Anonymous wrote:There are no identifiable phenotypes that have been discovered for this game. There are none.

Understand, this is the issue, the support (parents and coaches) that are participating. A lot seem to be actively proud of their lack of knowledge. Instead of showing a little inquisitive nature, they try to cram the whole thing into a concept they can easily digest or apply. They roam the countryside spreading their "wisdom" and trying to get the kid to "Send it long." Paying for crazy amounts of travel and spend more time in the car than the kid spent with the ball at their feet.

But, if you give them the easiest and cheapest way to get some sustainable results, they revert to completely bonkers takes on the subject. I bet if I paid them $50 to watch the video in the "Soccer Starts at Home" link I posted, they still wouldn't get it. Now, my kid has to play with their kid. With them on the sideline screaming their heads off while my kid is trying to control the ball. It's even funnier when you hear parents and coaches yelling at some kid to "Control the Ball!!!." How is that going to make anything better? You don't know what you're talking about! You didn't even try to learn about the game or help them! Shut up and let them focus.

I'm glad at least one person got the message. Hopefully, their kids have an enjoyable experience, play for a long time, and retain some of those skills to impart to their children.

Considering the bolded above, it boggles the mind that people honestly believe that the reason we are not a dominant soccer nation is because .0001% of all the body types in the United States plays another sport professionally. I mean, soccer only has 99.999% of the rest of the population to choose from to field a successful soccer team.

There are no identifiable phenotypes that have been discovered for this game. There are none.

Understand, this is the issue, the support (parents and coaches) that are participating. A lot seem to be actively proud of their lack of knowledge. Instead of showing a little inquisitive nature, they try to cram the whole thing into a concept they can easily digest or apply. They roam the countryside spreading their "wisdom" and trying to get the kid to "Send it long." Paying for crazy amounts of travel and spend more time in the car than the kid spent with the ball at their feet.

But, if you give them the easiest and cheapest way to get some sustainable results, they revert to completely bonkers takes on the subject. I bet if I paid them $50 to watch the video in the "Soccer Starts at Home" link I posted, they still wouldn't get it. Now, my kid has to play with their kid. With them on the sideline screaming their heads off while my kid is trying to control the ball. It's even funnier when you hear parents and coaches yelling at some kid to "Control the Ball!!!." How is that going to make anything better? You don't know what you're talking about! You didn't even try to learn about the game or help them! Shut up and let them focus.

I'm glad at least one person got the message. Hopefully, their kids have an enjoyable experience, play for a long time, and retain some of those skills to impart to their children.

Anonymous wrote:Put a video up of our top AAU U10 basketball teams and ask the same question. Our top talent chooses other sports. Take basketball and American football away and force soccer as our number one sport with Equal access to the everyone I promise you the USA win a World Cup within 15-20 years and dominates from there out. The team won't look the same as it has for the past 50 years. You will have majority African Americans on the roster. The game won't appeal as much to mommy and daddy who live in Potomac and will watch the precious little trophy kids get dominated. You will also see many more latin children drift away as the more generations that are from the USA water down the genetic talent.

The sport chooses the talent. It is a logical fallacy to assume that top basketball players would be dominant in soccer. On top of height, the genetic differentiators for pro basketball players is wing span. Their arms are longer than at a disproportionate rate to the general population. The last I checked, arms aren't used much in soccer.

It is just a stupid argument to make. Soccer is just not a cultural phenomena in this country and it most likely never will be. We have talent, we have athletes but we are simply a very ignorant nation when it comes to soccer. In short, we really don't know what we are doing. The women's side has been gifted a handicap of general international disinterest in the women's game for nearly 3 decades that has provided us with a large lead.

Anonymous wrote:Put a video up of our top AAU U10 basketball teams and ask the same question. Our top talent chooses other sports. Take basketball and American football away and force soccer as our number one sport with Equal access to the everyone I promise you the USA win a World Cup within 15-20 years and dominates from there out. The team won't look the same as it has for the past 50 years. You will have majority African Americans on the roster. The game won't appeal as much to mommy and daddy who live in Potomac and will watch the precious little trophy kids get dominated. You will also see many more latin children drift away as the more generations that are from the USA water down the genetic talent.

I don’t know, African teams suck pretty bad, with the occasional exception. I don’t think Africans have any special claim to soccer talent. Poor countries in Latin America excel at soccer; poor counties (basically, all of them) in Africa suck at soccer.

Put a video up of our top AAU U10 basketball teams and ask the same question. Our top talent chooses other sports. Take basketball and American football away and force soccer as our number one sport with Equal access to the everyone I promise you the USA win a World Cup within 15-20 years and dominates from there out. The team won't look the same as it has for the past 50 years. You will have majority African Americans on the roster. The game won't appeal as much to mommy and daddy who live in Potomac and will watch the precious little trophy kids get dominated. You will also see many more latin children drift away as the more generations that are from the USA water down the genetic talent.

Anonymous wrote:Here is a link to the book I mentioned.

https://soccerstartsathomebook.com/

There is a good video on that site about a lot of what I have been talking about earlier. I didn't know USSF is starting a program around it in Washington. It will be interesting to see if it works in 10+ years if there is buy-in from the community.

This is fantastic - thank you! I never really played soccer as a kid (beyond rec anyway) and so this is really helpful to me as a parent of soccer crazy boys.

Pay to play, no clear pathway, individual coaches incentivized to retain players rather than push them up the nonexistent structure, lack of expansive profitable professional club structure.

Most of these big soccer countries have a higher concentration of professional clubs, a clear path from local clubs to the higher tier professional clubs, no/minimal fees, etc.

US soccer hasn’t done a great job of teaching what is necessary for the young kids to learn or in creating a structure to nurture players in the absence of professional clubs. There are no regional pathways (rec club - advanced/local travel - travel - professional), everything is super expensive, clubs are suckered into far flung prohibitive travel when it is not necessary. Parents are left to pay, figure out what coach is okay, figure out which club, etc.

Here is a link to the book I mentioned.

https://soccerstartsathomebook.com/

There is a good video on that site about a lot of what I have been talking about earlier. I didn't know USSF is starting a program around it in Washington. It will be interesting to see if it works in 10+ years if there is buy-in from the community.

Here's the issue, the number of hours that the kids on u9 Barcelona have with the soccer ball added up over their lives is absolutely enormous. These kids have had a ball literally since they could walk, nearly every single day for hours on end. Almost exclusively, they come from soccer crazy families in a soccer crazy area surrounded by people who live and breathe for their local team they support.

Imagine growing up in the same neighborhood as where the Lakers play, you have all these fan traditions and people playing unstructured pickup games every single day of the week for hours and hours, kids dreaming of becoming a celebrity and becoming a big star and will do absolutely anything to get there, starting from about age 5 when they become aware of it.

These kids have been grinding and aspiring to be professionals since about age five or six, believe it or not. we see the same thing with basketball kids in this country with YouTube videos of 8 year old basketball prodigies, these kids did not just pick up a ball and start playing, they have parents at home grooming them to be the next LeBron james. Well soccer is the same way parents are grooming their kids to be the next Superstarso it is power driven, environment driven, and player driven. We just don't have the same thing here in the US with soccer that even compare slightly to the same situation. Not to mention that the financial awards are all so there as well unlike here

Some of you are getting closer to really understanding. Once you take this curiosity beyond the big known countries to smaller countries like Iceland, Croatia, South Korea, Ghana, Egypt, and Japan. You will see that yes, passion and drive are essential. But, the knowledge imparted at a very young age is crucial and the experiences/temperament of the supporting group (parents and coaches). It is the only thing that unites all of these groups globally.

I never hear of kids in Iceland playing soccer non-stop in the streets. Why are they competitive on the global stage? Well, they recognized that the coaching of the very young players was substandard and required only licensed coaching at the youngest ages. They built facilities (Domes) because it is cold, and the kids would have to be taken to the facility, where knowledgeable coaches guided them. A lot of federations (Germany, France) require licensing for the youngest coaches as well. That doesn't explain all of it for, say Ghana and Egypt, where the resources are far and few. Their community and main support (parents) had the knowledge and imparted it to them at a young age.

But what can we parents do to encourage a better approach?

I'll go back to what I said before for a US system current, pre 11 vs. 11.

1. Educate yourself on the game and get involved. Watch games with them at home. There is a good book called Soccer Starts at Home by Tom Byer. Play with your kid at home, learn the skills and help them early.
2. Get detached during games. Don't overstimulate the kids while they are building the skills needed to play. Stop screaming; nothing is happening! Your screaming is affecting my kid and your kid. You are way too close and way too loud. They don't have a lot of time away from you to do this, so make these moments count. The weekend game is free play if we let it become that.
3. Identify knowledgeable coaching only focusing on development. The goal should not be to go pro or win the tournament but acquire skills. If the coach doesn't care (no rotation, constant joysticking, no fun, no knowledge), leave. That ex-player is broken mentally.

If done on a large scale or a community, those three things would have a huge change in the development of players in a big enough group.

Most don't care, even if you tell them and show them the multiple ways it would help.

Here is one more for you. Here is a very talented professional football player playing basketball. You can see, he never had a connection with that game early and that's what it looks like. A kid playing for the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDvVY-OovE

I think Wilmer Cabrera summed it up best in the US: here everything is handed to the players and they are pampered all the way through to the senior national team level whereas in many other countries the players have to struggle and the end goal and ambitions literally mean more for them.

Anonymous wrote:I do think people are overstating the degree to which kids in Spain and Portugal are living and breathing soccer. Yes, it’s popular, but kids there are playing on their Playstations and XBoxes just as much. I’ve lived there, and haven’t seen the total soccer crazed youth that some are describing.

Did you have an eight year old boy when you lived there? I did - at least in Europe although not Spain specifically. And it is like that although I'm not sure I would have noticed if I had not had an eight year old kid who loved soccer. It's not every kid that behaves this way - I agree many focus on other things. But the ones that love soccer do behave this way and do play this much. Over here if a kid loves soccer this is not really possible for him.

Perhaps in some less wealthy South American countries it’s still like that.

I have no personal experience so I don't know for sure, but I would guess that it is similar in South America but for a greater percentage of kids since there are probably fewer options for how they can spend their time.

So I think the answer has more to do with their approach to youth development approach.

And yeah - why doesn’t MLS run youth teams? Why can’t we do an apples to apples comparison of a DC United U9 “A team” versus the Barcelona U9 “A team”?

Why do we have 7+ different soccer leagues overlapping, refusing to play teams from different leagues, political machinations about this or that league, etc.? Why is our system so convoluted and in a constant state of flux?

It seems “US Youth Soccer Inc” (generic) is quite happy to just keep the ludicrous spaghetti system status quo going, because it makes it easier to siphon money away from wealthy parents. But what can we parents do to encourage a better approach?

Maybe. Soccer in other countries has had a lot longer to evolve. Maybe we will slowly evolve towards a better system here too.

I do think people are overstating the degree to which kids in Spain and Portugal are living and breathing soccer. Yes, it’s popular, but kids there are playing on their Playstations and XBoxes just as much. I’ve lived there, and haven’t seen the total soccer crazed youth that some are describing.

Perhaps in some less wealthy South American countries it’s still like that.

So I think the answer has more to do with their approach to youth development approach.

And yeah - why doesn’t MLS run youth teams? Why can’t we do an apples to apples comparison of a DC United U9 “A team” versus the Barcelona U9 “A team”?

Why do we have 7+ different soccer leagues overlapping, refusing to play teams from different leagues, political machinations about this or that league, etc.? Why is our system so convoluted and in a constant state of flux?

It seems “US Youth Soccer Inc” (generic) is quite happy to just keep the ludicrous spaghetti system status quo going, because it makes it easier to siphon money away from wealthy parents. But what can we parents do to encourage a better approach?

Anonymous wrote:Clearly SYC samba boyz. 10-1 over bethesda.

Haha. You keep saying this. Are you the coach? They are a good team but no where close to this video.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hasn’t it proven that heading the ball below U12 really bad and can cause concussions/brain damage? The kids in the video are 8 years old and are constantly heading the ball.

No good.

This the reason we will catch up in this country instead—more brain cells left when they are older.

I agree. By the time our kids are 75 they should be much better than the Spaniards.