Reply to US Soccer age changes - what are the area leagues doing? are all the kids moving up? u11-u13

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]Can you help me to understand what the benefit to doing this is?  My child is only currently a U8, and I'm not knowledgeable about soccer.[/[/b]quote]

We think it's how soccer is set up in the rest of the world. That's not quite true, but it hasn't stopped anyone.

It IS how the major international tournaments are set up. Somehow, we've managed to find a bunch of kids born in January through March for the current U.S. U17 team without changing every team in the USA.

In any case -- there's some solid pushback at the younger age groups, and I can tell you rec leagues will have a lot of leeway in how they set things up. [/quote]

There is a long discussion of this topic over in the travel soccer in NoVa thread (much of it overwrought in my view, but there is some good information there).  I think the impetus was not so much to blindly copy what the countries who are good at soccer development do, but to make the path into elite soccer smoother.  The change will be beneficial not only for international tournaments, but also for evaluating kids who are candidates to play on a Development Academy team.  DAs are now the primary feeder system for the youth national teams, and they have always been birth year.  Starting next year or the year after, the program will expand to cover U12s (currently U14 is the youngest age group).  Evaluating kids will be simpler if they are already on birth year teams.

Many people feel that the change will cause all sorts of problems at the rec level.  I don't share that view.  As an earlier poster said, it just means that your child will end up with some extra friends in addition to the ones they have from their grade at school.  The current age group classifications are pretty bizarre if you think about it.  Most school cut offs around here are Sept. 1, but soccer age groups are August 1-July 31.  Other parts of the country have different school cutoffs.  The calendar year approach seems more sensible to me.[/quote]

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