Today's News,Wednesday,July.06
Great article by De Vos.
(good post by keem-o-sabi, too).
SSG= C.Toe city
I wish DeVos had mentioned the current ongoing changes occurring, in the OSA at least, to change their focus to more development of skills. The OSA teams need to take a page from the Academies structure. It's an interesting time with little attention on the fact there are 2 very different philosophies on development of youth happening right now in our country and to support one over the other could mean widescale change in the next World Cup Cycle.
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
Membership Team
mornin d
wow 2016 and things are looking up --- come on you reds lets go
19 played. 18 points.
Is it right to have hope?
this season is not yet over. . . a win over columbus would certainly help. .
Maicon and de Guzman are questionable ahead of Wednesday.
Attakora (quadriceps strain). Dicoy Williams (knee) and Adrian Cann = out
Gordon and Peterson are traveling,
oh, and lets find a way to win 3 points tonight shall we?
PS - Toe.
Last edited by Technorgasm; 07-06-2011 at 07:24 AM.
NOTICE: Wager with STB: OVER 2 shots on goal in the First half wins a Pint at HT.
oh right... there's a game!
is it bad that I'm often reminded about games the day of?
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Better than the day afterOriginally Posted by Parkdale
Back to reality for TFC?
beating up on vancouver's one thing, but NY? hoping we can avoid the hot Henry on Henry action.
Lol. Well played.
"de Guzman said he had talked to De Rosario just hours before the trade and his Canadian international teammate had told him how happy he was in New York."
Ouch.
pwned
Him being the Technical Director of Oakville SC (the largest club in North America) I find it curious that DeVos should ask parents to question why they send their children to clubs without professionals on staff. It's easy enough for him to say this, now that Oakville has mandated the hiring of paid staff at each age level, whereas much smaller clubs cannot afford to do so and must rely on volunteers. Should the parents of Dundas send their kids to Oakville ? Or should DYSC increase registration fees to cover the costs of having a professional on staff ? Is that what's going on in Ancaster (nb - player reg. fees in Dundas = $150; Ancaster = $220) ?
Fuck off, Jason.
a ha ha heh he hoo.. ha
Serious question. Are those numbers citywide? Are there no other options for kids in Ancaster but Dundas for affordability? The answer doesn't effect me directly but I am curious to know more.
Kids typically travel for sports when they get to a certain level anyway. Wouldn't this be a stopgap till both levels were available in both cities?
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
Soccer needs to be looked at as an actual sport in this country and be treated like Hockey.
With actual competitive leagues.
Hockey has strong competitive leagues going back to young kids it develops them and encourages that development. Having a Massive club like Oakville and a small club that can't afford decent staff... means two things. Kids who fat and nonathletic and whose parents are forcing them to get exercise can play rec and parents that don't want to keep score can send their kids to the little rec club... and kids that want to learn to play the beautiful game and want to play Jr A and move forward can go to Oakville.
We need these leagues to start cropping up. was need leagues that are competitive. It doesn't have to look like hockey right away but it should at some point start developing into a system that works well in the vastness of Canada. The Euro system isn't going to do it.
Get out there teach them like we do with hockey with the same competitive spirit and guess what we'll develop players.
It's funny when I was a kid the year we went to the World Cup I had friends playing hockey for the first time the same year I played Soccer. Their team lost and got nothing for losing.. they finished in the middle of league play. My team made it to the finals (I moved the day before so didn't get to playmy parents actually wouldn't wait a day so I could play in the championship game says a lot of my childhood ) Every kid got a trophy though no matter how bad they were. And that is the difference between the way the two sports are thought of in this country.
In Hockey you play to win, in Soccer you play to have fun... guess what winning is fun and so is playing your hardest even if you lose you played the best game every time. So lets get out there and get kids to play to win and play at their very best.
Honestly that is a more important to developing the sport in the short term, teaching parents that your kids will be better off not getting a trophy if the come in last place, and if you play your best and your hardest then no matter what you can lift your head high. That is a more important life lesson then slack off and smiie you'll still get a trophy for running in circles to make your self dizzy while playing keeper and letting in three goals in 5 minutes..... (watched one of my cousins score that way the keeper just started doing air plane sounds with their arms out and running in a circle till she fell down... the coach was just like it's ok she's just having fun.)
So yes lets fix Canadian Soccer at the roots, Fun is not making airplane sounds and falling over, Fun is trying hard, doing your best, and always trying to win. Even if you fail you still did your best and your best is always fun.
Last edited by Kaz; 07-06-2011 at 08:54 AM.
... other than that his point about teaching skills first at Youth level, disregarding results, is spot on.
I don't think disregarding results is spot on at all...
And the mighty Hockey Canada is finding the same thing...
Since the summit and the 'Performance of Excellence' has been instituted, one thing has been receiving negative feedback from coaches, and the panel assessing development - and that has been that the disregarding of results has caused a negative impact on players knowledge of the game, and the culture of sport...
Kids are playing games at a very young age with no scoreboard, no winners and no losers - as they mature, they haven't learned that in sport - there is a winner and loser. They aren't maturing... They aren't learning the value of working hard - no matter what they do, nobody loses or wins...
When they're entering the years where eventually the score matters, they are finding it tough to teach them that this is in fact what a sporting competition is about... Even at the recreational house league level...
You can teach skill, knowledge, game play, passion, work ethic - but at the same time a kid needs to learn that there is a winner - and more importantly they need to learn how to lose...
Hockey Canada is finding a huge increase in kids quitting the sport during the year, or after the year the actual win-loss / score is introduced...
In this age of parents giving their kids everything - sport is one of the few things that teaches them "you can't always get what you want", that sometimes you lose...
Focusing on development, should not mean disregarding the result...
And also, just because there is a score does not mean you must focus on winning with 6,7,8 year olds - but to be successful, you must learn everything about a sport - and that includes the sometime cruel score at the end of 90-minutes...
Carts...
"...Money wasn't tight, but it like, it wasn't right..."
Fully agree, but...
How do you get the kids and their parents to buy into that? The parents pay the reg. fees and don't feel as though they're getting their money's worth if little Jimmy's team doesn't win. Little Jimmy gets frustrated and doesn't want to play any more if his team doesn't win.
I've always believed that soccer is a mirror of a country's people. For any change to occur in Canadian soccer, we need a generation of kids raised by a generation of parents who aren't short-sighted, who don't believe they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, and actually have coping mechanisms for failure.
Maybe worth bearing in mind that only a tiny fraction of kids make it to the pro level so one size doesn't have to fit all. One guy from the dozens of kids I knew from playing down the local park in bounce games back in Scotland made it to the SPL (albeit briefly) and even at about 8 years old you could see the difference in how he played compared to everybody else a mile off. His father had played in the old first division in the 60s so a lot of it probably isn't even about coaching as to who has the edge athletically and in finding basic ball skills easy. Think it's OK to let the majority have their fun as long as there are elite teams around to spot the kids like that who have potential and give them the extra training that focuses on development over winning youth tournaments.
Yep, very true.
At the same time I wish parents could take off the blinders a bit and think about why they brought their kids to organized sports. We can all recognize the difference between competition and recreation. But even at the non-competitive level certain things should be expected.
Guess what I'm trying to say is (and not trying to counter your point but rather add to it and express my own frustrations): To play any sport you need to spend some time developing basic skills (competitive or not). Some parents don't seem to recognize that having their kids run around in circles and ignore all instructions will not give them even the basic skills they need to play the game.
If that's all they want, well for starters the kids are not actually playing the sport and second the parents should probably consider some other form of activity or venue for their children to play (YMCA drop-in perhaps).
Ancaster is the larger of the two clubs and have paid staff (clerical and senior coaching). Furthermore, they've entered into an agreement with Redeemer College to build a large year-round indoor facility. Part of the fees is to cover the costs of this venture no doubt. Dundas has only one paid staff member - the registrar. Everyone else is a volunteer. Ancaster is close enough to Dundas that a player from one could register in the other (I coach in both as my son and daughter's games/practices were on the same night in the Dundas system - I moved the boy to Ancaster to solve this), but I don't think anyone's up in arms about it enough to look elsewhere.
Last winter I signed up my daughter for indoor in Burlington, and after paying a $25 'out-of-catchment' fee it was still significantly cheaper than what was being offered at SoccerWorld Hamilton.
Thanks for that. And kudos for coaching! Good Luck!
FORMER FULL TIME KOOL-AID DRINKER
Kaz and Carts are spot on.
The biggest issue that hampers soccer in Canada is what Kaz says - soccer is seen as a game to play for fun during the summer while school is out. Like VPjr said yesterday in a guest blog, essentially a babysitting service for the summer months.
Until that attitude changes, it's going to be difficult.
But that attitude permeates through sport in Canada in general, with the exception of hockey. Being an athlete isn't something that is promoted or held in high esteem in Canada. Really only in hockey is there an attitude of "I want to be a professional hockey player" and/or "we are/want to be the best in the world."
A recent friendly between my son's club against the Power Soccer Academy, who do not play competitive games at the U10 level, reinforced Carts' points above.
The skill levels of the teams were very similar, but the Academy kids didn't seem to really care that they were getting whipped. A few nice passes here and there seemed to satisfy them, and there wasn't any real desire to compete.
I don't think the focus should be on the scoreboard but at U10 I think it's acceptable to teach them that winning is preferred, and it sure as hell beats losing. Either way they are gonna need to learn that, whether its soccer or school, work, etc....
I think a lot of that depends on the kids themselves though. My son plays U7 at NT soccer and although they don't officially keep score, every single kids on the field knew the score.
But I tell you something - what de Vos says in the article is right - the more successful teams were dumping and chasing.
I'm sorry Chevy, I usually agree with you but as a former Rep Coach, Club Board Director and now a parent of a kid in a Private Academy, I have to call this view out.
Not knowing the specifics of the Club team, I can say the Power kids' are most likely not coached to play a system but rather to allow creativity into their games. Does the coach of the club rep team have players playing different positions every game? How about every half? Do some kids sit on the bench when the result is in question?
At the end of the day, the Power Kids are getting extremely well qualified coaching that will remain consistent through their development, likely 3 training sessions per week from January through November, an emphasis on nutrition and training, and their progress is measured based on individual skill development vs a trophy.
You also don't know how many true U10s were playing up with the U11 team and unavailable for the game you played. Further, how many kids, boys and girls, were actually U9's getting an opportunity to play with a different team based on progress. It happens all the time in an Academy.
Developing a "winning system" is what coaches in the Club system tend to do because that is the only measure.
Don't kid yourself either, the kids know the score and they know if they won or lost. The difference is that the parents don't see the standings (and they are kept), aren't exposed to "Cup competitions" and therefore the amount of sideline "coaching" for the kids and ref abuse is minimal to non-existent. Standings in Euro-leagues for kids aren't often published until after U16.
Having been in both and deeply committed as a volunteer to the Club system, I can say with 100% certainty that having seen the difference, I would never go back to that environment.
As an aside, my U10 son is training this week under the direction of the Head Coach of Penn State. When that is over, he goes back to training under the direction of UEFA licensed coaches. They don't play a game for 3 weeks and over those 3 weeks he will have had 11 training sessions, "homework" and expectations to work on his fitness.
Obviously, good players can develop in a club system but tell me, which route offers the best chance to maximize the player's individual potential?
A trophy at U9-U10 is not a predictor to where a child will be at 16 or 17.
Coaching that focuses on competitiveness over technique will never compete with five-year-old street urchins who grow up with a football glued to their toes 18 hours per day. That's why focussed programs like the one you're outlining can work -- they take kids away from a uniform cookie-cutter approach.
The fundamental move away from competition at the grassroots organizational level isn't based the assumption that structure is bad; it's based on the assumption that technique is thefirst aspect kids require to be successful.
People forget that, past about the age of eight, many of the kids who are successful in Brazil and Argentina are in very regimented programs as well. It's the formative years before that, when kids here are being poorly directed by local enthusiasts, that is the problem.
It's the same for bball for ghetto kids in the U.S. That passion is evident from the earliest age precisely because it ISN'T structured, because it's something they can just pick up with their friends in the neighbourhood, instead of having parents and usually ill-trained well-wishers breathing down their neck. That's why they learn to love doing it for hours and hours, and fall into Gladwell's Outliers category of performance: they love what they do because they own the decision, entirely.
It's just human nature.
Meanwhile, structured pre-teen programs seem more inclined to teach team uniformity, and the concept that embarrassing one of your friends by schooling him on the dribble is some kind of social sin, instead of a learning experience.
If you want to do your pre-teens a favour, give them a soccer ball, a pump for when it goes flat, and leave them to do their thing. Keep them the hell away from club teams until they're about 15, and instead give them lots of exposure to creative soccer heroes and foreign games.
This is exactly the concept that stayed with me as we made the decision to move away from the Club environment.
The Academy had the philosophy that under 16, we'll teach them the technical skills they need to be able to play the game. After 16, we'll teach them how to win.
If you listen to the words of any scout, they will highlight again and again that technical skill is one of the key things they look for.
Removing the score board will do nothing. It just means the kids keep score themselves. Ive already witnessed this first-hand at programs my nephew is involved in.
However, moving the focus from the final result to skills development is something soccer, or more importantly, the people who are dedicating their career to the game do need. If coaches only advance on a win/loss record then professional coaches will focus on winning to advance their career. These coaches need to know they have the support of their clubs and various associations that they will not be measured solely on their record. They need to know they will measured on how well they are teaching the skills of the game and how well their players are developing.
There are many point in Jason's article I agree with - focus on skill development, clubs hire qualified coaches or invest in people willing to give their time to coach (easier said than done), support players & coaches based on their development and not only the win/loss record, etc.
But all that can be done with the scoreboard on.
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