It is not exactly the soccer version of NAFTA, but the Houston Dynamo hope they are starting a trend that will lead to increased movement of youth soccer players between the United States and Mexico.

Or, at least, between Houston and Jalisco, as the Dynamo Academy will be partnering with Cocula F.C. of the Mexican Tercera División to encourage player exchanges and, hopefully, create a pipeline of Guadalajara-area talent to Houston.

Try out for the Dynamo Academy with Dynamo Elite Camps

Nearly 40 years after Netherlands legends Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff unleashed Total Football on an unexpecting world, along comes a Dutchman espousing a new philosophy - periodisation.

If it is a concept that is unlikely to ever acquire Total Football's sexy cache, Raymond Verheijen believes periodisation - in essence a less is more approach to training - is important in allowing clubs to protect their key asset - players.

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(Fortune Magazine) -- What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway (Charts) Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to allocate capital." It's a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't.

Well, folks, it's not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don't exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that's demanding and painful.

Hey US, Lets follow their lead......Developmental Academy anyone?????

"The verdict brought by the voters is a statement of near bankruptcy in the way English football tries to groom the best of its young talent." Click here to read more

Originally published in the Jan/Feb. 2010 Long Angeles Sports & Fitness.

A representative from a nation’s basketball federation inquired about my interest in the position of the federation’s Technical Director. During the conversation, he stressed the importance of understanding Canada’s development model. While unfathomable to people in the United States, sports federations around the world no longer envy the U.S. model. Instead, sports bodies interested in developing Olympic athletes and world champions copy the models of Canada, Australia and Great Britain, the early adopters of Istvan Balyi’s Long Term Athlete Development model.

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Doneil Henry is tarnishing the image of the self-indulgent, pampered young professional athlete.

Two months after he began cashing paycheques for playing soccer, the teenager has not gone on any shopping sprees. Rather than a fancy car, the only transportation at his disposal are the GO train, streetcar, bus and subway he spends more than three hours on each day travelling from his family home in Brampton to work and back.

"I was 11 when I arrived, and the football philosophy of this club was drilled into me from the off. The most important thing is a willingness to learn. The philosophy is that the result is not important. We were taught to play triangles and move the ball around."

“You pick up good habits like learning the strengths of your teammates and always playing with your head up. Playing intelligently, passing to the right foot of a right-footed player or the left of a player who prefers the left. Before you get the ball you have to know what you are going to do with it. You can see the results of that development, with eight or nine key players in the Barcelona first team having come through the ranks. They are the base on which the team is built."

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The following is a translation of Johan Cruyff’s weekly article in El Periodico.  The original can be found here.

Cruyff’s Corner: “The solution is to lighten the calendar”

SA: What’s the advantage for a young U.S. player to go to Mexico?
TE KLOESE: There’s things that are very good in the U.S. and there’s a few things that Mexico maybe has a little bit of an advantage.

I think at Tigres we have a system that allows for a smoother transition from the youth level to the pro level.

An 18-year-old kid can be the very best on his MLS academy league team, but it’s very difficult for him to make a big difference in MLS. It’s difficult for him to get playing time and to get confidence to get better.

They need a lot of playing time and competition -- but competition within reason. It’s difficult with an MLS club when suddenly you go from youth soccer to competing with a Designated Player.

Not everything’s perfect in Mexico. Not by far. But our U-20s and U-17s play the same schedule as the first team. Our U-20s won the league last season and are first at the moment.

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