Part 2 in a Five-Part Series | Read Part 1

Claudio Reyna is the new Technical Director for US Soccer. He addressed assembled youth coaches at the recent USSF Development Academy Spring Showcase in Sarasota, Florida. TopDrawerSoccer.com was there and is presenting a rundown of Reyna’s comments both to the coaches and in an exclusive interview with Managing Editor Robert Ziegler later that week.

(Continued from Part 1)

Onward & Upward with the Academy

The new youth curriculum will be published and available online by the end of the summer, with continual updates. The items will also be implemented in youth programming for youth national teams, coaching education and development academy guidelines.

Reyna added that the Academy continues to improve, but said the standards of clubs need to improve on and off the field to compete with international standards of clubs, teams, players and coaches.

The number of USSF Technical Advisors will be increased from 4 to 9 nationally, however the advisors will be charged with serving both the boys' and girls’ soccer communities.

These advisors will be responsible for work within specifically identified markets across the U.S. rather than the old regional system. The current technical advisors include Rene Miramontes, Hugo Perez, Mike Dickey, Louis Mateus, Roberto Lopes, Tony Lepore, Juan Carlos Micia, Chris Brewer and David Rubinson.

Among their duties are evaluating practices of academy clubs, conducting the relatively new market training sessions (more on these at TopDrawerSoccer.com in the near future) and applying the new standards for Zone 1 (ages 6-12) to clubs across the country.

Goals and an Immediate Problem

Reyna closed by expressing the dual goal to develop a pool of elite coaches to implement the upcoming standards and to provide more exposure for players of varying backgrounds to national team programming.

But in an interesting aside, he took direct aim at a trend he noticed on youth fields, even during the event in Sarasota, calling it a humiliation of the American game to foreign observers. The problematic habit? Foul and abusive language used by coaches and players.

“We need to have a zero tolerance policy for this,” Reyna said. It’s not a gray area. It’s black and white. Some of these items will take 5 years or more to address. This won’t take 5 years. We can address this right now.”

Reyna said it is an aspect of the game that must change in order for the culture of the sport to truly be changed here, adding that he didn’t care what goes in other sports, but that coaches had the opportunity to set the tone with their communication to players and officials.

Part 3: The first segment of our exclusive interview with Claudio Reyna

Missed Part 1? Read it here.