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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is stupid.  No professional soccer player ever out-jogs someone to the ball. It is sprint and recover, which does not translate to a long distance timed run.

I guarantee neither Messi nor Ronaldo come anywhere close to the best 2-mile timed run on their own team.  We all know Maradona was a marathoner.

Why not do a sprint and cut the slowest kids who can't run an 11 second 100m?  Both metrics are physically unattainable for a certain population of kids, and both are a poor measure of how the athlete will perform on the field.[/quote]
Do you know anything that you are talking about? Boys HS record for 100M is 10.0 recorded in 2014 (T and F News). I don’t think many 9th graders are going to be running 11.0 100m.
“...the slowest kids who can’t run an 11 second 100m...” Geesh.

On the other hand a 5:30 mile is highly achievable and that endurance capacity is also highly desirable in a sport like soccer.  If an athlete can’t immediately achieve 5:30, he or she can train toward it.  The goal of the coach presumably is to build sheer endurance, yes, but also to develop an athlete who is able to perform with some level of power after being tired. That would mean fast acceleration and sustained sprints and fast lateral movements ... not simply 11 second in the 100m.  
Soccer requires a kind of endurance that is not just the body going on, but also endurance that allows the brain to function quickly and alertly in a physically stressed state, responding to the play on the field.

The bar he is setting seems reasonable, perhaps one part of a mosaic of fitness he wishes to see in his athletes. After all, it’s the Beautiful  Game.[/quote]

Why would you train for something that has no real practical use in a actual soccer game? Nobody runs flat out for a mile in a soccer game ever. [/quote]

No one does 10 reps of a bench press in a football game either ... but.  No one does mountain climbers in a basketball game either ... but. Clearly you’re not an athlete and have never been one. [/quote]

Clearly you're not a soccer player or you not believe this is at all useful in finding who is good at soccer.

[b]Generally, quality club soccer players are already "fit". [/b]

And, why do HS soccer coaches bother with this as a metric if much of their practice time is always spent running sprints, laps and bleachers with very little soccer?

Your first cut should be this simple, "What travel team and what league do you play in?"

Then you make up teams and small size scrimmage. Next cut, two teams and full scrimmage and done. [/quote]

If you believe they are all fit, you clearly haven't watched a lot of top level girls games -- can't speak for the boys.  But on the girls side, I mean ECNL/DA, even showcase top grouping level.  Yes, there are fit girls.  But there are also many that are gassed after 30 minutes or less.  A big problem especially with the more limited subbing (worst in DA in the past with no return once subbed out.). Doesn't matter how great your foot skills are, how big or strong or fast you are.  If you can't get to the ball, you can't show any of the rest of that.

Fitness is the one thing you can just decide to work on and improve.  Put the darn time in.  Juggle 300 times instead of 1000 and go run a few miles.  Then when you have the opportunity to make a long run and bring a ball down out of the air with your amazing touch, you'll actually get there and do it.  If the choice was a kid who was exceptionally fit (endurance and speed) and solid with the ball, or exceptionally skilled (great touch, dribbling ability, agility) but only average in speed AND endurance, I'd take the fit kid every time.  Tired kids play slow and think slow regardless of their skill. [/quote]

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