Soccer in America

How do we measure player development?
Too often in America, a professional sport model is used in measuring youth sports success. Youth soccer is not immune to this misapplied standard. For soccer the situation is made worse by a desire of many adults to use measuring tools from other sports. In fact, it is maddening to many adults that soccer is not as black and white as with some sports in judging successful play. Many team sports played in our nation are statistically driven and coach centered.

Soccer is neither of those!

In many sports the coach makes crucial decisions during the competition. In soccer players make the primary decisions during the match; the coach's decisions are of secondary importance. Ego-centric personalities will find coaching soccer troublesome. The other significant group of adults at a youth soccer match is parents. They too often have their view of the match colored by the professional model and by a view of "coaching" that is portrayed in the media. Although it is changing, the majority of parents watching their kids play soccer have never played the game. In fact the statistics show that most of today's parents never played any team sport. So their only exposure on how to measure sporting success is gleaned from the sports media. The sports media predominately report on adult teams at the college and professional levels. These adult measurements of team performance should not and cannot be applied to youth sports.

The analogy can be made to a youngster's academic development in preparation for work in the adult business world. While the child is in primary and secondary school, the corporate world measurements of success are not applied. Those business assessments are not yet appropriate because the school-aged student does not yet have the tools to compete in the adult business environment. The knowledge and skills to be a competitor in business are still being taught and learned. This holds true in soccer as well!

This analogy is driven me nuts! Yes, we are teaching discipline, hard work but we are here to teach something fun! How parents have turned youth sports into a high-pressure, big-money enterprise at the expense of their children. In America, it is even worse than other countries because traditionally with have baseball, basketball and football that are being played in College and shown on TV!

Me, I have one question! How do you want your kid to excel in sports? Playing all the sports when they are young at a very competitive level, that is nuts!

Adults don't have 3 jobs in the same time! They won't be good at none of them! Why do they do that with our kids in sports?