It doesn’t matter if you are a fan, parent, coach, or administrator. It doesn’t matter if all you’ve ever known was MLS and pro ball and haven’t ever seen a youth soccer match. It doesn’t matter if you’ve only become a soccer fan since you caught that one World Cup match by accident in a local bar and now can’t stop watching FSC. All of you need to go read Soccerhead. Right. Now.
Soccerhead, An Accidental Journey into the Heart of the American Game comes to us from Jim Haner, a journalist in Baltimore. No, he’s not a sport writer – he covers the Metro beat in Baltimore. His journey into American soccer began like it has for so many of us who are sucked into soccer, never to return: he signed his child up to play and went to orientation:
It was a night made for werewolves and stickup men – one of those airless southern summer evenings – the sort of swampy half-moon nocturne that can evoke a sense of anxiety all by itself. June bugs rattled in the canopies of the streetlights on Fifty-first Avenue. The smoke from my cigarette hung motionless in the air. Nearby, a freight train trundled by, bound for Washington, D.C., too slow to stir the torpid vapors. As I mounted the metal steps for Parents’ Night, I was beset by dread.
"Soccer?" I asked myself again, flicking the smoldering butt down onto the parking lot. "What in the hell do I know about soccer?"
So begins an education about soccer as ‘The American Game’ that few of us could even dream of.
The book chronicles the success and failure of Jim as coach along with his parents and players that make up the College Park Hornets, a group of 8 and 9 year olds who are reaching that level where soccer becomes less swarm ball and more serious. He quickly learns that he really doesn’t know much about soccer and begins an educational journey that will eventually take him to the sacred halls of the history and power for soccer in America. From the gritty textile towns in New Jersey to Oneonta, New York where he gets to touch the DeWar Trophy. He intersperses chapters about his beloved Hornets with chapters dedicated to the history of American Soccer, how soccer rose from it’s own ashes like a phoenix to become a defining sport and experience for America’s youth.
It isn’t all good feelings either. His Rec team struggles as it runs into bigger and stronger teams from the larger nearby leagues, but stays standing and continues to improve. His team has a sole girl named The Mosquito who often will leave bigger sneering boys in the dirt while she darts upfield with the ball she just stole. I couldn’t help but laugh reading about the exploits of this girl named Shelby when I have a little spitfire on my U8’s named Shelby as well, one who begs her mom to let her stay for her sister’s U10 practice week after week so she can get more ball touches and learn ‘from the bigger kids’
Now, before you MLS fans roll your eyes and scream ‘Next!’, hear me out.
Jim spends a lot of time talking to the ‘old-timers’ who played soccer in America long before the NFL was ‘cool’. Players who frequently broke bones, dislocated joints, and came back for more, week after week. Players who bore jagged scars from the nails driven through shoes to make ‘cleats’ in the day. Matches that turned into borderline riots when ethnic rivalries and hatred brewed to the surface. My favorite depiction is of a match in the late 50’s where the crowd surged onto the field to attack a player who had taken down their team’s player with a vicious tackle. The melee subsided only when 3 priests walked onto the pitch towards the offending player, parting and calming the crowd, and proceeded to beat him with their umbrellas.
Soccerhead is a fun read. I started reading it after I got home from my usual Saturday maelstrom of soccer and didn’t put it down until I finished it at 2:30AM. That’s right. A book about a kids Rec team and the history of soccer kept me up until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes laughing out loud, much to the annoyance of my sleeping wife beside me. I got up to start writing this review as she turned the first page. I haven’t heard from her since.
The book is packed with an amazing amount of facts related both to the history of the game in America as well as the absolute explosion of it in the past decade as a youth sport. Have you ever wondered why most soccer leagues are run as independent non-profits and not as extensions of local Rec programs? Have you ever wondered why parents suddenly started signing their kids up en masse for soccer? Have you ever wondered what ONT stood for? Did you know the likes of Man U and other storied clubs used to travel to one of the worst pitches in the world, located in the US, just to face teams made up primarily of mill workers? Did you know Native Indians were playing a form of soccer before the pilgrims brought their style of play? Did you know soccer in its earliest forms was often used to teach tactics to the military?
This book takes you on a journey through the dark days, when baseball conspired to ‘adopt’ soccer to keep it’s venues in use during the off season, only to smother it once the money men saw it as a risk to their lifeblood. As Jim notes "The fingerprints of big-league baseball are all over the knife that cut soccer’s throat." True, baseball isn’t the only reason soccer vaporized in America, but it helped the decline. The Depression was a huge factor as most teams were run by industries that cratered after 1929. But baseball knew a threat when it saw it and began to work against soccer as far back as the 19th century.
MLS fans will find a rich trove of soccer history that is enough to get even the most tepid of fans asking for more. However, where Soccerhead really excels is as a magnifying glass into the youth game. The future of soccer in America lies with our kids and the millions of volunteers working to teach them the game, get them to practices, and more. If you want to know why America might someday win the World Cup outright in the next 15-20 years, why foreign soccer powers will publicly ridicule American soccer in public only to whisper dire warnings privately that America may someday rule the game, you need to learn how youth soccer is run in America and why it has exploded.
The news is not all good, but more on that in a minute.
One thing many people don’t understand is that youth soccer is not just another kid’s sports. It can become an integral part of a family and community’s social fabric. You’ve likely heard the media describe soccer as a way of life for other countries and that the US will never succeed at soccer because that’ll never happen here. Baseball, we’re always told, is America’s game. Please. Over 17 million kids are playing soccer in the US, the second biggest youth sport in the US and we’re gaining on basketball. What the media doesn’t get is that youth soccer is almost a religion for a sizable portion of it’s participants, both young and old. I can’t explain it, but Soccerhead does an excellent job.
Soccer is different. My kids play soccer and basketball, dance, and do Tae-Kwon-Do. The other activities, are just that: activities. Even a competitive sport like basketball is just that: a sport. We bring our kids, they practice, we cheer them like crazy at games from the bleachers, and head home. Soccer is a different animal. For many it becomes a social fabric that most happily fall into. While the kids learn the core skills of the game, the parents form social networks that probably will often last a lifetime as do the kids. Teams that form when the kids are young and stay together as the kids grow up become a rock for many families. For the coaches and administrators who run the leagues, soccer becomes even more of an obsession. I live at the soccer fields along with dozens of other families and do so happily. While my kids are reminded over and over if they tire of soccer or they find it isn’t fun anymore that they can quit at any time, they wouldn’t think of it because they love it too. You might think it unhealthy at first, but that’s not it. It’s an obsession – of that there can be no doubt. But most soccer parents KNOW it’s an obsession and work to provide well rounded groups of alternative activities for their kids. But soccer is more than an activity, it often will become a key part of a family’s structure, teaching both the kids AND the parents more than they may ever realize and strengthening a social network many felt was shattered after Americans retreated into their homes after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. Remember when we were supposed to seal ourselves in rooms with duct tape?
Soccerhead chronicles Jim’s own journey into that obsession. Lest you think this is all feel good and happy news, it isn’t. Jim quickly learns that youth soccer is at risk from within and unless something is done, and done quick, we risk throwing away the best chance we have of bringing soccer into it’s true place as one of "America’s Sports". He quickly realizes that he is out of his league as a coach and decides to learn as much as he can. He recognizes that he and many other coaches are obsessed with offense, something all other American sports emphasize. (his description of how the NFL repeatedly changes the rules to protect offenses and quarterbacks is hilarious, but true) Coaches take this offensive mindset and try to apply it to soccer, doing the kids a vast disservice. Boomers who grew up doing drills, running laps, and standing in lines bring these same disastrous methods to soccer and end up turning kids off to the sport instead of showing them why it is ‘the beautiful game’. What the upper levels of US soccer are realizing and trying to teach is that young kids just need to play. Let them discover the beauty of the game and coaches simply need to get out of the way.
Lest you think this was going to be nothing but a gushing review, and I admit for the most part it is, this is the one area of Soccerhead that left me wanting more. When Jim realizes that he and the other coaches are way out of their league as his kids age up into ‘travel’ soccer, they discover the Coerver Method and bring in a paid coach to teach the kids, with spectacular results. Now I’m a true believer in the Coerver Method, no question. Our coaches spend WAY too much time trying to teach the finer points of soccer to 6 year olds instead of working on core skills that they’ll combine in later years. While Soccerhead highlights the changes that the new coaching has on Jim’s teams, I was left with the feeling that all your troubles will be solved by finding your local Coerver coach and hiring them. That’s just not realistic and probably wasn’t Jim’s intent, but I couldn’t shake that feeling.
Jim has the epiphany that many youth coaches have when they realize their methods are steeped in other sports and have been hindering their kids. I had one when I took my ‘E’ License class. You feel horrible (what I have I done to ‘my’ kids), your ego is hurt, and hopefully you realize there is ‘a better way’. The trick is what that better way is and Soccerhead only talks about that briefly. There is a revolution brewing in soccer over this very point. Small-sided matches or 11v11. Petunia garden leagues as Jim calls them or competitive training grounds. Drills training or Sharks and Minnows. Things have reached a point where there are now two competing national youth soccer associations with divergent views on how youth soccer should be handled. The success or failure of this resurgence of soccer in America will largely be tied to how we handle coaching and teach our kids. Soccer in the US in amazingly organized, yet millions of kids get their start in soccer as 4 year olds under the tutelage of a volunteer coach with no clue how to coach a soccer team. We need to change that and quick while trying to ensure there isn’t a schism in soccer at the competitive level.
USSF coaching education is just a start. The curricula are being tweaked on a regular basis, but at least in North Carolina, trying to find good instructors and getting local classes to train our coaches has been a struggle. We need to expand the coaching education efforts in America on a scale no other sport has probably considered in their wildest dreams. Soccerhead touches on this, but you know there is so much more to it and that the future of soccer rests in large part with how we handle our youth coaching. Of course Jim has only been coaching for six years or so now, so I can see why this wasn’t dealt with in more detail. In a few more years, he will have even more insights into this, I’m sure. Here’s hoping he shares them with us!
I know when you review something, you should try to stay as objective as you can, no matter how much you like something. However, sometimes you read something that hits you at your core and it’s hard not to gush over it. I loved this book because it spoke to me as someone who has suffered as an American soccer fan and has also been consumed by the secular religion known as American youth soccer. The combination of real life experiences mixed with the history of the game makes it an enjoyable read. I’ve already placed an order for ten copies to give to the core volunteers in our league who’ve been happily spending night after night on the pitch since the beginning. It’s nice to know we’re not the freaks of nature we sometimes fear we’ve become, or if we are – there are a lot more like us. I probably should get a copy for my wife’s family. They think we’re certifiable!
I want to thank Kinney of The DCenters for suggesting this book to me in an earlier thread. For someone who writes about soccer a lot, I never seem to have the time to read about it and rarely have time to even find stuff to read. If you know of other books related to soccer and especially youth soccer that are worth a look, by all means let me know in the comments. Next on my reading list is ‘A Home on the Field‘, suggested by LDSM Soccer Mom. After that – who knows!
If you do end up reading Soccerhead, I’d really like to know what you thought about it. Feel free to post a comment with your impressions or even your own full blown review. The more the merrier! Also, if you happen to buy the book via the link at the top of this story (for the same price you would normally), you’ll help pay the bandwidth bill for On The Pitch just a little, which is always appreciated!
October 1st, 2006 at 12:15 pm
There is a review of Soccerhead over at The Soccer Daily as well posted in June. J Hutcherson wasn’t as impressed as I was and felt the combination effect detracted from it somewhat. While I’m not sure I agree with the criticism that recent history was ignored (making it less history and more recent events), J also noticed that just when things got interesting towards the end of the book as Jim realized he had so much more to learn, it was breezed over, something I touched on above as well. However I can’t fault that – considering how quickly the book was written, Jim, like many of us, are just beginning our journey to better youth soccer coaching.
I do disagree with J regarding the combination of youth soccer and the history of soccer. I thought that helped a lot and would speak more to many of the volunteers who read this that may not know nearly as much about US soccer as someone like J does.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Can I borrow your copy? I’ve spent all my money on youth soccer…:)
October 1st, 2006 at 11:08 pm
HAHAHAHAHA – Sure!
There’s a great scene he describes while at the NSCAA conference. Some parent was talking about his kid – had gotten a free ride to college and then lamented that considering all the money he’d spent on camps, leagues, trainers, and whatever else had come along the way he’d probably spent more than the kid would get from the scholarship. Oooops.
So many parents need a reality check…
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Sounds like a great book. I’m going to read it as soon as I can. I especially look forward to the historical stuff. Someone was talking to me over the weekend about the conflict between soccer and baseball – I didn’t really know much about it, but it will be interesting to learn.
I’m also interested in the way soccer is different from other sports and activities. I don’t really fully understand why, but it was that way for me too. A season in, I was hooked and would remain so for good. An obsession is a good way to put it. Even after spending ten years ignoring soccer, I went to one MLS game and it all came back, just like that.
Community is probably part of it. It was like that for my family. There’s something for everyone: the kids play, the parents coach, and then there’s reffing – in my league they started recruiting the kids as soon as they hit U14. I don’t know though, other sports have the multiple levels of involvement. I don’t know if refereeing is the same in other sports, but when you take the soccer refereeing course, they really drill into you the idea that you’re a part of something larger than yourself, your team, your country – it’s hard to describe the way FIFA gets inside you and becomes a part of you without making it sound negative like a cult or something, but I don’t think it’s negative.
I think the… the world-wide-ness of soccer is a part of things; here in the US we tend to be so culturally isolationist sometimes, but to throw yourself into soccer is to move away from that because you wind up learning about and embracing traditions from other countries as well as your own. And that’s one of the reasons why sportswriters and other assholes hate soccer so much – it’s a knee-jerk thing kind of like insulting the French; it’s the way you say you’re a damn American and the rest of the world can go mumblety-mumble.
But still, there’s all this, and then there’s something else as well that I don’t really fully understand. So I’m looking forward to reading this book because maybe it’ll be another piece of the puzzle.
October 2nd, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Very true human, very true. I used to think most of the knee-jerk ‘Americans hate soccer’ was just ignorance. But now I can’t help but wonder if some of it is mixed in with a little fear from people who have seen the effect soccer can have on people and what might happen if it got bigger. No clue. I agree it is hard to describe without making it sound cult like because it’s not. I think there was a phrase in the book ‘secular religion’ That soccer often provided a community and support network similar to a church but in a secular way.
October 2nd, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I think there was a phrase in the book ’secular religion’ That soccer often provided a community and support network similar to a church but in a secular way.
Hmmmmmmm… so do things like political party organizations, and unions… and Americans are really suspicious of THOSE, too.
Interesting.
October 9th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Ok wow, I thought I was going to like this book, but… er. I’m about halfway through thus far, just began digging into the part about soccer history in the US, and /that/ stuff is cool, but good god, when this author tries to make social/cultural generalizations based on his experience… could he get any more annoying? He seems completely unaware of the existence in current American society of anyone who is not middle class. Or, if they do exist, they don’t count because they’re not the “default” American or whatever. It’s so blatant, and he’s so smugly self-satisfied that it makes me want to smack him.
So yeah, still an interesting book, but this guy is not half as deep a thinker as he thinks he is, and he doesn’t have anything like enough awareness of any other culture or socio-economic situation other than the one he’s in, to talk about anyone’s experience other than his own with any credibility.
But then, this is a problem that’s endemic to the DC suburbs, so it’s not like it’s tremendously surprising. Yikes, though.
October 9th, 2006 at 7:44 am
The bad part about this is, however, that given how youth soccer has grown, it really is, almost by default, part of middle class suburbia and his experiences probably are reflective of that. US Soccer is struggling so hard to make inroads into metro areas but right now, soccer is primarily a suburban and rural sport. And white.
I look at our league, in a town with a sizable non-white population (20%), I can count the number of minority kids on two hands. People love to say that soccer is racist or that leagues somehow try to only appeal to white kids. Well from my experience, that’s silly. Our kids all go to the same schools where we hand out fliers, drive on the same roads where we put out signs, etc.
I hope to do some serious writing about that soon as an offshoot of my take on Home on the Field. How can suburban leagues appeal to non white kids? The Latino families are constantly playing pickup games on any field they can find free, but a number of issues keep them away, including the language barrier for the parents (I may take Spanish classes one of these days)
Our league does nothing overtly or even subtly racist that we know of. We appeal to as many people as we can when registration starts and take anyone who signs up and pays $20. The result is a minority makeup of 3-5% max.
I guess the reason Soccerhead appealed to me was primarily because of where I live. I saw the same things he did, etc. I guess in his book he does treat youth soccer as a primarily a suburban sport and unfortunately right now, it is. The trick is how to change that.
October 10th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
I guess in his book he does treat youth soccer as a primarily a suburban sport and unfortunately right now, it is.
But not if you count the pickup games you mentioned above as being soccer. Which they are, right? That’s the problem – the assumption that the middle class experience is THE normative experience for Americans. There’s nothing wrong with having that experience or with being middle class, but in order to talk credibly about the American experience of soccer or whatever, you have to be able to recognize that it’s not the only experience out there. And even more so – it’s not the only experience that counts! The difference is maybe a subtle one, but it’s the difference between “This book is about suburban middle class soccer in the US” and “This book is about soccer in the US.” This guy seems to have a BIG class blind spot; he seems to think his book is described by the second statement, and it’s just not. He does slightly better with race and a lot better with sex, but I just found it really grating. I did like the second half of the book a lot better than the first. I would have liked it even more if he’d gone into more detail, had a little more depth, etc. – you can tell he’s a reporter and not a social scientists or historian. 🙂
October 10th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Well, yeah, it’s not high literature 🙂 I guess what really made the book work for me is I took it for what it was. The chronicles of yet another parent who unwittingly became part of the youth soccer phenom in the US. Reading about someone else doing the same kinds of things I’ve done or probably will be doing – was a lot of fun. Honestly, I wasn’t expected the historical part to be as interesting as it was – that was a nice surprise. I just wanted to find out how he did with his Hornets and becoming a better coach. Simple things 🙂
October 10th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
The part that really got me thinking was the part near the end, about the drive to get better and better and move up into travel soccer – and how for the kids who can’t or don’t, for whatever reason, opportunities to play evaporate. That’s sort of sad. For me, I didn’t have the opportunity because there was no girls’ travel team in my area and we weren’t welcome to try out for the boys’ team. Looking back, I don’t think I would feel so bad about this now if I had at least had the opportunity to keep on playing. But it was rec to travel to high school, or nothing.
I guess that’s where pickup games come in. And fortunately, where I live those abound. (My foot just needs to heal. I got a stress fracture playing said pickup games, grumble.) I guess I just share the author’s frustration about that issue, that you have to keep striving for and achieve excellence in order to play. Striving for it is one thing, but if you miss the mark… you should still be able to play.
Maybe this is an American thing. We’ve done it with music, too. I trained for a career in music for many years, and wound up choosing another path, but I still sing or play if I want to. Most people who never got any of that training feel like they are just not qualified to inflict their “inferior” musical ability on others. That’s just wrong… everyone who wants to sing should darn well sing, for the joy of it, and not in order to become the next Pavarotti. Soccer’s the same… everyone who wants to should play, just for the joy of it.
I guess decades after your parents hassled you for it, you boomers are still screwing up society. 🙂
October 10th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
In all fairness, this may just be soccer leagues meeting the needs of their parents. I’m not sure if this is universal, but for us – older age divisions in ‘rec’ don’t exist simply because the kids aren’t there. Sure, finding coaches for any soccer team can be tough, but if enough older kids wanted to keep playing rec during high school, I expect the leagues would form the teams. But at that age, you find the kid’s attention on other things and the only ones who stay interested in soccer are the ones striving to reach the next level. We as adults need to figure out ways to keep kids interested in soccer as an activity even if they only want to play for fun. I think the lack of playing opportunities often has to do with lack of interest on the part of the teenagers than anything else – but as always, I could be WAY wrong.
October 10th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Well, I don’t know. The problem with the “lack of interest” argument is that it’s an easy one to make about a lot of things where there are many other issues going on. After all, that’s what they always say to “Why don’t you have a girls’ team?”
When I was in high school I was very driven and absorbed an attitude that if I was going to do anything I had to be the mostest awesomest excellentest in the whole wide world at it (or moving toward that anyway) or else there was no point bothering. It’s taken me years to realize that that’s sort of a messed up way to live your life. As much as my parents always insisted I came up with that idea all by myself, I think it’s a cultural problem rather than a problem with individual parents, kids, leagues, coaches, etc.
October 10th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Oh I agree 100% about the cop out that is ‘no interest’. The whole reason our league exists as a private non-profit corporation was because the city felt there wasn’t enough interest in soccer to have a program. The rest, as they say, is history.
But my argument of lack of interest is based on experience. We’ve handed out flyers, advertised, etc and the interest above U12 is scant (we got 30 kids this year, half of them also play on travel teams), but we also are a smaller city. But if they someday turn out in droves so we can have 3 or 4 full teams in U14, etc. we’ll give them a place to play for sure. Even with 30 kids, we’ve done a 3v3 division with 5 teams and the kids are enjoying it.
November 11th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
I’ve almost finished reading Soccerhead and generally liked it– there was one section that troubled me that I want to re-read before posting my comment. The lack of interest thing is an interesting dilema. We have no problem right now of interest in soccer for our U13/14 girls. At the U13/14 girls level, we had 21 teams signed up to play this fall. Most of the players are not travel players but simply girls looking to keep playing. Even more locally our soccer club has 39 girls (only 5 of whom play travel) in indoor soccer this winter (In fairness, ~10 of the girls are from other clubs that did not have enough to form separate teams).
November 16th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
I really liked this book, even though it is primarily white, middle-class. Can’t fault him much on that, he’s writing what he knows. I wish there had been more about the pick-up leagues that have sprung up all over, but since Haner never played soccer he can be forgiven for not being involved in pick-up games.
I did especially like the historical stuff and the epiphany into coaching that unfortunately, not many coaches would admit. All in all, I think this book’s a useful addition to a coach’s or soccer parent’s library.