Purp
Active Member
I resisted club soccer as long as possible for my son, but he finally reached an age where he was going to regress and lose the joy of the game if we didn't find a more competitive environment.So the wife and I were chatting with my daughter's teacher a few years ago during parent teacher night, and, as a "get to know my kid," the teacher asked about some of her interests, hobbies, etc. We mention that she plays soccer, and her preferred position is defense. Teacher's eyes immediately brighten, and she proceeds to tell me that her son's "elite select team" was "chosen" to participate in a tournament in Madrid run by Madrid, and how they were so excited to head to Spain for a few weeks of "coaching and real competition. Does [amazing daughter of @dawg] play on an 'elite' team?" No, I reply. She plays in the local rec league. "Oh... well, that's ok, too." Of course it is, I say, before causally asking how much their trip is costing per kid? "A little over $6,000." Was it unrelated that my daughter got on worse with this teacher than any other before or since? Maybe. But maybe not.
Later on in the school year over dinner, my daughter mentions that they're playing soccer for a few weeks in gym class. Have you seen [teacher's kid] playing during gym? "Yeah." He any good? "Not really. I shut him down." She smiled, and I immediately give her a crisp high-ten.
Now I'll be the first to admit no one on my daughter's team, including her, is likely getting anywhere near a college scholarship, let alone the WNT ranks, and select teams do serve a point, in that kids who are good at a particular sport only get better by playing with and against better kids. That coaching and time cost money; in other countries it is fronted by the big clubs (Ajax, Liverpool, Dortmund, etc) who run the academies. In this country it's fronted by the parents. But I have no idea how we (we meaning the US and US Soccer) begin to go about capturing the the missing strikers and wingers as @kaiser soze mentioned up thread and getting them the development they need to reach that level.
I was coaching with another dad in 7v7 (9U) and we had 4, maybe 5 players who ranged between decent and very good. My son was in the middle of that range. The remaining 6 players ranged from bad with one useful attribute to completely mediocre with zero athletic potential whatsoever. We couldn't teach any tactics at all because there weren't enough players ready for that for any of them to get anything out of it. The 4-5 good players spent all their time covering for the deficiencies of their teammates and learned way too many bad habits as a result. Any success we achieved was almost exclusively because of individual efforts, luck, or occasionally the stars aligning for two talented players to combine and make a great play.
For 10U we were going to go to 9v9 so we'd need to add 3-4 more players to our roster. We were losing our best player to a club team (they hadn't decided on one yet, but they were definitely going that route) and the players we were going to get in the draft were going to likely be more mediocre than in that serviceable range. It wasn't going to benefit our boys at all to further dilute their ability with a larger share of mediocre players and the league wasn't going to allow us to add players I knew from other leagues to our roster so we could actually teach real soccer so we had to make a difficult decision.
My 6 year old (at the time) had his entire team start training with Texas Lightning b/c his coach (a mother of 4 with 2 older ones already at TXL) so we went out to training sessions because he wanted to keep playing with his buddies (and he's much better than his older brother so continuing in rec soccer wasn't going to challenge him). We ended up liking the coach and returned every week. When I saw older boys training one field over I brought my oldest out there to knock it around with them and the talent gap was stark. My son was a decent player. He knew how to move without the ball and processed things in his head to know where to move the ball when it came to him, but his individual skill level and first touch were so bad compared to those kids I realized I'd held him back for too long. He made significant strides this past year and I think he'll further close the gap this coming year, but it's been worth the money for us to see him grow in the game the way he wants to and rise to the challenge. I wish I'd done it when he was 8 or 9, but those are the mistakes we make with the first kid.
The club environment isn't for everyone and the kid has to be invested more than the parents, but in our case that's the way it works out and as long as that remains true we'll pay for it. I just wish there was a better way. We'll never have the academy structure that exists in Europe until every small town and village has its own football club competing at some professional level beyond a local open adult league. And even then I suspect club membership largely subsidizes that training for the kids so it's probably not completely costless to the families.