None of this Means Anythng!

[Guest]

I played up until '95-'96, does your friend have any idea how much things have changed since then? Just around her in SJ it used to be that only the very best players played on a travel team and travelled to out of state tournaments while most players played on local town teams either against other local town teams or worse yet other teams from your town. Girls soccer wasn't even a thing as most high schools still had girls playing on the boys teams if they wanted to play simple because they didn't field a team. I do agree that fundamentals and a love for the game are key, but you can't keep them back when it is time to move on. 1 rule we stuck to and a lot of others have as well as some variation is at the lower levels ie local town, EDP and such, if your kid is truly a top 5 player they should be looking to move up.

Yeah, could not disagree more. Puberty is such a huge equalizer, playing EDP before then is not a huge factor. I know parents that said they wish they got their older kids in EDP earlier as they never made it when they hit 14/15. I watched these kids play, and it would not have made a difference. They are just not good enough athletically to keep up. My 2 kids are faster than 99% of the kids at SJSL, at camps and at the EDP practices we have attended. Athletically they are way ahead of other kids their age in all the sports they play. Skill wise and IQ wise they are up with top 3 players on multiple EDP teams we have practiced with. Things have changed, but the one thing that has not is coaches take speed with average skill over slow with great skill any day. My kids have skill and speed. Now puberty can change all this not only as the kids bodies change, but also mentally form burnout and kids wanting to be more social with friends. Everyone is missing my point. NOTHING MATTERS BEFORE PUBERTY! Great players fade, average players get better, faster and stronger. Keeping them back is fine as long as they are working on their skills. Other sports help them play with space due to these sports being faster than soccer- basketball & lacrosse. It is like the baseball player that has talent but plays at a lower level. Put them in with a pitcher that throws 95 and they will adjust very quickly. EDP sells a bill of goods. Here are the NCAA #'s on a kids chance to play college soccer:

Boys Girls
D1= 1.3% 2.4%
D2= 1.5% 1.9%
D3= 2.7% 2.9%

This means 5.5% of boys and 7.2% of girls will play in College. This means 94.5% of boys and 92.8% of girls won't. So EDP/GA is selling parents on next level play and over 90% of players will not play next level. Stop wasting your money and save it for the 529 plan. Add on to this parents that think their kid can go pro. 0.8% of men and 0.4% of women who play college will play professionally. Playing EDP/GA before puberty will not give you a better shot than the kids that play SJSL. Think about how many kids from a Real, SJEB, Futbol Tech, or any other NJ club team actually play in college? Maybe 3 per team per age group. You have been brainwashed to think you need to do this, but you do not! Moving too early leads to burn out and most teams want you to make soccer the main sport year round. Over use injuries are huge with girls (tons of ACL). Boys not as much but burnout is huge amongst both sexes. Also playing such structured soccer on EDP/GA teams hurts creativity. This is why other countries are better at the men's level and are catching up at girls level. You do not realize it but you are actually hurting your child playing EDP/GA before puberty. The clubs teams only care about money. Wake the F*** Up!

[Guest]

You do you, not everyone's path will be the same or similar. I will say this though, regardless of what you read here not many teams travel so far they need a plane other than those dim wits who think going to Super Copa, Dallas Cup, Disney or Surf Cup are needed to be great. The farthest any pre-ECNL or pre-GA club travel would be Jeff Cup and even that isn't usually until u12. Don't get sucked into what worked for your oldest 15 years ago. A lot has changed just in the last 5-6 years between the age changes, rules, leagues and over all structure of the level of play. You have players playing at clubs now starting at u5/u6 who also play basketball, lacrosse, track, field hockey, and volleyball so they start off with the same advantages as your kid only at a higher level. Right now, at the u14/u15/u16 ages, I've seen very little movement between USYS players to GA or ECNL teams. Not for the lack of trying out or desire to play for them but more so the level of skill required. Most new players are either moving from ECNL to GA, GA to ECNL, ECNL to ECNL, GA to GA, ECNL-RL to GA or ECNL-RL to ECNL. The only team I know of in ECNL that took a lot of USYS/EDP players was PDA Souths 09s and well, you can see how bad that went. Me personally, in your situation, I would look for a D1/2 EDP team to play on as a guest or part time player to get a feel for the game at that level.

D is a starter in GA but still plays with her friends from her HS team on the local town team when she can. The local team plays some very, very bad players but D said it is sometimes harder to play them because you don't know what they are going to do. At a higher level a player with good IQ can see how a play develops but when playing against clueless players the obvious answer in a situation may not always be done so they keep her on her toes. She isn't going to get any better though from having to slow down her game for others and to not blow teams out and become a target for irate players. At the older ages it becomes less about skill and more about strength at the local and even lower EDP levels.

Did you read anything I previously wrote. Other sports help with soccer IQ as long as it is a sport attacking another goal. Basketball and Lacrosse are so fast, playing soccer seems slow to my kids and they can process thing faster than just soccer players. You prove my point that waiting to play GA after puberty is the way to go. You say at the older ages is is less about skill and more about strength. So why waste the money on EDP when you admit strength is so important as the kids get older. Playing lacrosse & basketball only help the soccer player with their strength, physical play, and quickness. Soccer is a very slow sport compared to other sports. Speed is need in the open field and quickness and fast decisions in the box or when pressured. Other sports have this all over the field/court. Mental processing, strength and quickness are the name of the game at older levels. Play SJSL, work on skills, go to camps to learn new drills, work on skills, play multiple sports, and wait for puberty to filter out the real players from the pretenders. WAKE UP!!!!!!!

[Guest]

I played up until '95-'96, does your friend have any idea how much things have changed since then? Just around her in SJ it used to be that only the very best players played on a travel team and travelled to out of state tournaments while most players played on local town teams either against other local town teams or worse yet other teams from your town. Girls soccer wasn't even a thing as most high schools still had girls playing on the boys teams if they wanted to play simple because they didn't field a team. I do agree that fundamentals and a love for the game are key, but you can't keep them back when it is time to move on. 1 rule we stuck to and a lot of others have as well as some variation is at the lower levels ie local town, EDP and such, if your kid is truly a top 5 player they should be looking to move up.

Wrong. Players moving up before puberty is useless. Working off the pitch and playing multiple sports is more important at younger ages. Even US soccer touts multiple sport before puberty and then chose by 14 or 15. EDP/GA does nothing at younger ages expect steal money from parents. Obviously too many soccer parents have been brainwashed to believing EDP/GA at younger ages is the way to go. It is a pure money grab. Think about this the next time you see the higher ups at these clubs driving their $70k+ cars. Money talks and all of you are fools!

[Guest]

It really depends on what your goal is, respectfully, US College soccer prizes physicality and is not a high quality level. They would be destroyed by most semi pro European teams in top twenty soccer countries 3/4th division. Your son could switch late and progress to college because it’s just not that high of a level, physicality rules, and going back ten years or so the level was even worse.

Soccer is different now and the prospects for young kids are different. Any top academy in Europe or South America wants access to the top kids at 7/8 to start giving them the correct fundamentals. If the goal is for a kid to have a shot at being a pro starting at a serious level at the age of 15 is a 10million to 1 shot. I can think of very few exceptions - maybe Luis Diaz would be one.

[Guest]

Read this article about Christian Pulisic. How he played a lower level so he could handle the ball more, work on his individual skills. How playing in the back yard was more important than team practices. How his athletic ability and drive is what made him great. How he played other sports. He did not really focus full time on soccer until 15. Everyone needs to wake up and realize none of this matters. It is your kids ability and drive that will take them places. Not you and your team structuring practices for them!

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...isic-blueprint

[Guest]

Good article - emphasizes how crucial futsal is at a young age despite your original post. Although not really making the point you think when 1. Edp wasn’t structured same then and PA Classics are very much at that exact level of intensity now. 2. His parents clearly thought elite play mattered at 10 years old if they were flying him to train multiple times at La Masia. So Defo not supporting the “nothing matter before 15 thesis” Unstructured play is 100% important but it can go side by side with training 3x per week and playing a weekly game at an elite level.
Check out social media for programs like Ballers Den in NJ and Eddie Johnson’s lab in Florida. That is the elite input and environment kids need.

Again it depends on the goal. If you want to be elite you need to do what the Pulisic family did and seek out an elite level quickly.

[Guest]

Read this article about Christian Pulisic. How he played a lower level so he could handle the ball more, work on his individual skills. How playing in the back yard was more important than team practices. How his athletic ability and drive is what made him great. How he played other sports. He did not really focus full time on soccer until 15. Everyone needs to wake up and realize none of this matters. It is your kids ability and drive that will take them places. Not you and your team structuring practices for them!

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...isic-blueprint

by lower level you mean the fact that he played for PA Classics, which is now an MLS Next / GA club starting at U11 and hung around pro-teams like Ignition and the City Islanders from a very young age? Quite different than playing for a South Jersey Rec Travel team

[Guest]

I am the original poster. I altered my kids flight and statistics so the online detectives could not figure out who my kids are. I have a 30ish son from my first marriage. Lived in a different State until I moved to SJ 10 years ago. My older son played ice hockey, lacrosse and soccer growing up. Soccer was third sport until he hurt is wrist at 14. Started concentrating on soccer and made an Academy level team at 15. Went on to play soccer at a Big Ten school as a 4 year starter. Coach when he was 15 could not believe his soccer IQ, instincts and skills for not playing high level soccer until 15. My son said soccer was slow compared to hockey and lacrosse so the pace was a step down to him. Point of first post was playing soccer at high level at young ages means nothing. Other sports are much faster than soccer- hockey, lacrosse and basketball and train young kids minds to think and react faster. This is the key to playing at a fast pace, not playing a high level early on. Sports that attack a net also have the same concepts, so playing basketball and lacrosse (like my 2 younger kids play) make soccer seem slow. Mentally they are very advanced compared to kids that just play soccer year round because their processing speed is faster, which makes them play faster. Both of my kids go out in our yard and practice their skills on their own which allows them to keep up with the kids playing EDP/GA. Since they practice all their sports, they are better athletes than a lot of the kids they practice against when they are invited by EDP teams. They have both been to 3 different clubs practices and were offered guest practice and tournament slots on all 3 teams. My kids have a chance to play at the next level since me and my current wife were both Division 1 athletes. When my kids are older they may or may not chose soccer as their sport, but they will definitely have a chance to play at the next level if they do chose soccer. Competing has nothing to do at the level they play. They compete in other sports and some SJSL teams make it harder on my daughter by designing ways to keep her in check. My kids love soccer and their skills are top notch. I am not "doing nothing" as you say and I am not handicapping them. I am taking a different route which I recommend (and worked for my oldest son, my first wife, 2nd wife and me) for others as EDP/GA is not the only route to making a great player. The EDP/GA will tell you it is the best route because they run a business and without tuition payments they go bankrupt. Somewhere along the way soccer told parents this is way to develop your kid. the way to develop kids is have them play and practice on their own. Look at how great US basketball is. Kids play on their own year round, develop their dribbling and shooting and the US is the best basketball country in the world. Basketball really pulls kids into plane travel when they are 14 & 15. Soccer thinks hopping on a plane at 10 years old is the way to develop kids. Parents need to wake up and not listen to the so called experts. If your kid wants to play soccer in college and they have the talent, it will be the work they put in away from the team that will get them there, not the EDP/GA. That is how players become great. My kids go to camps and learn the drills and skills needed for the next level, then go home and work on them. Do you think soccer stars make it because they played EDP/GA. No they make it because of the work they put in off the pitch. Hard work and talent are a great combination. Just because my kids and other kids do not play EDP/GA does not mean they do not work on their games. Parents are so delusional to think EDP/GA before 15 is best route. WAKE UP!!!!

Hockey and AAU basketball are more expensive than soccer. Give it a rest go cheap/town team guy.

Are they also chess masters?....good grief.

[Guest]

Wrong. Players moving up before puberty is useless. Working off the pitch and playing multiple sports is more important at younger ages. Even US soccer touts multiple sport before puberty and then chose by 14 or 15. EDP/GA does nothing at younger ages expect steal money from parents. Obviously too many soccer parents have been brainwashed to believing EDP/GA at younger ages is the way to go. It is a pure money grab. Think about this the next time you see the higher ups at these clubs driving their $70k+ cars. Money talks and all of you are fools!

Foolish is banking on walking onto PDA Blue and being a top 4-5 player at U-15 unless a stud of epic proportions. If it is it is a kid from another ECNL team not EDP anything.

[Guest]

This original post is everything wrong with US youth soccer and not in the way the poster means.
kids here have so much choice in sport that they aren’t playing soccer at a young enough age to develop the skills to be able to play at the true elite level. Rest of the world top kids wouldn’t be messing around with other sports like hockey or lacrosse.

[Guest]

I get the premise of the original post but is EDP really all that? You can play in EDP without even leaving your town team and in most cases a more competitive option than local leagues

[Guest]

Agree edp is definitely not “all that” it’s more about finding the absolute best coaching and highest level that you can within a reasonable distance from home. There are some fantastically coached EDP programs at the u littles and some very poor ones.
when talking edp specifically meaning top teams in top division. Third/Fourth bracket edp team level often not that different to strong northern counties teams and little point in the investment unless coaching is exceptional.

[Guest]

Foolish is banking on walking onto PDA Blue and being a top 4-5 player at U-15 unless a stud of epic proportions. If it is it is a kid from another ECNL team not EDP anything.

I have yet to see a girl walk into my D ECNL practice from a town team who was a starting level player. Most club girls dont even make the team. The original poster is living in the past, things have changed.

[Guest]

You are all insane. 95% of kids will not play college. Of the 5% that do play college, the top players will maybe get a 20% scholarship. All including college players will at best end up playing is a beer league. This is all BS. Make the sport fun again and stop buying into EDP, GA, ECNL, etc. The original poster is correct, it means nothing. You know what kids will remember the most? The friends they met, the pools they swim at when traveling, the end of year awards ceremonies, etc. When they are older they won't even remember the medals they won. Keep it fun, who cares what league you play in and don't put too much pressure on kids at such a young age. Parents ruin everything!

[Guest]

You are all insane. 95% of kids will not play college. Of the 5% that do play college, the top players will maybe get a 20% scholarship. All including college players will at best end up playing is a beer league. This is all BS. Make the sport fun again and stop buying into EDP, GA, ECNL, etc. The original poster is correct, it means nothing. You know what kids will remember the most? The friends they met, the pools they swim at when traveling, the end of year awards ceremonies, etc. When they are older they won't even remember the medals they won. Keep it fun, who cares what league you play in and don't put too much pressure on kids at such a young age. Parents ruin everything!

College scholarships are likely not happening for most kids and that is all fine and dandy but what if your kid wants to play at a high level and takes the sport seriously? You understand kids can still have fun, make memories during travel etc playing ecnl. Fact of the matter is most kids will not walk on to an ECNL team from a travel team, the speed of play is vastly different and ALL of the girls on these teams are years ahead of travel players in development. Sorry if that hurts your travel kids/parents feelings as that is not my intention, its just a fact 99.9% of the time.