re: Super League may NOT actually be happening!

quote:

---

it's professional soccer played by the best players in the world

---

Again, who makes these players?

quote:

---

This European Super League is like a lads night out before everyone asks their Mrs if it’s alright.

---

quote:

---

Players are born, not made

---

Utterly idiotic. The French FA reorganized their youth development program in 1988, with massive benefits. The German and Belgian FAs both reorganized their youth program in 2000, with massive benefits. The Icelandic FA produced 23 professional players (actually a lot more) out of a population of 200,000. What changed? Their youth development structure.

This is so deeply wrong I'm convinced you know nothing about the sport at all. Just straight up flies in the face of actual events that have happened, with a verifiable history. The French FA and Clairefontaine is far more responsible for the greatness of the PL than any one of these fricking owners. Johan Cruyff is far more responsible for the development of technical levels of elite players than any of these owners. That you cannot see the connection between youth development, the pyramid structure, and player production is beyond me. There is a reason why it took so many generations for US players to reach an appropriate technical level, which is directly related to the expansion of youth academies, as well as appropriate instruction and guidelines handed down by USSF.

The reason these owners don't see it is because the relationship to money isn't 1-to-1, as in, the more money you produce, the more players you produce. Perez understands it, and uses the fact that Madrid has one of the best academies in the world as an overt strategy to justify his spending. Barca and Man U's golden generations were produced with academy players they made.

The notion that players are "born, not made" is so stupid and incurious that maybe I shouldn't be surprised you believe it. But it is dumb as frick and not supported by the evidence on the ground. The French FA's decision in 1988 is such a clear example, especially given the French NT's performance before 1988, and after, where they saw the effects of reorganization within a decade, and now supply national team players to France, as well as lots of African teams.

quote:

---

riddle me this... if players were "made", why aren't they all Messi or CR7?

---

Because individuals have different natural athletic ability, which is a distinct, different thing than technical ability. The point of any technical development program is to give players a good baseline technical level by which they can express their athletic gifts. If you've played before, you would realize that a striker with his back toward goal, dealing with a pass that might be head level for a 5'6 striker will be dealt differently than the same pass, with the same angle and velocity as a striker who is 6'3. How players problem-solve situations is always dependent on their technical ability. A CB playing a first-station pass between the lines doesn't depend on his ability to jump. It depends on technique, to hit the pass in the right area of the foot, to add the appropriate angle and velocity, so that it can reach its intended target. The fact that not all CBs can do that is a reflection of pragmatism, as their isn't a neat delineation between judging who makes the cut at key points in a players development. A player might show this ability at lower levels, but is unable to perform it at higher levels, and the only way you know is through competition.

Let's take a player like Santi Cazorla. He has few athletic gifts. He isn't fast, he isn't particularly strong, he is absolutely tiny, and would be a professional in no other sport. What separates him is his technical ability, which is imparted to him through Real Oviedo's academy, and the fact that he wasn't let go due to his height, which often happens even to wonderful technical players. Cazorla can receive the ball in any body position, can dribble well, pass well, use both feet at elite levels and has otherworldly ball control. He was able to use his massive technical ability to play any position on the front-line (not striker, though he certainly could have), and a central midfield role where he played a massive role dictating the attack. The mere fact that he didn't have significant athletic gifts, like the acceleration of Messi, or Ronaldo's jumping ability, forced him to problem-solve situations through his technical ability alone, which reinforced his technical ability, over and over, through thousands of little problem solving situations.

And it isn't as though Messi nor Ronaldo did not receive technical educations. Ronaldo came through Sporting's academy at the same time as Ricardo Quaresma, who isn't blessed with near as much athletic ability but plenty of technical ability. Messi follows in a genre of Argentinian playmaker in the line directly descended from Maradona, whose own technical skills were developed through street football in his neighborhood, and showcased by his neighborhood club Estrella Roja. There is nary a professional player who didn't receive some type of technical education.

The question, why isn't every player Messi/Ronaldo, is the wrong question, because it assumes everything is innate. Humans aren't necessarily a blank slate, but the degree of skill they can achieve through early primary motor development as well as activities that maximize visual-spatial integration is extremely high, and is well-supported in the literature. A player might have worked out from playing with friends how to receive a ball in a certain position, but the reinforcement of that comes through technical education, where bad habits, like dribbling exclusively with one leg, are targeted and drilled out. The better question is why did the French model produce so much success, in a verifiable form, after the reorganization of the French youth system? Are you suggesting that France found magical generation after generation after generation? Or why the German FA decided to reorganize after the failures of 1998 and 2000, and again, produced far more technical players than previous generations as a whole?

The one terrible thing about American Sports is that you are rewarded for being terrible

In Europe you are punished

quote:

---

crazy4lsu

---

Your posts get me so fired up
I just wanna pound a beer in a pub and go give an opposing fan a Glasgow smile

quote:

---

Why wouldn’t you want the best players playing against each other regularly?

---

because theres a chance half of the Super League teams wont even qualify for next years UCL, where the best teams play.

guy has to be stroking out.

he also said PSG werent invited, and almost immediately someone hacked some emails and produced the papers inviting PSG to the super league.

quote:

---

Florentino Perez has said nobody has left the Super League

---

To Florentino Perez, the Super League is the Hotel California.

quote:

---

knew he was losing it when he rambled on about how the games are too long for younger people and how they have to shorten them.

---

16-24 year olds aren’t watching the game
Is that because soccer isn’t woke enough?

“Why European football has a white supremacy problem” - Vice