Hi, I'm from a small town called Floresville in Texas. I'm the director of a soccer club. The past few years we've charged one-time $40 fee. We are similar to Argentina, as we practice on really poor fields. However, we go to San Antonio and beat bigger clubs and one of our teams has one two tournaments, going undefeated under the current coach. Real San Antonio and Round Rock tournaments. We don't make money, so really everything we do is for soccer and for the kids. I worked very hard to recruit kids randomly who showed any potential in the beginning, and we are just now starting to get players coming to us. Our focus is development. I love your perspective and it rings true. I grew up playing American football, but fell in love with soccer in my 30s and I'm a soccer advocate like you. I'm trying to export this model of cheaper soccer and I love the idea of learning and making American soccer better. My personal goal is to make soccer incredible in Floresville, because if we can achieve what we want for the USA at a micro scale, then we can replicate and achieve it at a macro level. I'm inspired by the soccer culture talk you gave on Argentina, and I'm going to add a new layer to our club, Flo Town Kicks, by aiming not only to get the best players in town, but to get the whole town playing! I'll let you know how it goes
The micro building into macro success is only possible in a system that rewards success, which the US system does not. Good for you in your efforts, but the structure of USSF means there will never be a good soccer ecosystem.
@@Barracuda501 yes and no. they are in same youth ecosystem. They also had a 40 year head start with title 9. And it wasn’t until recently that other countries put any resources into the women’s game.
Yes! Our players often succeed overseas not in spite of their athleticism, but because of it! We don’t have an athlete problem, we have a ball mastery/creativity problem.
So Lucho Acosta is getting his citizenship and will likely be on the USMNT radar. He is the ball mastery guy. You teach the kids to control the ball like that and we are a real global force.
Over here in Europe the club is paying travelling costs. And others. The only thing the parents have to buy are football boots and shinpads (and gloves, if your kid is a goalie). I don´t know any club in central Europe where the annual fee per Junior player is more than 150 Euros.
@@chrismellow3947 Bottom line is, we have a long-standing system of making sports available to non-rich kids: School sports teams. Unfortunately, a lot of schools historically have used soccer (or volleyball) as a way to equalize (for Title IX purposes) their sports offerings for girls, to "balance out" the American football team. I think this has given those sports a reputation for being "girls' sports" in the US, similar to the way rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming are viewed as feminine sports in the rest of the world.
IMO the argument about players like Patrick Mahomes not playing soccer holds water here: Game-reading skills (including in a fluid, rapidly-changing environment) are really important for a quarterback, and IMO one's potential as a game-reading quarterback is likely correlated to some extent with his potential as a soccer player, particularly in a midfield or CAM-type role.
Pedri would cut it in US elite football. Iniesta would have never been supported in the US. We fundamentally don’t understand the sport. The USSF board being the best example.
I think it would really help to see futsal sized play areas in similar frequency to basketball courts. That would allow kids to play in neighborhoods without large green areas. Even permanent nets (with metal nets or solid back/sides) at schools would be perfect. You always see basketball hoops but never soccer nets.
Even when you see the nets they are normally chained together when not in use or you have to pay to use them unlike basketball hoops or some baseball diamonds
The English coaches (21 years old) are telling me that in Manchester, the Premier league clubs regularly scout the primary/elementary school leagues. I can count the number of teams scouting my AYSO EXTRA team on no fingers.
I'm commenting from a Canadian point of view. I truly believe the "Culture Excuse "and the "Other Sports Excuse", that you brought up have a much higher relevance than you suggested. I've played soccer for over 25 years (and I am now coaching U12 Rep girls), and I've had no interest in Baseball, Basketball, Hockey or American Football at any point of my life, as my parents are from Europe. I think this upbringing or "culture" has a big impact on how someone is raised and brought up, and which sport they may want to participate in. If you were to ask 10 random boys in Canada or the US (let's say 13 years old), what sport they would want to go outside any play "this afternoon" with their friends... I'll guarantee you that maybe 2 or 3 max, will say soccer. The rest will say ( ---- insert N. American sport here). BTW Rory, long time watcher, first time poster on your channel. Keep up the great work!
I think kids on devices and the culture of "going outside" not being as much of a thing these days will be problematic down the line, but the current US players didn't have those dynamics, did they?
Hi coach. Little background on myself and then my two cents. Military brat with a USAF father and an English mother. While growing up we moved quite regularly. At least every other year with a few variations in time amounts. Never more than 4 years in one place. Every other move was back to England then back to the US. Fantastic childhood. I LOVE football/soccer. What I see in the US game is a total lack of understanding the game. I was immerged in the game as a child. Played it every day while living in England, (yes, I played all sports and was a very fine baseball player), and never while living in the US. The PE departments in the US never had a soccer ball in its school ball arsenal, never. It's a crime. As you know there is a lot more to the game than just running around kicking the ball down field. Football was almost never on the TV during the time I was growing up in the US. It was always on the TV while growing up overseas. I learned the flow of the game and learned to anticipate the game while on defense and then offence. Anticipation skills is not a part of American soccer and does not happen in the US game. I have been watching my grandson now learning to play football and I am appalled at the amount of time that is used for skills training and almost no time for learning how the game is played. Almost no scrimmage time and zero time for rules and positioning. Most of that kind of football knowledge is attempted during the little scrimmage time they have and during real game play. After practice and after games he never watches it on TV, (almost never on), and he never talks about it unless it's brought up by me. Yes, he does love to play it. I'd love to help but at my age that can never happen. HA!
Soccer culture matters. In all top 20 national teams in the world, apart from the US, soccer professionals can achieve rock star status, which is an incredible motivator for budding youth players. Developing creativity and flair takes an enormous amount of individual time on the ball. It can’t be developed in group training, like in a camp. Flair players can create something out of nothing. The USMNT has Sergiño Dest and perhaps Giovanni Reyna. That’s it. We’re not on par with, say Colombia, because we lack depth in creativity. So culture matters.
Our problem is pay-to-play combined with our lack of culture. Go to Brazil or Spain or Argentina or England and check out the parks and beaches and even streets on weekends and evenings. Guaranteed you will see kids kicking the ball around for fun. There is no substitution for this kind of petry dish where kids feel free and empowered to be creative and take risks. It also gives them so many touches outside of those boring/structured practices that are the mainstay of American kids and their soccer experience and also grows their passion for the game. But even when a child does find a way to get in these non-practice touches, many times they still slip through the cracks because their parents can't afford the $$$ to get them onto a good enough team to get discovered. Until we fix those two factors, the USA will struggle to produce world class players.
I realized real quick when my kids reached age to try out for travel clubs (NJ) that these clubs are looking to collect money. I realized there is no "bar." if you have $1500-2000+, then your kids can play travel. I consider my daughter (11 now) borderline for what i would consider a skilled player that could play travel. Most of the teams she tried out for over the years seem to want to make a team out of any kid that shows up to try outs. It sucks when they want you to pay a ton of money to effectively have your kid be on a rec team in some cases.
Other excuses (of which I think is fair) are you see plenty of tennis courts and basketball courts open to the masses but you don't really find soccer goals to the same extent available for people to just shoot at or play pick up in their local neighborhoods. Also youth sports in general in the US is basically for profit so instead of it being ways to find good yoing talent it is who can afford to pay for their kids to be skilled enough to have opportunites that poorer kids can't have.
I think most youth sports in the US is either for-profit or interscholastic. If you want to grow the youth game (particularly among kids who aren't upper or upper-middle income), you can either try to effect a sea change in that overarching status quo that applies to all sports...or you can support increased access to interscholastic soccer.
We don’t have a lot of parents who can teach kids the basics of soccer. When compared to other sports, there are many more volunteer coaches that can do a good job because of experience with the sport(football, baseball, basketball). I’ve seen too many volunteer soccer coaches who are the coach because nobody else wanted to do it. This will change over time, however.
I'd say its not just a basics thing, though that is a factor. Too many of these U8/U10 coaches focus too much on winning. I get that no one wants to let those parents down but too often these coaches take shortcuts. Throwing your whole team in the box and counterattacking with your best player is not developing good players but it might get you a top 3 finish. The goal should be engaged, fun practices that involve a lot of ball time and creativity but that's not what I see for the most part.
Good call. It's part of the culture argument. Volunteer coaches for traditional American sports really know their stuff. They can develop players. Every random dad can teach his kids technique. But US soccer coaches at youth level rarely know much about technique.
If the mls clubs made enough money to pay for their own youth teams we could improve. I coached in a club that charged minimal 1500$ a season. No culture or real fan base here . New York city would need to have 6 or 8 top teams in the mls for example. How many top two teams does London have. Relegated and promoted teams moving up or down. That will never work in the u.s. Sponsorship dollars for clubs would need to take care of the huge financial problem.
I live in Hampton VA. My neighborhood is full of kids who will come outside to play soccer with my kids but not a one of them plays it in a league...because even the doldrums cost 130 plus a season for a practice and a game a week of your lucky. It's absurd. It's also extremely hard to break the bad habits that some of these kids bring from other sports (particularly american football) and there parents lack of knowledge of the game is also a barrier for coaches to overcome. When I coached I very quickly became a babysitter and not a coach...
"We coaches have an obligation to people who love football, which is not just to win, but to have a 'form' that gets them passionate," he said. "We must create a spectacle and to do that we need courage, for those we work with to have courage and experience football with joy. "I think it's fundamental we create a strong sense of identity within the team, which allows us to have quality in our play and ambition to win every game," he added. Who is he? New AC Milan coach Paulo Fonseca. Not Greg Berhalter, obviously.
Re: culture. I live in CA. Yes a lot of people like soccer here. Yet, a lot also like baseball/basketball/football/boxing/you name it. This is the big difference between USA and [most of the rest of the world] My son's mom grew up in CA but she knows nothing about soccer. She likes baseball and football. She is a headwind in my son's soccer development because she does not support him. This is the reality of America. He's a great soccer player. But will he fulfill his potential if the mom is steering him in other directions because she doesn't value soccer? Most Americans, even the soccer fans, just don't understand what it takes to develop to the fullest in soccer. Our kids are not just competing against kids in other neighborhoods... they are in essence competing against kids in Brazil and France, etc... and now tell me... how much soccer are those kids playing?? What you talk about culture this is what I think about.
8:34 great comments about coaching development. As a U10 coach myself, I only found two total courses being taught for 7v7 for the entire year in the state of Illinois if you met the various requirements. Availability of courses is also a concern along with cost. We want to develop ourselves but lack formal training opportunities to do so. The result is every coach doing what "they" think is best to develop teams and kids. I'm sure it's different in big cities but small town USA is left on their own to navigate this industry.
I think the biggest problem is that from 2002-2014 Soccer had a chance to be culturally relevant but wasted it. It has the perception of being something like golf. It’s seen as a rich boy’s sport but without the prestige of it being an affluent sport. Also, our technique is bad. The players have the talent but the execution is putrid.
@@CoachRorySoccer US Soccer just doesn’t know what it wants to be and that’s the problem. It’s stuck between a hobby and semi-serious sport because even for “rich people” sport, Golf, tennis, and swimming has lower barrier of entry and their are multitude of leagues for basketball, baseball, and football. Besides immigrants, most families don’t play soccer. And if your family is not extremely poor, you’d have some knowledge of playing other sports with your friends.
As a German I always wonder why the US cannot field a solid team. There are currently 30+ players under contract in European clubs. I always come to the same conclusion: Berhalter...
The problem is much deeper. Which is proven by the fact that GGG got hired twice and did terrible twice and then stayed in the job for more than 3 minutes. The legal structure of USSF puts MLS owners in control and none of them give a hoot about the success of national teams or the American footy ecosystem.
America routinely demonstrates that it has the best athletes in the world. They're there, hidden away in your ghettoes, locked into isolated commercial North American sports. All you need do is offer your 5 year-olds a choice of ball. International Football teams require a squad of athletes. If you field 11 players having more stamina, speed and agility, you're likely to win games. Lionel Messi is not the be all or end all of footballers. Mimicry of his side-footing style dulls what should be an aggressive and spectacular sport. America's pride and expectations for male oriented hand driven national pass-times simply gets in the way. Exceptionalism has its downsides. That you fill a void with middle class children of either stripe, weakens you. To become football champions you must learn to utilize your whole body, including your feet, which is something to teach boys from childhood. You need cultural conditioning, meaningful intra-school, intra-region, intra-state competition. Your "jocks" should use only their feet or their heads, and should derive from the best sporting stock regardless of status. When this happens the USMNT will lift the FIFA World Cup trophy every four years.
You can field all the players you want who have the stamina and speed and you will lose to a team of technically brilliant players. The issue with US sport is that 1) town soccer coaches are volunteers. You are at the mercy of the parent coach and it depends on if they put in the time to learn the game too ( in some cases they have zero soccer knowledge). 2) No club can create the top technical players without supplemental training at home. That requires parents be involved. As a coach, I have sent RUclips drills to parents that require a 4ft x 4ft space to practice (so lacking a yard is not an excuse) but I guarantee that 95% of the parents don't share the vids- much less have their kids train regularly outside the 3 hours they train with a club. Until these things change and the culture changes alongside with the money making as the priority, the USA will not win a world cup or Copa America.
@@kennym3159 All footballers are athletes. One who is faster, stronger, and has more endurance--with skills learned from childhood--will outplay someone with less prowess, regardless of tactics. Having a longer gait and more mass, in his prime, he'll negate and out-run any conventional defender, especially if controlling a ball is second nature, and that's the key. Instead of training imposing individuals to throw balls through hoops, to catch balls and run with them, teach them how to trap, dribble, and juggle balls with their feet. Teach them to play pool as toddlers and how to transfer that knowledge to chip, bend, toe-punt, side foot, and strike, accurately, instinctively, knowing to lean over a strike to keep the ball down. Strikes on goal will be from greater distances and with more velocity. Football isn't limited to tactics when you have more speed, control and natural ability than your opponents.
@@kennym3159 Let me put it another way. Dull and boring games result when two "technically brilliant" teams face each other. In these cases a "break" or transition attack often settles the issue. This is why superior prowess and endurance is important. Split seconds decide matches.
Great stuff - I would say that coaching training is a problem and it cuts two ways. Ideally even rec coaches would be required to have some training and they should be motivated to learn more. One thing with a league I was involved with back in Raleigh is to require all Select coaches to get their C license in two years. The league paid for the course as long as you pass. Since moving to Tennessee I see coaching courses being offered and occasionally someone in our area will sign up but not enough- and often coaches have to pay for their own training. And it is much worse at middle school level where there are very few coaches who have had any formal training. So my recommendations would be: 1. Leagues- even at the recreational level need to require coaching training 2. Leagues need to pay for that training 3. Select coaches need to be working towards a C license- 4. Coaching courses need to be very available- there should be a “we will come to your league” attitude- make it easy
To be a professional in the NFL or NBA, you must be a physical freak. Footballers either weigh 300 pounds or have Olympic-class speed. Michael Jordan was 6'6" and Lebron James is 6'9". They are too tall to play soccer and would not have the coordination. Soccer players tend to be average size. They have to be able to run 8 miles in a match and have an 11-second speed for 100 metres. The average NBA player runs 2.5 miles in a game.
The U.S. Soccer Federation should be trying to find out how does a 16 year old start for Spain in the Euro's Semi-Final and scores a goal. The U.S. soccer suck starts at the top.
The soccer participation graph/downtrend really surprised me. That tells a big part of the story. I think it parallels the lack of success on a national level. The USMNT has repeatedly failed with occasional blips upward. That pretty much saps enthusiasm. The USWNT has had huge success (until last WWC) and is possibly propping up participation. MLS is very popular but if you look at the club by club composition you see an enormous number - a majority in many cases - of foreign players. That might inspire some of the markets you mentioned but not a national surge in interest. The fact is that kids in Europe, UK, South and Central America play street soccer from the time they're little the same way we play touch football or "stick ball". They develop a feel for the game that leads to game intelligence that far fewer American kids develop. Still ... we have a large enough population to develop a pool of quality players - if the skills training and mental training is there and it just isn't.
I know that as a coach in small town Arkansas I’m on the most backwater end of US Soccer, so this comment might not be true, but it seems to me that the development model from tike to titan isn’t clearly laid out. In all of the sport we’re “good at” (I’m not sure we are, but certainly better) one thing you see is that everyone who plays has a pretty clear idea of what you do next in order to get to the top. And it’s usually not very onerous to do it. Take American football. If you’re a kid from delta Arkansas, you go from pee wee to Mr high. Jr high to high. If you stick out at high school there are about 300 D1/D2 schools who can pick you up. From those 300 players who continue to crush the competition are selected to the NFL. It really is that simple. Kids from places like Warren and Ashdown Arkansas can - and do - make the NFL. With soccer it’s harder. For all of our insignificance, we still have a regional league with 2400 kids in it between 5-17. But even if we had kids out of the bunch who are talented enough to try and go pro, I’m not sure there a system of identification to get them seen that doesn’t involve paying a coach in an area 2+ hours away thousands of dollars + travel. “Be a boss at your high school”, for a coach that’s paid by the school to win, is way different proposition than “quit your job, sell your house, move to Kansas City and pay thousands of dollars” for a CHANCE to be seen. And even then, we’re taking a coach or club’s word for it that they’re getting seen at the level we need. It’s not like they have a first team in the premiership to prove it. Outside of MLS academies, who decides? The pipeline is very opaque.
Excellent analysis! I have a son that has played soccer up till college. Throughout the years one would think that putting your child in a club paying high fees is the answer to making your child a great player, because after all you get what you pay for right? In my experience the exact opposite was true. My son got some of the best experiences with clubs like AYSO that make it very affordable to play and every child gets to play for at least a half. My child thrived under that! Contrasting that with more expensive clubs where it was very political and if you weren't on the first team, the coaches didn't really give a shit because your just a source of extra revenue for the club. Under these expensive clubs, we would constantly get our asses kicked by Hispanic teams that only paid a couple hundred bucks to play. Club soccer from my experience has been a huge con job with exceptions to a few. That is where a vast majority of the issues lies in my opinion.
There's no continuity of play for youth players in this country where they can progress from 8 or 9 year old all the way through college. It's also too expensive for many families to afford because it's become a money grab.
Buy the only “Latino” countries that are good at consistently producing world class players are Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Spain. Mexico and other Central American countries have never produced elite players
@nl5703 Lol... You sound ignorant. Hugo Sanchez, Andres Guardalo, Giovanni Dos Santos, Marquez, Carlos Vella, Cen Fuego's, Hugo Perez, Mago Gonzales, Carlos Ruiz, Garcia Aspe, Guillermo Ochoa, Luis Hernandez,Cauahtemo Blanco,That is just a few names the list goes on and on....lol if you knew anything about the game you would never say such a ignorant thing....lol look them up some are ranked in the top hundred players of all time by FIFA.
@@christianromero9596 only 3 of those played for Champions League clubs and only 2 were world class players. 100 years of Mexican soccer history and you produce 2 world class players? Argentina produced several every year
@nl5703 By the way, Spain is not a Latin country it's a European one, just because they speak Spanish dose, not make them Latin. Just like people from England would not be considered American just because they speak English.
Just stop ...your killing me You mean to tell me the only way you consider a good player is if they win champions league?...lol Pele never won a Champion League, Zlatan, Carlos Valderam, London Donavan never won a Champion League...by your measurement these players aren't considered good players?
#1: I was guilty of saying that yesterday. The thing is that I want to get players who are extremely strong athletically and technically speaking. (3/5) #2: I think this is a valid excuse with the fact that they then mention pay to play and offball training. (3/5) #3: This one is bs. The country is growing and the sport is growing. It’s the federations job to cultivate it and accelerate it. They don’t. So it becomes our job. (2/5) 4. I’m not even saying anything about this one. (1/5) 5. 100% we do. We need to increase our ability to develop coaches and like players have them challenge their tactics amongst the world’s best. (4/5)
Great take, love these videos. Almost identical problem in Australia, I could list dozens of examples in parallel with these which kill the growth of soccer in our country. Despite it being the MOST popular participation sport in the nation. The whole; culture, not enough people play, don't have good coaches, don't have the athletes arguments are complete myths. The problem is the systematic administration of the sport, its leagues, and the national program. All of those things hurt soccer's growth and development in both Australia and the USA. Another great example is Croatia, country of 3-4 million people, world cup finalist in 2018. Why? Because they administer the sport, and facilitate the national program correctly. They remove the roadblocks. Also, another fun fact about Croatia football, one of their most successful academies has 1 turf pitch and 1 grass pitch for the first team only. Most of the squads from U8 - U19 all practice mostly on a half pitch. They also don't have enough classrooms for the kids to do school work so they split the school into am and pm, while one group is in school the other trains. And they produce dozens of pro players and national team players. Western nations have no excuse.
it's all a 1 on the meter - the excuses outline the issue that as Americans, no matter the pockets of soccer culture, it's nothing like it is most of the rest of the world. Kids don't have the distraction of other sports - there daily competition are there friends and classmates playing soccer. Darwin Nunez didn't wake up a child thinking about his fast ball, or a jump shot. They probably see a soccer ball before there mom's face the day they're born. Its ingrained in to daily life with the society that surrounds them and not just for those that can afford to play
Great video as usual Coach! Keep it up please 😊 I reckon the main issue is Soccer just isn’t as popular in the US as everywhere else which I would categorize as “cultural” using your definition. Myself, my kids and a few of their friends and parents from our youth team love it but we’re outliers. You’ll get robust, informed, nuanced, insightful discussions with friends, family, co-workers, Uber drivers, the random dude in the grocery store line etc… about Basketball, Football, Baseball and maybe even Hockey but none of them will have any idea what makes Toni Kroos brilliant. Unfortunately its just not a thing here in the US and this lack of generalized knowledge and appreciation of Soccer across the population reverberates through the all the other aspects you and others have mentioned in the comments: lack of publicly accessible fields, poor grassroots coaching, kids not playing soccer “for fun” outside an organized team like the do for say Basketball, etc… For example, there is a decent sized Brazilian community where I live in San Diego. When you go to the beach you’ll see 20somethings, kids, older folks kicking the ball around, juggling back and forth in a group or maybe even playing a small game. The Americans are just as active but they’re throwing a football or baseball around. All that said I totally agree with your statements about pay to play, misaligned incentives and promotion/relegation. Its scandalous how expensive the “elite” club teams in my area are. Unfortunately given the relative lack of popularity in the US, I just don’t see this changing in any realistic way.
Got a 16-0 record for U5/U6 over two seasons, means nothing. I would do better than Greg. I wouldn't hold back on these young adult athletes and wouldn't be doing around the back basketball bs on the sideline. If they are being a pussycat they are going to know it. I wouldn't get Bobby Knight on them physically because I'm not like that and they would probably kick my ass. Hire me, this is my resume.
Think about American sports. Football, basketball, hockey, baseball-even golf. They all center around hand-eye coordination. If a kid wants to play multiple sports, she would choose to play ones whose skills translate. Soccer is an outlier, because it’s such a different skill than any other sport. Our brains are evolved to use our hands, so becoming world class at NOT using your hands takes unique focus. Very few kids in America grow up with that kind of singular focus.
6:53 That might be something to explore....I've recently watched videos by some basketball youtubers who are starting to get worried that youth development in US basketball is heading in the wrong direction and tha the recent influx of high end European talent into the NBA is a telltale sign. They specifically pointed to the differences in the way youth players are developed in the US vs. European countries with relatively strong basketball culture and organization. Might be an interesting case study that takes a broader scope into 'youth sports' as opposed to just 'youth soccer'
Hello Coach Rory, As always, your content is very relevant: 1) coaching; As I had mentioned in the previous video, I think that "anyone can be a coach" in the USA is not an exception but rather the unfortunate rule. Furthermore, those who work in soccer in the USA simply DO NOT CREATE CONCEPTS and models, they COPY them in an excessively decontextualized manner. The fundamentals are not adjusted to the nature and ability of the children. 2) culture; The fundamentals are not adjusted to the nature and ability of the children. There is simply no context that links the North American sports culture and that of soccer and what it should be in this country according to the social inclusion of the population. As Bielsa said, soccer seems like an exclusive and luxury activity in recent times and it is obvious that in the USA it has become that, a space to seek profits versus the foolish waste of its advantages in the long term. 3) sports model; With all due respect, it seems more like a mafia where people who know how to make money focus on maintaining small monopolies, zero competitiveness and ignorance, wasting the time of families, children and ultimately it is even reflected in the quality of the game and the fans.
Poor countries produce hungry soccer players with the mindset to learn how to fight for the next meal, literally food in the belly! In our lovely 🇺🇲 we assumed that our kids and teens could make the transformation of hard training, diets, private academies, & cryotherapy etc.. Idk if these are excuses to me it looks and sounds like these kids are already Professionally Winning at home and social media. 🤑⚽👏🏽
Agree with your assessment, but I think the Culture portion could be expanded onto other areas; there is a culture and passion for the sport from the "people" stand point, but the capitalist system, which is the companies culture, we have in USA focus mostly about how to make profits and this drives the poor league system which is more about making money and create a spectacle than making it competitive. The pay-to-play system for the youth: soccer should be the cheapest of all sport to play. And in our culture includes this American pride of wanting to do things our own way instead of "copy paste and then improve" system; meaning let's copy the best soccer systems and then improve from there by making American. From this perspective, I'd say Culture should be rant higher. - It's not the coaches, it's not the players and is our system.
Other countries' systems are even more capitalist than ours. They have big clubs that buy and sell players. US sports have all these very non-capitalist trade barriers, which kills the incentives to develop players.
@@StephenDay-t6x Great point, and I agree. I wasn't criticizing the capitalist mindset, but how we develop our youth talent. At the end of the day what we want is a system that creates a competitive National Team that keeps up with the best of the world.
I think "it's the culture" is the best "excuse" (answer). Because culture is what brings money into the system. In the rest of the world, it comes from rabid soccer fans who pay to watch, and then big investors. It's easy to say "get rid of pay to play," but the money has to come from somewhere. Foreign clubs don't develop players out of the kindness of their hearts. Someone tell me why I'm wrong!
Is good that the us is good at other sports, football is the biggest sport around the world i think its the most important sport for the us to be good at.
1. Infrastructure is poor. I live in Los Angeles and the kids don’t have their own fields. Everything is shared with other sports 2. No clear path from youth soccer to professional soccer. Franchises that only have 1 team that play in MLS or the other less competitive leagues don’t give the feeling to youngsters of how they are going to be picked up by any team, especially when the teams spend their money on bringing good players from overseas 3. Youth soccer is expensive. 4. Professional players start with high (at least for international standards) salaries. Which kid is going to want to go to play in, for example Italy, if they make good money when they are in their early 20s, and seeing how in other sports in the US, moving overseas is not needed 5. There is no relegation in MLS. If you play poorly nothing happens. 6. Everywhere else in the world, this idea of soccer players going to college and interrupting their professional development is absurd. I don’t want the guys in my team to solve string theory, I want them to play soccer well.
I think here in the US, going to college is not seen as _interrupting_ professional development so much as _being_ professional development. After all, that's what it is in basketball and Am. football. It's just that those sports allow you to peak at an older age, so the ages of 18-22 (or 23 for red-shirts) really are you "spring chicken" years rather than the first half of your prime. Even more so in baseball where you can play in college for four years and _then_ still be developed at the minor-league level for a few years.
I agreed in mls you see the youth players struggle with techniques in how to defend and control the ball. we need to work on how to develop the player better.
I also think all coaches are too conservative. Always more defending than attacking. Never see basketball or hockey with more defending than attacking. It’s a beautiful game. I hope it gets better
1) Greatest athletes - only noobs support this take. 2) Not enough kids playing the game. In reality not enough FAMILIES play the game together. 3) Bad coaches are the reason why kids dont want to continue to play the game. They don't continue to make it fun, viewing things like table soccer as a distraction instead of another way to improve skills. Better soccer culture could improve that. 4) We should view pick-up soccer as the way to overcome the competition from other sports. USSF/MLS have killed the ability for ground-up development of the culture. USL is the most recent hope that dynamic can change. 5) Sorry, too many bad coaches, who can’t teach our kids anything. How many coaches teach the basics every week, even if just to review competency? Not enough.
1. I’m a noob. All I know is if soccer was culturally accepted in my neighborhood as a kid and we played. My athletic friends and I would have just dominated athletically. Bigger faster stronger is a thing. Ok the best players are small. So! The most important players today are big fast and in the box scoring off of headers in the box. And an aside. It to hard to get equal ability kids together to play and develop. Money time and lifestyle all get it the way.
1. So our best athletes play soccer… 2. No one gives a fuc$ about soccer in the US 3. Bad coaches are in every sport, maybe if they listened to coach RORY we would have a surplus of great coaches 4. Pick up soccer? Kind of like playing ball at Rucker…right. Oh but the athletic ability is a myth. 5. So it is the coaches…bad coaches like Greg Berhalter. So skippy who are the elite players in our player pool? Why have we NEVER DEVELOPED EVEN ONE WORLD CLASS PLAYER EVER!!! Even blind luck would make that happen. Hell Davies from Canada is a stud, will be the starting left back for Real Madrid. We have PULISIC. Who cant stay at stank Chelsea. McBride is our most successful player in Europe, and Donovan scored What 5 goals outside of MLS. Watch all the major leagues EPL, Bundesliga Serie A, La Liga, know the game and love the game…but coach and you also are full of shit if you actually believe we have great athletes in our USMT pool…
Coach, I really thought you would rank the coaching problem higher, after all that is why your channel is growing? Or at least that we don't have a good system to train grassroots coaches, with the main problem being that most "clubs" are all volunteer run and coaches are literally picked right before the start of the season, whether they have experience coaching or not.
For sure. The grassroots is an issue coaching wise. I was speaking at the higher levels. Been blessed to be around really high level coaches in US but I don’t think they get the opportunities
It's worth noting that we aren't all that great at developing basketball players either. Of the five best players in the world, probably four of them are not from the United States. This despite our player pool advantages being overwhelming. The best rookie in the NBA last year? Also not from the United States.
I think we are finding out in baseball and basketball that we were never all that great at player development. We simply cared about those sports when others didn’t. As even small part of the globe have become half as interested in developing those players as we are, the dominance diminishes quickly.
The rest of the world is coming for the NBA! hate that there's no defense anymore but love all the new players who can ball out from different countries! 🏀🇺🇲
@@albertorosas3694 I mean... the rest of the world is already in the NBA. That Australia team who gave the US Men a scare in the pre-Olympic friendly had NBA players. It's freaking Australia...
Thanks for another excellent video... I'm gonna use your athlete argument; LeBron James might make a good center back - USA could use a Virgil VanDyke, but of course any country does - but I do know he has a body type that could never be competitive in surfing or cycling ...
It's from the lack of talent plain and simple. The current US crop of players is simply not good enough. Kids do not grow up seeing soccer players on highlight reels. They see baseball, American football, and basketball players. This gets the attention of young athletic competitors, with the emphasis on competitors born with ice running through their veins. Clutch gamers. The glory is not in the American soccer scene my man. Competitive American athletes from the past learned the skills to succeed in baseball, basketball, American football. If soccer stole a decent chunk of attention from these other three, competitive youth athletes would learn the skills necessary to be a standout soccer player. The NBA has always had plenty physically gifted enough to be goalies. The NFL's running backs, wide receivers, full backs, and plethora of defensive safeties/secondaries could all have made great soccer players. Ditto for the MLB. The US woman's national team is similar in stature to the US men's team. Ergo they are all physically imposing, athletic enough, talented, and want to win at soccer more than any other sport. But, they don't have many other sports to play so soccer gets a top choice in their youth. The youth leagues to HS to university to pro level here in the US has worked for decades in the classic American sports. It can work for soccer as well, once the MLS becomes popular in the eyes of the American youth. Fix this, and all other points you made will fix themselves. But I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime. The big three American sports, including the NHL, are perfectly suited for American television stations that are all about product advertising so they can become wealthy. They will not push the MLS during primetime spots for it's less lucrative than the other three. 45 minutes with no commercials is like death to them. If they were less greedy though, they could really push the sport during prime time which would essentially force people to watch it.
Culture deserves a 5 rating. "Our system stunts the development of players" IS part of culture. Remembering my cultural anthropology course, culture is what is learned and shared throughout a population. Our soccer culture has not yet grown and matured adequately in terms of sophistication, quality, and refinement relative to soccer.
100% agree. The question then becomes "How do we change the culture?" My answer is make the top tier leagues more about winning (promotion/relegation). That will drive popularity and in a generation or two US soccer will look much different.
In opposition to this video, do you have suggestions on how to improve our soccer/fútbol culture here in America? I think bringing in players like Messi are helpful, but ultimately it doesn't fix anything. Thoughts?
Until the system changes to one of merit based incentives it won’t change. But the more people are taking about it the better. You won’t hear mainstream media pundits get into it.
@@CoachRorySoccer I think you touched on that a bit in this video. How do you mean Merit Based? What merits do Football/Baseball/Basketball players get? Fame and fortune? Or rewards like playing in the game, or being on the cover of the latest EA Sports game? How do we encourage our youth with these things? Thanks for the conversation. I appreciate people looking at this. I played soccer when I was younger and still enjoy watching the challenge of pushing the ball up and down the field. Up to the point that someone becomes a drama queen and takes a dive on the field. That crap makes me angry at the player AND the coach for letting the player do it. Which is why I tend to watch the Women's World Cup more than the Men's.
@@BenMorch I’m talking about merit for clubs. ProMotion relegation. Training compensation and solidarity payments. Our current system incentivizes tuition. More players = more money. There isn’t incentive to develop players.
@@CoachRorySoccer thanks for the clarification! That would be nice to have. I could see it as being a "home" of sorts for the players. To give a sense of belonging. And push the clubs to really improve their behavior and skills. This would in turn make more people Want to play for them. Thanks Coach! I am hitting that subscribe button now.
Our club typically has 5-8 levels of teams for any kid with ECNL being the highest. I don’t think most people really support more than the team their kid plays on, so you’re not really into the club. I wish we had a first team and a proper club culture. That seems to be the case across the country.
Come on coach, you're smart enough to dismiss #1 out of hand as a ridiculous apple and oranges comparison. Love to start an NFL or NBA team with these names? Good luck: Matthews, Finney, Di Stefano, Puskas, Maradona, Best, Cruyff, Garrincha, Messi, Beckenbauer, Charlton, Gerrard, Lampard, Platini, Baggio, Zidane, Baresi, Dennis Law, Keegan, Rossi, Laudrup, Dalglish, Iniesta, Del Piero, Pele (great athlete but was 5′ 8″, 154 lbs), Zico, Rivellino, David Silva, Giggs, Bergkamp, Rooney, Cantona, Scholes, Beckham, etc., etc. See what I mean by ridiculous? The list could go on and on, as could a list of today's top players. The reality is that too much height, weight or muscle is a hindrance to high-level soccer players. Speed is nice, but without skill and tactical awareness it's useless. Of all team sports, Soccer demands the greatest number and variety skills...not even close. That's just how the way it is. If you get really off on the NFL combine, you're probably not a soccer fan. Entirely different sports, body types, skill sets.
Its not a ridiculous comparison as all those players were great athletes (just not NFL or NBA material). The real question is if all those players grew up in America, would they become great soccer players?
@@CoachRorySoccer I’m that parent that is going to volunteer coach and I’ve just watched 10+ of your videos. I have a PE/Coaching background in other sports. It’s a group of kids ages 8-10… They are all driving minimum 15 minutes from different directions to play ball together and I want to make it worth their time. Do you suggest I try and have a merit based system within our team to encourage the athletes?
the immigrant community has always known this but go to the east coast where the majority are Caucasian and see how they react to this kind of info. they don't like it and don't respond well to this type of info.
@@CoachRorySoccer on the more optimistic side of things, I believe in my country and am hopeful. We can achieve anything we collective do, which to me looks like a drastic change in leadership. Maybe in a decade lol.
Great video and analysis as usual Coach, interesting that you didn't mention pay to play, where, in your opinion, does that fall in your ranking? IMHO it's a combination of several issues of which best athletes is one but not as much due to competition from other sports as our restrictive, confusing and duplicative pay to play maze. There's also significant inequity in the southeast in how soccer is supported and managed at the middle and high school levels, plus there's difficult, if any, general access to soccer facilities, e.g., in our area the Rec departments remove the goals during the offseason
Oh it’s huge. It’s a 5/5. I have a separate video on it. This video was to point out excuse people give when I try to say it’s the ecosystem. Like for example people will blame Gregg Berhalter (and he has some blame) but the issue isn’t confined to one coach or any other excuses put forth in this video it’s the system. And pay to olay is part of said system.
Great video! Thank you for sharing your insights. Do you think the women's national team will suffer the same fate as the men's since they have the same systemic problems at the youth level? Why do you think the women's side have had and still maintain such a high level of soccer (still top 5 in the world)? Is something different?
Unfortunately I do. The women however have now arguably the best coach in women’s football. So honestly anything is possible short term. Women had title 9 and the rest of the world not investing in women’s sport for 30 years. So a big head start.
I just watched your other video, and I have a few thoughts. Firstly, At the top level, I'm not convinced that the benefits of pro/rel would outweigh the instability or threat to (present or past) sustainability. Here are some differences between the USA and Europe that I think are relevant here: -The EFL Championship exists in a country where one (1) league has more viewers and TV airtime than they do. They effectively have first dibs on media coverage that is "left over" after the EPL has taken their cut, so to speak. They don't have to worry about IF their games will be publicized by some media outlet (other than a club newsletter) once the big TV channels and newspapers have finished covering the EPL and four other sports leagues. The TV and other coverage isn't so "used up" on first-tier leagues in soccer, rugby, cricket, and hockey that there's none left over for even the most popular second-tier league. -Even if the EFL Championship and other second-tier leagues _did_ have to contend with a complete lack of media coverage due to the aforementioned media saturation with top-tier leagues in various sports, fans are less dependent on TV to follow their clubs, because their clubs are so closely-spaced together that many fans can *regularly* attend their local club's games in person. Put differently, the "catchment area" from which each club draws fans is geographically smaller due to the clubs not being spaced out over hundreds of miles. Contrast this with the US: Here in southwestern Oregon, I know ardent Seattle Seahawks fans who _might_ travel once or twice per season (or less) to see their team play. It's a rare treat, since it's a 7-hour drive each way and it's just not practical to make that kind of trip every weekend. Outside of those rare trips, these fans are ardent but wholly TV-dependent. If it were possible for their team to get relegated to an un-televised league (see point #2--American media is so saturated by nearly a half-dozen first-tier leagues that there's just no airtime or newspaper space left over even for MiLB, let alone the USL), they would basically be forced to choose between switching their team allegiances--possibly to a hated regional rival of their original team--and giving up following the sport altogether. The US population density outside certain very specific parts of the country just won't support the same club density as Europe, especially since when it comes to local sports, there's long been a stronger and more passionate fan culture for interscholastic sports than club sports in the US. (More on this later.) -The guaranteed franchise contracts can be seen as an aftereffect of the path we had to take to get where we are. Now that soccer is a more stable professional sport in the US, it's easy to feel like we could've had pro/rel from the beginning, but there was a stage at which we needed more stability than that--where we couldn't afford to have so many teams going belly-up (and make no mistake: Most relegated MLS clubs in 1997 would've most definitely gone belly-up). Owners were already taking a _huge_ risk just by owning an MLS club WITHOUT the threat of relegation, as the fate of even the best NASL clubs shows. The threat of relegation layered on top of the threat of the league (i.e. the entire pyramid!) going defunct would've just been too much to attract sufficient numbers of owners back then. Those owners have already paid for guaranteed league membership via the franchise model, and it would probably be violation of their franchise agreements to institute pro/rel in MLS. Even if you think American soccer is ready for pro/rel, the fact remains that *MLS had to survive those lean years to get to where it is today.* These guaranteed-franchise contracts were likely the price of admission to even _have_ a league with enough willing owners to even exist at any point during the MLS 1.0 era. Secondly, the USA has a *LONG* and deeply-entrenched status quo of funding youth athlete development with tax money via the school-sports system rather than with private funds via team academies and league-subsidized lower-tier club leagues. This likely means that the most straightforward way to bolster youth development (and especially to bolster access for players whose parents can't afford pay-to-play) is to grow the game at the junior high and high school level. Particularly on the boys' side, as girls' soccer is already well-supported at a lot of high schools (and the success of the USWNT is arguably proof-of-concept that this strategy can work).
@@CoachRorySoccer One other thing: There's something that _can_ create accountability in a sports culture where people are used to parity and no relegation: Expectations. Think about how Manchester United's supporters have been calling for an ownership change even though Man U. hasn't remotely been relegation-threatened. Clearly, the threat of relegation is NOT the source of their discontent; they have expectations that are higher than just staying up. They want to WIN something. The US professional sports model (perhaps coupled with American culture as a whole) leads to a situation where fans of *EVERY SINGLE TEAM* are rooting for their team to win it all, and frequently call for the ouster of the team owner if they don't feel like he's making an honest effort to do so. Exhibit A is probably the LA Angels' owner Arte Moreno, but I've even seen some discontent from Seattle Mariners fans during their recent slump--even though they're still in the playoff picture!
@@CoachRorySoccer I live in Coos County, Oregon. My closest MLS club is the Portland Timbers, and their territory is essentially the entire state of Oregon. I'm sure there are closer USL teams, but people around here who want a more local team than Portland (or Seattle for the NFL and MLB) follow college sports. I don't know how the Oregon Ducks baseball team's local Eugene-area attendance compares with the Eugene Emeralds, but out here people care about the Ducks (all teams, though of course Am. football and basketball are the biggest) but most probably have no idea that the Emeralds even exist. This is the opposite of European or Latin America soccer culture, where club is way bigger than school.
Here are some factors: 1) many coaches dont believe in teaching much technique in practice. So who gets good? Familes that can pay for private lessons that teach technique, or camps, etc. Also, tournaments, travel, etc. really add up in price. It becomes competitive parenting not soccer. 2) you mentioned Messi's size. I had a friend that was 5 ft 6 in and the boys coach at his college wouldnt even invite him to tryout because of his height. He volunteered to help out and eventually they realized he was amazing and became their star player. We focus too much on athleticism. At the u8-u11 age, i see lots of coaches with a high preference for athleticism over technique. Fast and aggressive kids win games at the young ages and those basketball players moonlighting as soccer players get preference to be developed. 3) also, the idea of kids just playing soccer together unorganized is way more foreign to Americans than south American countries where its normal in my experience. We only play when we pay.
I think the size of the country and how spread out it is hurts obviously. I am going to throw an entirely different take here. All US sports are suffering. AU basketball pulls away kids from school leagues. The percent of European NBA players seems like its growing. The US just lost an american football tournament (youth) to Japan the other week. The best baseball player is the world is Asian, the fastest growing demographic in baseball is hispanic. Hockey only has american teams, but most of those players are foriegn. Yet USA womens teams are winning everything. The USA leads the world in pushing competitive womens sports. At the same time the US has uniquely criticized what it means to be a man. Words like toxic masculinity have made their way into our common vocab. Im not saying its the cause but i would bet yourh sports participation is down as a whole. And pay to play in all sports....but why are US women dominant?
Great points. Women dominated in a time when the rest of the world didn’t care about women’s soccer and title 9 gave them a 40 year head start. You can see that now changing.
I believe this is just a bunch of malarkey. Brazil is 300,000 miles bigger than the continental US and they have 5 stars on their shirt. In addition, and for decades, Brazilians had a high desire to play the game. Their recent generations suffer due to a shift from playing outside to playing games on their phones. Lack of organization at the National level is what is making soccer irrelevant in US, to watch, to give inspiration to the youth and to have true desire to play. Why US women are dominant in soccer? In most contries, women do not like soccer. They don't want to play, watch or attend games because soccer is considered as a men's game.
@@wysiwyg2489 Brazil is bigger yes, but all of its population is basically along the coast. The US having two coastal regions plus pockets of dense population in the middle and south make it much bigger when you look at where people are. The playing on your phone is exactly what I'm talking about. Parents complain about screen time but the truth is their boys are quiet and not rambunctious so they are okay with it.
So if its not our player pool, coach pool, culture, or pipeline then what is it? I'm not really disagreeing, but I'm curious what we should be pointing to, then. Seems like the "pay to play" issue is just identifying a reason that all of those things are not good enough. My only disagreement is with the "best athletes" point. I agree that raw, measurable athleticism like speed and vertical jump, etc. are a bit overrated for soccer so its not as if Lebron James would be the great striker ever if only he grew up playing soccer, but I do think the general point that our best athletes (or best sport player, most coordinated people, etc. if you 'athlete' is a loaded term) don't play soccer and that is a serious difference between soccer and the other sports in which the US is successful. The same line of thinking could be said with coaches - our best strategic sports mind and best team motivators are dedicated to other sports and always have been. Its not saying the coaches and players are bad, but its tough to argue that they are our best in a hypothetical world where everyone starts from scratch.
@@CoachRorySoccer that makes sense. Why do you think this isn’t as problematic on the women’s side? Not trying to being combative just newer to all this
If you don't understand why the USWNT is as successful as it is, and why this doesn't map onto the mens team, you are underinformed to the point of idiocy.
...But just because a country produces good female soccer players, volleyball players, rhythmic gymnasts, or synchronized swimmers doesn't mean it is going to produce good male athletes in those kinds of sports. (And yes, soccer and volleyball have historically been viewed as women's sports in the US _almost_ to the same extent that rhythmic gymnastics and synchro swimming are viewed that way internationally. Not saying I agree, or else I wouldn't be here.)
@chrismellow3947 Yes, please help me with my idiocy. Seems to me the same system that produces a mediocre mens team also produces the best womens team in the World. Is soccer a rich girls sport? @philipmcniel4908 is on to it "soccer and volleyball have historically been viewed as women's sports in the US". Culture is the reason for all these issues and the answer is the one point @CoachRorySoccer doesnt mention, Promotion and Relegation. Make US soccer more about winning and the 2nd and 3rd order effects will resolve the rest.
You’re missing the point of the first objection. Athleticism translates. NBA players are mostly too tall and have feet too big to become great at controlling the ball and kicking with precision, but in the main, you can’t look at adult athletes and say, if only that guy chose soccer. You have to say, if only that 5’11” defensive back had instead grown up with a soccer ball at his feet dreaming of being the next Messi. His ability to run isn’t all that makes him good at football; he’s also very coordinated, but he developed his coordination in the football context-that is, focusing on his hands and using them in a particular way. If he had focused on his feet instead, he would probably have good-to-excellent soccer skill.
Hi, I'm from a small town called Floresville in Texas. I'm the director of a soccer club. The past few years we've charged one-time $40 fee. We are similar to Argentina, as we practice on really poor fields. However, we go to San Antonio and beat bigger clubs and one of our teams has one two tournaments, going undefeated under the current coach. Real San Antonio and Round Rock tournaments. We don't make money, so really everything we do is for soccer and for the kids. I worked very hard to recruit kids randomly who showed any potential in the beginning, and we are just now starting to get players coming to us. Our focus is development. I love your perspective and it rings true. I grew up playing American football, but fell in love with soccer in my 30s and I'm a soccer advocate like you. I'm trying to export this model of cheaper soccer and I love the idea of learning and making American soccer better. My personal goal is to make soccer incredible in Floresville, because if we can achieve what we want for the USA at a micro scale, then we can replicate and achieve it at a macro level. I'm inspired by the soccer culture talk you gave on Argentina, and I'm going to add a new layer to our club, Flo Town Kicks, by aiming not only to get the best players in town, but to get the whole town playing! I'll let you know how it goes
Love it!
The micro building into macro success is only possible in a system that rewards success, which the US system does not. Good for you in your efforts, but the structure of USSF means there will never be a good soccer ecosystem.
Isn’t the women’s team in the same ecosystem?
@@Barracuda501 yes and no. they are in same youth ecosystem. They also had a 40 year head start with title 9. And it wasn’t until recently that other countries put any resources into the women’s game.
Yes! Our players often succeed overseas not in spite of their athleticism, but because of it! We don’t have an athlete problem, we have a ball mastery/creativity problem.
So Lucho Acosta is getting his citizenship and will likely be on the USMNT radar. He is the ball mastery guy. You teach the kids to control the ball like that and we are a real global force.
Well, we had our manager playing our most creative player on the defense side of the midfield.
Only kids with wealthy parents can afford it. As the kid get into his teen years, it cost a lot of money to have him on a traveling team
Over here in Europe the club is paying travelling costs. And others. The only thing the parents have to buy are football boots and shinpads (and gloves, if your kid is a goalie). I don´t know any club in central Europe where the annual fee per Junior player is more than 150 Euros.
@bladablitz UK as well. It genuinely blows my mind how Americans have managed to turn the ultimate poor kids sport into one for the rich only.
@@chrismellow3947 Without wanting to get political - apparently that's how things work (or don't work) in the US.
@@chrismellow3947 Bottom line is, we have a long-standing system of making sports available to non-rich kids: School sports teams. Unfortunately, a lot of schools historically have used soccer (or volleyball) as a way to equalize (for Title IX purposes) their sports offerings for girls, to "balance out" the American football team. I think this has given those sports a reputation for being "girls' sports" in the US, similar to the way rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming are viewed as feminine sports in the rest of the world.
@@bladablitzIs it because the youth clubs are often funded or subsidized by professional clubs?
What makes a great soccer player is technique but more importantly what’s between the ears. To read the game, to play in a system and be disciplined.
IMO the argument about players like Patrick Mahomes not playing soccer holds water here: Game-reading skills (including in a fluid, rapidly-changing environment) are really important for a quarterback, and IMO one's potential as a game-reading quarterback is likely correlated to some extent with his potential as a soccer player, particularly in a midfield or CAM-type role.
Pedri would cut it in US elite football. Iniesta would have never been supported in the US. We fundamentally don’t understand the sport. The USSF board being the best example.
I think it would really help to see futsal sized play areas in similar frequency to basketball courts. That would allow kids to play in neighborhoods without large green areas. Even permanent nets (with metal nets or solid back/sides) at schools would be perfect. You always see basketball hoops but never soccer nets.
Totally agree.
That would also fall under culture.
And It would help kids learn how to play in a small space and master ball control
Plus give players the chance to play freestyle and grow an organic love of the game without outside pressure to win from parents and coaches.
Even when you see the nets they are normally chained together when not in use or you have to pay to use them unlike basketball hoops or some baseball diamonds
The English coaches (21 years old) are telling me that in Manchester, the Premier league clubs regularly scout the primary/elementary school leagues.
I can count the number of teams scouting my AYSO EXTRA team on no fingers.
😂
Awesome video Coach. We need more people like you having these conversations. Keep up the good work and don't let the troll get to you!
Thanks!
I'm commenting from a Canadian point of view.
I truly believe the "Culture Excuse "and the "Other Sports Excuse", that you brought up have a much higher relevance than you suggested. I've played soccer for over 25 years (and I am now coaching U12 Rep girls), and I've had no interest in Baseball, Basketball, Hockey or American Football at any point of my life, as my parents are from Europe. I think this upbringing or "culture" has a big impact on how someone is raised and brought up, and which sport they may want to participate in. If you were to ask 10 random boys in Canada or the US (let's say 13 years old), what sport they would want to go outside any play "this afternoon" with their friends... I'll guarantee you that maybe 2 or 3 max, will say soccer. The rest will say ( ---- insert N. American sport here).
BTW Rory, long time watcher, first time poster on your channel. Keep up the great work!
Thanks!
I think kids on devices and the culture of "going outside" not being as much of a thing these days will be problematic down the line, but the current US players didn't have those dynamics, did they?
Scary to think about. But you may be onto something
Hi coach. Little background on myself and then my two cents. Military brat with a USAF father and an English mother. While growing up we moved quite regularly. At least every other year with a few variations in time amounts. Never more than 4 years in one place. Every other move was back to England then back to the US. Fantastic childhood. I LOVE football/soccer. What I see in the US game is a total lack of understanding the game. I was immerged in the game as a child. Played it every day while living in England, (yes, I played all sports and was a very fine baseball player), and never while living in the US. The PE departments in the US never had a soccer ball in its school ball arsenal, never. It's a crime. As you know there is a lot more to the game than just running around kicking the ball down field. Football was almost never on the TV during the time I was growing up in the US. It was always on the TV while growing up overseas. I learned the flow of the game and learned to anticipate the game while on defense and then offence. Anticipation skills is not a part of American soccer and does not happen in the US game. I have been watching my grandson now learning to play football and I am appalled at the amount of time that is used for skills training and almost no time for learning how the game is played. Almost no scrimmage time and zero time for rules and positioning. Most of that kind of football knowledge is attempted during the little scrimmage time they have and during real game play. After practice and after games he never watches it on TV, (almost never on), and he never talks about it unless it's brought up by me. Yes, he does love to play it. I'd love to help but at my age that can never happen. HA!
Great insights thank you!
Soccer culture matters. In all top 20 national teams in the world, apart from the US, soccer professionals can achieve rock star status, which is an incredible motivator for budding youth players. Developing creativity and flair takes an enormous amount of individual time on the ball. It can’t be developed in group training, like in a camp. Flair players can create something out of nothing. The USMNT has Sergiño Dest and perhaps Giovanni Reyna. That’s it. We’re not on par with, say Colombia, because we lack depth in creativity. So culture matters.
Our problem is pay-to-play combined with our lack of culture. Go to Brazil or Spain or Argentina or England and check out the parks and beaches and even streets on weekends and evenings. Guaranteed you will see kids kicking the ball around for fun. There is no substitution for this kind of petry dish where kids feel free and empowered to be creative and take risks. It also gives them so many touches outside of those boring/structured practices that are the mainstay of American kids and their soccer experience and also grows their passion for the game. But even when a child does find a way to get in these non-practice touches, many times they still slip through the cracks because their parents can't afford the $$$ to get them onto a good enough team to get discovered. Until we fix those two factors, the USA will struggle to produce world class players.
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But then the question is how to do encourage a pick-up soccer culture in the U.S.?
@@nl5703 have to fundamentally change the way we approach U5-U10. My next video.
I realized real quick when my kids reached age to try out for travel clubs (NJ) that these clubs are looking to collect money. I realized there is no "bar." if you have $1500-2000+, then your kids can play travel. I consider my daughter (11 now) borderline for what i would consider a skilled player that could play travel.
Most of the teams she tried out for over the years seem to want to make a team out of any kid that shows up to try outs. It sucks when they want you to pay a ton of money to effectively have your kid be on a rec team in some cases.
I enjoy your videos. Glad you have started the conversation on "How do we improve?" Keep posing and thanks for all you do.
Thanks!
@@CoachRorySoccer Jurgen Klopp is available. Next US men’s soccer coach!!!???!!!🤔😁
Other excuses (of which I think is fair) are you see plenty of tennis courts and basketball courts open to the masses but you don't really find soccer goals to the same extent available for people to just shoot at or play pick up in their local neighborhoods. Also youth sports in general in the US is basically for profit so instead of it being ways to find good yoing talent it is who can afford to pay for their kids to be skilled enough to have opportunites that poorer kids can't have.
Good point.
I think most youth sports in the US is either for-profit or interscholastic. If you want to grow the youth game (particularly among kids who aren't upper or upper-middle income), you can either try to effect a sea change in that overarching status quo that applies to all sports...or you can support increased access to interscholastic soccer.
We don’t have a lot of parents who can teach kids the basics of soccer. When compared to other sports, there are many more volunteer coaches that can do a good job because of experience with the sport(football, baseball, basketball). I’ve seen too many volunteer soccer coaches who are the coach because nobody else wanted to do it. This will change over time, however.
I'd say its not just a basics thing, though that is a factor. Too many of these U8/U10 coaches focus too much on winning. I get that no one wants to let those parents down but too often these coaches take shortcuts. Throwing your whole team in the box and counterattacking with your best player is not developing good players but it might get you a top 3 finish. The goal should be engaged, fun practices that involve a lot of ball time and creativity but that's not what I see for the most part.
Good call. It's part of the culture argument. Volunteer coaches for traditional American sports really know their stuff. They can develop players. Every random dad can teach his kids technique. But US soccer coaches at youth level rarely know much about technique.
Soccer participation declining from 2010. That absolutely shocks me. So basically USSF can’t do anything right
Pretty much.
If the mls clubs made enough money to pay for their own youth teams we could improve.
I coached in a club that charged minimal 1500$ a season.
No culture or real fan base here . New York city would need to have 6 or 8 top teams in the mls for example. How many top two teams does London have. Relegated and promoted teams moving up or down. That will never work in the u.s.
Sponsorship dollars for clubs would need to take care of the huge financial problem.
I live in Hampton VA. My neighborhood is full of kids who will come outside to play soccer with my kids but not a one of them plays it in a league...because even the doldrums cost 130 plus a season for a practice and a game a week of your lucky. It's absurd. It's also extremely hard to break the bad habits that some of these kids bring from other sports (particularly american football) and there parents lack of knowledge of the game is also a barrier for coaches to overcome. When I coached I very quickly became a babysitter and not a coach...
"We coaches have an obligation to people who love football, which is not just to win, but to have a 'form' that gets them passionate," he said.
"We must create a spectacle and to do that we need courage, for those we work with to have courage and experience football with joy.
"I think it's fundamental we create a strong sense of identity within the team, which allows us to have quality in our play and ambition to win every game," he added.
Who is he? New AC Milan coach Paulo Fonseca. Not Greg Berhalter, obviously.
Fantastic
Re: culture.
I live in CA. Yes a lot of people like soccer here. Yet, a lot also like baseball/basketball/football/boxing/you name it.
This is the big difference between USA and [most of the rest of the world]
My son's mom grew up in CA but she knows nothing about soccer. She likes baseball and football. She is a headwind in my son's soccer development because she does not support him. This is the reality of America. He's a great soccer player. But will he fulfill his potential if the mom is steering him in other directions because she doesn't value soccer?
Most Americans, even the soccer fans, just don't understand what it takes to develop to the fullest in soccer.
Our kids are not just competing against kids in other neighborhoods... they are in essence competing against kids in Brazil and France, etc... and now tell me... how much soccer are those kids playing??
What you talk about culture this is what I think about.
totally agree
8:34 great comments about coaching development. As a U10 coach myself, I only found two total courses being taught for 7v7 for the entire year in the state of Illinois if you met the various requirements. Availability of courses is also a concern along with cost. We want to develop ourselves but lack formal training opportunities to do so. The result is every coach doing what "they" think is best to develop teams and kids. I'm sure it's different in big cities but small town USA is left on their own to navigate this industry.
I think the biggest problem is that from 2002-2014 Soccer had a chance to be culturally relevant but wasted it. It has the perception of being something like golf. It’s seen as a rich boy’s sport but without the prestige of it being an affluent sport. Also, our technique is bad. The players have the talent but the execution is putrid.
This is true.
@@CoachRorySoccer US Soccer just doesn’t know what it wants to be and that’s the problem. It’s stuck between a hobby and semi-serious sport because even for “rich people” sport, Golf, tennis, and swimming has lower barrier of entry and their are multitude of leagues for basketball, baseball, and football.
Besides immigrants, most families don’t play soccer. And if your family is not extremely poor, you’d have some knowledge of playing other sports with your friends.
As a German I always wonder why the US cannot field a solid team. There are currently 30+ players under contract in European clubs. I always come to the same conclusion: Berhalter...
Lol and four hours after my comment, he gets fired.
The problem is much deeper. Which is proven by the fact that GGG got hired twice and did terrible twice and then stayed in the job for more than 3 minutes. The legal structure of USSF puts MLS owners in control and none of them give a hoot about the success of national teams or the American footy ecosystem.
America routinely demonstrates that it has the best athletes in the world. They're there, hidden away in your ghettoes, locked into isolated commercial North American sports. All you need do is offer your 5 year-olds a choice of ball. International Football teams require a squad of athletes. If you field 11 players having more stamina, speed and agility, you're likely to win games. Lionel Messi is not the be all or end all of footballers. Mimicry of his side-footing style dulls what should be an aggressive and spectacular sport. America's pride and expectations for male oriented hand driven national pass-times simply gets in the way. Exceptionalism has its downsides. That you fill a void with middle class children of either stripe, weakens you. To become football champions you must learn to utilize your whole body, including your feet, which is something to teach boys from childhood. You need cultural conditioning, meaningful intra-school, intra-region, intra-state competition. Your "jocks" should use only their feet or their heads, and should derive from the best sporting stock regardless of status. When this happens the USMNT will lift the FIFA World Cup trophy every four years.
You can field all the players you want who have the stamina and speed and you will lose to a team of technically brilliant players.
The issue with US sport is that 1) town soccer coaches are volunteers. You are at the mercy of the parent coach and it depends on if they put in the time to learn the game too ( in some cases they have zero soccer knowledge).
2) No club can create the top technical players without supplemental training at home. That requires parents be involved. As a coach, I have sent RUclips drills to parents that require a 4ft x 4ft space to practice (so lacking a yard is not an excuse) but I guarantee that 95% of the parents don't share the vids- much less have their kids train regularly outside the 3 hours they train with a club.
Until these things change and the culture changes alongside with the money making as the priority, the USA will not win a world cup or Copa America.
@@kennym3159 All footballers are athletes. One who is faster, stronger, and has more endurance--with skills learned from childhood--will outplay someone with less prowess, regardless of tactics. Having a longer gait and more mass, in his prime, he'll negate and out-run any conventional defender, especially if controlling a ball is second nature, and that's the key. Instead of training imposing individuals to throw balls through hoops, to catch balls and run with them, teach them how to trap, dribble, and juggle balls with their feet. Teach them to play pool as toddlers and how to transfer that knowledge to chip, bend, toe-punt, side foot, and strike, accurately, instinctively, knowing to lean over a strike to keep the ball down. Strikes on goal will be from greater distances and with more velocity. Football isn't limited to tactics when you have more speed, control and natural ability than your opponents.
@@kennym3159 Let me put it another way. Dull and boring games result when two "technically brilliant" teams face each other. In these cases a "break" or transition attack often settles the issue. This is why superior prowess and endurance is important. Split seconds decide matches.
Great stuff - I would say that coaching training is a problem and it cuts two ways. Ideally even rec coaches would be required to have some training and they should be motivated to learn more. One thing with a league I was involved with back in Raleigh is to require all Select coaches to get their C license in two years. The league paid for the course as long as you pass. Since moving to Tennessee I see coaching courses being offered and occasionally someone in our area will sign up but not enough- and often coaches have to pay for their own training. And it is much worse at middle school level where there are very few coaches who have had any formal training.
So my recommendations would be:
1. Leagues- even at the recreational level need to require coaching training
2. Leagues need to pay for that training
3. Select coaches need to be working towards a C license-
4. Coaching courses need to be very available- there should be a “we will come to your league” attitude- make it easy
Absolutely
To be a professional in the NFL or NBA, you must be a physical freak. Footballers either weigh 300 pounds or have Olympic-class speed. Michael Jordan was 6'6" and Lebron James is 6'9". They are too tall to play soccer and would not have the coordination. Soccer players tend to be average size. They have to be able to run 8 miles in a match and have an 11-second speed for 100 metres. The average NBA player runs 2.5 miles in a game.
The U.S. Soccer Federation should be trying to find out how does a 16 year old start for Spain in the Euro's Semi-Final and scores a goal.
The U.S. soccer suck starts at the top.
Yep.
Cavan Sullivan will be 16 in 2 years. LOL
@@nerychristiantrue. What major tournament do you see him being in the starting 11? ⚽👊🏽
Awesome picture of the great Barry Sanders!
Thanks. He’s the best.
The soccer participation graph/downtrend really surprised me. That tells a big part of the story. I think it parallels the lack of success on a national level. The USMNT has repeatedly failed with occasional blips upward. That pretty much saps enthusiasm. The USWNT has had huge success (until last WWC) and is possibly propping up participation. MLS is very popular but if you look at the club by club composition you see an enormous number - a majority in many cases - of foreign players. That might inspire some of the markets you mentioned but not a national surge in interest. The fact is that kids in Europe, UK, South and Central America play street soccer from the time they're little the same way we play touch football or "stick ball". They develop a feel for the game that leads to game intelligence that far fewer American kids develop. Still ... we have a large enough population to develop a pool of quality players - if the skills training and mental training is there and it just isn't.
I know that as a coach in small town Arkansas I’m on the most backwater end of US Soccer, so this comment might not be true, but it seems to me that the development model from tike to titan isn’t clearly laid out.
In all of the sport we’re “good at” (I’m not sure we are, but certainly better) one thing you see is that everyone who plays has a pretty clear idea of what you do next in order to get to the top. And it’s usually not very onerous to do it.
Take American football. If you’re a kid from delta Arkansas, you go from pee wee to Mr high. Jr high to high. If you stick out at high school there are about 300 D1/D2 schools who can pick you up. From those 300 players who continue to crush the competition are selected to the NFL. It really is that simple. Kids from places like Warren and Ashdown Arkansas can - and do - make the NFL.
With soccer it’s harder. For all of our insignificance, we still have a regional league with 2400 kids in it between 5-17. But even if we had kids out of the bunch who are talented enough to try and go pro, I’m not sure there a system of identification to get them seen that doesn’t involve paying a coach in an area 2+ hours away thousands of dollars + travel. “Be a boss at your high school”, for a coach that’s paid by the school to win, is way different proposition than “quit your job, sell your house, move to Kansas City and pay thousands of dollars” for a CHANCE to be seen. And even then, we’re taking a coach or club’s word for it that they’re getting seen at the level we need. It’s not like they have a first team in the premiership to prove it. Outside of MLS academies, who decides?
The pipeline is very opaque.
Agreed.
Excellent analysis! I have a son that has played soccer up till college. Throughout the years one would think that putting your child in a club paying high fees is the answer to making your child a great player, because after all you get what you pay for right? In my experience the exact opposite was true. My son got some of the best experiences with clubs like AYSO that make it very affordable to play and every child gets to play for at least a half. My child thrived under that! Contrasting that with more expensive clubs where it was very political and if you weren't on the first team, the coaches didn't really give a shit because your just a source of extra revenue for the club. Under these expensive clubs, we would constantly get our asses kicked by Hispanic teams that only paid a couple hundred bucks to play. Club soccer from my experience has been a huge con job with exceptions to a few. That is where a vast majority of the issues lies in my opinion.
Thanks!
There's no continuity of play for youth players in this country where they can progress from 8 or 9 year old all the way through college. It's also too expensive for many families to afford because it's become a money grab.
Yes, this video is well done. These are junk excuses. I would like to see you do a video on Cohesion from Gainline Analytics
I’ll check that out. Not sure what that is.
It's an upper middle class game. How many Latinos are in the national team? One why they are priced out "pay to play".
Buy the only “Latino” countries that are good at consistently producing world class players are Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Spain. Mexico and other Central American countries have never produced elite players
@nl5703 Lol... You sound ignorant. Hugo Sanchez, Andres Guardalo, Giovanni Dos Santos, Marquez, Carlos Vella, Cen Fuego's, Hugo Perez, Mago Gonzales, Carlos Ruiz, Garcia Aspe, Guillermo Ochoa, Luis Hernandez,Cauahtemo Blanco,That is just a few names the list goes on and on....lol if you knew anything about the game you would never say such a ignorant thing....lol look them up some are ranked in the top hundred players of all time by FIFA.
@@christianromero9596 only 3 of those played for Champions League clubs and only 2 were world class players. 100 years of Mexican soccer history and you produce 2 world class players? Argentina produced several every year
@nl5703 By the way, Spain is not a Latin country it's a European one, just because they speak Spanish dose, not make them Latin. Just like people from England would not be considered American just because they speak English.
Just stop ...your killing me You mean to tell me the only way you consider a good player is if they win champions league?...lol Pele never won a Champion League, Zlatan, Carlos Valderam, London Donavan never won a Champion League...by your measurement these players aren't considered good players?
#1: I was guilty of saying that yesterday. The thing is that I want to get players who are extremely strong athletically and technically speaking. (3/5)
#2: I think this is a valid excuse with the fact that they then mention pay to play and offball training. (3/5)
#3: This one is bs. The country is growing and the sport is growing. It’s the federations job to cultivate it and accelerate it. They don’t. So it becomes our job. (2/5)
4. I’m not even saying anything about this one. (1/5)
5. 100% we do. We need to increase our ability to develop coaches and like players have them challenge their tactics amongst the world’s best. (4/5)
A lot of good youth players can't afford Pay to Play soccer in the US.
Sad but true.
Great take, love these videos. Almost identical problem in Australia, I could list dozens of examples in parallel with these which kill the growth of soccer in our country. Despite it being the MOST popular participation sport in the nation. The whole; culture, not enough people play, don't have good coaches, don't have the athletes arguments are complete myths. The problem is the systematic administration of the sport, its leagues, and the national program. All of those things hurt soccer's growth and development in both Australia and the USA.
Another great example is Croatia, country of 3-4 million people, world cup finalist in 2018. Why? Because they administer the sport, and facilitate the national program correctly. They remove the roadblocks.
Also, another fun fact about Croatia football, one of their most successful academies has 1 turf pitch and 1 grass pitch for the first team only. Most of the squads from U8 - U19 all practice mostly on a half pitch. They also don't have enough classrooms for the kids to do school work so they split the school into am and pm, while one group is in school the other trains. And they produce dozens of pro players and national team players. Western nations have no excuse.
Croatia absolutely. Great points.
it's all a 1 on the meter - the excuses outline the issue that as Americans, no matter the pockets of soccer culture, it's nothing like it is most of the rest of the world. Kids don't have the distraction of other sports - there daily competition are there friends and classmates playing soccer. Darwin Nunez didn't wake up a child thinking about his fast ball, or a jump shot. They probably see a soccer ball before there mom's face the day they're born. Its ingrained in to daily life with the society that surrounds them and not just for those that can afford to play
Great video as usual Coach! Keep it up please 😊
I reckon the main issue is Soccer just isn’t as popular in the US as everywhere else which I would categorize as “cultural” using your definition. Myself, my kids and a few of their friends and parents from our youth team love it but we’re outliers. You’ll get robust, informed, nuanced, insightful discussions with friends, family, co-workers, Uber drivers, the random dude in the grocery store line etc… about Basketball, Football, Baseball and maybe even Hockey but none of them will have any idea what makes Toni Kroos brilliant. Unfortunately its just not a thing here in the US and this lack of generalized knowledge and appreciation of Soccer across the population reverberates through the all the other aspects you and others have mentioned in the comments: lack of publicly accessible fields, poor grassroots coaching, kids not playing soccer “for fun” outside an organized team like the do for say Basketball, etc…
For example, there is a decent sized Brazilian community where I live in San Diego. When you go to the beach you’ll see 20somethings, kids, older folks kicking the ball around, juggling back and forth in a group or maybe even playing a small game. The Americans are just as active but they’re throwing a football or baseball around.
All that said I totally agree with your statements about pay to play, misaligned incentives and promotion/relegation. Its scandalous how expensive the “elite” club teams in my area are.
Unfortunately given the relative lack of popularity in the US, I just don’t see this changing in any realistic way.
Agreed. I don’t see much changing either.
Very unlikely. But we can dream.
Great food for thought, pretty similar to South Africa
Got a 16-0 record for U5/U6 over two seasons, means nothing. I would do better than Greg. I wouldn't hold back on these young adult athletes and wouldn't be doing around the back basketball bs on the sideline. If they are being a pussycat they are going to know it. I wouldn't get Bobby Knight on them physically because I'm not like that and they would probably kick my ass. Hire me, this is my resume.
Think about American sports. Football, basketball, hockey, baseball-even golf. They all center around hand-eye coordination. If a kid wants to play multiple sports, she would choose to play ones whose skills translate. Soccer is an outlier, because it’s such a different skill than any other sport. Our brains are evolved to use our hands, so becoming world class at NOT using your hands takes unique focus. Very few kids in America grow up with that kind of singular focus.
6:53 That might be something to explore....I've recently watched videos by some basketball youtubers who are starting to get worried that youth development in US basketball is heading in the wrong direction and tha the recent influx of high end European talent into the NBA is a telltale sign. They specifically pointed to the differences in the way youth players are developed in the US vs. European countries with relatively strong basketball culture and organization.
Might be an interesting case study that takes a broader scope into 'youth sports' as opposed to just 'youth soccer'
For sure.
Hello Coach Rory,
As always, your content is very relevant:
1) coaching; As I had mentioned in the previous video, I think that "anyone can be a coach" in the USA is not an exception but rather the unfortunate rule. Furthermore, those who work in soccer in the USA simply DO NOT CREATE CONCEPTS and models, they COPY them in an excessively decontextualized manner. The fundamentals are not adjusted to the nature and ability of the children.
2) culture; The fundamentals are not adjusted to the nature and ability of the children. There is simply no context that links the North American sports culture and that of soccer and what it should be in this country according to the social inclusion of the population. As Bielsa said, soccer seems like an exclusive and luxury activity in recent times and it is obvious that in the USA it has become that, a space to seek profits versus the foolish waste of its advantages in the long term.
3) sports model; With all due respect, it seems more like a mafia where people who know how to make money focus on maintaining small monopolies, zero competitiveness and ignorance, wasting the time of families, children and ultimately it is even reflected in the quality of the game and the fans.
Great points! Very insightful.
Poor countries produce hungry soccer players with the mindset to learn how to fight for the next meal, literally food in the belly!
In our lovely 🇺🇲 we assumed that our kids and teens could make the transformation of hard training, diets, private academies, & cryotherapy etc..
Idk if these are excuses to me it looks and sounds like these kids are already Professionally Winning at home and social media. 🤑⚽👏🏽
Very true.
Agree with your assessment, but I think the Culture portion could be expanded onto other areas; there is a culture and passion for the sport from the "people" stand point, but the capitalist system, which is the companies culture, we have in USA focus mostly about how to make profits and this drives the poor league system which is more about making money and create a spectacle than making it competitive. The pay-to-play system for the youth: soccer should be the cheapest of all sport to play. And in our culture includes this American pride of wanting to do things our own way instead of "copy paste and then improve" system; meaning let's copy the best soccer systems and then improve from there by making American. From this perspective, I'd say Culture should be rant higher. - It's not the coaches, it's not the players and is our system.
Other countries' systems are even more capitalist than ours. They have big clubs that buy and sell players. US sports have all these very non-capitalist trade barriers, which kills the incentives to develop players.
@@StephenDay-t6x Great point, and I agree. I wasn't criticizing the capitalist mindset, but how we develop our youth talent. At the end of the day what we want is a system that creates a competitive National Team that keeps up with the best of the world.
I take exception with the comments made in your very first point. Any illusion that soccer players are not fantastic or elite athletes is a mistake.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I think "it's the culture" is the best "excuse" (answer). Because culture is what brings money into the system. In the rest of the world, it comes from rabid soccer fans who pay to watch, and then big investors. It's easy to say "get rid of pay to play," but the money has to come from somewhere. Foreign clubs don't develop players out of the kindness of their hearts.
Someone tell me why I'm wrong!
Is good that the us is good at other sports, football is the biggest sport around the world i think its the most important sport for the us to be good at.
The major problem is Pay to Play.
1. Infrastructure is poor. I live in Los Angeles and the kids don’t have their own fields. Everything is shared with other sports
2. No clear path from youth soccer to professional soccer. Franchises that only have 1 team that play in MLS or the other less competitive leagues don’t give the feeling to youngsters of how they are going to be picked up by any team, especially when the teams spend their money on bringing good players from overseas
3. Youth soccer is expensive.
4. Professional players start with high (at least for international standards) salaries. Which kid is going to want to go to play in, for example Italy, if they make good money when they are in their early 20s, and seeing how in other sports in the US, moving overseas is not needed
5. There is no relegation in MLS. If you play poorly nothing happens.
6. Everywhere else in the world, this idea of soccer players going to college and interrupting their professional development is absurd. I don’t want the guys in my team to solve string theory, I want them to play soccer well.
Really good stuff here.
I think here in the US, going to college is not seen as _interrupting_ professional development so much as _being_ professional development. After all, that's what it is in basketball and Am. football. It's just that those sports allow you to peak at an older age, so the ages of 18-22 (or 23 for red-shirts) really are you "spring chicken" years rather than the first half of your prime. Even more so in baseball where you can play in college for four years and _then_ still be developed at the minor-league level for a few years.
So then kids can learn to play on these surfaces. Play small goal. We played on the street growing up.
I agreed in mls you see the youth players struggle with techniques in how to defend and control the ball. we need to work on how to develop the player better.
I also think all coaches are too conservative. Always more defending than attacking. Never see basketball or hockey with more defending than attacking. It’s a beautiful game. I hope it gets better
Agreed.
1) Greatest athletes - only noobs support this take.
2) Not enough kids playing the game. In reality not enough FAMILIES play the game together.
3) Bad coaches are the reason why kids dont want to continue to play the game. They don't continue to make it fun, viewing things like table soccer as a distraction instead of another way to improve skills. Better soccer culture could improve that.
4) We should view pick-up soccer as the way to overcome the competition from other sports. USSF/MLS have killed the ability for ground-up development of the culture. USL is the most recent hope that dynamic can change.
5) Sorry, too many bad coaches, who can’t teach our kids anything. How many coaches teach the basics every week, even if just to review competency? Not enough.
What's the guesstimate of qualified VS unqualified coaches in the US
1. I’m a noob. All I know is if soccer was culturally accepted in my neighborhood as a kid and we played. My athletic friends and I would have just dominated athletically. Bigger faster stronger is a thing. Ok the best players are small. So! The most important players today are big fast and in the box scoring off of headers in the box. And an aside. It to hard to get equal ability kids together to play and develop. Money time and lifestyle all get it the way.
They mean well but there is ZERO oversight and zero FIRING of coaches!
1. So our best athletes play soccer…
2. No one gives a fuc$ about soccer in the US
3. Bad coaches are in every sport, maybe if they listened to coach RORY we would have a surplus of great coaches
4. Pick up soccer? Kind of like playing ball at Rucker…right. Oh but the athletic ability is a myth.
5. So it is the coaches…bad coaches like Greg Berhalter.
So skippy who are the elite players in our player pool? Why have we NEVER DEVELOPED EVEN ONE WORLD CLASS PLAYER EVER!!! Even blind luck would make that happen.
Hell Davies from Canada is a stud, will be the starting left back for Real Madrid. We have PULISIC. Who cant stay at stank Chelsea. McBride is our most successful player in Europe, and Donovan scored What 5 goals outside of MLS.
Watch all the major leagues EPL, Bundesliga Serie A, La Liga, know the game and love the game…but coach and you also are full of shit if you actually believe we have great athletes in our USMT pool…
@gerrih3483 85% unqualified, regardless of licensure. Maybe 90%. When was the last time you saw a female youth player properly trap a ball?
Coach, I really thought you would rank the coaching problem higher, after all that is why your channel is growing? Or at least that we don't have a good system to train grassroots coaches, with the main problem being that most "clubs" are all volunteer run and coaches are literally picked right before the start of the season, whether they have experience coaching or not.
For sure. The grassroots is an issue coaching wise. I was speaking at the higher levels. Been blessed to be around really high level coaches in US but I don’t think they get the opportunities
It's worth noting that we aren't all that great at developing basketball players either. Of the five best players in the world, probably four of them are not from the United States. This despite our player pool advantages being overwhelming. The best rookie in the NBA last year? Also not from the United States.
I think we are finding out in baseball and basketball that we were never all that great at player development. We simply cared about those sports when others didn’t. As even small part of the globe have become half as interested in developing those players as we are, the dominance diminishes quickly.
The rest of the world is coming for the NBA! hate that there's no defense anymore but love all the new players who can ball out from different countries! 🏀🇺🇲
@@albertorosas3694 I mean... the rest of the world is already in the NBA. That Australia team who gave the US Men a scare in the pre-Olympic friendly had NBA players. It's freaking Australia...
Thanks for another excellent video... I'm gonna use your athlete argument; LeBron James might make a good center back - USA could use a Virgil VanDyke, but of course any country does - but I do know he has a body type that could never be competitive in surfing or cycling ...
It's from the lack of talent plain and simple. The current US crop of players is simply not good enough. Kids do not grow up seeing soccer players on highlight reels. They see baseball, American football, and basketball players. This gets the attention of young athletic competitors, with the emphasis on competitors born with ice running through their veins. Clutch gamers. The glory is not in the American soccer scene my man. Competitive American athletes from the past learned the skills to succeed in baseball, basketball, American football. If soccer stole a decent chunk of attention from these other three, competitive youth athletes would learn the skills necessary to be a standout soccer player. The NBA has always had plenty physically gifted enough to be goalies. The NFL's running backs, wide receivers, full backs, and plethora of defensive safeties/secondaries could all have made great soccer players. Ditto for the MLB. The US woman's national team is similar in stature to the US men's team. Ergo they are all physically imposing, athletic enough, talented, and want to win at soccer more than any other sport. But, they don't have many other sports to play so soccer gets a top choice in their youth. The youth leagues to HS to university to pro level here in the US has worked for decades in the classic American sports. It can work for soccer as well, once the MLS becomes popular in the eyes of the American youth. Fix this, and all other points you made will fix themselves. But I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime. The big three American sports, including the NHL, are perfectly suited for American television stations that are all about product advertising so they can become wealthy. They will not push the MLS during primetime spots for it's less lucrative than the other three. 45 minutes with no commercials is like death to them. If they were less greedy though, they could really push the sport during prime time which would essentially force people to watch it.
Lot of truth there.
Culture deserves a 5 rating. "Our system stunts the development of players" IS part of culture. Remembering my cultural anthropology course, culture is what is learned and shared throughout a population. Our soccer culture has not yet grown and matured adequately in terms of sophistication, quality, and refinement relative to soccer.
Understood. And kind of agree. I think we could be better if the system was set up for success regardless of the culture.
100% agree. The question then becomes "How do we change the culture?" My answer is make the top tier leagues more about winning (promotion/relegation). That will drive popularity and in a generation or two US soccer will look much different.
What is your 5 what do you think is the main issue ?
It’s the system. Our soccer ecosystem doesn’t work. US Soccer doesn’t want our country to be a merit based soccer ecosystem.
In opposition to this video, do you have suggestions on how to improve our soccer/fútbol culture here in America? I think bringing in players like Messi are helpful, but ultimately it doesn't fix anything. Thoughts?
Until the system changes to one of merit based incentives it won’t change. But the more people are taking about it the better. You won’t hear mainstream media pundits get into it.
@@CoachRorySoccer I think you touched on that a bit in this video. How do you mean Merit Based? What merits do Football/Baseball/Basketball players get? Fame and fortune? Or rewards like playing in the game, or being on the cover of the latest EA Sports game? How do we encourage our youth with these things?
Thanks for the conversation. I appreciate people looking at this. I played soccer when I was younger and still enjoy watching the challenge of pushing the ball up and down the field. Up to the point that someone becomes a drama queen and takes a dive on the field. That crap makes me angry at the player AND the coach for letting the player do it. Which is why I tend to watch the Women's World Cup more than the Men's.
@@BenMorch I’m talking about merit for clubs. ProMotion relegation. Training compensation and solidarity payments. Our current system incentivizes tuition. More players = more money. There isn’t incentive to develop players.
@@CoachRorySoccer thanks for the clarification! That would be nice to have. I could see it as being a "home" of sorts for the players. To give a sense of belonging. And push the clubs to really improve their behavior and skills. This would in turn make more people Want to play for them.
Thanks Coach! I am hitting that subscribe button now.
Our club typically has 5-8 levels of teams for any kid with ECNL being the highest. I don’t think most people really support more than the team their kid plays on, so you’re not really into the club. I wish we had a first team and a proper club culture. That seems to be the case across the country.
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Stop keeping score! Focus on developing! No more academy teams!!
Great video Coach really loved the points on the Athlete excuse and the Coaching excuse
Come on coach, you're smart enough to dismiss #1 out of hand as a ridiculous apple and oranges comparison.
Love to start an NFL or NBA team with these names? Good luck:
Matthews, Finney, Di Stefano, Puskas, Maradona, Best, Cruyff, Garrincha, Messi,
Beckenbauer, Charlton, Gerrard, Lampard, Platini, Baggio, Zidane, Baresi, Dennis Law, Keegan, Rossi, Laudrup, Dalglish, Iniesta, Del Piero, Pele (great athlete but was 5′ 8″, 154 lbs), Zico, Rivellino, David Silva, Giggs, Bergkamp, Rooney, Cantona, Scholes, Beckham, etc., etc.
See what I mean by ridiculous? The list could go on and on, as could a list of today's top players. The reality is that too much height, weight or muscle is a hindrance to high-level soccer players. Speed is nice, but without skill and tactical awareness it's useless. Of all team sports, Soccer demands the greatest number and variety skills...not even close. That's just how the way it is. If you get really off on the NFL combine, you're probably not a soccer fan. Entirely different sports, body types, skill sets.
Its not a ridiculous comparison as all those players were great athletes (just not NFL or NBA material). The real question is if all those players grew up in America, would they become great soccer players?
So what is your reason/excuse why the US isn't competitive nationally?
No Merit based system. It affects everything. No competition no development
@@CoachRorySoccer I’m that parent that is going to volunteer coach and I’ve just watched 10+ of your videos. I have a PE/Coaching background in other sports. It’s a group of kids ages 8-10… They are all driving minimum 15 minutes from different directions to play ball together and I want to make it worth their time. Do you suggest I try and have a merit based system within our team to encourage the athletes?
the immigrant community has always known this but go to the east coast where the majority are Caucasian and see how they react to this kind of info. they don't like it and don't respond well to this type of info.
I know. Comments section has been fun lately. 😂
@@CoachRorySoccer on the more optimistic side of things, I believe in my country and am hopeful. We can achieve anything we collective do, which to me looks like a drastic change in leadership. Maybe in a decade lol.
What are some reasons why so many kids quit playing soccer by the age of 14?
Not fun. Too expensive. Other interests.
Soccer is soo physically demanding
Great video and analysis as usual Coach, interesting that you didn't mention pay to play, where, in your opinion, does that fall in your ranking?
IMHO it's a combination of several issues of which best athletes is one but not as much due to competition from other sports as our restrictive, confusing and duplicative pay to play maze. There's also significant inequity in the southeast in how soccer is supported and managed at the middle and high school levels, plus there's difficult, if any, general access to soccer facilities, e.g., in our area the Rec departments remove the goals during the offseason
Oh it’s huge. It’s a 5/5. I have a separate video on it. This video was to point out excuse people give when I try to say it’s the ecosystem. Like for example people will blame Gregg Berhalter (and he has some blame) but the issue isn’t confined to one coach or any other excuses put forth in this video it’s the system. And pay to olay is part of said system.
Great video! Thank you for sharing your insights. Do you think the women's national team will suffer the same fate as the men's since they have the same systemic problems at the youth level? Why do you think the women's side have had and still maintain such a high level of soccer (still top 5 in the world)? Is something different?
Unfortunately I do. The women however have now arguably the best coach in women’s football. So honestly anything is possible short term.
Women had title 9 and the rest of the world not investing in women’s sport for 30 years. So a big head start.
I just watched your other video, and I have a few thoughts.
Firstly, At the top level, I'm not convinced that the benefits of pro/rel would outweigh the instability or threat to (present or past) sustainability. Here are some differences between the USA and Europe that I think are relevant here:
-The EFL Championship exists in a country where one (1) league has more viewers and TV airtime than they do. They effectively have first dibs on media coverage that is "left over" after the EPL has taken their cut, so to speak. They don't have to worry about IF their games will be publicized by some media outlet (other than a club newsletter) once the big TV channels and newspapers have finished covering the EPL and four other sports leagues. The TV and other coverage isn't so "used up" on first-tier leagues in soccer, rugby, cricket, and hockey that there's none left over for even the most popular second-tier league.
-Even if the EFL Championship and other second-tier leagues _did_ have to contend with a complete lack of media coverage due to the aforementioned media saturation with top-tier leagues in various sports, fans are less dependent on TV to follow their clubs, because their clubs are so closely-spaced together that many fans can *regularly* attend their local club's games in person. Put differently, the "catchment area" from which each club draws fans is geographically smaller due to the clubs not being spaced out over hundreds of miles. Contrast this with the US: Here in southwestern Oregon, I know ardent Seattle Seahawks fans who _might_ travel once or twice per season (or less) to see their team play. It's a rare treat, since it's a 7-hour drive each way and it's just not practical to make that kind of trip every weekend. Outside of those rare trips, these fans are ardent but wholly TV-dependent. If it were possible for their team to get relegated to an un-televised league (see point #2--American media is so saturated by nearly a half-dozen first-tier leagues that there's just no airtime or newspaper space left over even for MiLB, let alone the USL), they would basically be forced to choose between switching their team allegiances--possibly to a hated regional rival of their original team--and giving up following the sport altogether.
The US population density outside certain very specific parts of the country just won't support the same club density as Europe, especially since when it comes to local sports, there's long been a stronger and more passionate fan culture for interscholastic sports than club sports in the US. (More on this later.)
-The guaranteed franchise contracts can be seen as an aftereffect of the path we had to take to get where we are. Now that soccer is a more stable professional sport in the US, it's easy to feel like we could've had pro/rel from the beginning, but there was a stage at which we needed more stability than that--where we couldn't afford to have so many teams going belly-up (and make no mistake: Most relegated MLS clubs in 1997 would've most definitely gone belly-up). Owners were already taking a _huge_ risk just by owning an MLS club WITHOUT the threat of relegation, as the fate of even the best NASL clubs shows. The threat of relegation layered on top of the threat of the league (i.e. the entire pyramid!) going defunct would've just been too much to attract sufficient numbers of owners back then. Those owners have already paid for guaranteed league membership via the franchise model, and it would probably be violation of their franchise agreements to institute pro/rel in MLS. Even if you think American soccer is ready for pro/rel, the fact remains that *MLS had to survive those lean years to get to where it is today.* These guaranteed-franchise contracts were likely the price of admission to even _have_ a league with enough willing owners to even exist at any point during the MLS 1.0 era.
Secondly, the USA has a *LONG* and deeply-entrenched status quo of funding youth athlete development with tax money via the school-sports system rather than with private funds via team academies and league-subsidized lower-tier club leagues. This likely means that the most straightforward way to bolster youth development (and especially to bolster access for players whose parents can't afford pay-to-play) is to grow the game at the junior high and high school level. Particularly on the boys' side, as girls' soccer is already well-supported at a lot of high schools (and the success of the USWNT is arguably proof-of-concept that this strategy can work).
I used to think similar.
@@CoachRorySoccer One other thing: There's something that _can_ create accountability in a sports culture where people are used to parity and no relegation: Expectations.
Think about how Manchester United's supporters have been calling for an ownership change even though Man U. hasn't remotely been relegation-threatened. Clearly, the threat of relegation is NOT the source of their discontent; they have expectations that are higher than just staying up. They want to WIN something.
The US professional sports model (perhaps coupled with American culture as a whole) leads to a situation where fans of *EVERY SINGLE TEAM* are rooting for their team to win it all, and frequently call for the ouster of the team owner if they don't feel like he's making an honest effort to do so. Exhibit A is probably the LA Angels' owner Arte Moreno, but I've even seen some discontent from Seattle Mariners fans during their recent slump--even though they're still in the playoff picture!
@@CoachRorySoccer I live in Coos County, Oregon. My closest MLS club is the Portland Timbers, and their territory is essentially the entire state of Oregon. I'm sure there are closer USL teams, but people around here who want a more local team than Portland (or Seattle for the NFL and MLB) follow college sports.
I don't know how the Oregon Ducks baseball team's local Eugene-area attendance compares with the Eugene Emeralds, but out here people care about the Ducks (all teams, though of course Am. football and basketball are the biggest) but most probably have no idea that the Emeralds even exist. This is the opposite of European or Latin America soccer culture, where club is way bigger than school.
Here are some factors:
1) many coaches dont believe in teaching much technique in practice. So who gets good? Familes that can pay for private lessons that teach technique, or camps, etc. Also, tournaments, travel, etc. really add up in price. It becomes competitive parenting not soccer.
2) you mentioned Messi's size. I had a friend that was 5 ft 6 in and the boys coach at his college wouldnt even invite him to tryout because of his height. He volunteered to help out and eventually they realized he was amazing and became their star player. We focus too much on athleticism. At the u8-u11 age, i see lots of coaches with a high preference for athleticism over technique. Fast and aggressive kids win games at the young ages and those basketball players moonlighting as soccer players get preference to be developed.
3) also, the idea of kids just playing soccer together unorganized is way more foreign to Americans than south American countries where its normal in my experience. We only play when we pay.
Agreed!
Awesome video love it !!!
Thanks!
Please talk about how brazil has been so bad lately and why that's happening
I honestly don’t know much about futbol in Brazil. I know they have insanely good players and yes haven’t done much for years.
I think the size of the country and how spread out it is hurts obviously. I am going to throw an entirely different take here. All US sports are suffering. AU basketball pulls away kids from school leagues. The percent of European NBA players seems like its growing. The US just lost an american football tournament (youth) to Japan the other week. The best baseball player is the world is Asian, the fastest growing demographic in baseball is hispanic. Hockey only has american teams, but most of those players are foriegn. Yet USA womens teams are winning everything. The USA leads the world in pushing competitive womens sports. At the same time the US has uniquely criticized what it means to be a man. Words like toxic masculinity have made their way into our common vocab. Im not saying its the cause but i would bet yourh sports participation is down as a whole. And pay to play in all sports....but why are US women dominant?
Great points. Women dominated in a time when the rest of the world didn’t care about women’s soccer and title 9 gave them a 40 year head start. You can see that now changing.
I believe this is just a bunch of malarkey. Brazil is 300,000 miles bigger than the continental US and they have 5 stars on their shirt. In addition, and for decades, Brazilians had a high desire to play the game. Their recent generations suffer due to a shift from playing outside to playing games on their phones. Lack of organization at the National level is what is making soccer irrelevant in US, to watch, to give inspiration to the youth and to have true desire to play. Why US women are dominant in soccer? In most contries, women do not like soccer. They don't want to play, watch or attend games because soccer is considered as a men's game.
@@wysiwyg2489 Brazil is bigger yes, but all of its population is basically along the coast. The US having two coastal regions plus pockets of dense population in the middle and south make it much bigger when you look at where people are. The playing on your phone is exactly what I'm talking about. Parents complain about screen time but the truth is their boys are quiet and not rambunctious so they are okay with it.
@@jarhead_jr Actually, parents like the idea of kids playing on the phone. They enable this at a very early age.
You should feel proud, united states are a team that is within the 35th in the world ranking without being a country with a football tradition.
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Hey coach rory love the vids man
Corey!!! Thanks bro.
So if its not our player pool, coach pool, culture, or pipeline then what is it? I'm not really disagreeing, but I'm curious what we should be pointing to, then. Seems like the "pay to play" issue is just identifying a reason that all of those things are not good enough. My only disagreement is with the "best athletes" point. I agree that raw, measurable athleticism like speed and vertical jump, etc. are a bit overrated for soccer so its not as if Lebron James would be the great striker ever if only he grew up playing soccer, but I do think the general point that our best athletes (or best sport player, most coordinated people, etc. if you 'athlete' is a loaded term) don't play soccer and that is a serious difference between soccer and the other sports in which the US is successful. The same line of thinking could be said with coaches - our best strategic sports mind and best team motivators are dedicated to other sports and always have been. Its not saying the coaches and players are bad, but its tough to argue that they are our best in a hypothetical world where everyone starts from scratch.
It’s the system. Incentives are not towards development.
@@CoachRorySoccer and in order to get better development what has to happen? Or would have had to happen in the past?
@@benjaminhiggins3194 open ecosystem. Promotion relegation. Training compensation and solidarity payments.
@@CoachRorySoccer that makes sense. Why do you think this isn’t as problematic on the women’s side? Not trying to being combative just newer to all this
I like P.O.ed Rory.
😂😂.
They are all 1’s!!!! We have everything we need to produce a world champion!!!!! Our women are amazing
If you don't understand why the USWNT is as successful as it is, and why this doesn't map onto the mens team, you are underinformed to the point of idiocy.
...But just because a country produces good female soccer players, volleyball players, rhythmic gymnasts, or synchronized swimmers doesn't mean it is going to produce good male athletes in those kinds of sports. (And yes, soccer and volleyball have historically been viewed as women's sports in the US _almost_ to the same extent that rhythmic gymnastics and synchro swimming are viewed that way internationally. Not saying I agree, or else I wouldn't be here.)
@@philipmcniel4908 I said our women are amazing. Not sure I follow your comments. You don't think are USWNT are amazing?
@@chrismellow3947 I just said they are amazing. Why do you think they are so good and the men need improvement?
@chrismellow3947 Yes, please help me with my idiocy. Seems to me the same system that produces a mediocre mens team also produces the best womens team in the World. Is soccer a rich girls sport? @philipmcniel4908 is on to it "soccer and volleyball have historically been viewed as women's sports in the US". Culture is the reason for all these issues and the answer is the one point @CoachRorySoccer doesnt mention, Promotion and Relegation. Make US soccer more about winning and the 2nd and 3rd order effects will resolve the rest.
You’re missing the point of the first objection. Athleticism translates. NBA players are mostly too tall and have feet too big to become great at controlling the ball and kicking with precision, but in the main, you can’t look at adult athletes and say, if only that guy chose soccer. You have to say, if only that 5’11” defensive back had instead grown up with a soccer ball at his feet dreaming of being the next Messi. His ability to run isn’t all that makes him good at football; he’s also very coordinated, but he developed his coordination in the football context-that is, focusing on his hands and using them in a particular way. If he had focused on his feet instead, he would probably have good-to-excellent soccer skill.
Disagree.
The problem is one player decided to punch another player in the head 17 minutes into our decisive game 2.
That’s not an an important issue long term.