re: Alexi Lalas: "stop vilifying pay-to-play youth soccer"

Japan uses its colleges.

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In America, if you want to find the best competition, chances are you’re going to have to travel a good distance. Gas, hotels, food. It adds up a good bit.

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Not if you live in a good sized metro area. The problem is, because of the pay for play system, most of the teams that are close to each other can't play each other because they are all in different pathways, each with their own financial interests. My daughter's team in metro ATL, before she quit playing for this very reason, had a least 6 if not 8 clubs within an hour that could provide competitive games. Problem is there were only 2 of them in the same organization so instead playing teams 30-45 min away we had 3 team from Florida, 1 in Alabama, 1 in So Car, 1 in South Georgia, and like 3 in North Carolina. Just for regular league games. It's ridiculous.

Your point about travel isn't wrong but it doesn't have to be that way for the vast majority of players if not for a stupid system.

Japan is probably more technically profitent than we are, so the system isn’t exactly failing. That said, a cultural shift happened in the 90s with Tom Byer (an American) starting a children’s show that encouraged kids to pick up a ball early. This developed into camps and a nationwide push to improve technical skills. Guys like Kubo, Minamino, Mitoma, etc owe a lot to him, and some of these guys even got direct coaching from him. Byer wrote a book called soccer starts at home, and I recommend it to everyone who wants to get their young kids involved in soccer.

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Not if you live in a good sized metro area. The problem is, because of the pay for play system, most of the teams that are close to each other can't play each other because they are all in different pathways, each with their own financial interests

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Yep, even in a much smaller metro in Shreveport/Bossier we had to go to Dallas or somewhere in Texas because CABOSA wouldn't allow their teams to play ours.

Well my thing is it does cost money to be on the good teams. If you are poor you are just shite out of luck.


Dempsey is a great example. From small town, parents didn't have the funds with multiple kids to take him to Dallas to play. His sister dies, I think sister, and then he starts playing in dallas.


And again, soccer is a sport you can't just start playing in high school like football and be good at it.

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Don't city recreation departments offer free youth soccer?


Doesn't matter if they aren't getting the proper coaching. That just makes it a glorified daycare.

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The kids in the slums of Brazil and spain and Africa arent getting "good" coaching at u-8? Absolutely not. You don't need good coaches for U-8 and even U-12. Kids simply need to touch the ball. All the time. That is when kids need to simply be playing on their own, practicing on their own.

Look at basketball, there's plenty of innercity kids that develop on the playground simply by playing without proper coaching.

The difference in America is there's not enough kids just playing on the playground and the streets. There's no saturday and sunday street games. That's how 90% of the world with great soccer gets their talent. The academies and coaching comes later, and most of these kids are already talented. The coaching simply polishes them.

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ou don't need good coaches for U-8 and even U-12.


Christ

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Respectfully you clearly have very little experience playing or coaching, frankly any sports.

I've coached soccer now for close to 20 years. I played for about the same.

I've seen 100s of kids that came from almost nothing with very little formal training in multiple sports jump into the scene at 8, 10, 12, 14.

Again, its passion and playing on their own that's the most important. We simply don't have that by and large across the US. You can't change that by free quality coaching.

ETA; I'm not suggesting it doesn't help. Of course it does. But you can't take a C rated player and force them into being an A. You just can't. Not on coaching alone. Its takes the players and motivation, most of that is built at home in the neighborhood. That's across the world.

Their academies, especially in Europe are not pay for play with 3 practices and 3 games during season. It's Mon-Thur morning practice, school, afternoon practice. Fri morning practice, school, go home. Sat club game. Sun off. Year round until they either move on to university, get picked up by the national team, or get a contract. 9 practices with coaches invested in their development and them being professionals, and one game to let out some steam and socialize. We are better, but we are still lightyears from the 2nd and 1st tier teams.

As someone mentioned earlier, true developmental academies near our largest metros would close the gap tremendously. They have to be developmental academies and not pay for play. Start free programs to push the sport at a young age, identify gifted individuals, develop them. They get proper training, a good education, and a pipeline to either a lucrative career or a college degree. Either way better than most would ever get. This makes the national team better as well as MLS better. This an a better college system would cement us close to the second tier. Close enough that the one true generational talent could put us in a spot to break into a tier 1 conversation or at least elite tier 2 that is a legitimate threat to bring it home.

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with 3 practices and 3 games during season. It's Mon-Thur morning practice, school, afternoon practice. Fri morning practice, school, go home. Sat club game. Sun off. Year round until they either move on to university, get picked up by the national team, or get a contract. 9 practices with coaches invested in their development and them being professionals, and one game to let out some steam and socialize. We are better, but we are still lightyears from the 2nd and 1st tier teams.

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Agreed, most academies in England are signing kids at 7-8 years old and it becomes almost a full time job at that point.
ETA: this is the same thing the Dominicans are doing in baseball and why they’ve been so successful


I think every MLS academy is free if you receive an invitation to join. The issue is the kids not quite good enough for that level or live in a certain area without an MLS academy. I know our club gives out 250k in scholarships each year for kids that can’t afford it but that doesn’t help with all the travel.

In regards to college soccer, obviously that shouldn’t be the goal for our top tier players but gives players that may not have professional aspirations a goal to work toward. Right now the men’s college soccer programs are like half of women’s programs and that’s not including all internationals coming over.