How to tell if a player is developing? Coaches please

[Unregistered]

I love that idea - and I agree...but how can you make that happen when soccer is a "team" sport. My DD is 11 and the "team" is everything to her. She is definitely one of the best individual players, but she could care less about that. She loves to compete with her teammates and honestly I think that is what keeps her loving the game the most.

It is interesting to me that we make it so hard. People want to know what type of training they should do, and how they should do it, and how much they should pay for it.

This line of thought is all wrong. If you are truly talking about a player developing it is much more simple. First develop fitness and ball skills, work on them compulsively, juggle, kick a ball of the wall, learn tricks, juggle some more…As your foot skills become embedded (you can juggle 1,000 times without dropping the ball) all sorts of other abilities will start to emerge. You will be able to lift your eyes and see the field, and see the opportunities and place the ball appropriately. Through developing as an individual you will become a very strong team player.

Of course you will continue working passing and other drills at practice, but you don't need some special coach or fancy training to develop these individual skills, you need an appreciation for "doing the work" and understanding that it is this "work" that gets you to the next level.

[Unregistered]

Tirade? Lol. Your overarching point sucked. Just admit it. Why don't you throw some other lame ***** cliche out there? "It's a marathon, not a sprint"...come up with something original for once.

Uhh....actually you did draw that correlation. I read the other post as a contradiction to your opinion. Why did you become so personally hurt by it?

"This is true. Having 2 older kids now, I can say with absolute certainty, it is a marathon, not a sprint. So many players from my kids early teams and super intense parents are no longer playing at all."

I did a poor job of communicating my thoughts, that is definitely on me. It was an attack directly on intense parents. I did not intend for it to come across that way. I was trying to agree with the initial post I quoted, not create a whole different discussion. I was attempting to say that ALL kinds of kids and families end up quitting, even those you wouldn't have expected.

Here is what I know, lots of kids quit, regardless of how invested their parents are and if a kid is still playing and has genuine enthusiasm for the sport and is getting better at U12/13, then they are in fine shape.

I also agree with the original post I had quoted, which is there are some kids that just have "it" at the earliest ages and they still have "it" when they go off to play in college.

It may be a cliche to say it is a marathon, but that does not make it any less true. Sweating every little up and down does not help and probably hinders in the long run.

[Unregistered]

Poor argument. So many kids from my oldest daughter's team quit and their parents were not "super intense". They either realized they were not good enough to compete at the highest level or they realized they just want to do something else. It is called growing up. I don't expect my youngest to know what they want to be in life at 11, let alone whether they want to play soccer at 15. Dumb, dumb argument.

Exactly, that's why no one should do club soccer at all. Waste of time and money.