Academy season

It means that it isn't about "development" at all, it's just about trying to win at all costs and egos
Yes it's all about the wins. When laufa beat Galaxy at the showcase the coaches weren't yelling at their boys about development. All about winning and egos. My son loves his team but academy is looking like such a charade. Same old Tier 1 club soccer with a feigned purpose.
 
Not sure why everyone knocks "pay to play" exactly. it's a question of economics. SOMEONE has to pay for your kid to play, be it the rec players paying extra so that the academy players get a free ride, or a sponsorship deal, or the MLS team, but that only goes so far. field usage costs money, uniforms, etc. If you have a full time coach, they generally get paid as well. Not everyone is financially in a position to be able to run 4-5 practices a week + games on the weekend and have a flexible enough regular work schedule to do so.

Now the quality of coaching being worth that "salary" is a whole different story. When your coach spends half of his time staring at his phone instead of coaching, it's probably a good idea to start looking elsewhere
 
Not sure why everyone knocks "pay to play" exactly. it's a question of economics. SOMEONE has to pay for your kid to play, be it the rec players paying extra so that the academy players get a free ride, or a sponsorship deal, or the MLS team, but that only goes so far. field usage costs money, uniforms, etc. If you have a full time coach, they generally get paid as well. Not everyone is financially in a position to be able to run 4-5 practices a week + games on the weekend and have a flexible enough regular work schedule to do so.

Now the quality of coaching being worth that "salary" is a whole different story. When your coach spends half of his time staring at his phone instead of coaching, it's probably a good idea to start looking elsewhere

Pay-to-play is a symptom, not the problem itself
http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/the9...-to-play-is-a-symptom-not-the-problem-itself/

"Look at it one way. Whatever you think about Ronald Reagan, the money involved in soccer development is top-down. It has to start with professional clubs, which reel in sponsorship cash, gate fees, and other big money assets youth clubs will never sniff. You mitigate that by trickling money down to those clubs that feed these players to the pros. This is the cycle. Take your favorite MLS Homegrown player, and there is an almost deadlock certainty that he was not actually developed at that MLS club. He was claimed and poached:

The top down approach is one of the problems currently we need to start bottom up, high level youth soccer is not really working well for many in certain socio-economic standings.

The USA is a melting pot of people; races, ethnicity, backgrounds that has produced some of the best athletes in the world but we can't seem to develop many world class soccer players because the system we have doesn't work well
enough. Development has to start at the lowest possibles levels not the highest or top down, Just like what germany did when they changes there system in ~ 2000 http://www.ahmetguvener.com/wp-content/uploads/DFB-Youth-development-System.pdf they won the world cup and teams are consistently in the top tier.

Pay to Play symptoms really manifests themselves in the academy system, players are not ready, they haven't been taught well enough so they revert to their old ways where many teams & players can't or don't play the way ussda wants.

Too many coaches pay to win at all costs, Most of them don't care much about playing time or development much, they just want to claim and poach more players and brag on twitter about the 12 pts out of 12 this week. When teams have these huge rosters and are constantly adding new players you can make your own decisions or what motives this.


 
I always see it as a poor reflection on the coach and club when a youth team plays a full-game without making a single substitution. Even professional clubs in the highest competitions make 2-3 substitutions about 2/3 into the game.

When a youth coach rides his starters for the entire game, it means one of two things:
1). The starters even when they're running on fumes are better than the bench players and is a poor reflection of how the club develops players
2). It's a reflection on how poorly the coach/club identifies players if they can't even put together a 16-18 player gameday roster without sitting a 3rd of the team.

Sometimes youth teams have players injured or families go on vacation, so in those cases you may find yourself with one or no subs. But at DA, you got 7 kids sitting on the bench and typically with another 5 reserves behind them. There should be no reason to be riding starters for the entire game unless the team has serious depth issues. And if it's happening at this stage in the season, it means there's problems with how the coach develops players if so many are falling behind.
 
Pay-to-play is a symptom, not the problem itself
http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/the9...-to-play-is-a-symptom-not-the-problem-itself/

"Look at it one way. Whatever you think about Ronald Reagan, the money involved in soccer development is top-down. It has to start with professional clubs, which reel in sponsorship cash, gate fees, and other big money assets youth clubs will never sniff. You mitigate that by trickling money down to those clubs that feed these players to the pros. This is the cycle. Take your favorite MLS Homegrown player, and there is an almost deadlock certainty that he was not actually developed at that MLS club. He was claimed and poached:

The top down approach is one of the problems currently we need to start bottom up, high level youth soccer is not really working well for many in certain socio-economic standings.

I'll confess I didn't read the article, but up until very recently, we have not had a practical top down approach. US Soccer is trying to go that direction. The US approach with the DAs has been almost universally been a bottom up approach (until a few years ago when the MLS teams started to fund DAs). Indeed, there are very few fully funded DA's and almost all (but a small minority) are funded through the lower divisions. The DAs associated with the MLS team are basically the only top down academies here in the US. All others are bottom up and will quickly be relegated to tier 2 because they don't have the financial ability to fund what the MLS teams can provide.

A missing component to the current system is that all of those clubs that have funded their DAs are being denied transfer fees when the players are promoted to MLS sponsored or the National teams. All of these bottom-up DAs invest thousands into a players development and receive zilch when the player is nabbed by US Soccer (in violation of FIFA's solidarity policy). The practical effect here is there is a disincentive for those lower level (bottom up) approach teams to invest too heavily in their DA players/programs because there is simply no upside.
 
What was score with first line of Albion boys, and the score with 2nd line.

Does that matter?

When your a team at these young ages in da trying to eke out defensive draws (4 out of there last 6 for example) 0-0, 1-1, etc something is not quite right.
 
Does that matter?

When your a team at these young ages in da trying to eke out defensive draws (4 out of there last 6 for example) 0-0, 1-1, etc something is not quite right.

Haven't had a chance to see Albion play yet, I don't know there style of play. From accounts here, they play defensively. I was curious to know if the score dictated the player changes.
 
Watched RSC and Arsenal play to a 0-0 draw last night at Oak Park. RSC had several chances dink the bar or go over. Arsenal had a few less chances, they have a super right winger, but RSC defended his crosses and wide attacks.
 
Doesn't the USSDA require all teams to play a 4-3-3?

Recommends that formation, but Albion 03' has been playing with 5 mids in all the games I've seen them this season so far.

In this latest game appeartly they have taken that a step further and played 5 defenders with the 5 mids. The scouting reports will note this if true and may not be kind.
 
Total disservice to the game of soccer.
Not really.

10-0-0, 9-0-1, 5-5-0, 4-5-1 formations occur regularly in soccer. So regularly, in fact, that there is a commonly used phrase for these types of formations, "Parking the bus".

Parking the bus happens so often and at every level of soccer, it's a feature of the game, like diving.
 
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