Off Topic: Soccer and NASCAR

[LightninBoy]

Can you guys define "pay to play"? That's a serious question. Around here, there's always a fee to join a league regardless of the sport. Is that pay to play?

Whatever is wrong with the US system it doesn't seem to affect the women much. Girls soccer is *serious* stuff around here. I knew my son's team was good when they scrimmaged the girls team and only lost by two.

[froot loops]

LB - it depends on what kind of fee you are talking about.

Basically the gist of the pay for play model is you are paying a lot of money to play on a travel team that goes on year round and plays in tournaments to win. So the thought is they want to eliminate that aspect in the younger ages, to emphasize more skills. If you have an 8 year old and he's on a team that wants to win they might deploy a long ball strategy like a dump and chase in hockey. You don't really learn the dribbling and passing skills needed at the elite level so the argument goes.

The US men's team is normally full of athletes and is generally among the fittest of any teams but lacks skill and creativity. The thought is that if you eliminate a lot of the early competition at the younger ages, they get better skill wise.

This argument exists also in things like Hockey whenever the Canadian team bows out. Also in basketball when you see AAU kis who can do a lot of highlight reel things but can't make a left handed layup.

[CGVT]

It is travel ball teams that play weekend tournaments.

Around here it is about $100 to play rec baseball. With that you get a dad coached team with his son pitching, playing shortstop and leading off or batting third no matter how good or bad he is.

Travel teams usually cost a whole lot more, the better ones hire professional coaches, have serious practice times, batting cage time and travel to play in tournaments almost every week. So much so that sports tourism has become a thing. The entry to the teams is considerably more money and additionally you have to pay to enter the tourneys. Ad that to admission fees for parents to watch the tourney (usually $15 to $20 per person, and travel expenses like gas, food, hotel rooms etc etc and you are dropping at least a few hundred bucks every weekend.

[CGVT]

Yeah, there is no place for kids to develop anymore. That kid that was a slow starter that turned into a star in high school in years past doesn't get a shot. He is basically priced out of the opportunity by the time he is about 13 years old. The travel coaches want to win, so he gets no shot. The rec leagues are all about the coaches kid and have terrible coaching so he gets no shot and eventually loses interest because it is not fun.

[froot loops]

The one thing pay to play does is it leaves a lot of the urban areas out. They can't afford the outrageous costs. All the sports I listed all suffer the same type of issues, but it doesn't manifest itself like it does in Soccer. Baseball is really hurt by the same issues, but there isn't a World Cup that people care about where we might lose. Basketball is similar but if kids show ability early someone bankrolls it. And it's much easier to spot a phenom in basketball. Not so in Soccer, being a teenage phenom in Soccer is a curse.

[FVD]

The sad thing is, soccer should be one of the cheapest sports to play. You don't need to spend a lot of money on equipment to play, it's not like football or hockey.

Soccer in the US relies too much on the academic model to develop players, whereas other countries the clubs invest in young talent via their academies where their investment is making the kid better skilled, not winning trophies.

[froot loops]

That's true. The pay to play argument is more an argument that they are missing out on a much bigger player pool that they could be benefitting from. But it is intertwined with the problem that they are not exploiting the existing player pool, which is huge and is not fullnof Poindexters that can't play any other sport.

All of this is fun to talk about, but the debacle yesterday was less about that and more about bad managing all around. They have suffered from bad managing this whole qualifying cycle. Klinsmann sucked and Arena was not much better, he may have been worse. Arena's comments following the game were ridiculous. Get him far away from that.

[Panoptes]

Futbol is a 3rd world sport

[FVD]

I agree. Klinsmann was not the answer, but he certainly wasn't the problem. They need to find a new direction, but who's gonna want to take on this job? The complacency needs to go.

[froot loops]

Klinsmann was a big problem, he was technical director and manager. He was solely responsible for the roster management and at the end they were relying mostly on all old players that were there prior to him. How many of those European players did he cap and they are nowhere to be found. It got to the point where you look at last night's lineup and you wonder why Dempsey didn't start. The Deuce should have long been retired from International competition.

Whatever the talent pool is, they totally underperformed all during the Hex. Klinsmann would have been better off relinquishing managerial duties after the 2014 World Cup to focus on the technical director. And they shouldn't have brought back Arena, he was a stopfap, but he underwhelmed.

[Malto Marko]

Yep, my daughter was really good at softball but not so into it that I would want to spend thousands of dollars and every weekend in the summer. we had some friends who have daughters that play and their season ended the first week in August and tryouts for the next year were the next week. My daughter quit softball for a couple years because there was nowhere to play unless she wanted to do that travel league stuff. She plays in high school now but the stakes are incredibly low.

I can imagine down there the youth league football is much bigger. In this area youth league soccer is king.

My cousins make big bucks running travel soccer teams at every age level.

The sad thing is, soccer should be one of the cheapest sports to play. You don't need to spend a lot of money on equipment to play, it's not like football or hockey.

Soccer in the US relies too much on the academic model to develop players, whereas other countries the clubs invest in young talent via their academies where their investment is making the kid better skilled, not winning trophies.

Agreed it should be cheap but up here, the most successful teams also play indoors when the weather goes sour. Becoming a member of a travel team that participates in spring, summer, fall and winter leagues (which, by the way, I can give you a number if your kid has talent,;)) gets very expensive (and profitable for the team owners).

[LightninBoy]

Ok. Thanks for the explanation guys. We have a lot of the some concepts around here too.

My experience has been different though. I remember growing up and playing youth football and basketball. I wasn't good and ended up sitting most of the time. In otherwords, not developing and not having fun and eventually dropping out.

Once I hit junior high age - the only sporting options were school based. So you either made the jr high team or you didn't play. I barely made the jr high school basketball team. But even then the focus was on winning not developing. So I mostly sat and dropped out.

Fast forward way too many years and my kids have a lot more options. Rec leagues start young and go all the way through the high school years. So you don't need to make the school team to play. I've had mostly good experience with Rec, they emphasize development over winning and have rules to make sure kids get equal time playing at all positions. The worst part of Rec is that they claim to balance the teams but usually they don't or do a terrible job at it. There's always one coach/director who stocks his team to win. This killed my oldest son's interest in baseball and is in danger of killing my middle one's too. But at least our rec baseball has rules to make sure every kid gets to play infield and outfield. Anyone who wants to pitch will pitch. We had one coach that even forced every kid to pitch, even if they didn't want to. That was taking it too far, IMO.

My two oldest boys both play (or played) in competitive (traveling) soccer instead of rec soccer. But really, outside of traveling a little on the weekends and paying more, its the same as the rec leagues in that they are about developing more than winning. The kids get equal time and play multiple positions (goalie being optional). Unlike my area's traveling baseball leagues, competitive soccer doesn't have insane traveling commitments. At most I've had to drive an hour to a game. Most are either home or within 30 minutes.

So overall, in my experience, US youth sports are in a better place than when I was growing up in regards to discovering and developing youth talent. Granted there's like a 30 year gap there. So I can't compare now to say 15 years ago. Maybe it was better 15 years ago?

I do think early specialization and extra training may be a problem in identifying and developing real talent. At young ages, extra training is a huge advantage and can bias opportunities towards kids with more money but actually have a limited ceiling. Same with specialization. I know my oldest eventually couldn't keep up in soccer because he played multiple sports and only played fall soccer rather than year round. Now, soccer was never his strongest sport so its not like soccer lost a future pro here, but I can just imagine a kid who is a gifted athlete and has the potential to go far, but his interest in many sports limits his development relative to his peers who are specializing.

I don't have any answers for this. All I can say is that, when I look at my area's youth sports, overall I see a much better environment for developing kids than when I was growing up.

[Marko69]

Don't know about you guys, but this "lame, third world sport" supporting dude, stigmatised by the more intelligent, elite cunts, is going to have a beer tonight ..... to celebrate an actual conversation on the Soccer thread!

High 5 to you, Froot; love reading about parents who take active interest in their kids sports. I was exactly the same. Until Scotty said, "Dad. You know that American Baseball?" And then I said, "Fiiiiickin NOOOOO!"

[FVD]

It's not a third world sport, contrary to what Gonz thinks.

[Panoptes]

When you live in North Mexico (CA) and all you see beyond AYSO are the spawn of 3rd world ILLEGAL INVADERS, it really proves the 3rd world sport issue.