As a soccer fan and coach, I really enjoy reading the few referee blogs out there. They give you a great perspective on the state of the amateur game and if coaches and parents are really doing some of the things we’ve heard about. (they are) But what I find most useful is their analysis and introspection on matches they’ve called - it really gives you an idea of how the refs react to blown calls, fast paced or physical matches, nut case coaches and parents, etc.

Up until now, the two I’ve read the most are The RefBlog and Whistling in the Wind. The good news is now there is a third I’m adding to my must read list. A referee here in North Carolina has just started writing about his experiences, primarily in the youth leagues, though he is working to get assessed to center adult amateur matches. Soccer Referee is a fun read. His first post sold me:

I referee’d a soccer tournament this weekend, as I’m sure many other Referees did, and I just want to say that I’m reasonably sure that the intelligence factor in any group of people goes down as they get closer to a soccer field. I mean no disrespect, but there is a definite change in people’s behavior as they watch their loved one play soccer. I’m certain that in other places, these parents are model parents, worthy of the love and devotion their children give them. On the soccer field? Well, that’s why they’re called fanatics.

Case in point: I had the ‘luxury’ of being a center referee (while I enjoy it immensely, it is a tough position), and a coach (and some of the parents!) quite enthusiastically informed me that there was a ‘handball’ (!) inside of the Penalty Area. He was jumping up and down, and shouting, and generally being quite annoying about it until I turned to him and uttered very simply: "He’s the Goalkeeper."

OWN3D!

Ridge Mahoney over at SoccerAmerica has the first firm details about the much anticipated MLS Youth Development Program which we’ve discussed previously. The good news is, the MLS will mandate that clubs run youth development programs. The bad news is they still haven’t said how they plan to avoid eligibility problems and also will allow clubs to make their academies pay to play.

The league has set out a plan by which six developmental teams, ranging in age from U-14 to U-25, will be run by each MLS team at its own cost. Also left to the teams is deciding on whether or not the players pay to play.

That’s a good start.

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17 million kids can’t be wrong. Soccer is a FUN game to play. Yet many adults don’t. Considering how many people are out of shape and don’t get enough exercise, soccer is a great way to get in shape. All you need is a fairly flat field, some cones, a ball, and some pinnies (color mesh jerseys). Sure, nets are nice, but they aren’t a requirement. Cones work just fine.

What’s that you say? You don’t think you can get 22 people together? No problem - play small side. Believe it or not, you’ll get MUCH more exercise and running in a small sided match. You can play with as few as 6 players on a 20yd x 30yd field. Wal-Mart and sporting goods stores sometimes sell inexpensive folding nets that are perfect for small sided matches.

The trick is finding other people who want to play in your area. That’s where the Internet comes in…

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Footie Girl explains why she loves soccer tournaments. If you’ve ever wondered why some people live and breath soccer, here’s one player’s perspective. There’s a reason why they call it the beautiful game and it’s not just the play on the field.

Just over a year ago, FIFA added clarifications to the offside rule trying to clarify when a player was gaining advantage, interfering with an opponent, and interfering with play:

The definitions of elements of involvement in active play are as follows:

• Interfering with play means playing or touching the ball passed or touched by a team-mate.
• Interfering with an opponent means preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent’s line of vision or movements or making a gesture or movement which, in the opinion of the referee, deceives or distracts an opponent.
• Gaining an advantage by being in that position means playing a ball that rebounds to him off a post or the crossbar having been in an offside position or playing a ball that rebounds to him off an opponent having been in an offside position.

As you can expect, these changes ended up causing more confusion instead of clarifying things.

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I wrote an article recently about the ever growing amount of homework kids are getting and wondering how kids who choose to play sports are dealing with it. This was in response to a couple of great posts over at White Trash Mom.

It may just be me, but I seem to have noticed that the mainstream media has picked up and run with this crusade against too much homework. I’ve noticed a number of stories and segments on it recently. I happened to catch a local news segment about a local YMCA, the increasing homework load and the increasing difficulty. Watch the video on the right (needs IE ) The local YMCA finds that their staff have to spend more and more time on homework on subjects of ever increasing complexity. Some parents have simply said the kids should be allowed some downtime to play and that they’ll do the homework at home.

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What do you get when you mix amazing freestyle ball skills with some online marketing savy? BambiBall

She probably could teach the Chinlone folks a thing or two.

This is what happens when you do computer animation and drugs at the same time. Or some ad exec who loves soccer had a vision during a bad acid trip and woke up thinking ‘this would be a GREAT idea’.

UPDATE: Yes, even something as annoying as the Crazy ‘Ring Ding Ding’ Frog has a Wikipedia entry. My condolences to those of you in the UK who had to endure the advertising onslaught. Ouch

FIFA’s president now feels that World Cup finals should not be decided on penalty kicks. Am I the only person who thinks a PSO is just fine? Sepp Blatter feels it is a tragedy:

‘When it comes to the World Cup final it is passion, and when it goes to extra time it is a drama,’ the head of world football’s governing body said in an earlier speech. ‘But when it comes to penalty kicks it is a tragedy.

‘Football is a team sport and penalties is not a team, it is the individual.’

Well, the teams had 2 hours to try and decide a winner and didn’t. At that point you sort of need to reach a conclusion. I personally thought the PSO in this year’s World Cup was filled with plenty of drama. Buffon vs Barthez. After a hard fought match it all comes down to the keepers.

I know I’m probably in the minority, but I have no problem with deciding a match on penalties. If you’ve played for two hours and you still can’t break the tie - it’s time to shoot.

That said - I think an extra sub for overtime would be a welcome addition. (HT My Soccer Blog)

As any youth coach who has taken a USSF coaching class knows, you are encouraged to pretty much sit quietly on the sidelines during matches and not instruct players. This is great advice - the idea being if they don’t know it already, they aren’t likely to figure it out in the frantic activity of a match. Note what needs work and mold your upcoming practices to address those problems.

Fair enough. And for U10 and above - I think this is sound advice, advice I continue to try to adhere to in my U10 matches, talking with players when they sub out instead of while they’re on the field. I’m not completely quiet by any stretch, but I’m letting the kids play and learn. At most it may be a frantic ‘Look at the middle!’ when we leave an attacker wide open, etc. while at the same time encouraging my keepers and other team leaders to be on the lookout for situations like this so they can point them out to their teammates. Of course the thing I hate about talking with the players on the bench to point some things out is I always end up having my back to the field when we score! But in all seriousness, it’s been great just watching the U10 kids play and seizing on those ‘teaching moments’ when they pop up here and there.

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In preparation for our U10 division moving from 8v8 to 6v6 this season, I wrote a few articles this summer that talked about how to handle the smaller sided match: Strategic Thinking and U10: 2-3 or not 2-3. Now that my U10 team is well into our Fall season, I figured I’d revisit the ideas in those posts.

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Once you get sucked into the wonderful world of youth soccer as a coach, it’s often hard to escape. Not that I’m complaining a bit. I really enjoy coaching and working with the younger kids as they develop their soccer skills. Just like teachers talk about the excitement when a student ‘gets it’, coaching can be very similar.

Last year, most of my daughter’s team moved up to U10, leaving her and two other players behind in U8. So I offered to take on their ‘team’ as head coach (I had assisted her team last year and was head coaching U10). My new U8 team was formed primarily of kids moving up from U6. Now, we play 4v4 no keepers in U6 while we play 6v6 w/keepers in U8 on a bigger field (35×50 vs 20×30), so the change is pretty drastic (much like the transition from U8 to U10 for leagues that play 4v4 no keeper in U8 and 6v6 in U10) After our first practice it was clear many of the new players lacked some core foot skills. So, we spent a LOT of time working on dribbling, passing, protecting the ball, etc. and very little on field work beyond scrimmages. We didn’t have the time. The kids worked very hard, but the parents got to joking that "It’s all about the snacks this season!"

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Having fallen off the face of the Soccersphere firmly onto our local youth soccer pitches, I managed to miss the call for posts for the Carnival of American Soccer #5. It was a good one - asking contributors to write about the background, character, story, etc. of their local MLS team. The posts that came in were fun reading. Enjoy!

Lisa over at LDSM, Soccer Mom recently highlighted a new book that is out called ‘A Home On The Field‘ which sounds very interesting. Written by TIME Magazine reporter Paul Cuadros, it chronicles the experiences and hardships of a group of Latino students working to start up a soccer team at their school and gain acceptance on the field and off:

Migrants from Mexico and Latin America are transforming the American south. In his new book A Home on the Field, TIME reporter Paul Cuadros chronicles one town’s decision to start up a soccer team in its increasingly Hispanic public school - and how that team struggled not only to win acceptance among the Anglo establishment but also on a playing field dominated by white soccer organizations who looked at them as interlopers. The story is a deeply personal one. Cuadros himself helped to found and coached the team, taking a bunch of young street footballers from Jordan-Matthewes High School in Siler City, North Carolina, through triumphs and defeats to come in reach of a state championship.

With the fall season in full swing I have not had a chance to read this yet, but hope to soon. Has anyone else read it yet? What did you think?

One of the most difficult things facing our young league is going to be how to reach out to the Latino community. The biggest problem so far is the language barrier. We’re making up new signs to advertise Spring registration and probably will make them bi-lingual. We have a few Hispanic kids playing in our league, but I know if we figured out the right way to approach them we could have many many more. We see kids playing pickup games all the time on local fields and want to make it easier for them to participate in our league. We’re working to translate much of our website and forms, but that’ll only go so far. There are sure to be cultural barriers and more. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes and would love to read about any successes your leagues have had in this area.

I happened across a couple of posts over at White Trash Mom where they’re upset with the ever increasing amount of homework their kids are having to complete. The Tacky Princess gets a good rant going about the amount of homework her kids have each day. She talks about a new book out called The Case Against Homework which has caused quite a stir with claims that too much homework is hurting our kids, not helping them:

"For example, most parents (as well as many teachers) would be surprised to hear that there’s absolutely no proof that homework helps elementary school pupils learn more or have greater academic success. In fact, as this book will explain, when children are asked to do too much nightly work, just the opposite has been found. And study after study shows that homework is not much more beneficial in middle school either. Even in high school, where there can be benefits, they start to decline as soon as kids are overloaded."

The Tacky Princess is at the end of her rope:

Teachers, we love you so, and I know that you are overworked and underpaid, and yada, yada, yada. AND, I truly appreciate all that you do. But could you pile on any more hours of homework every night? Is ANYONE with me? Whatever happened to time for kids to play outside after school? When your 5th grader comes home from school, takes 20 minutes to have a quick snack and tell you about her day, gets right down to homework, works diligently until dinner - and let’s face it, folks, we don’t eat until 645 or 7:00 many nights at our house - and THEN, still has to get right back to her homework after we finish dinner…DON’T YOU THINK THAT’S A LITTLE MUCH????

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