Re: What are we doing?
 

I think we should create a NAFTA Men's team.

Re: What are we doing?
 

Well, maybe Russia can argue that since we're theirs now, we can get in under the "host country gets automatic entry" tradition.

Re: What are we doing?
 

As you all know, I am not a soccer aficionado, although I have been watching a lot more soccer since my daughter took up the sport quite a few years ago now. I think I have a better appreciation for the game (the women's game is more respectable, btw, because they don't spend all their time fucking flopping like beached fish).

I watched Taylor Twellman criticize the US soccer machine. I think he's an excellent analyst and his points are well taken. But I will tell you, from my perspective, what the real problem is. (And to be fair, nothing he said and nothing I will say will be an excuse or even an explanation for why the USMNT lost to fucking Trinidad and Tobago. Jesus.)

Soccer, like many sports now, in this country is not for poor kids. You might not think that this makes any sense at all since it certainly is for everyone else, the world over. But here, what I am going to call The Great De Facto Segregation, which used to apply to mostly schools and neighborhoods, is destroying youth sports.

If your kid wants to play soccer competitively, she needs to be on a club team early on, before there is an option to play for a school, which costs money. If they show any talent and want to continue, they need to play travel, which costs money. Dues, uniforms, fees, gas money, hotels, gifts for coaches, meals away from home, team parties, skill-position extra coaching, etc. It's not cheap. And it's a year-round slog.

You may think, "Well, if they're not on a travel team, they can just play for their schools." Nope. If you want to play for a good school team (public or private--and we're obviously not talking about private schools are we?), you better have been playing travel for years before you try out or you won't get a spot. Worse yet, travel players with ambitions of a scholarship (read: 80% of players) often don't even play for their schools because all of the good coaches are connected to travel teams and playing for your school is often looked at very negatively and may be considered a step backwards. And that's if you even have the time. The better travel programs require you to choose one sport and will not tolerate you missing their practices or games when there is a conflict. So, even if you're pretty good without going to travel, you're playing with and against unskilled players and being instructed by shitty coaches.

Finally, if you're still pretty good and want to try to play at the next level, college coaches won't even see you play to recruit you. They're all at the college showcase tournaments that the travel juggernaut sets up. The relationships between travel coaches and schools run deep. And travel teams have all the talent and have been highly coached since they were little kids.

So, our best black and Latino kids don't even try to play soccer. Hell, the same thing is going on in basketball, except the love of basketball in poor communities is so strong that parents are killing themselves to pay for their kids to get on travel basketball teams. But if US soccer can't draw black and Latino athletes to soccer at a young age, they're never going to be able to compete, no matter how many billions we spend on soccer as a country. And I say this with the understanding that Germany, for example, is lilly white and is a powerhouse. That's not us.

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

More attractive in some ways than the wild fever dreams of "gun control legislation," to be fair.

Re: What are we doing?
 

T&T were upset that Iceland is now the smallest country to qualify. That's who I'll be rooting for.

If you look at the US roster last night, there's this missing generation of players who should be in the prime of their careers. Yedlin is 24, and there are some younger players. There are a whole bunch who are past 30. Between them, you only had Altidore and Nagbe (27), Villafana (28) and Gonzalez (29).

Re: What are we doing?
 

That's what he was saying about it being a Pay to Play sport in this country, at $2500 a kid a year. I totally agree with you on this, and I think it's something that we need to look at from a federation level. Other countries have academies where they find talent and develop the hell out of it. Whatever Barcelona invested in Messi when he joined their academy at 12 or 13, they got back in spades.

Re: What are we doing?
 

German national team members Emre Can, Shkrodran Mustafi, Jerome Boateng, Amin Yones and Leroy Sane might disagree.

eta: I want to have some of whatever Sunil Gulati is smoking.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I'm old enough to remember when athletic preferences played a role in integrated schools kept white by alumni preferences.

Now, so many athletic preferences are effectively for sale (got an ok rich basketball player, not good enough for the top schools either athletically or academically? - move them over to volleyball, crew, fencing, soccer....).

Re: What are we doing?
 

All true. The coaches figured out how to monetize it and the parents are willing to pay. When you factor in gas, hotels, and meals out, I probably spend about $15k a year for my three girls to play. There is definitely a training arms race that creates peer-pressure. "You're not doing private training/futsal academy/ODP/Thanksgiving tournament/summer camps? You'll be left behind."

My son dabbles in tackle football, flag football, basketball, baseball and swimming. Together all of these activities are less than $2k. But of course you have to put up with parent coaches, which is a whole other issue.

And not playing for the high school sucks. My oldest got to play one year of high school before the club's "no high school sports" policy kicked in this year. High school sports are fun.

So why spend all that money? I don't know what to say other than I enjoy it. I enjoy watching them play at a high level. I enjoy the long car rides and the conversations I have with them. That being said, I sometimes dream of an alternative reality wherein we sunk all that money into a beach house and we became one of those families that just went to the beach each weekend instead of driving all over for sports.

Re: What are we doing?
 

More here.

Re: What are we doing?
 

European sports is a much different animal. We had a 6' 7" Italian exchange student a few years back. At 12 he was under a contract. At 15 his team sold his contract to another team. Investment like you are talking about requires a contractual tie. Hell, in basketball here, no one commits. Everyone wants to be able to jump ship if the coach decides someone other than my kid gets most shots.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I'm not sure it's just about money. I'd like to know where the parents engaged in this arms race find the time for it.

There are all of these helicopter sorts who appear to have nothing to do but take the kids to practice, to special coaching, and to watch and critique every game. And volunteer coach!

What do these people do for a living? Some are well off sorts with time to burn. But most are middle class to affluent sorts who seem to have magically found 30 hours in a day.

Some of this is jealousy at the fact I don't have the time, nor does my spouse. But some of it is also annoyance. Many of these people are making poor choices. Their kids are not good enough to get scholarships, they have perhaps too many kids, and their time might be better spent in a commercial/working endeavors which would better equip them to pay for the kids' college. I fear a lot of them will spend all these years collecting trophies that'll wind up in a dusty garage, while their kids later head off to college to collect debt, which will preclude them from participating positively in the economy.

I grasp the attraction of one's kid excelling in a sport, and that team participation schools one for later group participation in the workplace. But many of these parents go way too far, and they create an unhealthy arms race. And I think a lot of these parents need to understand, Reliving your youth through Junior is not reliving your youth. The school sports star phase of your ride through the mortal coil is Over. Assume the appropriate spectator position.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I blame marketing for this. Clearly, for some people, guns are collectibles. How do manufacturers keep people buying more of something? Keep making unique versions of it.

If you're a billionaire car collector, when someone else has a Veyron, your Ferrari won't do. And when that Veyron owner hears McLaren is building something that goes 10 mph faster than a Veyron (and will suck your dick and make you four kinds of espresso using Bluetooth commands), he's got to have it.

Aren't gun nuts just collectors of a really, really unhealthy product?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If from a standing position, with ten seconds on the clock, you can place a money shot in a potted plant on the floor, bag law and get thee to the San Fernando Valley!

Re: What are we doing?
 

I have three kids playing comp soccer, in youth club of a MLS team fwiw. I manage two of the teams, and have my coaching license and sometimes fill in when a coach can't be there for a game. Across their teams, there are a small number of parents who fit the profile you describe above -- they are very much the exception rather than the rule. For most of the families, the kids play comp soccer in a structured club because it is hard to find things for them to do that aren't structured, and hard to find sports that they can start fresh. If you want to play soccer, it becomes a year-round thing, or you're out. The club is pretty focused on identifying new talents and getting them to its academy team, and the kids at our level (below that) are pretty clearly not going to be on the academy team. The money we spend keeps the program working. If every club in the country worked as hard as ours does to spot the talent out there, US Soccer would be in great shape.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I hear you. But, fuck. That's just the most selfish (from a national team perspective) approach to growing the game, no? Cherry pick talented kids and put them in an academy so we can have a great team? That leaves poor kids that aren't completely exceptional out in the cold still. These travel teams should be forced to provide a certain number of spots to kids who can't afford to pay. They should allow public schools to use their facilities. Providing coaching at public schools should be part of travel coaches' jobs. We should be investing in building smaller soccer fields in cities and reaching out to kids to train them and give them field time.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

The Messi example is a little complicated from a club vs. country perspective. The investment Barcelona made in him has paid off ridiculous dividends, but his move to Spain at a young age enraged many in Argentina, and there are many that argue that the rift between Messi and Argentina soccer has been a reason that he has dramatically underperformed on the national stage (last night excepted) while at the same time being arguably the best player in the world for Barcelona.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I think the issue is that the game is too expensive for younger kids, so unless they are less likely to have the opportunity to get spotted and pulled into the pipeline. For my teams, the biggest expense is fields, for which we pay the local school systems. The second biggest expense is coaching. Nothing else comes close. If there were more fields, and if the local governments (school districts) weren't using the rental fees from them to balance otherwise upside-down budgets, it would be much cheaper.

Re: What are we doing?
 

My daughter plays travel soccer and basketball. But she also plays high school soccer and basketball. Both of her (public) high school teams are absolutely terrible. We have 3 travel players on the HS soccer team. They are so fucking advanced that playing with girls who are literally just learning the game is frustrating. And the powerhouse schools they play are the Catholic schools who have a dozen travel players. It's sickening.

My daughter absolutely loves playing for her school even though they frequently get murdered. There is school spirit, it helps with the social life obviously, and since she's so highly skilled (and I'm not bragging at all--that's just how it is when you've played travel for 10 years) she was one of the leaders on both teams as a freshman last year. All of that is great for her. We've told both travel teams who try to keep their players from playing other sports and playing for their schools to fuck off. She's been lucky that it hasn't affected her participation on either team. But that is not the norm and I think it's bullshit.

And what's crazy is that parents buy in to this one sport bullshit that these travel teams sell. If you ask college coaches what they're looking for, they always say they want a kid who has grown up playing multiple sports. They think differently, have much better footwork, understand how to move, etc. And yet parents force their kids into playing just one sport the whole year.

Everything sucks.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

The best players in our area don't play in high school at all, because their clubs want them to play through the winter (soccer is a winter sport here). My oldest plays on the HS team, and the level of play is much lower than the club teams, because the players are relatively new to each other and don't have that many practices before the season starts. He loves playing for the school team too, but it's not the path to playing in college for those who care about that.

I have three kids who play a sport each, and we barely make that work. I have no idea how we'd manage if they added another sport. Who can do that?

Re: What are we doing?
 

This is the new reality of parenting in this country. Your kids are overscheduled from jump. And the parents are forced to figure it the fuck out.

My mother said to me years ago that she was concerned that my daughter was too overscheduled and she should just have some time to play with other kids. I told her that after playground years are over, that's just not possible. Every kid is scheduled. It's not just sports. So there is no one available to just get together and play with. You can't go up the street and ring someone's bell and get them to come out to play. They're all being trained somewhere. Whatever your kid is interested in requires a commitment that I and none of my friends could imagine when we were growing up. We just went out and played whatever sport was in season, organized our own games, saved up for equipment, etc. Playing an instrument only happened through school. Hell, everything that required some type of training pretty much happened through school. And rich kids and poor kids were on equal ground (except when it came to SAT courses, of course).

All facts. If parents invested the money they spend on sports they'd have a significant chunk of change to spend on school. And a lot of the parents I run into from my daughter's teams (or the opposing teams) are fucking nuts. Seriously.

I admit that I am more vocal when it comes to basketball because I know when the ref is screwing up. (And I'm glad my daughter played soccer, which kept me completely quiet the first 5 years because I surely didn't have the understanding of the sport to even question a call.) But my few comments are limited to really bad calls. These asshole parents are questioning coaches at games and think their kids should be playing at all times and should have the ball at all times when they're playing. They are completely delusional. I wouldn't coach a team if they paid me double what I make now.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

I am so happy my kids are total nerds

eom

Re: What are we doing?
 

I watched a thing on one of those news magazines on Spain's soccer academies. I think it's nuts to identify kids who are talented and then move them at a young age into a boarding school where they spend inordinate amounts of time being trained so that you can then feed them into the professional soccer machine. It's absolutely crazy. Is it worse than what we have set up? I can't tell you. But what happens in Spain to all the poor kids who love to play soccer who don't get picked? Because I know what happens here.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

We left WCFC for a different travel team/academy for a number of reasons. But here are their facilities:

Main field and field house:

https://cdn.patch.com/users/56817/20...1881ed0e83.jpg

Full facilities layout (including dedicated parking):

http://ommsoccer.org/data/images/OMMComplexImage001.jpg

Please notice that every field is fully lit for night games. And we played other academies whose (multiple) facilities are bigger and way nicer. Kids must buy new uniforms every single year even though the colors and designs rarely change. They're not trying to bring the budget down. They're trying to blow it up to draw the money. That's what they want. They don't give a shit about actual development. They want to grow their business. I saw kids who were amazing playing NPL who should have been on ECNL teams within the same club! They don't move them up. In fact, the new thing is getting an academy classification and bringing in kids from somewhere else to spend money on that new and highest level. Hell, the head of player development at WCFC told me that my daughter was the best goalie he has, but he couldn't move her up because the parents of the girl who had been playing at a higher level would be upset and might leave. And they have multiple kids playing, so...

This shit is a business. They don't give a fuck about the kids. We left and went to a smaller program with a coach who is actually focused on developing kids and having fun.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

Yep. This is exactly right. If your kid is good enough, and you pick the right travel team, those teams will allow your kid to play another sport and miss some practices and games when they conflict. But it's always a fight. A lot simply will not allow it. We try to steer away from those programs.

I have one daughter. And I do less heavy lifting than my ex because I can rarely get to weekday games. But I do the weekend stuff and we switch off when it comes to travel tournaments. She's doing North Carolina. I'll probably do Massachusetts, etc. Her other daughter is not interested in sports. If she were, I couldn't imagine how it would work. I can't imagine how you do it with three kids!

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

Graham was telling me that a lot of the poor Latino kids in this part of the world play for fun and none with the idea that it's the way out of poverty or to college or whatever. And their parents and others keep an eye on them in case someone shows some real talent. Then they get sent back to wherever their family came from (especially to Mexico and Honduras) to be developed there because the programs there are so much better and they have a much better chance of success than they ever would in the US system.

Re: What are we doing?
 

You let yourself get forced into playing zone defense. Strictly man-to-man and maybe there's room for more.

Although y'all are scaring me with all this. Tiny Baby may have to stick to competitive reading.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I'm the worst at questioning refs and I'm trying to stop doing it now, well in advance of any youth sports participation.

Re: What are we doing?
 

Enh. I wouldn't be overly concerned. If you have a kid who is clearly a star and needs that talent developed (sports, chess, music, or anything, really), then you'll do it. But if your kid really just loves something, manage your own expectations and do what you can to help them spend time doing whatever that is.

My hope is that my kid can use sports to help her resume for really good D-III schools. I'm not one of these lunatics who is shooting for a scholarship. And, frankly, if your kid gets a scholarship to a shitty D-II school or a crappy D-I school, is that the best thing for them or you?

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

I had a ref turn to me during summer travel ball and say, "You know what? You're right. I messed that one up." Couldn't say a damn thing. And then we were tight and joking the rest of the game. That's a ref who knows what he's doing.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

My oldest played baseball for a while, but then ended when the next child started to have practices. I work 50 miles from home and take a train every day, so you can imagine my commute. My wife works twelve-hour shifts on an odd schedule. Thank God my oldest drives now. Also, HopSkipDrive.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I want my kids to play team sports through high school to have had that experience, but they don't need the pressure of having to get a scholarship. I think my oldest could play D-II or D-III, but he seems to want to go to the sort of D-I school whose team he'll never make, and he's OK with that.

Re: What are we doing?
 

Shit is crazy. My mom used the: "Go outside and find someone to play with, but be home by ____" method, as did all my friends' parents. When my daughter was young enough that I was taking her to playgrounds, I had to tell her to go up to kids and ask if they wanted to play or if she could play too. Much anxiety ensued until she actually did it and then had lots of fun. Hell, as recently as 3 years or so ago, I had to tell her to go ask a group of adults and kids playing an unorganized soccer game if she could play. Had a ball, of course.

I wouldn't do that now. She'd embarrass and anger them. I can't even play around with her anymore in soccer. It's completely pointless for her and for me. I clearly suck, but I can't believe how skilled she and her friends are. It is amazing.

I make sure I beat her soundly when we play basketball or ping pong, though. No mercy.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

2

Father Marshall knows best.

Re: What are we doing?
 

I know very little about youth development, either in the elite European academies, or in the traveling programs here. I have no idea what the fix is for the U.S. Men's team, or why it is underperforming (while the women's team excels), although the points you raise about economic and racial segregation in youth development seem like a problem from any number of perspectives. My daughter is a theater kid, which is its own slice of crazy after a certain level, but at least we don't have to travel for theater tournaments every weekend. Finally, I'm glad to see you acknowledge that soccer actually requires skills -- I seem to recall this being a bit of a change in perspective from many years ago. ;)

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Yikes.

VF

Re: What are we doing?
 

No. That's not true. The game didn't appeal to me because of the lack of scoring, the flopping, and the fact that games end in ties way too often (and I still think the offsides rule needs serious revision). I always thought the players were amazingly skilled and even when I didn't have the same appreciation of the game I do now, would post amazing goals and saves that were beyond impressive.

TM

Re: What are we doing?
 

My son and daughter both played travel. My girl for the local dad coached cheap team. My son for the team having "coaches with accents" ( "I played pro in England so pay me") Son's teams was forever screwed by this type problem. no one kicked off if the 'rents could float a check, and no one benched ever even if the word pass was not even in their vocabulary. It is bullshit. As near as I can tell one kid from all of their teammates got a scholarship.

The thing that really opened my eyes was when my kids started reffing. They were 13. They could ref rec league U-13, or any U-8 (pre-travel). No travel games at first. The U-8 having a mix of the kids that will be travel and those that will be rec was a problem. Or more accurately the U-8 parents of the kids that will be travel were. I would drive them to ref, and so I'd watch. Those U-8 parents would be screaming like mad people, and I just thought how can you watch these little kids playing and scream like that? But i also realized I had too, and was currently doing the same for my kids in their older leagues.* We shouldn't change any of it so the US can make the World Cup, but we should maybe ban parents from watching so that kids can just have fun.

*Don't even ask me what I had to become to deal with rival coaches in travel basketball, or my greatest shame, yelling at Canadian b-ball refs at a Gus Macker in London Ontario, when I went into what was required to get fair treatment v. the yelling US coaches. Canadians didn't yell. i'm surprised they didn't try to hospitalize me.

Re: What are we doing?
 

O.K., fair enough, I can't really remember all the details of the great soccer debates from many years ago.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's time to send Trump out to coach the USMNST. #MAGA