SYNERGY at WORK

“US youth soccer is broken… But instead of just griping let’s offer some solutions.” wrote Mark Zeigler, in his San Diego Union-Tribune article, US Soccer, Pay-to-Play model’.

So, last week Gary Jezorski and Ruth Nicholson were kind enough to offer their solutions. They identified with and expanded on trends that were brought-up by Mark. Their input resulted in an email blizzard of consenting comments and also some essentially different solutions.  

The different suggestions/ideas for our soccer community to consider came from Kevin Botterill, Mark Bickham, Keith Tozar and Ton De Hoop.

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I think that we grossly underestimate the issues involved in developing soccer players within this country if we think the problem can be solved in one single way. Some of the issues include:

1) Coach education: providing the appropriate pedagogical and content based information to all of our coaches from grassroots on wards in a way that they can afford, can understand, can utilize and can buy into.

2) Parent education: teaching our parents the importance of adherence to a long term curriculum of teaching (I.e. not jumping clubs every 6 months) and the importance of delayed gratification (I.e. the appropriate skills for an 8 year old to learn are not necessarily the skills that give them the best chance of winning u9 games). Additionally, the importance of letting their child play and enjoy playing, suffer obstacles and setbacks and thus develop intrinsic motivation from them, and learn to be a proactive decision maker by having to solve problems with only a coach’s appropriate guidance.

3) Club reward for excellence: clubs need to be extrinsically rewarded for producing top players. Clubs that produce top players overseas receive significant financial gains for the investment they put into that player. In the US all proceeds go to US Soccer therefore there is NO benefit to creating exceptional players, only successful teams.

4 Geography: The US is so big that it is next to impossible for the best players to train and ply with and against each other. Teams are forced to play multiple games in a day or at least in a weekend and travel many hours to have appropriate competition. I’m not sure this issue is solvable. Kevin Botterill,

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When we can agree and understand that ALL team sports are identical in principle then it will become very easy.

 Every team sports have the “exact” same attacking, defending, and transition principles.. With that said the problem with soccer is the fundamentals (control, dribbling, passing, shooting) are overlooked when the players are between 6-12 thus our players are always playing catch up with the rest of the world..

It’s not rocket science after all however there is a science to teaching properly. Respectfully,   Mark Bickham

______________________________________________________Look at the top nations in the world regarding football (soccer) and many if not most have utilized Futsal (street soccer) for player development. There has been an explosion of the game here in the U.S but why has so many decision makers haven’t bought in?

To go outside the pay to play system and to reach different demographics in our major metropolitan cities Futsal could be that bridge, that answers of a different pathway.

When creating your task force I would recommend having those involved in Futsal here in the U.S. part of that discussion. Question: What do you have to lose?  Make others part of the solution!  Keith Tozar

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The role of the referee – You need to consider having the younger age-groups play their games without a referee(s). That will for sure give a big boost to the United Soccer Coaches’ 7th cornerstone. In Holland it is proven already for many years that this really works.

Modified fields - Every soccer complex/club should have one or more small fields where players in their spare time can use these to play small sided games on their own with friends and team mates. Ton De Hoop

Koach Karl’s Note: Thank you for taking the time to read these personal views, perusing the ‘9-Step Routine’ and sharing them with your soccer community. Your Responses/Comments on this subject are very much appreciated!

Your FUNdamental, Koach Karl (Karl Dewazien)

• Emeritus Director of Coaching - California Youth Soccer Assoc. 1979-2012
• Author - Internationally Published FUNdamental SOCCER Books Series
• Producer - highly acclaimed ‘FUNdamental SOCCER -Practice’ DVD.
• Clinician at: www.fundamentalsoccer.com