soccer soccer soccer

[cl smooth]

Just now, CaliforniaRaisin said:

Poor Africa.

- Donald Trump

[sneakypower]

[soccer10k]

Rooting for Colombia here. No offense to the Swiss but Col-Arg could be fire. Colombia won’t be scared and they’ll probably go at Arg. They kept attacking until the end against Por even though a tie won them the group and they kept going at Ghana despite winning late.

[JHBulls]

What can go wrong?

 

[sneakypower]

glad to see this backs up my snap reaction everytime i see Akanji/Tah types booting their attempts into the stratosphere

[I owned a Suzuki]

19 hours ago, sneakypower said:

Trump just came out and said that Belgium was 2 weeks from having nuclear capabilities:)

[We Got The Whole 9]

We will also accept wiping your ass with his new dollar bill

[Soul]

14 hours ago, JHBulls said:

What can go wrong?

 

Put in a call to Infantino.

[soccer10k]

2 hours ago, sneakypower said:

glad to see this backs up my snap reaction everytime i see Akanji/Tah types booting their attempts into the stratosphere

Surprised wingers is so low. Though it’s only 13 PKs so there could be a bit of sample size there.

[bukie]

Pulisic fractured his tibia and fibula during the Belgium game. Could be related to him not looking good and taking himself out of the game 

[mul21]

37 minutes ago, bukie said:

Pulisic fractured his tibia and fibula during the Belgium game. Could be related to him not looking good and taking himself out of the game 

He looked like ass before he kicked that guy's foot and got hurt.  Piss on him.

[squally1313]

Dumb analogy coming in from a soccer idiot: Pulisic on the world stage is like Ian Happ. Perfectly fine player, will go down as one of the better ones in the team's history, but if he's your best guy (like Happ was for a couple years in the early 2020s), you're never actually going to win horsefeathers. Figure out a way to let him bat 6th. 

[sneakypower]

55 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Figure out a way to let him bat 6th.

way easier said than done.. everybody is arguing about how to achieve this and nobody really seems to have any answers

how can youth development thrive when everything has gotten so prohibitively pay-to-play? think of what gets lost along the way; the de facto appointed ambassador for us soccer thinks this is fine, actually

[squally1313]

1 hour ago, sneakypower said:

way easier said than done.. everybody is arguing about how to achieve this and nobody really seems to have any answers

how can youth development thrive when everything has gotten so prohibitively pay-to-play? think of what gets lost along the way; the de facto appointed ambassador for us soccer thinks this is fine, actually

Yeah it wasn't a perfect analogy. The USMNT can't go out and buy actual elite players. Pulisic had a bad game but the idea that he'd be, even in form, the best player on a semi final, much less a championship team, is laughable. 

[WrigleyField 22]

1 hour ago, sneakypower said:

way easier said than done.. everybody is arguing about how to achieve this and nobody really seems to have any answers

how can youth development thrive when everything has gotten so prohibitively pay-to-play? think of what gets lost along the way; the de facto appointed ambassador for us soccer thinks this is fine, actually

It's just crazy. I didn't grow up playing much soccer since I played football pretty early on.  Nonetheless I helped a little bit two years ago with my son's team and last year (U7) when the local AYSO was desperate for coaches I stepped in and did my best Ted Lasso impression.  Now, headed into U8 this fall, about half the kids I coached are already moving into expensive travel clubs. Some of these kids have nice talent, but there's onto so many "top" kids who will get attention and the rest will pay thousands for that "product" just marginally better than the rec AYSO.  Now I live in an area where most can burden that cost. But if that happens elsewhere that means the development just basically stops because kids just get priced out all together.

 

Rec league will carry on into U12 at least, but won't compete with the expensive leagues, and a lot of the kids in that expensive travel league will burn out because the cost puts a lot of pressure on it from mom's and dad's who see this massive commitment they're making for 8 year olds.

 

So on one hand accessible development gets its rug pulled out from under it from expensive league. Meanwhile the expensive leagues really don't excel at development either - they really just act as a segregation tool, so the competition is "better", but still not actually focused on development.

 

That said, the issue isn't just soccer ever becoming as popular as our other big sports, but at least for basketball/baseball/football there is still a lot of crossover benefit and playing multiple sports for as long as possible is still somewhat encouraged (though way less so that it used to be). In soccer, except for the true freaks of nature, early specialization is probably key.  You can be an Erling Hallaand and specialize later, but you aren't going to build a roster completely of those guys. You probably need a deep pipeline of early specializers and early specialization here is just a rich kid thing so it cuts out deep parts of the potential pool.

Edited 7 hours ago by WrigleyField 22

[sneakypower]

guess it's time to start looking forward to 2030:

USMNT’s 30 for 2030: The holdover stars and new players in frame for the next World Cup [Gift Article]

[Irrelevant Dude]

11 minutes ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

That said, the issue isn't just soccer ever becoming as popular as our other big sports, but at least for basketball/baseball/football there is still a lot of crossover benefit and playing multiple sports for as long as possible is still somewhat encouraged (though way less so that it used to be).

I still subscribe to there being benefit to playing multiple sports, but that is soooo hard to do in the current landscape of youth sports.  My 9 year old son really enjoys baseball.  He has rec baseball in the summer, travel baseball year round, individual hitting sessions, individual pitching sessions, other camps, etc.  The problem is, all those activities don't leave room for much else.  He plays rec soccer in the fall and has occasionally played indoor in the winter when the schedule allows, but there isn't time to dedicate much to soccer outside of games and practices.  He has expressed interest in playing basketball, but I just don't know how to fit that in.  None of the sports ever really end and everything overlaps/conflicts with the others. You can play everything casually or you can play one sport seriously, but it's hard to find any balance in between. 

[WrigleyField 22]

Just now, Irrelevant Dude said:

I still subscribe to there being benefit to playing multiple sports, but that is soooo hard to do in the current landscape of youth sports.  My 9 year old son really enjoys baseball.  He has rec baseball in the summer, travel baseball year round, individual hitting sessions, individual pitching sessions, other camps, etc.  The problem is, all those activities don't leave room for much else.  He plays rec soccer in the fall and has occasionally played indoor in the winter when the schedule allows, but there isn't time to dedicate much to soccer outside of games and practices.  He has expressed interest in playing basketball, but I just don't know how to fit that in.  None of the sports ever really end and everything overlaps/conflicts with the others. You can play everything casually or you can play one sport seriously, but it's hard to find any balance in between. 

I'm absolutely a proponent of kids getting exposure to many sports too. Or at the very least having off time from the sports they do play.  I really only played maybe 4 organized sports and a handful of street all type things informally growing up, but none of those took up 6 months of the calendar.

 

But that attitude probably isn't consistent with the question of how to produce better soccer results, either.  I'm not sure there is a middle ground, because even if soccer became like our #1 sport overnight, sports 2-4 would have a lot more crossover and allow for later development among athletes. All evidence points to soccer specialization early creating the best players. In football guys frequently pick up at 14 or even later and can make it to highest levels. But general athletic skills or other team sport skills translate over.

[mul21]

51 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

I still subscribe to there being benefit to playing multiple sports, but that is soooo hard to do in the current landscape of youth sports.  My 9 year old son really enjoys baseball.  He has rec baseball in the summer, travel baseball year round, individual hitting sessions, individual pitching sessions, other camps, etc.  The problem is, all those activities don't leave room for much else.  He plays rec soccer in the fall and has occasionally played indoor in the winter when the schedule allows, but there isn't time to dedicate much to soccer outside of games and practices.  He has expressed interest in playing basketball, but I just don't know how to fit that in.  None of the sports ever really end and everything overlaps/conflicts with the others. You can play everything casually or you can play one sport seriously, but it's hard to find any balance in between. 

That level of specialization at 9 years old is just crazy to me.  Do kids even play sports at school once they get to middle school anymore?  That's where a lot of the development for kids my age came because the seasons were short and you could try just about everything.

[Irrelevant Dude]

34 minutes ago, mul21 said:

Do kids even play sports at school once they get to middle school anymore? 

I assume so, but what I have been told by friends with older kids is that school sports are secondary to travel.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

What a horrific PK by Mbappé.

France really has to be kicking themselves after that first half.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

4 hours ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

It's just crazy. I didn't grow up playing much soccer since I played football pretty early on.  Nonetheless I helped a little bit two years ago with my son's team and last year (U7) when the local AYSO was desperate for coaches I stepped in and did my best Ted Lasso impression.  Now, headed into U8 this fall, about half the kids I coached are already moving into expensive travel clubs. Some of these kids have nice talent, but there's onto so many "top" kids who will get attention and the rest will pay thousands for that "product" just marginally better than the rec AYSO.  Now I live in an area where most can burden that cost. But if that happens elsewhere that means the development just basically stops because kids just get priced out all together.

 

Rec league will carry on into U12 at least, but won't compete with the expensive leagues, and a lot of the kids in that expensive travel league will burn out because the cost puts a lot of pressure on it from mom's and dad's who see this massive commitment they're making for 8 year olds.

 

So on one hand accessible development gets its rug pulled out from under it from expensive league. Meanwhile the expensive leagues really don't excel at development either - they really just act as a segregation tool, so the competition is "better", but still not actually focused on development.

 

That said, the issue isn't just soccer ever becoming as popular as our other big sports, but at least for basketball/baseball/football there is still a lot of crossover benefit and playing multiple sports for as long as possible is still somewhat encouraged (though way less so that it used to be). In soccer, except for the true freaks of nature, early specialization is probably key.  You can be an Erling Hallaand and specialize later, but you aren't going to build a roster completely of those guys. You probably need a deep pipeline of early specializers and early specialization here is just a rich kid thing so it cuts out deep parts of the potential pool.

My son does rec baseball and soccer and while there are extenuating circumstances (still thousands displaced and parks/schools not completely rebuilt after the Eaton Fire), the rec leagues have been severely carved by kids bouncing  for travel ball. The talent is just hollowed out.

[bukie]

29 minutes ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

My son does rec baseball and soccer and while there are extenuating circumstances (still thousands displaced and parks/schools not completely rebuilt after the Eaton Fire), the rec leagues have been severely carved by kids bouncing  for travel ball. The talent is just hollowed out.

Yes, as a parent of a college kid who did 10 years of travel ball and an 8u kid now, you just can't develop effectively in a rec league anymore. Rec leagues are effectively sports tourism. Give something a try in your free time to get out and see if you like the sport, then if you want to get good at it you have to jump to a travel organization, at least at some level.

Unfortunately, even with that truth, some travel programs are effectively money printing factories, where they have 5+ teams per age level, focusing on the development of the top team at the cost of everyone else, where if you're the parent of the kid on the bottom tier, you pay the same (or more, those top team kids get benefits sometimes too!) but just don't get the same level of attention and spotlight as the top tier kids.

Then you get into the organizations that run the tournaments and leagues, and those get ridiculous as well. Leagues effectively run for the lower-end travel programs so you can get mid week games in between weekly tournaments. Tournaments run usually 4 days a week, where Saturday and Sunday you can play 2+ games per day, up to as many as 4 that I've been a part of. Just to get in the door at these tournaments a team is paying upwards of $700 a team, with some of the more prestigious tournaments going for over $1k a pop. That just gets the team in, though, as then to see your kid play that's another $10 a day, and maybe even an extra $10-$15 to park in the parking lot.

That's just the games, though. Training is another beast all together. If you are fortunate to latch onto a travel program with their own facility for training, that's great, but that all costs extra on top of the tournament and team fees usually (or it's rolled in with the team fees, and team fees are $1k more for those programs). Depending on the team, then you get 1-2 days a week of training in the off season. Then you can augment that with private lessons for hitting, pitching, catching, or fielding for an extra $50 a session.

All told, at a high end program with their own training facility, playing 10 tournaments a year, you're easily out at least $2k per year plus about $500 for private training if you're extra serious about it. The younger the player, the more they benefit from training compared to game environments, so it's a better focus (like at a 3:1 level for 8u up to about even for 17-18u). That's before equipment, too, where bats run up to $500 for even little kids at the high end, and gloves can run $100+ easy (and if you're a catcher, that's a good $500 purchase new as well, hoping it lasts a few seasons)

And we were up in the northern US for all of this, so you could really only play games April-July, trying to fit 50+ games into the spring. Down in places like Texas, Arizona, Florida, or California, you could easily play year-round, 100+ games a year.

Is it all worth it? It shouldn't have nearly that large of a barrier for entry for anyone, but so many people see dollar signs in it, everybody gets their cut, and parents are left footing the bill. You can't go into it thinking you'll get it back in scholarships, though, for college, that's maybe 1% of everyone that plays. Everyone else ends up spending a cool $25k over 10 years just to help your kid succeed and enjoy sports.

What's the fix for it? I don't know, really, it'd have to be scorched earth and rebuilt from the ground up. Public programs for training and team building, community organization for games and tournaments, shared incentives for equipment and gear, objective evaluation and team placement, separate education from sports, more similar to a European sports academy than an American pay-to-play club (though the Euro academies have their own wild problems with how much they take advantage of players' effort and labor time).

[entbird79]

20 minutes ago, bukie said:

Yes, as a parent of a college kid who did 10 years of travel ball and an 8u kid now, you just can't develop effectively in a rec league anymore. Rec leagues are effectively sports tourism. Give something a try in your free time to get out and see if you like the sport, then if you want to get good at it you have to jump to a travel organization, at least at some level.

Unfortunately, even with that truth, some travel programs are effectively money printing factories, where they have 5+ teams per age level, focusing on the development of the top team at the cost of everyone else, where if you're the parent of the kid on the bottom tier, you pay the same (or more, those top team kids get benefits sometimes too!) but just don't get the same level of attention and spotlight as the top tier kids.

Then you get into the organizations that run the tournaments and leagues, and those get ridiculous as well. Leagues effectively run for the lower-end travel programs so you can get mid week games in between weekly tournaments. Tournaments run usually 4 days a week, where Saturday and Sunday you can play 2+ games per day, up to as many as 4 that I've been a part of. Just to get in the door at these tournaments a team is paying upwards of $700 a team, with some of the more prestigious tournaments going for over $1k a pop. That just gets the team in, though, as then to see your kid play that's another $10 a day, and maybe even an extra $10-$15 to park in the parking lot.

That's just the games, though. Training is another beast all together. If you are fortunate to latch onto a travel program with their own facility for training, that's great, but that all costs extra on top of the tournament and team fees usually (or it's rolled in with the team fees, and team fees are $1k more for those programs). Depending on the team, then you get 1-2 days a week of training in the off season. Then you can augment that with private lessons for hitting, pitching, catching, or fielding for an extra $50 a session.

All told, at a high end program with their own training facility, playing 10 tournaments a year, you're easily out at least $2k per year plus about $500 for private training if you're extra serious about it. The younger the player, the more they benefit from training compared to game environments, so it's a better focus (like at a 3:1 level for 8u up to about even for 17-18u). That's before equipment, too, where bats run up to $500 for even little kids at the high end, and gloves can run $100+ easy (and if you're a catcher, that's a good $500 purchase new as well, hoping it lasts a few seasons)

And we were up in the northern US for all of this, so you could really only play games April-July, trying to fit 50+ games into the spring. Down in places like Texas, Arizona, Florida, or California, you could easily play year-round, 100+ games a year.

Is it all worth it? It shouldn't have nearly that large of a barrier for entry for anyone, but so many people see dollar signs in it, everybody gets their cut, and parents are left footing the bill. You can't go into it thinking you'll get it back in scholarships, though, for college, that's maybe 1% of everyone that plays. Everyone else ends up spending a cool $25k over 10 years just to help your kid succeed and enjoy sports.

What's the fix for it? I don't know, really, it'd have to be scorched earth and rebuilt from the ground up. Public programs for training and team building, community organization for games and tournaments, shared incentives for equipment and gear, objective evaluation and team placement, separate education from sports, more similar to a European sports academy than an American pay-to-play club (though the Euro academies have their own wild problems with how much they take advantage of players' effort and labor time).

Now a lot of the travel teams are just average or even sub-average level players, so they make tiers in the tournaments, so they can make sure they make money off everyone. The level of play often isn't any better than rec league. Rec league gets further watered down, and parents with the means move their kids to travel because they "have to."

Coaching 8-year-olds in baseball isn't rocket science. Could parents take the time that they spend running to private lessons and use it to take their kids and some of their friends to the diamond? A bucket of baseballs and some other baseball gear can be bought from savings from lessons. I'm not saying private lessons are bad, but could a parent go on YouTube and basically parrot the same thing? I've taught many parents things to work on with their kids, and for those who take the time to spend with them, the results often come quickly.

I don't know what the solution is, and I feel fortunate that in my area we still have somewhat of a rec league to go along with travel. I've coached all of my kids (rec and travel) with my last one being 8 as well, and I run into parents all the time who hate the idea, and the practice, of travel ball, but feel pressured from coaches to participate. I know many either don't have the means or shouldn't be spending it on travel, but they do it anyway.

[Tryptamine]

2 hours ago, CaliforniaRaisin said:

My son does rec baseball and soccer and while there are extenuating circumstances (still thousands displaced and parks/schools not completely rebuilt after the Eaton Fire), the rec leagues have been severely carved by kids bouncing  for travel ball. The talent is just hollowed out.

Going through all the expenses with clients and I find it shocking how many parents are dumping 5k, 10k and more on their kid's sports activities annually. It's not even wealthy households either. I see people dropping 5-10% of their household income on their kid's sports.