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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Arlington DA parents and kids... nothing but a bunch of annoying snubs! [/quote]

Ha.  Omg.  The op before you.  Omg.  Ha.

They are a “special” group over in Arlington.  The fact they claim they play beautiful football, don’t pick for size and deletion individuals is pure comedy.[/quote]

I don’t know - but our non- DA club beat both DCU and ASA DA in the Fall.[/quote]

Pipeline 06 I assume?  There's no doubt that Pipeline also has a very good team, which is why you are ranked #2 (I think?) in the country.  But if you're going to use results as a measure you need to be fair and provide all the context, which is that Arlington uses pre and post season games to give development squad players playing time.  So you played about 2/3 of the Arlington DA team (where the squad had basically had about two practices together and lacked arguably its three best players) and several players from the Red (top) travel team in a pre-season game and won.  You played a stronger - but still not full strength - DA team more recently in the post season and lost.

I stand by my comments re the coaching, player selection and style of play at the Arlington DA.  I'm not a professional soccer player, but I did grow up in a soccer playing country so nor am I totally ignorant.

In my opinion of Oscar is the best coach in the entire metro DC area.  Not only does he have a really good vision of what he wants to teach as an ex professional player from Spain who learned to coach from some of the best in the business, but he really knows how to communicate and get the kids to understand what he's teaching.  Most of his coaching happens on the training field but listening to him on the sideline is also a joy.  It's not that he's not incapable of delivering a kick up the backside when it's needed - but his usual style is to ask questions during the game "Billy, what should you be doing now?" encouraging the players to solve problems themselves before something goes wrong, rather than the all too common "Billy, why did you do that?" after the fact, that so many coaches seem to think works as a form of motivation (hint - it doesn't).  While it's certainly true that some players will get more playing time than others (this is DA after all), he works hard on developing all the players and gives everyone a decent amount of playing time and opportunities to grow.  Having had three kids play soccer for I-don't-know-how-many-coaches I can tell you that no-one else has come close.  The improvement of all the players, both individually and as a team, over the course of the season is really noticeable.  For example the 06 team played Baltimore twice in the fall.  The first game was the second or third game of the season and the team was still learning how Oscar wanted them to play.  They also struggled with the size and speed of a couple of the Baltimore players.  The result was 3-0 to Baltimore at half time and 3-1 at full time after a more competitive second half, but 3-1 was a fair reflection of the game itself.  Two months later the next game was utterly different.  Arlington won 3-0 in a game where Baltimore spent long periods without ever touching the ball and the score arguably didn't reflect how one sided the game was.

It is possible that your view stems from a period prior to Oscar Feliu taking over as director.  His first year as director of Arlington DA was 2017-18. I can't speak to anything that happened before that period, and I would say that this is the first year that he's been able to fully put his stamp on the whole staff of coaches which has changed almost 100% in the last two years.  Prior to that he actually managed to turn the perennially awful CYA into a decent club before one of those legendary NoVA suburban soccer club board-parent driven meltdowns occurred.  They have subsequently and rapidly declined back to their previously established level of utterly awful.

I should also note that the development academy coaching is managed entirely separately from the travel program which I know nothing about and can make no recommendation either way.

FWIW I also know Oscar's view is that there are a number of really good teams in the metro area (of which Pipeline is certainly one) and they are not all DA clubs by any means.

For anyone considering other DA clubs in the area, leaving DC United out, I would rank them in the following order: Arlington, Baltimore, Bethesda, VDA.  That's based on observation and playing against them though - more than the intimate knowledge ypu get from actually having a kid in the system.[/quote]

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