Reply to DA soccer terminating boys and girls? “Rumors”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Every now and then I dip into these threads.  It funny with folks losing their minds and talking smack etc.  even more so in these times.  Folks.  This is a business decision.  It goes far beyond DC metro.  Stop being so petty and stupid.  I can tell you with fairly good authority this ship has sailed.  I know some knucklehead (or several) will dismiss this post etc.  I don’t care.  But, I can tell you from my contacts in the administration side of DA and ECNL- this is all but done.  It won’t matter.  The best players will rise to the top.  Clubs will lose and win in this change.  Your issue is you think this region only.  Breathe.....change is coming.[/quote]

DA is done.  You better tell that guy in the other post providing intimate details of his kid’s 06 DA team.[/quote]

Hey that's me.  I'll remain somewhat skeptical until we hear officially.

My recommendation though would still hold good for wherever that particular coach ends up :-).[/quote]

I read your summaries... I’m not sure why your preference of preferring style of play over athletes.  America forever has wished to get its best athletes playing soccer, and now it’s starting to happen in some parts of country.  Who’s to say these U14 kids won’t keep developing?  The difference is, their athleticism is nearly entirely predetermined by the genes; development is not.  Style of play is important, but it’s also a bit myopic (especially when paying so much for DA), and I bet MLS academies will prefer athletes who can play than non-athletes who can play.[/quote]

The reason I prefer not to just select the best athletes is because that's not what they do in countries where they develop the best players - in other words other criteria have been proven to work better.  Whereas in the US we have been selecting the "best athletes" for years with disappointing results, and I think simply getting even better athletes isn't going to change much.

Let me try and clarify what I'm saying.

1.  When I use the word "athlete" I am primarily talking about speed and strength.

2.  However there are other qualities important to soccer where there are also significant differences in innate talent: foot-eye coordination, balance, elusiveness, spatial awareness.  These qualities result in skills that can be practiced and improved - but the ceiling is not the same for every player in the same way that one can improve one's 5K time significantly by training, but not everyone can compete in the Olympics.  That right winger that the poster mentioned on the other thread (and no - he's not my son in case you are wondering) can make people miss by just ducking his shoulder and changing direction without even touching the ball.  I doubt he could even explain what he's doing himself and most kids will just never be able to do that (or at least they might pull it off occasionally by accident, but that's not the same thing).  So you need to look at things like control with the first touch when running at speed, accuracy of passing, decision making under pressure, one-on-one ability.  Think of it like a quarterback if you like - yes the arm is important but every draft bust proves that just because a kid has a strong arm does NOT mean you can teach him the rest.

3.  In soccer speed and strength are important, but the greatest players do not physically look like NFL or rugby players and in the rest of the world that's not because the best athletes just don't play soccer - it's because those other attributes I'm talking about are more important.

4.  It's also worth noting that coaches don't and can't develop individual skills to the necessary level.  It takes thousands of hours of practice to develop these skills and that doesn't come from four hour-and-a-half team practices a week.  In fact it doesn't really come from those practices at all.  You can go and pay for private indiviudal coaching sessions perhaps, or you can go and sign up for HP Elite classes which focus on individual skills, but - while those might prove enjoyable and perhaps serve to motivate the kid to do more by themselves - there is no substitute for the kid spending time by himself with the ball, and most kids just aren't interested enough to put in the time.  There's one kid on our team who goes home every night after practice and works on his skills alone for another 2-3 hours every day of the week, and you can see it in the crispness of his touch, his ball control, the weight of his passes.  I don't care how good an athlete another kid is, if he hasn't put in the time to develop his technical ability by the time he's 14 or so, he's probably not going to because he just doesn't love the game enough to do the work.  So looking at those skills at 14 is likely to strongly correlate with ability as an adult.

5.  The final point is that the differences in speed and strength between the best athletes and the rest tend to diminish over time, and the differences in skill become more important as the player's decision-making improves and he is able to know how and when to use his skill to help the team score goals.  As the boys develop physically at different speeds there are huge gaps in size, strength and speed that persist from 8 or 9 through as late as 15 or 16.  The differences can be so great that they overwhelm everything else and it's very easy to fall in love with a player who wins every tackle and scores a lot of goals and overlook the fact that his ball skills are not all that great.  But then a few years later, as the playing field levels, and the kids with more skill learn how to use it to win games he doesn't look so good any more.

All that said, of course speed and strength are important so they absolutely need to be weighted in the selection process - just not nearly as heavily as they often are in the US today.

Now on to style of play.  I talked about style of play for two reasons.

1.  It is reflective of the talent level of the players on the team.  When you see teams controlling the ball for large portions of a game, stringing passes together and playing one or two touch soccer it's not just an accident and it's not just tactics either.  It requires a high level of skill from all the players including the goalkeeper.  Many teams - if put under pressure - simply cannot manage to do it, even if the coach attempts to teach them.  Even only one or two weaker players cause the play to break down and the team to lose the ball.

2.  It also reflects the coach's ability.  This is basically what the coaches teach the kids.  Firstly have the coaches managed to help the kids learn sufficient skill to play this way?  Then secondly have they managed to teach the kids how to play, how to keep their heads up, how to make decisions on the field, the awareness to know what they want to do with the ball before they get it, how to see and think about space, where to make runs, when to make runs, how to pull defneders out of position both with and without the ball, when to go forwards and when to reset. etc.

A good coach both understands the game himself and can teach (all these concepts) well.  The result is a team which plays attractive soccer.  A good teacher who doesn't understand soccer all that well can get a team to play disciplined soccer.  They press hard, fill the midfeild with bodies and win a lot of balls there - play it out quickly down the wing when they win it.  They score goals, win quite a few games and the kids have fun but they're not really learning how to play soccer the way it's played at the highest level.  A coach who can't teach though - that's not much fun to watch no matter how well he understands the game.
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