Reply to Reasonable to expect coaches to break ball-hogging/Star syndrome?

Forum Index » Soccer

Reply to "Reasonable to expect coaches to break ball-hogging/Star syndrome? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=RantingSoccerDad]It happens, yes.

Just not to the extent that we think.

And the countries we admire most, Germany and Iceland, are still casting a very wide net up to age 12 and even into the teens. It's not "pro academy at U9 or bust."

See another piece from These Football Times, which talks about Icelandic players having opportunities to walk into their local clubs, get good coaching and even have the opportunity to go on to big-time pro soccer.

https://thesefootballtimes.co/2015/01/15/the-icelandic-roadmap-to-success/

Here's a summary on Germany and how the federation makes an effort to find kids in the 10-14 years who aren't at the Bayern Munichs and Dortmunds: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/sep/05/germany-football-team-youth-development-to-world-cup-win-2014 [/quote]

Starting the scouting process at a young age and casting a wide net for as long as possible are not mutually exclusive.  It is not "pro academy at U9 or bust" anywhere that is serious about finding and developing the best footballers.  Everyone recognizes that development is uneven, kids who were nothing special at 8 may blossom by age 15, and the opposite happens as well.  For that reason, the scouting process is never ending.  Every year at pro academies, players are let go to make room for others who will take their place.  Clubs are constantly on the lookout for players who may - for a variety of reasons - have fallen through the cracks up to that point.

The recent experience of local player Aethan Yohanes is a good example of this.   According to his dad's twitter feed, hs family moved to the Netherlands a year or two ago and he initially signed on with an amateur club.  After a while his talent was recognized - I think he got selected to a regional team or something, kind of sounded like ODP - and now he's at 1st division AZ Alkmar, and was recently called up to the US U15 NT camp.  I don't think he was a late developer, but the point is that professional clubs do keep scouting and looking for new players even from amateur clubs well into their teenage years.

By comparison, how many MLS scouts do you think were watching the last round of ODP regional events, looking for those diamonds in the rough?   [/quote]

Aethan Yohanes was getting zero attention from USSF/youth national team, when he played locally for JOGA.  He was not scouted.  He was not known.  He would not have been considered to be good enough.  But for the move to the Netherlands, and getting spotted by AZ, he would still be one of the many kids who would have fallen through the cracks without ever getting a look. [/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