Reply to U9 reevaluated at U16

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I haven’t seen good youth soccer programs placing kids according to size at U9 or later. That would be silly, as you can’t tell how tall a kid will ultimately be at that age, and also because height is not an advantage for most soccer positions. There is a reason why the worlds’ best soccer players are, on average, average sized. It makes perfect sense to select for athleticism at any age, because you cannot be an elite player without being a great athlete. Speed can change over the years—it’s certainly true that puberty helps some kids and hurts others speedwise—but coordination, balance, and speed of thought on the field (which I view as a component of athleticism) don’t change all that much over time.

Picking kids who have good physical tools and investing good training in their development is not something anyone should criticize, but I think a lot of parents can’t judge their kids’ athleticism. There is kind of a weird false dichotomy that a lot of people seem to believe that a kid is either small and skillful or big and relying only on size, speed and strength. Athletic kids of all sizes are capable of learning skills and being great with the right training. OP’s point that at U16 you mostly see tall kids succeeding is not necessarily true in my experience, but to the extent it is, the reason is that the tall, athletic U9 player was picked for the top team back then for whatever reason and received top team training all the way through. Some of those tall U16s were small U9s, and all the small teens I know who were standouts at U9 and stayed on the top team are still great at U16. [/quote]

I agree with most of this, but you are confusing the issue somewhat by including coordination, balance and speed of thought as part of athleticism.  In general the "athlete" vs "skilled" debate is one of speed/size/strength vs "ball skills" where ball skills includes coordination/balance/speed of thought as well as amount of practise.[/quote]

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