Josh over at ThroughBall had an excellent take on the USA v Guatemala draw:

You can expect me to put as much effort into ThroughBall.com today as the U.S. Men’s National team put into their game with Guatemala last night.

See you tomorrow.

I know, I know, Guatemala played nothing but defense. That still wouldn’t change the fact that you’d be getting one point instead of three.

As the USYSA announced in December, they have formally organized the US Youth Soccer National League (NL). The charter has been adopted, which sets the basic structure for the league that will kick off this fall:

The League will begin operation in the 2007-2008 seasonal year that goes from September 1, 2007, through August 31, 2008. For this first year, competition will be held for the U-15 and U-16 age groups, girls and boys. Beginning with the 2008-2009 seasonal year, the competition will be expanded to include the U-17 age group, girls and boys.

Each gender age group will have eight teams. For the 2007-2008 seasonal year, all teams playing in the top US Youth Soccer Regional League of each region during the 2006-2007 seasonal year will be eligible to apply to play in the National League.

The four semifinal teams in each gender age group for the prior seasonal year will automatically be teams in the appropriate gender age group for the next seasonal year. The balance of the teams in that gender age group will be determined by the Committee.

This seems like the next step for teams looking for a competitive league beyond the current Regional select leagues. Also, teams that participate in this league still must participate in the State and Regional Championships, which I found interesting:

For the 2007-2008 seasonal year, all teams playing in the top regional league of each region during the 2006-2007 seasonal year will be eligible to apply to play in the NL.

the top 4 teams in each gender age group for the prior seasonal year will automatically retain their team slot in the appropriate gender age group for the next seasonal year and the balance of the teams in that gender age group will be determined by the NL Committee.

In order to be eligible to advance to the US Youth National Championship finals, all teams participating in the NL must also participate in their respective State Cup competition, as well as their respective Regional Cup competition should the team qualify, and the top regional league of each region should the team qualify.

So there you have it. This clearly will be a top flight league for current regional teams and provides more access to play at the national level. That can only help the development of our top teenage players. I’m curious how teams in this league will pay for travel and accommodations since teams will clearly have to travel a bit to play each other! It will also be interesting to see the breakdown of regions that the first set of teams come from. Go Region III!

Hey you. On The Pitch readers. Yes, all ten of you… I have a question.

Recent estimates point out that 17 million kids in America play soccer. I know parents of youth soccer players who can sit and talk for HOURS about youth soccer - in a good way. But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of online discussion going on related to youth soccer overall, especially at the younger and recreational levels. Part of that is obviously due to parents being more interested and involved as their kids move into travel teams, etc. Many state/regional soccer forums are active, though many will focus on a certain area like select/travel teams at the higher levels. But there aren’t that many generic ‘youth soccer’ discussion forums out there. BigSoccer has one, but posts to it are infrequent.

Considering how many parent questions I answer as a league administrator each season and how many Google referrals to On The Pitch are searches in the form of a question, it strikes me that there is a need. Part of the mission of On The Pitch is to discuss interesting questions and aspects of youth soccer, but posts I write are usually just about questions I find interesting. There are bound to be many others to start off some discussion.

So my question to you is this - is it worth setting up a forum dedicated to youth soccer at On The Pitch? Would you use it? If so, what topics do you think we should have forums for? I can think of a few. League Administration, Youth Officiating, Equipment, Travel, The Sidelines (talk about being a spectator), Fitness, Coaching, etc. Can you suggest any others? it would be fun to integrate the forum discussions into more formal blog posts and I’ve always been open to guest posters at OTP - that would be fun.

Implementing the forums would be fairly easy and they would integrate into the site (see http://plugins.baptiste.us and click Forums for another site where I have a small forum integrated into the main blog site) I would do something similar here. I realize forums can get out of hand so we’d monitor it and take care of users just causing trouble. But I’m just curious if there is even a need. It feels like there is given how popular youth soccer is and how many questions new parents have. But maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to setup nifty new site features

What do you think?

When our league was forming, I spent a lot of time visiting the websites of various established soccer leagues, trying to get a handle on what type of modified rules they played by. This was in the midst of the movement to small sided soccer, but regardless of the field size a league used, almost all had this magic phrase:

shall play matches governed by the latest FIFA Laws of the Game, with the following exceptions

Most of the exceptions are for field size, match length, goal size, roster size, ball size, and a few foul/penalty adjustments. But that’s it. Some may institute more detailed punishments for fighting, drug use, things like that. But overall, FIFA rules apply.

This brought up an interesting situation in a recent match in our league. In a 6v6 small sided match, there was an indirect kick awarded about one yard away from the penalty box. The team did a tap and shoot which the kicker executed perfectly. The ball was headed right over the head of a player in the wall towards the upper corner of the goal, until the player whose head it was whizzing by swatted it down with both hands.

FIFA rules dictate a red card in this situation for denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity by handling the ball in the penalty box. In addition, many associations, ours included, have rules stipulating automatic one match suspensions if a player receives a red card. These automatic sanctions are meant to discourage fighting, but technically - they apply for ANY red card.

So what do you think should have happened?

» Read the rest of this post…

Building on Ives’ point about US Soccer picking a color for the away kit and sticking to it so the fans will all match, what color should the US Soccer away kit be? Why?

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Via Soccer Fiesta, we find that Nike has released the new third jersey for the US Soccer teams. I’m sorry, but pinstripes are for suits and pajamas. Not an improvement IMHO.

UPDATE: Ives has a good point:

I think the US needs to settle on one trademark uniform ala Argentina’s light blue stripes, Italy’s solid blue and Mexico’s green. As it stands, American fans often show up in a mix of red, blue and white so you never get a true sense of how many American fans make up a crowd.

It’s time to have an identity for ourselves that Nike can tweak, but the overall theme remains the same. That way when we actually, you know, win that World Cup, our colors will strike fear into the hearts of opponents and our raucous fans will be a sea of, well, to be determined.

The NCYSA Board of Directors will be meeting on April 14th to vote on the proposed Academy Program. A working committee, primarily made up of league DOCs and Presidents, worked to produce the current version of the proposal. I’ve written a variety of opinions on the Academy program, so I won’t rehash them here. I’m not sure how our league will vote yet - have to wait for our next board meeting, but I’m fairly sure our league won’t be forming an academy program this coming Fall.

The main reason is the prohibition on dual rostering. We have plenty of Rec players who might like some extra matches and pool training, but not if they lose their ‘team’. Instead, we’re looking at adding a weekly U9/U10 pool training style clinic led by our more experienced coaches to help the kids improve skills and conditioning. It’ll be open to all of our Rec players. Still in the planning stages, but for our league and where we are right now, we think it’ll benefit more players than a dedicated academy program, which may have limited enrollment. That may change in later years - we’ll see.

So if you have any opinions on this proposal, be sure to let your league president and board know! 

Congratulations to the 1989 North Carolina Boys ODP team for winning the ODP National Championship, defeating Arizona 4-1.

The Arizona 1990 boys are the first team from Arizona to make it to the tournament and were hoping for gold, but met a North Carolina side seeking the same. North Carolina won 4-1 after a tremendous team
effort. Spencer Lomax III (10:00), Shawn Guderian (42:00), Will Shull (51:00), and Sean Haglund (74:00) each scored for North Carolina and Kyle Parsons (28:00) scored the only goal for Arizona.

“This is something we worked towards for the last two years. I don’t think there is one particular player that stands out from the rest. It is a good group of guys. The attitude is right and everything just came together,"? said Doug Hess, North Carolina’s coach. “This is a good environment for them to learn and grow to get them ready for the next level."?

The full press release can be found at NC Soccer. The team advanced to the Championship match by defeating Massachusetts 2-1. Clint Irwin was awarded the Golden Glove for the Tournament and Will Shull was awarded the Golden Boot.

Yes, I know this isn’t a ‘local’ soccer blog, but can’t help myself when the North Carolina teams do well! 

Reader JM sent along a post from Are You Loyal that talked about a recent Freddy Adu interview where he blames the dwindling interest in soccer as tweens turn into teens on the youth soccer coaches:

Last week, in an interview in Spain, Freddy Adu was asked why soccer’s popularity in America dwindles when players reach their teenage years. Freddy’s response: "I attribute it more to the fact that in America, coaches take the fun out of the game for kids. They do. They coach them to play one touch, two touch… It takes the fun out of it and the kids aren’t creative. It’s no fun when you’re not creative and when you’re not expressing yourself out on the field. I think coaches should do a better job."

Jeremy Horton posted a full response to this and you should read it all because he nails it:

Freddy, the reason I teach one touch and two touch is because that’s what wins soccer games. It’s not to stifle your creativity (although ironically, if I was your coach, I’d let you dribble all you want). I want my kids to have fun and to love soccer, it’s just that that excuse doesn’t work on their parents. So to some extent my teams will always play to win, even at the expense of creativity.

That’s why all kids should play pickup soccer. I learned to love soccer on the streets, in the playgrounds, and on the beach, not at practice. Oh, and one last thing, Freddy: A one-touch pass can be just as creative as the sickest dribble.

Now I think Jeremy is correct in that much of what coaches do is driven by the parents, and that is often to win. But I think he’s apologizing a bit too much.

» Read the rest of this post…

I was talking with someone in our extended family, who is 16 and in the thick of high school, about youth soccer and how it wasn’t just an activity for the kids, but also a social outlet for the parents. To which she replies:

Soccer is social??? It’s high school drama with women in their 30’s and 40’s!!

To say I almost fell off my chair laughing would be an understatement.

You know Spring has arrived…

When the kids can practice without their Under Armour on

70 degrees today was a far cry from the 30’s and 40’s with 15MPH winds we’ve had for most of late February and early March! 

When I took my ‘E’ License class, the instructors and handout materials talked about how water was better for re-hydrating youth soccer players than sports drinks. I think that curriculum might be adjusted a bit:

The United States Youth Soccer Association (US Youth Soccer) today announced its partnership with The Gatorade Company. The sponsorship designates Gatorade as the Official Sports Drink of US Youth Soccer, the nation’s largest youth sports organization, with over three million registered players ages five to 19. This is the first time that US Youth Soccer has entered into an agreement with Gatorade.

"Gatorade is excited to add US Youth Soccer to the long list of sports partners that have come to rely on our products to help their athletes compete at their highest levels," said Rachel Mellott, Gatorade Sports Marketing. "Optimal hydration and endurance are essential in soccer and, through our products and sports science institute, we look forward to assisting the world’s leading global sport in a variety of areas, such as athlete education, performance testing and the latest sports science research."

The NY Times has an in-depth article about what goes into the making of ’super athletes’ and some of the unexpected places they come from and train. Read the entire article - it’s worth it as the author looks into a variety of possible factors, both culture and bio-mechanical. Now I’m not saying we youth coaches are just worried about creating superstars, but a couple of passages stood out for me as a coach. The first was from one of the Russian coaches at the Spartak clinic the article centers around:

If Preobrazhenskaya’s approach were boiled down to one word (and it frequently was), that word would be tekhnika - technique. This is enforced by iron decree: none of her students are permitted to play in a tournament for the first three years of study. It’s a notion that I don’t imagine would fly with American parents, but none of the Russian parents questioned it for a second. "Technique is everything," Preobrazhenskaya told me later, smacking a table with Khrushchev-like emphasis, causing me to jump and reconsider my twinkly-grandma impression of her. "If you begin playing without technique, it is big mistake. Big, big mistake!"

This is something you hear in soccer coaching classes over and over. Tactics can come later or should be a small part of your practice regimen. Technique is everything. Note that ‘the first three years of study’ for these players is usually between 4 and 7 years of age. Another interesting quote related to practice regimens:

In a moment of towering simplification, "The Handbook" distills its lesson to a formula known as the Power Law of Learning: T = a P-b . (Don’t ask.) A slightly more useful translation: Deliberate practice means working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on improving weaknesses.

"It feels like you’re constantly stretching yourself into an uncomfortable area beyond what you can quite do," Ericsson told me. It’s hard to sustain deliberate practice for long periods of time, which may help explain why players like Jimmy Connors succeeded with seemingly paltry amounts of practice while their competitors were hitting thousands of balls each day. As the tennis commentator Mary Carillo told me, "He barely practiced an hour a day, but it was the most intense hour of your life."

Read the entire article. Even though it’s about tennis primarily, I thought there were some common threads with what we face as youth soccer coaches. Not in terms of developing uber athletes. Rather working on technique instead of tactics at early ages and instilling a desire to continually get better in our kids. I can’t say this article teaches anything concrete, but it was an interesting read as a coach.

Youth soccer coaches work hard to teach their kids the beautiful game and take pleasure in seeing them all improve and play better soccer. But even when you have a team with a solid core of performers, it can still be like herding cats trying to get them to play consistently as a ‘team’. So when it finally does happen, it’s an amazing feeling.

My U10’s played one of the best matches I’ve seen them play last night. In a rematch of last season’s tournament championship match-up, my U10’s decided to play as a team. I have a team that has a number of very talented players and I’m lucky to have them. But more often than not, they feel like when they’re on the field, they have to burn 2 or 3 players to get to the goal and shoot. I stress over and over how important passing is to maintaining possession and setting up scoring opportunities, but more often than not, much of our scoring relies on the footwork of a handful of our players. Not an ideal situation.

Tonight was different. Every single one of them played smart. They passed relentlessly, especially near the goal. Kids who normally would have tried a tough angle shot from the corner instead of a good cross, were crossing the ball like crazy. Our forwards were following shots in to the goal box and feeding each other over and over. Our defense was relentless in keeping their opponents near the touchline. It was a great thing to see as their coach.

I know a lot of people feel soccer coaches just care about winning, but this wasn’t about the final score. It was seeing our defense force the ball handlers over the touch line, seeing our forwards come to the ball at mid field and drive towards the goal, three wide in excellent spread out formation.

I wish I could say ‘well we just told them this and they responded’, but I can’t. I have no idea what possessed them tonight to play so unselfishly and as a TEAM. If I did I’d write a book! Every player on the team had multiple scoring chances. It was a pleasure to watch.

I’m not sure if any of you have encountered this, but with a team like this, you quickly learn you are more caretaker than anything else, directing them towards self improvement, teaching them core skills, and cheering them on. You’d like to think you’ve somehow done a bit of soccer coaching magic, but more often than not, you got lucky with your team assignments and got a great group of kids. When all the hard work, practice, and mantras of ‘pass when pressured, maintain possession, communicate’ and so on seem to suddenly sink in, it’s very rewarding.

I have no idea if they’ll continue playing like they did last night, but even if they don’t, they’ve set a new standard for themselves which we can continue to strive for. Now they know they can do what they’re supposed to do - ALL of them as a team. That was the key, everybody contributed last night.

Watching ‘Mom my ride’ over at LDSM, Soccer Mom, it reminded me I had a minivan post of my own to write. Our poor minivan is pushing 10 years old and we abuse the heck out of it. All those commercials of the gleaming minivan, kids in a spotless soccer uniform, scuff free soccer ball - they must only have one child Camping trips involve, 4 kids, 2 adults, usually one of the three dogs, and the popup trailer. Add in all the stuff that goes with 4 kids, 2 adults, and a dog, and available space is at a premium. Since I coach U8 and U10, I have to carry a bag of Size 3 balls and a bag of Size 4 balls, plus the water cooler, plus the gear bag. I’m amazed I haven’t blown the back window out yet trying to close it. However, probably the worst abuse is when it’s time to restock the concession stand. $600 later at Costco and the back seat removed, we have enough drinks to quench the thirst of a small army. And cause my hitch to ride 3" off the ground!

Remember - it goes three cases deep! This wasn’t the worst trip. That was the first time we stocked up and we had to buy a refrigerator and metal shelving. I had a 4′ x 8′ utility trailer hitched up. The van was full, the trailer had the fridge, shelves, and lots of drink cases. I think the total damage that day was about $1300, but we made it back to the fields! Probably the most abusive thing we ever did to the poor minivan was when we tore down our old garage to build the new one you see above. We knocked out the side cinder block walls with sledgehammers, then hooked a chain up to one corner and used the minivan to pull it down! I wasn’t pressing the gas when we did it - just using the momentum of the van to jerk it over, but still not something you’ll see in a commercial! The things you do when you don’t own a truck. Time to buy those lottery tickets so I can afford one.