Club soccer is evil, only about money, and waste of time

[Unregistered]

What's strange in reading this post is how all of these benefits and positive experiences are attributed to "club soccer" but then referred to as "playing soccer" or "sports." So sure, I suppose you can get this positive experience from "club soccer" (my kids have and have not, depending on the situation).

So pardon those of us who sip the Kool-Aid slow enough to see club soccer for what it is, at best, a business, not nearly as indispensable as they pitch themselves to be, a part and not the whole of serving a larger purpose, highly flawed, requiring careful navigation.

Those last three words are the key here. That said, we would have loved to have kept our kids in the town soccer program, paying a fraction of the cost we pay now, and have them enjoy playing along side like-minded and skilled school friends with the same passion and intensity for soccer, while being developed by licensed experienced coaches. Unfortunately, there are may be one or two kids in the town/school programs who might fit in this scenario, and zero coaches. That is why most people move from town to club soccer at the u-little level and then end up staying there. Once in the club environment for a year or two, with the decent training and good competition, a player will be years ahead of those left in town/school soccer, at least that was so in our case. Why not just let your kid be the best on the town/school soccer team, have fun, and save some money? Because, everyone knows that when a kid is not challenged, continually learning and seeing themselves improving, whether in school or music or sports, it stops being fun very quickly and motivation plummets. The kid may as well not even bother with the activity at all.

With so many competing sports, it's almost impossible to gather enough soccer focused kids to form a competitive environment in a single school system or town. One of my kids has players on his team coming from three states to form a competitive team. There is no way a town or school organization could pull this off. It takes a fairly sophisticated network to develop and ID kids, along with a solid reputation of good coaching to pull in new players. This, of course, takes time, focus, facilities, and lots of money, all of which clubs have and towns/schools don't. Yes, club soccer is expensive, but when you take into account that you're paying for a lot more than some guy telling your kid how to pass a ball, it's a little easier to stomach. This, of course, all applies only to quality clubs, and is where the careful navigation is required, as the previous poster pointed out.

[Unregistered]

Exactly.

We sit and complain we have no soccer culture and get our a55 handed to us internationally, then we complain about everyone dedicating so much time and money to the game, and the end result may be just furthering the love of the game.

Some people just get up in the morning, take a crap and mull what they are going to b!tch about today.

Please do not think that you can buy a “soccer culture”
It will take 2 generations of committed parents and players who get up in the morning and while taking their crap, read 4-4-2 magazine.
Tuning in every 4 years is fair weather and joining a club, unless it is committed to educating their players beyond the training pitch (think Spirit of Liverpool FC), is a waste of time and energy and creates no new fans.
All the money in the world does not foster a culture, especially one with the attention span of US players. 8-18 yrs does not a lifelong passion make.

[Unregistered]

But, yet, the part to key on is bolded.


You are trying to put a model in place to gear someone toward some expected outcome. There are many different outcomes from playing youth soccer, from giving a kid some fresh air for an hour a week to trying to get a free education and beyond.

Why does it bother people that some kids, and us parents, want them to play at as high a level with similar minded players for as long as possible. If my kid comes out with a love of the game, and passes it to her kids, that I do, it's a win. Absolute win.

I love the game that much, and so does she.

You really don't know what I'm trying to do. You really don't know what I know. You really don't know what bothers people and why.

Your argument, starting with relying on that simple truth that no one is being forced to do anything, while it is disingenuous, leads to and tacitly endorses all of the problems that are prevasive in pay-to-play. It's weak and deflects from acknowledging that there are many bad outcomes and, before they were that, they were misguided or ill-informed choices at a terrible value, and whether the financial or any other cost can be afforded is irrelevant. This is just as true as observing that no one was forced along the way.

[Unregistered]

Please do not think that you can buy a “soccer culture”
It will take 2 generations of committed parents and players who get up in the morning and while taking their crap, read 4-4-2 magazine.
Tuning in every 4 years is fair weather and joining a club, unless it is committed to educating their players beyond the training pitch (think Spirit of Liverpool FC), is a waste of time and energy and creates no new fans.
All the money in the world does not foster a culture, especially one with the attention span of US players. 8-18 yrs does not a lifelong passion make.

Brilliant post. Best ive read in a while and spot on. I read a lot of soccer stuff and if you actually look a the backgrounds of a huge percentage of the successful players, the one thing the Clubs and the USSF try and minimize is the impact of growing upo in a soccer family/culture.

A REAL one. One that actually values the game and excellence in it. Those families are not the ones talking about college scholarships etc. becasue to them, success at the game itself is the focus. the rest are just benefits of that.

there are so few families like that. its why we are where we are.

[Unregistered]

Please do not think that you can buy a “soccer culture”
It will take 2 generations of committed parents and players who get up in the morning and while taking their crap, read 4-4-2 magazine.
Tuning in every 4 years is fair weather and joining a club, unless it is committed to educating their players beyond the training pitch (think Spirit of Liverpool FC), is a waste of time and energy and creates no new fans.
All the money in the world does not foster a culture, especially one with the attention span of US players. 8-18 yrs does not a lifelong passion make.

You are making my point. My kid wants to be around a pure soccer culture. She wants players who think alike. They want coaches who think alike. She's thrilled I think alike.

If that means finding a club that caters to that, and it costs money, so be it. I won't vouch for Liverpool (other than their team stinks), but if they are forwarding that culture, great.

Daddy on the sideline with the whistle and clipboard doing it because he watched Landon Donovan score against Algeria and it was really cool isn't going to do it (but I applaud him for taking interest).

Culture will come by being excited and interested and, yes, succeeding. While 8-18 doesn't make a lifetime, it IS where the love will be fostered or negated. Immerse yourself in it.

[Unregistered]

Those last three words are the key here. That said, we would have loved to have kept our kids in the town soccer program, paying a fraction of the cost we pay now, and have them enjoy playing along side like-minded and skilled school friends with the same passion and intensity for soccer, while being developed by licensed experienced coaches. Unfortunately, there are may be one or two kids in the town/school programs who might fit in this scenario, and zero coaches. That is why most people move from town to club soccer at the u-little level and then end up staying there.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, true or false, I'll just say that it reflects the fact that club soccer destroyed town soccer participation because they sold their narrative much better. Setting the problem of this being an apples and oranges comparison aside, consumers of club soccer have an overinflated perception of the value delivered and the opposite is true for the consumers of town soccer.

[Unregistered]

like everything, its all in the details. terms like Club and HS are bandied about with no regard for specific situations. I love the last post that says

The game would benefit, players and parents would benefit, from those parent consumers being A LOT more informed about what they're buying and why they're buying it.

this is the line that sums most of it up. I have no issue with anyone knowingly buying a product but so many of the consumers have no real idea as to what they are buying and what motivates the person selling it.

On balance ,playing soccer has been a great experience for my kids but that includes some bad periods in both Club and Hs soccer.

I wish posters just shared thier own experiences as opposed to telling others what they should feel, think or do.

This is a pretty fair take on things and probably how most people feel.

I'm always fascinated how srutiny makes some people so uncomfortable. There is good and bad all around, schools, coaches, clubs, etc. The bad actors and actions deserve being called out.

[Unregistered]

This is a pretty fair take on things and probably how most people feel.

I'm always fascinated how srutiny makes some people so uncomfortable. There is good and bad all around, schools, coaches, clubs, etc. The bad actors and actions deserve being called out.

this is not like deciding on a career or a home or a spouse.

The risks for messing up this decision are low. Maybe Starbucks makes better coffee, but drinking Dunkin will not kill you.

[Unregistered]

this is not like deciding on a career or a home or a spouse.

The risks for messing up this decision are low. Maybe Starbucks makes better coffee, but drinking Dunkin will not kill you.

they are if you dont care about where your kid spends at least 2+ hours 3-5 times per week. this is another reason we are where we are. Parents just do not demand excellence.

I care becasue my kids loving soccer is/was very important to me. another bind we could build

[Unregistered]

they are if you dont care about where your kid spends at least 2+ hours 3-5 times per week. this is another reason we are where we are. Parents just do not demand excellence.

I care becasue my kids loving soccer is/was very important to me. another bind we could build

I did not say people don't care. They care appropriate to the importance of the decision. It is important but not really really important. Nothing terrible will happen if you play in this league instead of that league.

[Unregistered]

I did not say people don't care. They care appropriate to the importance of the decision. It is important but not really really important. Nothing terrible will happen if you play in this league instead of that league.

we can agree to disagree. i think terrible things can and have happened.Its not about league. its about what adults you trust to be around your children and what level of supervision and accountability a Club takes in hiring staff. That to me is not trivial. it matters a lot.

[Unregistered]

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, true or false, I'll just say that it reflects the fact that club soccer destroyed town soccer participation because they sold their narrative much better.

Not sure about this. Again, any one town program is just not going to have enough high quality, highly motivated players to keep those few at the top in a competitive enough environment to ensure they are adequately progressing (especially those programs that have no leveling and try to keep teams evenly matched at until U12 Travel). The top players have no choice but to join the top few players from surrounding towns, and currently, the only avenue for this is through clubs.

Town Select program is trying, but only has one practice a week and 6 games per season and that's at a cost of $700 (plus you have to be enrolled in your town program at another ~$200)! At that point, you're just a hop away from club prices, but with half your programming (town training & games with volunteer coaches) not adding much to your development. This is great for kids at a certain level, but if you want the general level of US soccer to improve over time, the best few players in every town need to be training with and playing against other players at their same level.

Even for lower level players, which is one of my kids, she would have one of the top players on the B town team, which has a huge disparity from the top to the bottom of the roster. Instead, she switched over playing toward the bottom of the roster on a club's lower level team last year and has improved so much with quality coaching that she's one of the top players now. Her club team would crush her old town team. High school soccer is now a possibility if she keeps working hard, whereas none of her town teammates have a chance of making the team. I realize not everyone has a great club experience, but for us it worked out for three of our players, each one playing at a different level.

[Unregistered]

we can agree to disagree. i think terrible things can and have happened.Its not about league. its about what adults you trust to be around your children and what level of supervision and accountability a Club takes in hiring staff. That to me is not trivial. it matters a lot.

No disagreement there. Does one leagues employ angels and the other monsters now?

[Unregistered]

Not sure about this. Again, any one town program is just not going to have enough high quality, highly motivated players to keep those few at the top in a competitive enough environment to ensure they are adequately progressing (especially those programs that have no leveling and try to keep teams evenly matched at until U12 Travel). The top players have no choice but to join the top few players from surrounding towns, and currently, the only avenue for this is through clubs.

Town Select program is trying, but only has one practice a week and 6 games per season and that's at a cost of $700 (plus you have to be enrolled in your town program at another ~$200)! At that point, you're just a hop away from club prices, but with half your programming (town training & games with volunteer coaches) not adding much to your development. This is great for kids at a certain level, but if you want the general level of US soccer to improve over time, the best few players in every town need to be training with and playing against other players at their same level.

Even for lower level players, which is one of my kids, she would have one of the top players on the B town team, which has a huge disparity from the top to the bottom of the roster. Instead, she switched over playing toward the bottom of the roster on a club's lower level team last year and has improved so much with quality coaching that she's one of the top players now. Her club team would crush her old town team. High school soccer is now a possibility if she keeps working hard, whereas none of her town teammates have a chance of making the team. I realize not everyone has a great club experience, but for us it worked out for three of our players, each one playing at a different level.

I think you might be misunderstanding where I'm coming from or presuming that I'm making an argument for or against something that I'm not. My point is that the comparison between club and town that you continue to make is entirely as a binary choice and that's demonstrated in the framing of that comparison being done in a particularly narrow way with respect to soccer and development. That's exactly how club soccer wants it to be viewed, as I tried to convey in my prior post. It's proven to be a very smart business strategy.

Not that there isn't great club soccer options, but the pay-to-play landscape is littered with bad club soccer that is every bit as poor as town soccer, where parents are traveling and paying exponentially more, but defending that decision to the death of their own credibility.

Conversely, not that there aren't nightmarish town programs, there is still a unique value that town soccer so obviously provides, yet in spite of this, the idea of it is now so marginalized and diminished that it's endlessly mocked and ridiculed by people who have no incentive to do so or even benefited from it.

I'd argue that both are mostly done as a way of convincing someone of the decisions they've made more than anything they actually believe.

[Unregistered]

One thing about soccer, and how it differs from most other team sports (probably basketball excluded) is there is a level for everyone. No matter your interest, your desire, your skillset, your location, your gender, race, creed, or color.

All you need is a ball and a little patch of space. The rest is up to you.

There is a club/team/organization out there that will offer what you want. Not all of them are in your backyard, and not all of them may be what you can afford, but let there be no doubt: if you want to play, you can.

The rest is up to you.