Reply to Serious Player Development Question

Forum Index » Soccer

Reply to "Serious Player Development Question"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]First, what is up with this doberman pinscher analogy?  I think of dobermans as graceful, highly agile and fast, with deadly accuracy, all good things if you are talking about ball skills.  If you said someone had the touch of a Clydesdale, that would make a lot more sense.

I agree with folks that burnout rarely happens with kids who love the game.  Also contrary to conventional wisdom:  I know a lot of kids who started out as standouts at U9 and continue to be top players throughout their youth career.  Some clubs may pick only big strong kids at that age, but that's not at all true across the board.  What I see most do is pick kids who are athletic and coordinated, regardless of size.  If those kids love soccer and get good training, then they just keep developing and improving.  Not to say others don't come to the game later and do well also.

[/quote]

[b]True, but most standouts at U9 do not become standouts at U13[/b]. Often the U9 standouts have a physical size or speed advantage due to being an early developer and as others catch up physically they become frustrated because suddenly they have to work harder to develop skills as they fall behind. Other U9 standouts are highly skilled because they started playing earlier than others and don’t develop physically over the years. They end up being undersized and don’t have the genetics to compete with the athletes that eventually catch up on skills. Of course there are early standouts that do have the whole package and continue to succeed. There are so many attributes needed to become that standout at U13 that you just can’t predict it at U9. You also can’t predict which U13s become D1 college players. [/quote]

I'm sure that this is true on average, but is not entirely consistent with what I've observed in our area.  I'm familiar with the background of a lot of kids in the older age groups of DC United, Bethesda, and Baltimore Armour's DA, and a significant number of the kids who are starters at those programs and committed to good D1 schools were standouts when they were U9-U12 when we first encountered them.  It was a lot easier back then to see a wide variety of kids over a long time span, because most ended up in NCSL gunning for D1, and then you'd play the same teams at the local tournaments, along with the Baltimore teams that would head this way for good competition.

From our experience, the key is to find a good developmental coach rather than worrying about clubs when kids are little.  You can also find, if you are lucky and/or do a lot of research, coaches who are talented at figuring out which kids have potential and who are excited to help them reach it.  That sort of coach is not just stacking teams with big, strong, early maturers, but evaluating whether a kid has the kind of "it factor" that suggests they may become a real player.[/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