I've been watching the U15 Boys National Team play this week here in St. Louis. There's some good playing talent out there.
The training sessions are worthwhile. The coaches on staff do an excellent job with these players. The administrative staff works very hard to make sure the whole week goes smoothly.
Did I mention I think the program is fundamentally flawed?
Again, it's not really about anything that the group does when they get together.
To explain, let me point out what has become to me one of the real highlights of the year in American cycle, the National Developmental Camp in Concord, MA, held at the beginning of August. At that event, approximately 120 players gather at Middlesex Prep school under the direction of U14 Boys National Team coach Manny Schellscheidt and several assistants. Most of the players are coming from the U.S. Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program teams which have been chosen during the various regional camps the in the previous month.
At the time of the camp, the players are technically U13 using, as all national teams do, the calendar year cutoff (Jan. 1). This means they are 13 or even as young as 12.
At the camp, the players play, play and play some more. The coaches do put them through training sessions, and they're good sessions, but they spend most afternoons playing matches, first as part of their regional teams, and then as mixed groups including the coveted "hot match" where the very beginnings of a national team pool are formed.
Now, it's not quite like a regional camp hot match, where I've often seen the kids who are supposed to be training on 4 or 5 other fields basically standing and watching the hot match. The satellite matches at the National ID camp do matter, and players get promoted from one field to the other with some regularity. An emphasis of Schellscheidt's is also to remember the vast physical difference between these kids depending on whether they have begun puberty or not.
It's that issue that I think cuts to the core of the problem I have with the U14 and U15 teams.
These age groups are right in the middle of the prime years of a boy's body changing into a man's. If the 4 components of soccer are technical, tactical, mental and physical, the fourth of those tends to become paramount on the field at this time, meaning the other 3 areas, all vital to the making of a top-level soccer player, are potentially undervalued.
Now this gets into the subject of coaching quality and ability to evaluate talent and that kind of thing. I've written about those things before and I will again, but I don't want to get into that here, because the real drawback of this part of the system ends up being more psychological, both for the players who make it and those who don't.
For the players who don't make it (and I mean all the way down to the state level), the mantra becomes "Wait until you grow." While that might be a reality for a player on the field, it shouldn't become a fixation to him as he works to develop as a player. It's the one part of his personal formation he has little to no control over, but if he's constantly told it's the one keeping from being "a national/regional/state team player," do you think he might start thinking less about the other 3?
For the players who are selected, and again I don't mean just at the national level, what does it mean? Does it mean they are a good player – almost certainly. Does it mean they have "made it" – certainly not. Is there the potential for them to start thinking that way – based on literally hundreds of anecdotes I've heard from club coaches over the past 5 years, apparently so.
Other than parents and coaches needing to keep their children's feet on the ground, what does this mean in regard to the program?
If you fast forward to the U16 and U17 years when 40 players are selected for the Bradenton Residency programs, we typically see something like 5-10 players who jump off the page at you and clearly show they are the top players in the country for their age group. Then you see 30-35 players who are quite talented, but fit in with roughly the same number of players, or maybe twice as many, around the country who are not in Residency. I've said it before that the coaching staff at Bradenton have an impossible job to select 40 guys. I don't want to get into the future of Bradenton in this editorial either, but the issue is even more pronounced for those 2 years leading up to the selection for residency.
So how about this – keep bringing in 120 guys periodically throughout the U14 and U15 years.
It's expensive I know, but it's worth more than the potential damage caused by the current setup. Doing a better job of keeping the door open for more players ought to make it worthwhile anyway.
The other thing about this is that it fits in much better with the USSF Development Academy program. The concept there is to provide a higher level training and program at the club level, and to evaluate the players AT THAT level. The program started with competition in the U16 and U18 age groups, but already we are hearing about a modified program for U14s and u15s beginning next season.
What if instead you scheduled 4 gatherings per year, as part of the Academy program and under the direction of USSF, of approximately 120 players, maybe divided into 8 groups of 15? Do this for both the U14s and U15s and by all means continue to use the excellent staff involved with these youth national teams now. The gatherings should be scheduled WITH RESPECT to the schedule of the Academy teams. MLS can't seem to get this simple premise down, but the Federation should be able to do it.
So when these teams get together they will experience a little extra and it will make a good incentive for them at the club level, just as it does now, but it will be far less discriminatory and ultimately do a better job of identifying promising players.
I might add that if you look at other countries, including the recognized soccer powers, you'll see very little national activity at these age groups.
The principle is a bit different on the Girls side for obvious reasons. I think the main focus there should be the quality of club-level training and establishing uniform standards for developing talent and basically taking better care of our top players in terms of schedule, coaching and opportunity.
Back to the Boys, at the camp itself, the teams will be playing matches of top players in their own group. Under the current system the matches range from impossible situations against older age groups to not-so-challenge matches against less-talented club teams. There are some good matches in the middle but for everything it takes to gather everyone together, you'd think a better guarantee of quality is desirable.
If at the end of each season you want to schedule some kind of international event as a one-off event I don't think that would be a big problem. You could still run into the same selection issues but it wouldn't be as pronounced or as likely somehow to be traumatic. I'd also like to see at least some of those international events played in the U.S., and I understanding something like this is in the works coming soon.
I know one concern with this is for players in places with no Academy program. In the short term I would hope the scouting network of the Federation would pay attention to this, but ultimately the issue with that is spreading the geographic reach of the system. I think this is already happening and we'll continue to see gaps filled in the coming years.
So this is what I'd like to see. I think it would be good for the players who are already being chosen, and for many more who are not.
