all quit after the first year. You will likely have a new coach every year. If you are happily at home in the A or B team at U11, you could find yourself cut as a result of a mass transfer from an imploding team - see below.

Small, Non-Academy Clubs: Will take anyone that shows up. The A team will be ok, maybe even good. The B team will bad - usually really bad - and will have kids with emotional/behavioral problems that will disrupt training and the team. You can join this club at almost anytime since they are constantly short players. If offered a B team slot, strongly consider continuing in Rec or SFL. The B team, with few exceptions, will implode at U11. The A team will disintegrate at U12/U13 if placed in anything less than D4, as no talented, motivated player will want to stay on D5 or below. Your best players will leave for D1 or D2 teams, probably after U11 but definitely by U13. It's possible that will happen mid-year, leaving the other players without enough numbers to field a team. You will usually have the same coach the entire time, but half the parents will hate him/her. Some parents may band together to engineer a mass transfer to a better team, typically an Academy club."

We removed the open forums because we're not in it for the page views; and policing all the comments and fielding complaints was taking an obscene amount of time... all while hurting our reputation with the league, club, and tournament directors who we were trying to support for the good of the game. Unlike this site and many others, we didn't allow "anonymous" posts, so to whatever extent the conversations there felt "civil", you should have seen

Forums do great on sites like this that are ONLY about providing a "community square" for discussion and have no other connection to a client base or their brand in any other capacity. We wish we could have done both. But that's not us. Our mission is to improve report on, support, and help improve the player development pyramid in the USA, and our brand is uber important to that mission. When you have meetings with executives at major youth clubs, MLS, USSF and they bring up "wow, you've got some people on those forums", it's time to move on. We've considered launching a separate branded site as a "community discussion partner" to SoccerWire.com, but it's just not a priority and sites like this, talking-soccer, ??, ??, ?? seem to be just fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed!

I'm sure anonymous! Give one true example. Eddie NEVER did anything that was targeted at a player. I keep hearing the accusation. Never a concrete example. Most likely a personality problem and that just seems like the best jab, huh?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed!

I'm sure anonymous! Give one true example. Eddie NEVER did anything that was targeted at a player. I keep hearing the accusation. Never a concrete example. Most likely a personality problem and that just seems like the best jab, huh?