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[quote=Anonymous][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.

Generally, quality club soccer players are already "fit".

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]

Played soccer, coached soccer for a long time. Ran. Lifted weights. Juggled. Played a lot of pickup, travel, school ball, etc. Watched a lot too. Probably have forgotten more soccer than you’ve experienced. Anyhow, there is no one answer, but yes many soccer players run a mile or two at a fast pace for their endurance training session and then also mix in strength and power (explosion) training as well as a mix of sprint, rest, jog, sprint, rest routines. I’ll agree that running more than a mile or two is not as useful. [/quote]

You seem fixated on this. I’ll try and be clear one last time.

Being fit is certainly a part of the game. But having a metric as a selection criteria is silly. Having the metric as an expectation of the selected team is mostly fine.

But it is not unexpected that HS coaches who many know little about the game choose players based on the idea that we will outrun and outwork our opponents. If HS soccer had a reputation of playing quality soccer this would not stick out.  But the fact is, HS soccer is mostly known for its poor quality overall, it’s overly aggressive style and sloppy play it stands to reason that coaches are relying on stop watches to select their team.

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