re: The pay-for-play debate

I'm not a fan of pay to play by any means (it holds back development yuuuugely) but this post on reddit helped put things in perspective for me:

LINK

The reason why youth soccer cost so much can be broken down into three categories: coaching, facilities, competition. All of which have costs which really can be attributed to individuals and groups trying to prosper on the game itself.

Coaching: Few and far between is there a volunteer parent capable and committed to coaching and teaching the right way to play (technique foremost and good tactics.) Most are the former high school and college player that is athletic and basic knowledge. Plus, there’s always the feeling from other families that the volunteer mom/dad coach is preferential to his kid and his kid’s friends. Some are, some aren’t. In order to cope with this, clubs bring in independent coaches and pay them. We do it and each coach will get about $10k per season. The good ones are closer to $20k but there aren’t that many good ones. I’ve seen countless paid “professional” coaches not teaching the kids the right way. But this has become the standard and that cost is on the players of that team. Unless you have a paid coach, you don’t attract players.

Facilities: Each team needs to train regularly in order to compete. However, day light and field quality are impactful here. It’s become the standard that a high level team trains on turf, under lights. Should it be the standard? No but again, if one club has it, it will attract players so now everyone has to do it. As a club we spend close to $150k per year on renting turf and are now trying to raise funds for a $3.1mil complex of our own. Private orgs are building facilities just so they can charge youth clubs fees upwards of $200 per hour for a turf field. At times we’ll squeeze 5-6 teams on the field to be efficient but that then impacts the quality of the training. Again, all of these costs are on the players. Could we use grass fields, parks, etc.? Yes. But scheduling these and weather/daylight changes make it really difficult and thus, we can’t compete.

Competition: because of the idiotic gotsoccer ranking system, teams are trying to do as many high level tournaments as possible. The more tournaments you do and do well in, the more points you get and the higher your ranking. The higher your ranking, the more likely you are to attract better players which then impacts your ability to get a higher ranking. It’s a vicious cycle. The top level tournaments are expensive (upwards of $1000 per team) just to enter and most require substantial travel. And again, we find the “college coaches will be in attendance” sales pitch as well. Btw, most all tournaments are simply fund raisers for the club hosting it. Again, all costs on the players. This one might be harder to fix.

Fixing all this sounds complicated but in my mind, is easy. What’s complicated is enforcing the changes to make sure all clubs comply. What’s to stop a club from going rouge and going their own thing?
First, and IMO, most important, we have to stop all the youth clubs from competing with one another for the same players and focus more on the development of those players. It’s become more about winning in this weekend’s tournament instead of long term development. I heard someone once suggest little-league baseball-like structure where kids can only play within their community boundaries. Not a bad idea. Then once they get to a certain age and have the ability, they move on to the academies. Competition between the clubs is important on the field in order to develop players but off the field it’s forcing the pay to play system. I have 3 clubs that started up within a few miles of us simply because they didn’t like what we were doing or didn’t agree with the placement of their kid after tryouts. So that parent started a new club and pulled some players. All this does is force the need for more paid coaches and more facilities for players that really should be just playing rec. More resource strain.

Second, the US and the state org’s have to invest in coaching and coaching education. If we go with the model above, there is a finite amount of clubs. Why can’t the US and/or state agencies take part in the compensation and education of those coaches? There are some education programs offered now but, at the top level, it’s limited to the old boys network and it’s structured by the US itself. It’s potentially bad coaches developing more bad coaches. US just ran their first pro level license. Who developed the courseware? If we did, how the heck would we know what should be discussed? It’s not like we are wildly successful at the top level. Get some European and South American influence here and get everyone in the country on the same page.

And since we’re on the state agencies, stop with the ODP stuff. It’s a money grab for the state orgs and an ego boost for the families, nothing more. The instruction is no better and based on the workload on the players, is too much soccer. Most top level teams aren’t allowing their players to participate anymore. It just strains all resources. Focus on developing the academies and develop more of them. There are only two academies each for boys and girls in my entire state one of which is 3 hours away. Align more resources into the academies and get more kids involved in the them. Funding comes from the top level pro clubs at all levels (MLS, NASL, etc.) along with the US and state agency and allow them to contract these kids like in Europe.

Third, invest in these facilities. While I’m not a proponent of every kid needs to play on turf, we have to build these along with grass fields somewhere. The inner cities need them more than the suburban kids but again, we’re expecting all of these kids to pay for this stuff. Even quality grass fields are expensive now. Yes the South Americans train on dirt and kick rocks when they are kids and that mental toughness is something we need but we can be more effective as coaches if we have half-decent facilities that are available at low or no cost.

Again, just wanted to offer a point of view from the youth clubs themselves. I’m to blame for this pay -to-play environment but in order to compete, we have to do it. I often find myself thinking grass roots and how we need to stop what we’re doing to set an example. But if we don’t follow along, the players go elsewhere and we struggle to exist. I’m sure many will have different points of view on this as the topic is polarizing and I am by no means an authority on the topic. But if we really want to fix things, it has to start at the youth level. Changing structure in the MLS, etc are good, but this is at the heart of it for me.

quote:

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Well soccer needs to be started very early,

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Reminds me of when Santi Cazorla's son was running around after a game juking everyone and he looked like he was 4. There is prob not a single American boy as skilled as he is at that age. Hell I didn't start playing until I was 6 or 7. Played baseball first.

What about future coaches and managers? Any gameplan for producing these?