Saw this article by Mark Zeigler and agree completely, being a youth soccer coach I see what he is talking about first hand. I have told my parents over and over again that their kids need to watch soccer on the tube and start playing as much as possible. We are too far behind other countries when it comes to the culture of soccer at home and focusing on the technical part of the game. And I also agree with hiring a foreign coach with playing experience, I am a good coach and will get better, but I have never played professionally and therefore do not have that experience to rely on. I think that a high level coach, in most cases, needs that experience. I have played semi pro and college and know my stuff, but put me in the locker room with a bunch of MLS guys and they might not respect me when they learn that I have never played at that level. The Most I can hope for in my career is to be either a Director of Coaching for a youth club or a Youth Director of an MLS Academy. Either way, I am living the dream and helping shape the next generation of American Soccer Players. Hats off to Bob for what he did, but it is time to take the next step and get better.
Six ways to fix American soccer
9:28 p.m., June 28, 2011
As preparations were being made for the trophy presentation at the Rose Bowl following Mexico’s 4-2 win against the United States on Saturday night, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati sat on the bench and stared blankly at the jubilant Mexican players. He was alone, and alone with his thoughts.
Maybe he was merely disappointed with the U.S. performance, blowing a 2-0 lead after 23 minutes. Or maybe he was suddenly overcome with the realization that there are major problems in his empire, that an era of meteoric ascendancy in American soccer has reached an apex, that a cliff may await on the other side.
Here’s how to avoid falling off, or at least how to open a parachute.
1. Admit there is a problem
Before it can be fixed, there must be an admission that it is broken – something the power brokers of American soccer have been loath to do.
The national team also lost to Panama – Panama – in Gold Cup group play and was underwhelming in its victories. And before that, it won one of eight games since the 2010 World Cup. The under-20 team failed to qualify for the U-20 World Cup out of arguably the planet’s weakest region.
The under-17 team just lost to Uzbekistan and tied New Zealand 0-0 in the U-17 World Cup in Mexico.
The U.S. women’s national team, with more high-level players than the rest of the world combined, nearly didn’t qualify for the World Cup and is at its most vulnerable point in the program’s history. The women’s U-20s were knocked out in the quarterfinals – their earliest exit ever – by Nigeria. The U-17s failed to qualify.
Yeah, there might be a problem.
2. Fire Bob Bradley
This is less about tactics or techniques than timing.
History has taught us that national coaches who hang around for a second World Cup cycle almost always fail, and of all countries, the United States should know that. Bruce Arena guided the 2002 team to the quarterfinals. He stuck around for 2006, and the Yanks didn’t win a game. Everything that history told us would happen has happened: the team has gone stale, players lack motivation, Bradley has lost the locker room, inferior teams are beating now it. As one person close to the team put it: “The players are miserable.”
Another issue is Bradley’s son, Michael. He was a key piece of the 2010 World Cup team but clearly has lost something – a step, his composure, an edge, something. Yet he played 535 of a possible 540 minutes during the Gold Cup, and the whispers about nepotism, warranted or not, are growing.
The biggest problem, though, is what Bradley represents. He is an exponent of the very system that has delivered a roster of robots to his national team: the youth clubs, college soccer, Major League Soccer. Having him at the top sends the message that the status quo is acceptable.
3. Hire a foreign national coach
Then tell him there’s no need to find a house in the States. Let him live in London, or Berlin, or Amsterdam, or some quaint European town with a train station.
This accomplishes two things. It brings a fresh, cosmopolitan perspective to a moldy product, and it positions him to place the most promising U.S. players with European clubs.
Because let’s face it. The best American players are based – and have blossomed – in the caldron of European soccer. MLS may one day be a fertile ground for developing and maintaining national-team talent, but it’s not right now. Over six Gold Cup games, just 15 percent of the U.S. minutes came from MLS players (and that includes the Los Angeles Galaxy’s Landon Donovan, who should still be playing in Europe). This has been done before, basing a non-European country’s national team in Europe. Dutch coach Guus Hiddink did it with Australia for the 2006 World Cup. African countries do it all the time. And imagine how much more productive training camps would be if players didn’t have to fly back and forth across the Atlantic.
4. Reinvent youth soccer
Assemble an international, and fully independent, committee to examine a dysfunctional youth development system and then provide it with sweeping powers to implement change -- not just issue mindless directives that merely perpetuate the problem.
The obsession with winning under-10 State Cups needs to be de-emphasized, along with the influence of parents and the premium placed on raw athleticism at the expense of technical skill. Youth teams are grouped strictly by age level, which gives those who mature early an inordinate advantage and leaves behind the late bloomer, no matter how good he or she is with the ball.
You have to wonder: Would Argentina’s Lionel Messi, a skinny tyke for most of his youth, have been passed over in America? 5. Tweak the college game
NCAA rules severely restrict practice and playing time for college teams, while kids everywhere else in the world are already on pro clubs that play year-round.
And what about eliminating college soccer’s idiotic multiple substitution rule? It creates a hectic, crazed, high-octane mess of kick ball – again, at the expense of technical skill – and players never learn how to properly manage the game and their aerobic resources like they would with the international three-sub limit.
That carries over to MLS, which consists largely of former college players who know only way to play: fast, furious, frenetic.
6. Embrace a soccer culture
It is the great equalizer, and the reason a country with the population of San Diego County (Slovenia) can tie a nation of 313 million in the World Cup.
Kids everywhere else grow up living, breathing, dreaming soccer. Here, kids in the suburbs go to regimented practice twice a week, play a game in front of screaming parents on the weekend and that’s it. No soccer on TV. No pickup games on the neighborhood vacant lot, honing their skills on a bumpy dirt field while dribbling around cinder blocks and tree roots.
Just trying stuff, without an overbearing coach in sight.
There are basically two choices here. Either suburban kids put down their Xboxes and start playing street soccer (probably not happening anytime soon), or U.S. Soccer embraces the ethnic communities that do.
It’s no coincidence that the most promising player on the under-17 national team, the most creative, the most inventive, is midfielder Alejandro Guido.
Who grew up in Tijuana and Chula Vista.
