Reply to How the USWNT’s pipeline got fractured by a youth soccer turf war

Forum Index » Soccer

Reply to "How the USWNT’s pipeline got fractured by a youth soccer turf war"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The big clubs in the DC area will develop players at younger ages but so rare to see a coach willing to develop a player at the older ages.  They will recruit players developed elsewhere instead. It is play to win only. [/quote]

For high schoolers, what do you expect? How many will play pro? How many will play even D1? If you're done playing after high school, why not play to win? Developing implies an end goal, but for a kid who won't play at the next level winning may be more important that further developing [/quote]

A Coach can play to win and still develop players at the same time - AND THEY SHOULD STILL BE DEVELOPED EVEN IN HIGH SCHOOL.

If you don’t, if you take only the players with the fine-tuned skills who you don’t need to develop, you’re going to miss out on the girl who played Classic through middle school but who is an amazing athlete. Or the girl who was focused on basketball or swimming but realized she loves soccer.  In fact, you might miss out on the next Alex Morgan who only started playing travel at 12.

I’ve seen plenty of girls with wonderful skills developed over many years with the big clubs, but they just aren’t athletic enough, not strong and aggressive, or most often - just slow.

Shouldn’t a coach put the great HS athlete who is fast and aggressive on the team and try to develop her skills?  Then again, you'd have to be a really good coach to see that projectable talent.  Much easier to take the kid who had been with the club for years and years and has the skills but not the athleticism.

We see it all the time — and it’s “pay to play” and that’s why we are where we are in US soccer.  Maybe US Soccer could establish some guidelines - like each coach had to take on 2-3 developmental girls each year.[/quote]

The coaches can do whatever they want, but the kids playing for their school want to win. If that goes along with development, great. If not, oh well. That kid who has been with the club for years has also paid the club tens of thousands over the years. If a club gets a reputation for cutting it's own in high school to make way for development projects, then maybe the next crop of parents start at a different club [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics