WrigleyField 22

As many threes as he hit all year at UNC.

I think a lot of kids want to do stuff like that still, even though they surely also want screen time and stuff. But kids also lack the freedom to do a lot of that stuff too compare to 30 years ago. Whether right or wrong, kids are a lot more restricted to just go off on their own like that and play ball

Honestly I think that extra hour or two just needs to be pickup ball and stuff on their own and not structured. I'm obviously not talking about developing future premier leaguers, but just healthy age appropriate development. By age 12, I think that conversation changes slowly, but not before then. That time description sounds like what my league is. So hopefully it stays meaningfully fun and competetive. It just doesn't seem realistic to me that 8 or 9 year olds are sorting themselves into primary sports already that require extensive formal development.

I think for up to u-10 you shouldn't even need that great of coaching. I'd have gladly taken a few clinics to gather better skills and be prepared and it would probably fully suitable for what you actually need up to that point. But my local AYSO is constantly desperate for parent volunteers as is where the only real requirement is showing up twice a week and passing a background check. So priveleged area and all, but parents by me will just pay 3k to offload the entirety of that to someone who will also conveniently stroke their egos. I'm pretty interested to see how U8 goes with my son this year, but I'm still absolutely resistant to going travel route. So I've already started to research some nearby towns that aren't as wealthy to see if there's still places doing decent rec leagues just because the parents can't as easily drop the rec league in favor of expensive club teams. But it's been difficult to find much online - probably need to get out and talk to people.

Very good summary. It's absolutely crazy to have tournaments where parents need to travel and pay for overnight lodging at 11 or 12 years old. And the joke is often that you're playing a team from 3 towns over. But parents are also doing it to ourselves. At some point we're all complicit and the reasons we give are admittedly weak. Often times these clubs are incredibly socially driven (even after you get past the competetion layer).

Agreed it's not rocket science for young kids. Honestly the biggest thing I've found is just learning when not to coach anything. Especially during games. Parents and coaches need to all just shut up and let them play. Literally it's play. I don't know when that cutoff happens that more serious coaching is actually beneficial, but I'm certain we've started it way too soon.

I still don't have kids old enough to see the lasting efforts of rec league, but it's got to be quite a bit longer than U8 that kids can develop in rec leagues, even once their carved out from travel. Even with pretty clueless volunteer coaches like me in soccer I saw U7 kids make big progress from fall to spring. They technically did supplement my coaching with a hour of a paid trainer for about 16 sessions accross fall and spring, but it was a single coach running a session for 20-30 kids at once and half the time was like "were playing sharks and minnows". Now I actually think that's great because it was a fun play based way of learning. But it's not rocket science at young ages. For really young kids, they just need to get out and play. My goal for my son is to just try and push him getting out with friends and messing around more in the neighborhood with pickup stuff. They'll develop skills just fine. The potential payoff of more formal developmemt just isn't worth it so I'll be in no rush to do travel team sports. The only semi travel thing we may end up doing any time soon is a swim team. He's been in swim lessons since a baby, initially for safety/water acclimation reasons, but he's taken to it and likes it, recently graduating out of all the swim school levels. So we'll try out for the swim team in a few weeks, but the competetions are optional so it's basically just weekly-ish swim training where he can continue to develop his stroke, skip when he needs to, and if he still likes it by age 11 or so can decide to specialize more and compete and stuff. Leaves plenty of time to try lots of rec league sports and develop at them at that age cohort.

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.

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.

Infantino says he did https://talksport.com/football/world-cup/4394810/gianni-infantino-resign-donald-trump-folarin-balogun-red-card/

He's going to be all right guys.

Soccer idiot, but yea after watching the Quansah replay again it seems like the "he struck the ball first / the ball lifted his leg" argument feels kind of weak. It felt like a pretty desperate attempt and so yea the ball forced his leg up, but only because he had to get so out of position to get contact first. That said, the whole VAR replay/slow-mo arguement seems valid to bring up and question if that's really the standard.

If USA *WON* the world cup, no way is it coming with an asterisk because of a Round of 16 win against Belgium. Their quarters appearance can come with an asterisk.

What if you kicked it hard though

If they actually do stuff with the open spots, it's a warranted approach. Even if it's just throwing horsefeathers on the wall and seeing what sticks. Even something minimal like the 2nd round pick swaps are low value bets. Make enough and some eventually hit or become trade assets or whatever.

Why?

Matas getting booted from the Caleb-PCA superstar cool kid Chicago gang

I refuse to get excited about any coaching hire, sure. Any. There's only clear bad hires, and he isn't.

Who really knows.

Getting a interim job because the head coach who just hired you is arrested on federal gambling charges. You get that team to playoffs which causes your team to have to convey a protected first round pick from a minor trade like 5 years ago. Get hired by team who just got that FRP. This gambling conspiracy goes deep.

Loveland x3 imo. And probably that way for a while.

There's no way they're broke. At absolute worst, maybe they're cash flow constrained. But even that would be difficult to accomplish, even for bumbling McCaskeys.

Oh you can't touch the political discourse on this. It's all stupid. Darren Bailey made a post that state should make Bears rebuild Arlington Racetrack lmao

No. And if the season ticket waiting list goes from 30 years to 15, also no. But in a bad year, it will be interesting to see. Traditionally a cold as hell SF has done a decent dent keeping away fans from investing in a bad team at seasons end. I honestly don't know what a bad team in a dome in a dumpy hard to get to area does, but it might be worse. Also there are some simple economic issues with the NWI deal. Some of the new slew of taxes do hit the Bears indirectly (like amusement taxes). Sold out stadium with same revenue? Not so sure that's the case.

Based on Bears own statements (and a basic density/wealth population map would support this logically), the majority of fans will travel much further to get to Hammond.