Reply to Just Curious... how many kids get moved down from a upper level team to a lower level team?

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Reply to "Just Curious... how many kids get moved down from a upper level team to a lower level team?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid — now playing college in a good conference — was moved down multiple times in his club career. For context, at one point he was on the fourth level team.

[b]Clubs are generally toxic places and movement/retention is often unrelated to skill. [/b][/quote]

+1 million
2 boys playing D1 that constantly for d@ked around in club and high school.  The politics and favoritism are astounding.  Absolutely toxic.

Thankfully, many college coaches don’t play that game.[/quote]

Yup.

We view my kid as having made it to his college team [i]despite[/i] club soccer, not because of it. The toxicity—something we saw across multiple clubs, not just one—is astonishing. I do think that not trusting the clubs was an excellent decision in hindsight.

OP, trust your instincts. If you don’t feel the move was made for the right reasons, it’s time to switch clubs. [/quote]

Can ppl give examples of the toxicity at clubs? I’m assuming that kids aren’t really promoted or demoted based on their skills? What else?[/quote]

Oh, man, where to start. But first, I want to make it clear that demotion and promotion is sometimes based on skill. It is not the case that it’s not. But the problem is this: on a top team there are generally a few kids who truly stand out. There are sometimes a few clearly struggling too, though in my experience with top teams that’s sometimes not because of skill but because they are terrified of the coach, who targets them if they make a mistake. The rest are in the middle. So, sometimes the demotion/promotion is based on skill, often it’s not. But, some examples of toxicity I’ve seen:

- Tolerating and not commenting/screaming at mistakes from some kids while screaming at others for the same or very similar mistakes.
- Allowing team parents to sit on the bench with the team during games and interfere/gossip. 
- Pitting kids against each other and not stopping kids from screaming at each other in games; coaches encouraging vile behavior on the field between teammates. I’m sorry, but no 13-year-old should be allowed to scream “why weren’t you there, you f***ing idiot” on the field with no coach consequences. 
— Teaching a selfish kind of play because you are judged every week on whether you can play and that’s partially a stats thing (mostly an ECNL/MLSNext issue). 
— Coaches putting kids they didn’t like in positions they don’t usually play in college showcases so that the kids didn’t look as good as their favored kids. For instance, putting a right winger in at left back for the college showcase. 
— Over-rostering teams to collect the higher fees for top-level teams when the club knows those kids will never see the field. 
— Discouraging creativity in learning players because the coaches/clubs make them so terrified to make a mistake that they will never take a risk. For instance, yelling at kids who challenged players for not releasing the ball fast enough (we left one club over this; my kid needed to learn to challenge, but the top team was filled with kids who kicked the ball away as soon as an opposing player got within five meters because the coach got angry if they didn’t).

I could go on with so much more but this is already too long. Also, as a point of reference I have multiple kids who have played club in various sports. I think soccer is more toxic than any of the others, and I had a kid who did gymnastics (second most toxic IME). I also am reasonably likely to have another college athlete (still in HS) on a good college team, in a different sport. After all of this, I don’t think the US will ever improve at soccer so long as MLSNext and ECNL rule the pipeline. It’s not a system designed to nurture the best prospects and it doesn’t. I say this as a parent of a kid who had multiple good offers for college teams recently (after the transfer portal change), so in theory someone who externally is probably seen as a success of the club system. [/quote]

As a fan of EPL - and who isn’t after watching thousands of hours of kid soccer - your line about selfish play sticks.  Unfortunately, that is what European clubs look for in American players so agents here look for it.  Rinse and repeat.[/quote]

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