U.S. soccer making changes to youth set up

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With youth development remaining a major priority, U.S. Soccer is making some major changes to how young players play the game.

U.S. Soccer announced Monday that the organization would be making changes related to small-sided games and birth-year registration. The changes are expected to go into effect by August 2017.

“Our number one goal is to improve our players down the road and these initiatives will help us do that,” U.S. Under-20 Men’s National Team head coach and youth technical director Tab Ramos said. “With small-sided standards what we’re trying to do is to help players develop by putting them in an environment where they are constantly involved in the play and our changes in birth-year registration will make age groups easier to understand, while aligning our calendar with the international calendar.”

To start, U.S. Soccer will focus on adjusting field standards for youth players from the U-6 to U-12 age groups. Field sizes will now be based on age group, allowing players to develop more technical and game recognition skills than with previous setups.

Field dimensions and team sizes will increase from 4v4 at the U-6, U-7 and U-8 levels, 7v7 at U-9 and U-10, 9v9 at U-11 and U-12 and, finally, full 11v11 games at the U-13 level.

“Now you’re playing 4v4, 7v7, and 9v9 at a young age and chances are the players are involved a lot more in those types of games,” Ramos said. “Over a period of 10 years, there are thousands of more times that you’ve been involved in certain plays and that will speed up the process of players getting more comfortable.

“The players, by being involved in the play constantly, will learn how to make important plays, and make plays individually that can break down teams.”

In addition to field adjustments, U.S. Soccer has adjusted registration calendars to reshuffle player eligibility. Previously, U.S. Soccer was run on an August-to-July calendar, but will now implement a more traditional January-to-December listing.

The changes, U.S. Soccer says, will align birth-year registration with the international standard while also allowing the federation to better combat “relative age effect,” the idea of selecting players that are more physically mature due to early birthdays.

New changes in registration will be grandfathered in, allowing current players to play up with older age groups rather than abandoning current teams.

“I think the birth registration changes make everything easier,” Ramos said. “Over the years you go through coaching youth and people are confused about what age group they’re in, if they’re supposed to be U-15 versus U-14, because they’re born in such-and-such year, but they’re born in June. This new calendar makes things easier for everyone.

“If you’re born in a certain year you belong in that certain age group. It also gets us on the same calendar with the rest of the world, so now it becomes easier to identify for U.S. National Teams and everything else when it comes to international soccer.”

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