| USSF forms committee to examine youth development |
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| on 07 Jan 2007 | |
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Here is an interesting article from Top Drawer Soccer. Where is the political will to make the right decision?
Youth Soccer landscape changing quickly with initiatives from Clubs, MLS, USSF by Robert Ziegler 11/15/2006 (Editor's Note: By way of update, since this article was published in mid-November, U.S. Youth Soccer has released a short statement affirming that they intend to have a national league established for the 2007-2008 competitive season. The statement does not give any specifics but promises "For US Youth Soccer members, the next months will be an exciting time as the plans for the league are finalized." Stay tuned to TDS for the continuing developments. Things are changing very quickly. That seems to be the consensus among most coaches and officials involved with elite youth soccer and player development in the United States. The shifting sands reflect a growing awareness (by those responsible) of shortcomings in the status quo American youth competitive and developmental system, an increased recognition by the international community of the great potential in the American player pool, and a heightened yearning from top players and their families to have their considerable collective potential fulfilled. This weekend the Red Bull National League 17 begins play in Raleigh, NC alongside the CASL Shootout. The league, which involves U17 Boys teams from 16 top clubs around the country, isn’t so much a revolution as an evolution. While the initial version of the competition is notable mainly for assuring that some of the better teams face one another at events rather than being thrown in to a larger and more diluted competitive mix, all signs point to the club directors in charge looking to make it much more involved in terms of age groups, gender, and most importantly, scope. USSF Director of Coaching Education and Youth Development Bob Jenkins, who was highly involved in the initial discussion to form the league, said while there are other highly competitive elite regional and national leagues in operation, the Red Bull league represented an attempt to raise the quality of competition without adding to an already-crowded schedule for young players. “So many of the things going on make sense in themselves, but what doesn’t necessarily help is if it becomes layer upon layer upon layer on competition,” Jenkins said. “The Red Bull league was a way for the clubs to have this sort of competition without it being just another event on top of all the other events, so I think in a lot of ways it’s been a positive initiative by the clubs.” MLS Youth Initiative long on promise, on details: “naht soo muhcha:” But the National League may just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to things changing. Last weekend, Major League Soccer officially announced its Youth Development Initiative, in which the professional clubs may sign players affiliated with their youth teams without said players having to go through the MLS Draft. In professional leagues around the world, there is no such thing as a draft and even lower division clubs have youth programs that include even pre-teen players. While starting in 2007, the MLS teams won’t be nearly as developed as their overseas counterparts, in fact, it’s still somewhat unclear just what these teams will look like. What MLS decreed is that each of its team can have a team in up to 6 age groups, U25, U20, U18, U16, U15 and U14. Players on these teams will be on a “Home Grown Players” list, from which teams can sign 2 players per year. A player must have been affiliated with the club for 1 year before they can be signed. There are a number of details still to be determined. The league says minimum levels of practice and match time will be set, and that players will be eligible to play on other youth teams during the year. Each MLS club is required to hire at least one coach per age group. Real Salt Lake coach John Ellinger had indicated earlier that the initiative will allow MLS clubs to establish up to 2 teams in separate areas of the country, not covered by a territorial map. The league release goes on to say that college eligibility is not affected by participation in the youth teams. With the U20 and U25 age groups it seems likely that there will be some overlap with the United Soccer Leagues’ Premier Development League, which is mainly a summer competition for current college players. USL has been rumored as a possible domain for at least some of the MLS Youth teams’ competitive schedule (but there are other possibilities for this, which will look at later in the article). Some MLS clubs, including New York Red Bulls, DC United, FC Dallas and Chicago Fire, have already fielded youth teams, but they have all been a mirror of the existing club structure in the U.S., including pay-to-play, and entered in many of the same competitions. There’s no indication that the teams forming next year will not be pay to play, and in that regard the league’s announcement does not constitute the crossing of a crucial threshold, as USSF Staff Coach Bob Jenkins noted. “The way it will sort itself out ideally is when the professional clubs have a developmental system that’s not pay-to-play.,” Jenkins said. “When that happens so much of this other stuff sorts itself out. But obviously we’re not there yet.” Players, executives hopeful about MLS Youth Initiative Still, Jenkins and others agree that the initiative can be an important first step. Houston Dynamo players Ryan Cochrane and Wade Barrett, speaking 2 days before winning the league championship in Dallas, were enthusiastic. “You see that all through Europe and it’s a good reason why Europe is a little bit ahead of us now,” Cochrane, who enjoyed the best of the current system as a former youth club, ODP and U20 National Team player from Portland, said. “I absolutely would have liked that. The club system here is good, but any way you can incorporate with the pro system, for kids who are striving to be a professional in this game, it’s a great thing.” Barrett, who played club ball in Virginia but who also saw professional youth development up close as a pro player in Denmark, agreed. “It’s fantastic for the kids to get that level of instruction from a young age. They get brought into a system and start understanding the technical and tactical part of the game much earlier,” Barrett said. “You see how it works its way up from the youth level to the senior level so a player can grow up in that and excel. We don’t have that yet but hopefully it will come about because it’s a great thing for youth players. It creates a fantastic learning environment and an atmosphere where young players can aspire to be involved.” Barrett noted that while in some ways change can’t come soon enough, the initiative is a tangible sign of progress. “Remember, when I was a youth player there was no MLS. Even in my 1st year of college soccer (1995) the league hadn’t started,” he said. “Things have come along way in a short amount of time with this game in this country. I think the next couple of years will be pretty exciting.” One stumbling block with the league getting involved with the youth game is how many individuals across the country have been able to make their living at it. MLS Commissioner Don Garber tried to placate those concerns at a press conference last week. “We don’t mean it to compete against the existing youth system, but to augment it,” he said. “At some point, the academies will become full time, but that’s something that will take time.” FC Dallas General Manager Mike Hitchcock noted there are pluses on the business end, as well as the concerns. Hitchcock’s organization features talented forward Kenny Cooper, who played his club soccer with Solar SC in Dallas. After a stint at Manchester United, Cooper returned home for the 2006 season and had a stellar year. The buzz in the home crowd whenever Cooper touched the ball was noticeable, and Hitchcock recognizes the potential business advantage of having local players featuring in the first team. “Kenny is a great player anyway, but because he’s a Dallas player, the fans have really made a connection with him. He’s the most popular player with our fans because of that,” Hitchcock said. Dallas is a very competitive youth soccer marketplace, and as with other cities, the idea of the professional clubs including area youth players on their teams, perhaps exclusively at some point, is not necessarily well received. Hitchcock doesn’t pretend otherwise. “(Integrating with the area youth setup) hasn’t been easy. It’s only going to get more difficult now that we’re announcing this youth initiative, but that said, everywhere else in the world the national federation is not responsible for player development. It’s the professional clubs’ responsibility and the national teams benefit from it, not the other way around,” Hitchcock said. “I think the youth soccer community will see that this is for the good of soccer in American and for youth soccer. If we take the right approach and have a strategy that is about helping players develop as a player and a person, I think we can break down some of those barriers.” Federation working group a hopeful sign The role of the federation is one that is often called into question by observers of the American soccer scene, but since Sunil Gulati has taken the helm as president of USSF, there has been a palpable change of tone in the area of addressing some of the issues with the elite youth game. Gulati formed a committee earlier in the year to examine player development issues in the country. The Technical Committee, which has met together once but continues the discussion from distance, is looking at myriad issues, including coaching standards and competitive structure and schedule. Bob Jenkins, who is part of the working group, said the fact that various organizations are beginning or talking about beginning national competitions is understandable, given the evolution of the game here. He stressed that the implementation of such initiatives must be done with development as the priority. “US Youth Soccer is talking about a national league, US Soccer is talking about a national league. I think everyone is looking at how they can develop something that’s most effective … It’s all because of this pregnant gap we have (the lack of professional club youth player development), so none of it is going to be perfect in its implementation,” he said. “We’re trying to do things that make sense from the standpoint of Best Practices (coaching education document), which is what we consider to be developmentally best for the kids. We’re trying to see if we can set something up where there’s competition, but within the competition there are opportunities for education. Education seems to be where the organization wants to make the most impact on the developmental youth level. Jenkins said the determining how to tie developmental standards and criteria to participation in the competitions is complex. “That’s one of the main sticking points. How do you tie that in? When you are talking about professional clubs developing players, you’re not talking about grass roots. You’re talking about identifying players you consider to have the most potential and bringing them into an environment where they can reach that potential, and always looking for other players too, not making it a closed model,” he said. “The challenge of any of these national leagues is how do you identify and develop the potential top players, yet allow it be an open system where kids who maybe are developing outside of what you’re doing can still come into it, whether it’s other players joining the clubs that are existing or getting other clubs who are doing things according to this criteria and allowing them in.” Jenkins agreed that the current landscape is both promising and complicated. “It’s very complex. As an organization we’re trying to guide, lead and educate. Since Sunil has been involved, there has been a lot of information gathered. At what point do we reach that critical mass where the information has come in and now we start to take that and come back with some initiatives?” he said. “We’re not there yet, but there’s a lot of activity out there, and you’re getting a feel of just how many possibilities there are. We can go in 10 different directions on where it could go. We don’t know, but I don’t think it makes sense to have 3 or 4 different national leagues. If we make that mistake and just have more leagues and organizations trying to find a foothold, then we haven’t found anything.” Something Jenkins doesn’t mention is also a key matter tied in to the entire discussion. It seems logical that the establishment of such an encompassing competition, perhaps including the new MLS youth teams as well as existing youth clubs, would likely, by definition, include a revisiting of the purpose, structure and performance of the Olympic Development Program, which to date has been designated as the country’s primary means player identification. |
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