REAL: WORD to the WISE

The Youth Soccer Development Debate

(click on link and see the video)

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid958992159/bctid1435949735

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Player Insights

Posted  2/28/08  on  www.skysports.com/football

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Chelsea's Shaun Wright-Phillips gives his exclusive insight into what it takes to become a top footballer.

   

What makes a great player?

For me it's just somebody who is always willing to learn from people around them and listen

to what everybody has to say and not take anything to heart too much.

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When did you realize you could become a top player?

There wasn't a definite time or age but maybe when I was a second year at secondary school

I realized that it would be possible. I used to go to school with Scott Parker as well and we played together

so I realized it was possible. I just started to put my head down and make more of an effort than I did when

I was younger. I always believed that if I wanted to do something that much; I could do it

so no matter what setbacks happened I just put my head down and carried on.

I just enjoyed playing football on a whole - with my friends that I grew up with.

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You obviously had ability but how important was training?

Very important. To become a good player and to make the grade you always have to turn up to training

and you always have to give 110 per cent, even if things aren't going the way you want them to go.

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Who was your inspiration growing up?

I obviously looked up to my Dad [ex-Arsenal and England striker, Ian Wright], but I also used to like

Anders Limpar, Ryan Giggs and players that would dribble the ball and create chances for everybody else.

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What was the best piece of advice you received?

From my Mum and Dad: Everything you want to do in life, if you believe in yourself that much

it then becomes possible. I've always believed that. It's always stuck with me.

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Can you give one top tip for any aspiring player?

Always believe that you can be better than you already are.

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How important is ambition?

Ambition is very important; it's a form of drive. If you have big ambitions that will help you make

the steps towards being the best you can be.

Added  2/10/08 

Stop the Tournaments

Too many games, little preparation and no training opportunities

Tournaments, tournaments, tournaments. They are overwhelming youth soccer in this country. Everyone wants to play in tournaments. Every soccer publication in this country lists pages of tournaments for our children to attend! Every year the biggest decision a club team makes is "which tournaments do we attend?" Most clubs have a person or three who do nothing but prepare for tournaments. Stop the tournaments, I want to get off. Tournaments are hurting America's soccer playing youth.

Soccer tournaments started in this country as a way for clubs to raise funds to pay the bills. Great idea. Clubs would sponsor a tournament early in a playing season or in the summer when league play was suspended to make some cash. Now these tournaments rule youth soccer. It is now very important to participate in these types of events.Many clubs recruit players based on the tournaments they attend. Many coaches entice U-16's, U-17's and U-18's to their club by promising attendance at tournaments where college coaches will attend. Many players (and their parents) choose a club solely based on attendance and success in certain tournaments.

Today, the main focus for teams, clubs, parents and players is tournaments. The weekly league game (or two) is secondary to tournaments. And maybe games are even eliminated from the busy tournament schedule. In Central Ohio where club teams must participate in a sanctioned league in order to be allowed to play in tournaments, some clubs have a team for the weekly league (usually a weaker team) so the A team can compete in tournaments all over the country. If you don't get into the tournaments of your choice? Change clubs or create your own tournament. It works. Try it.

These tournaments allow our soccer playing youth to play a variety of teams in a variety of states all year long. But they are expensive. It costs the average family a weekend, car mileage, hotel expense, entertainment for between games, food and video game money. Why? Because everyone plays in tournaments. The kids will become better players. The college coaches can see them play. Yes, everyone plays in tournaments – except youth teams in other soccer playing countries. The weekly game is the most important game in most other countries. The teams have one week of training. One week of learning. One week to prepare for the game on Saturday or Sunday. The most important aspect of learning the game happens in well-founded training programs. The habits necessary to become a complete player are developed in training.

Training is important. Training is critical to the success of these soccer-playing nations.

Why is training important? It allows a supervised and progressive means to learn the game, if done properly. It allows the player, coach and team to focus on the areas of the game that will influence performance. What are those areas?

• Fitness
• Constant technical improvement
• Improvement of tactical understanding based on problems in the previous game
• Improvement of the mental aspects of the game by applying stress in the training situation in a variety of situations
• Team building

Do any of these things happen during a tournament? Not very likely. The very nature of tournaments prevents this from happening. Maybe in America we are uncomfortable with training. It is still a fact that some of our youth soccer coaches still do not have the background in the game as a player to feel confident in the design and execution of a training session. The obvious solution is play games. So, we play games and don't train.

Soccer teams in Germany, England, Holland, etc. do play in tournaments, but those tournaments are usually during a holiday break or serve as an excuse to go to Madrid for a week. During the season it's the league games that count. The entire focus is on the league game. Promotion, relegation and rivalries all depend on the weekly game.

Only in America do the players play in tournaments to collect patches for their bags or to add a medal to their collection or to spend Memorial Day in Lexington, Ky. Play, play, play. What happened to training? Tournaments are killing soccer in this country. Young players can't learn how to play in these types of situations.

Everything about these tournaments is bad for the development of American soccer players. Tournaments allow players and teams with slow pace or no pace to succeed. Teams play three games in a 24-hour period and, if they are lucky, play two more and win a trophy. Assuming we accept the fact that minimum recovery takes 24 hours, it is physically impossible to play that many games in a short time. In a recent tournament in Central Ohio, for example, a U-18 team played at 4:45 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday night and at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning. What can a coach expect to get from the players in these games? Nothing. It's not possible to play soccer in these situations. These tournaments breed Underwater Soccer. Nice and slow, no change of pace, no defending. Soccer is not meant to be played this way. Soccer is a game that is played when the player is uncomfortable, when the player closes in on fatigue, when the player runs, works and defends for 90 minutes. The very early laws of the game of soccer stressed a physical component by not allowing a lot of substitutions. Fitness is a part of the game. Ah, so you think there is a fitness component when playing in a tournament? No, there isn't. There is an energy conservation component, not fitness. American youth players stop running when they are uncomfortable. Since they're playing so many games in a short weekend, they just don't run at all. When the players try to move on to the next level (college), they are shocked to realize they cannot make the team. They don't know how to play. They don't know how to run and they don't know how to work. They don't know how to defend. They don't know what the physical aspect of soccer is all about. They have never been taught what it takes to play this game at a high level.

Technical development in a tournament situation? No chance. The games do offer a variety of opportunities to cultivate technical improvement, but because the games are so slow and there is very little defending, the time and space available for players is not realistic for a real soccer game. In fact, it's counterproductive. When a player does get into a "real game" where time and space are limited he/she cannot play.

Tactical improvements? Don't look here. There is no time between games to either discuss any tactical problems or work on them before the next game. If your team faces a "formation" or "tactic" you haven't seen before, what do you do? Hope you don't see it again. As a rule, there is very little teaching going on in regards to tactics in many clubs. The prevailing mentality is simply "find the best players and let 'em play!" Not a bad strategy. But as players move on in their soccer career, an understanding of tactics is very important. Even a constant teaching/review of 1 v. 1; 2 v. 1; 3 v. 2, etc., is essential to complete the maturation of a soccer player. This tournament mentality does not allow this teaching to take place. A player who relies only on athletic ability without learning the game will hit a "soccer plateau" and not get any better. This happens far too often in the United States. There is too much emphasis on the athletic ability of a player at the expense of soccer ability. In addition, tactics are important in the development of the whole team. If you agree with Alan Wade that the most difficult aspect of coaching a soccer team is "getting all the players on the same page," then you will agree that teaching tactics is very important. To accomplish that, the team must have time to train together and learn about tactics after each game. And the problems do not end there. The mental aspect of the game is lost. Soccer is a game where the mental aspect is so very important. In fact we delight in selling the game as a players' game and as a mental game. But we do nothing about it. No less an authority than former German international Jurgen Klinnsman believes that working on the mental side of the game is lacking right now in soccer all over the world. There is no mental preparation during tournaments at all. "If it's 2 o'clock it must be Vardar. Let's go play." The young players do not learn that a warmup prepares you to play physically and mentally. Rather they show up, perform some cursory warmup (or no warmup at all) and play. As a result they simply go through the motions of the game and never get any better. Preparation is important for the individual and for the team. The game of soccer is both physically and mentally demanding. It is the responsibility of the coach to prepare for both. In tournaments preparation does not happen.

Fields? Are you kidding? So many teams want to attend tournaments that most tournaments don't have the space necessary to supply good fields. Fields are created on any space possible. The grass is too long, the holes are too big, the field is too narrow and very bumpy. The fields create problems with injuries and bad soccer. Narrow, bumpy, heavy fields are not the surface to learn how to play. These fields contribute to a very direct style of play and don't allow for any creativity or any positive dribbling. The fields at most tournaments are simply unplayable.

Officials? There is a shortage of officials all over this country. Any fall weekend will see many officials working a high school game in the morning and a college game or two in the afternoon and evening. As the hours on the job increase, the quality goes down. This is exactly what happens with tournaments. Officials will do four, five or six games each day. Officials have been known to eat lunch while working a line, and, how about that six o'clock game? What can anyone expect from an official who has been on the field for six or eight hours?

These long hours for officials can cause real problems in tournaments.

Quality of competition: Some parents and coaches argue that they "cannot get better" playing the same old teams, that tournaments allow better competition. Every other league in every other country plays the same teams each year. The concern for these teams is to make themselves better. There is very little concern about who they play. The teams train hard all week to put what they learned on the field on the weekend. They learn how to play the game systematically and with a sound progression. Our "tournaments kids" miss out on a lot of necessary soccer information. Traveling eight hours to play three games in 18 hours does not make a team better. Quality of competition is important, but the quality of each team's effort each game is what counts in the end. The time spent traveling would be better spent training at an intense level and preparing for the game on Saturday.

Some tournaments have addressed some of these problems.

The Cincinnati Blue Chip Classic each April allows each team to play only once each day. The teams play three games in three days. Not great, but better than the usual five games in two or three days. Recently adidas began an Elite Soccer Program (ESP), which brings some of the best  soccer players to a site for five days of training and games. Each of these programs allows the players to "be seen" by college coaches while playing only one game a day. The players have a chance to play the game at a higher level than the weekend tournaments. The college coach can see if the kid has a game.  But these “new tournaments” come with their own problems.The players attend these tournaments “to show”.  They don’t care about the score, they care about showing.  After a big loss it is not unusual to hear on the sidelines, “Hey dad, how did I do?  Did I show well?”  These types of tournaments promote selfish play and players who don’t care about the score. 

A recent unscientific survey by Soccer Journal asked college coaches what were the problems with incoming freshmen.  Two of the top five responses said; 1) the players don’t know how to win; 2) the players are selfish and don’t know how to play as a team. 

So even these tournaments cause real problems with the players!

A tournament now and then is fine. It can be fun for the club, the players and the parents. Maybe they can travel to some cities that are fun. A tournament can bring a team "together" and build some morale. But too many tournaments will prevent the natural progression of learning that will take place in well-organized and thoughtful training sessions… training sessions that use the last game as a learning situation to build on and training sessions that prepare the team for the next opponent. The old coaching expression that "the game is the best teacher" is not true. Games used as a laboratory and supplemented by systematic and progressive training sessions are the best teacher.

By Jamie Treckerwww.jamietrecker.com. 

Two years ago, Freddy Adu was "done."

As in cooked.  Over hyped?   Maybe. 

But had he underperformed?

In the minds of many, yes. "A lot of people were writing me off," says Adu. "I was reading a lot of not-too pleasant articles about meIt's sometimes hard to remember that the best American prospect in a generation was only 12 when he was tabbed as the next big thing, and only 14 when he signed what at the time was the first major deal in MLS history — $500,000 a year to play at D.C. At United, his salary dwarfed that of his older colleagues, and there were unmistakable tensions among him, his teammates and his new coach Peter Nowak.

Adu is outspoken about it. "In America, our mentality — I don't know if it's American soccer in general or just MLS — when a young guy comes in, the mentality is to break him in, and make him earn everything he gets," says Adu, bluntly. "It's understandable, but sometimes it gets taken too far, to the point where the young player breaks down mentally." Did Adu break down in MLS? "I don't think I broke down mentally ... but I had a really rough time," says Adu. "At 14, I didn't deal with it well. Who can blame me? I'm 14, and I've got all this exposure, but the atmosphere [in Portugal] is a lot different when it comes to young guys." Adu could well have ended up like so many other prodigies — feted, well-paid, and then burned out.

For every Cesc Fabregas or LeBron James, there are a hundred Jennifer Capriatis and Kwame Browns.

So what changed for Adu? He was finally allowed to grow up. Adu is lucky. He is still young, and flourishing after a $2 million move to Portugal's Benfica. He is not playing as much as he would like, but he's already survived a coaching change and has shown his skill in limited play. He's on the game-day roster. He speaks some Portuguese, and lives on his own. "I've grown up a lot, basically. I'm taking care of everything, living on my own, and I've asked my Mom when she visits not to stay for a long time," says Adu. "I want to be an adult and I want to be in an environment where I am able to handle a lot of my own things.

My career is in my own hands, and I want to deal with adversity. I want to learn to be a pro." Some will have little sympathy for a kid who made more in four years than many MLS players will make in a career.

Others will correctly point out that Adu contributed to the hype himself when he signed a $1 million contract with Nike, and appeared in a series of Pepsi product ads. But reasonable observers have to know that Adu was thrown into a no-win situation twice in MLS. He was twice paired off with rookie coaches with little to no development experience and both under pressure to win immediately.  

There's no questioning that Adu is a different player today than he was just twelve months ago. He credits a change of scenery and a change of attitude, and it has helped make him into the player many hoped he could be after four frustrating seasons with two MLS teams. "When you get to Europe, it doesn't matter whether you're 17, 18, 19, everyone is treated the same," says Adu. "The coaches don't treat players over 35 any differently. You have the same say in everything and the same respect, and I was very surprised, because back in our country, this is not the case. Here, talent is talent, and people respect you. You have to earn that, but if you keep working, you get it, and that's the difference. "In MLS, the culture is more turned towards making the young guy pick up the Gatorade, making being a rookie an initiation. Here, [teammate] Rui Costa doesn't get treated any differently than I do. If I make a bad pass, someone yells at me. If he makes a bad pass, I can say the same thing. No one takes it as an offense, just that we're all part of one team." His command performance at the U-20 World Cup this past year probably saved his career, and he acknowledges that. But he also credits his decision to turn down offers from Italy and England, to go with a club that has a track record for development.“I think I made the right and best decision," says Adu. "There were other offers, and I want to be the big-time player. But I wanted to go to a place with a history of developing players, one that would give me a chance both to play and to grow. I'm not sure that would have happened in a high-pressure league like England or Spain — this was the place for me. The fans here are great, my teammates have been great. You can't ask for any more than that." Adu has also already overcome one hurdle that could have derailed him before he even got started. Coach Fernando Santos, who signed Adu, was fired just after the teen arrived. "It was weird," admits Adu. "But you know, in a way it meant everyone started with a clean slate. I knew I needed to show I deserved to be on the field, and I did that. Then I needed to show I deserved to be in the 18, and I did that. Now I need to show [new coach Jose Camacho] I deserve to be in the starting 11."

Adu has grown up in other ways. Freddy buried the hatchet with now-Olympic coach Nowak after a frank meeting in October. Bob Bradley has kept in close contact with Adu, and it seems certain he'll get a call to camp during World Cup qualifying. Freddy also has no regrets about choosing to play under the American flag, even though he'll be staying in Portugal while his birth nation kicks off play Sunday at the African Cup of Nations. "I don't regret turning down Ghana," says Adu. "It was a tough decision. But I grew up with a lot of the U.S. guys, and I always wanted to be a part of the U.S. team. I couldn't tell you why, but every since I was young, I did! I love America and love playing for the country."