The Ajax model sounds awful for all but the 1% of kids who make it out. What happens to the rest of them? Do they ever get a college degree, ever get a job that isn't coaching youth soccer?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know if we'd be better because football is full of 300lb fatties, baseball is full of lazy dudes who can't run, and basketball is full of 7' tall dudes who also are slow and gangly.

Really? You don't think NFL and NBA players are good enough athletes to play soccer? Really?

Consider that an entire basketball court would take up only about 75% of the penalty box on a soccer field.

Anonymous wrote:I don't know if we'd be better because football is full of 300lb fatties, baseball is full of lazy dudes who can't run, and basketball is full of 7' tall dudes who also are slow and gangly.

Really? You don't think NFL and NBA players are good enough athletes to play soccer? Really?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous



Do we really need more kids in soccer? The amount of travel soccer teams in the area is already unbearable. What's wrong with a country liking more than one sport? I think it must be boring to live in a country where only one sport is played competitively.

This is the problem with the US. The traveling team model does not develop players. It cost a lot of money(hotel, travel etc.) and time. The Europeans start development at 11 to 12 and it's a full time job.

This point is made in the NY Times article about the Ajax Academy in the Netherlands. Our "travel" model here focuses too much on developing a winning team (when who really cares if your child's team wins a tournament at Disney World?) and not enough on focused, rigorous development of the individual player. Way too much time is spent sitting in cars driving to tournaments and games instead of doing footwork drills, playing small-side games, and even working on other sports requiring similar skills (tennis for the footwork, gymnastics for the strength, agility, and flexibility).

Yep US lacks speed and size.

The US looks like a bunch of dogs playing with a beachball.

What kind of a soccer player would RG3 be?

I would to see Sean Taylor playing center back for the US right now.....

Meant NCSL.

Not really. Many kids in the CCL and NVSL here continue with soccer. There must be some other differences.

in the US kids play soccer but drop it for other sports. in Europe they ramp up training in middle school and it is a full time gig. they still study, but have tutors and mostly travel and play soccer.
many still go on to college and coaching careers, but it is def different.

Soccer is low on the totem pole in sports here, and we wouldn't be really having this discussion if it wasn't for the world cup and all the bandwagon-jumping.

But if our best athletes did play soccer yeah I think we would dominate.

Are US parents willing to give up a college or even high school education to have their children play soccer? Sounds like from that article that's the trade off in Europe.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous



Do we really need more kids in soccer? The amount of travel soccer teams in the area is already unbearable. What's wrong with a country liking more than one sport? I think it must be boring to live in a country where only one sport is played competitively.

This is the problem with the US. The traveling team model does not develop players. It cost a lot of money(hotel, travel etc.) and time. The Europeans start development at 11 to 12 and it's a full time job.

This is interesting. Does that theory hold with other sports like baseball and basketball?

If soccer was like football or basketball, yes we would be the favorite each world cup. The speed, size, skill and athleticism would be crazy. As an example, you would have your pick of like 10 forwards with 4.1 to 4.2 speed with the skill. King James in goal, Allen Iverson in the middlefield, etc.