HS Soccer is borderline unwatchable

[Anonymous]

I wonder how coaches are selected for HS soccer.

The JV coach at our school is just a dad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how coaches are selected for HS soccer.

The JV coach at our school is just a dad.

Teachers at our school. They really need to upgrade. It was fine when these guys started 20 years ago, but the landscape has changed and these unlicensed crappy coaches no longer cut it for kids that have had UEFA coaches most of their childhood and played for former pro players and pro coaches.

It really is a mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how coaches are selected for HS soccer.

The JV coach at our school is just a dad.

Teachers at our school. They really need to upgrade. It was fine when these guys started 20 years ago, but the landscape has changed and these unlicensed crappy coaches no longer cut it for kids that have had UEFA coaches most of their childhood and played for former pro players and pro coaches.

It really is a mess.

Please...you can go online and get a basic coaching license in a few hours...do you really think that'll help anything?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how coaches are selected for HS soccer.

The JV coach at our school is just a dad.

Teachers at our school. They really need to upgrade. It was fine when these guys started 20 years ago, but the landscape has changed and these unlicensed crappy coaches no longer cut it for kids that have had UEFA coaches most of their childhood and played for former pro players and pro coaches.

It really is a mess.

Please...you can go online and get a basic coaching license in a few hours...do you really think that'll help anything?

Kids today play for coaches with decades of experience in International academies, as players and coaches. To go play for someone that didn't even play college ball or did at some third rate school in the 80s is not beneficial and team selections and coaching reveal that very quickly.

It's fine for 'fun', but most of the top players leave it after a year or two because it isn't worth the serious time constraint, injury risk (1/2 the team is injured before the first game because there is zero concept of rest/recovery you get with top programs mlsnext/college and serious over-use-training). When the time commitment is making you nothing but a 'worse' player over 2 months it's not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my experience, the club players just dance around with the ball, never move it forward, and lack speed and athleticism. So the non-soccer kids that just play kick and run win the games because they are superior athletes. My son is one of these types of players. He’s big and fast and soccer is his third sport, but he dominates the smaller and slower club players. A team full of really good club players that play a possession style might defeat them, but in practice the kick and run teams win so coaches stick with that.

The club players try to posses the ball but the problem is the ball will eventually get to a non-club player and then the ball will get lost. So it's not a great strategy for HS soccer. I do agree the big kids dominate. It's not really soccer though.

“Club” player just means anyone who plays with a private club, right? So the club players you’re referring to could be on the club’s rec team, or one of the lower-level travel teams that DCUM so often derides as “glorified rec?”

If the “big guy kick and run” strategy is still winning games, then it sounds like the level of play at these HS games must be pretty low, regardless of whether the players are club or not. The reason why you don’t see this in higher level soccer is not just cause “kickball” is not “real” soccer, but cause it’s a quick way to LOSE games. Punting the ball to outer space almost always results in turning over the ball to the opponent, even when the ball stays in bounds. If both teams are doing it and they’re not that good, the game gets boring real fast.

Also, there’s no need to be a douche about this, so GTFOH with the “bigger kids = superior athletes” BS. it’s soccer not a eugenics contest.

No that was my original point. The skill level of the athletes is pretty variable in high school unless the team is one of the very best. The varsity team my son is on has a bunch of kids that play travel year round but only 1-2 is a strong athlete that play at a higher level. My son and another non-travel soccer player are biggest and fastest players and score the vast majority of the goals. If our team ever takes them out the soccer looks more fluid, but our team performs a lot worse. So the coach puts them in because we win our league by just playing direct with long kicks that they run down and put in the back of the net.

Possession style is superior when you have the cats to execute it, but the bottom 70% of travel soccer plays will just get cooked by a really good athlete that has very little technical skill because they can’t keep up with them and get knocked off the ball. So it may look like dumb soccer but it terms of winning games it’s often the better course. That’s why it persists despite being ugly.

[Anonymous]

I also hate it when everyone cheers the kid who makes a blazingly fast run from seemingly light years away to block a goal at the last second - but only cause that same kid was so out of position all game long that he allowed multiple players he should have been marking get that close to his goal in the first place.

So then that kid looks amazing cause he’s running up and down the field like Usain Bolt, “saving” goals at best half the time. I don’t really fault parents who don’t know any better for cheering, but I can’t believe the coaches don’t see it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also hate it when everyone cheers the kid who makes a blazingly fast run from seemingly light years away to block a goal at the last second - but only cause that same kid was so out of position all game long that he allowed multiple players he should have been marking get that close to his goal in the first place.

So then that kid looks amazing cause he’s running up and down the field like Usain Bolt, “saving” goals at best half the time. I don’t really fault parents who don’t know any better for cheering, but I can’t believe the coaches don’t see it.

Well I certainly hope that when that happens, you stand up and lecture everyone about what they should and shouldn’t be cheering for.
I’m sure that everyone will appreciate your brilliance.

[Anonymous]

On the girls side- the soccer is bad but some of the injuries are horrific. Like, soccer ending injuries for no reason besides a bad level of play, bad coaching and bad ref-ing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On the girls side- the soccer is bad but some of the injuries are horrific. Like, soccer ending injuries for no reason besides a bad level of play, bad coaching and bad ref-ing

Please provide some examples that are a result of it being high school.

[Anonymous]

Inexperienced players making tackles that don't make any sense from a tactical perspective and going into hard, or tackling with incorrect technique and putting too much momentum into the tackle where it becomes unsafe and not restraining themselves, they don't know any better

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the girls side- the soccer is bad but some of the injuries are horrific. Like, soccer ending injuries for no reason besides a bad level of play, bad coaching and bad ref-ing

Please provide some examples that are a result of it being high school.

You want a list of injuries?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the girls side- the soccer is bad but some of the injuries are horrific. Like, soccer ending injuries for no reason besides a bad level of play, bad coaching and bad ref-ing

Please provide some examples that are a result of it being high school.

On the girls side...ACL ACL ACL. Here is the gruesome truth! Player has a fast break and a defender closes on them fast and slides in spikes up high on the shin. Knee takes a awkward bend and you're done for a year. The technique needed isn't something you can learn quickly in terms of how to do a hard, clean tackle without drawing a card which usually translates to knowing that you have to hit that ball clean first.

I can usually spot the reckless athlete that isn't a soccer player. I cringe when seeing them playing, not because they aren't doing amazing stuff, but they are the dangerous on the pitch.

[Anonymous]

Its either somone super clumsy getting embarrased and accidently making heavy contact, or same scenario but the other player is coordinated enough to time a heavy tackly with intention to inflict harm because they have been run ragged all game by the superior technical player and have had enough. Its a lose lose in HS soccer for the elite players. More and more won't play. I think thats there loss. You can get injured crossing the street, play the game enjoy it with your classmates cause club mates can be hit and miss

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also hate it when everyone cheers the kid who makes a blazingly fast run from seemingly light years away to block a goal at the last second - but only cause that same kid was so out of position all game long that he allowed multiple players he should have been marking get that close to his goal in the first place.

So then that kid looks amazing cause he’s running up and down the field like Usain Bolt, “saving” goals at best half the time. I don’t really fault parents who don’t know any better for cheering, but I can’t believe the coaches don’t see it.

Well I certainly hope that when that happens, you stand up and lecture everyone about what they should and shouldn’t be cheering for.
I’m sure that everyone will appreciate your brilliance.

Is it your kid always out of position and running back? 😂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its either somone super clumsy getting embarrased and accidently making heavy contact, or same scenario but the other player is coordinated enough to time a heavy tackly with intention to inflict harm because they have been run ragged all game by the superior technical player and have had enough. Its a lose lose in HS soccer for the elite players. More and more won't play. I think thats there loss. You can get injured crossing the street, play the game enjoy it with your classmates cause club mates can be hit and miss

The 'elite' players are enjoying time with their classmates and schoolmates even if they're not on the soccer team

The soccer HS season is only 3 months btw