US Soccer has two broad goals when it comes to youth soccer that often seem in conflict with one another, and they haven't figured out what to do about it.
On the one hand US Soccer is responsible for developing high level youth talent that shows up in national team competitions, and when national teams do poorly the national federation gets blamed massively. When the uS men didn't qualify in 2018, literally the president of US soccer was voted out of office (actually he decided not to run again because he knew he wouldn't win, but you get the point.) Many supporters are still obsessing over that failure.
On the other hand US Soccer should also be responsible for increasing overall participation and access, as it claims it is. But when participation goes down, as it did after the birth year change (which the federation made to bring local participation in line with international standards), nobody got voted out of office. If the US had won the World Cup after that change, they would have given the president of US soccer a ticker tape parade even though overall youth participation went down.
I'm not sure this conflict is different in other places. England has its academy teams for its premier league and championship league clubs to develop talent for it, thanks to the enormous revenues of those clubs. The same is true of many other countries.
I'm only aware of a few places where the national FA has been credited with helping expand access. The story of how Iceland did it is one example. The book Das Reboot, about what Germany did after its failures 20 years ago, is another.
In both cases, the local FAs focused on producing more coaches with training, so that even kids playing in local leagues could bank on being coached by someone who knew what they were doing. Iceland also massively increased the number of fields available in the country, though it's a small country and easier to do.
Free youth sports are always a good idea but have limitations also. Having experienced HS soccer for years, I know that the people who run it often have other agendas. Coaching can be terrible and coaches are often selected by ADs who themselves know nothing about soccer. Often the priority for who gets hired, or who stays on, is politics. Unfortunately, it's precisely in those towns where kids can't afford to play club soccer that the towns themselves don't hire quality committed coaches, maybe because they don't think it's important. One local town in north jersey had a HS team coached for decades by a former cop, and would often go 15 or 16 games without a victory in a season.
Every once in a while you find local programs that bridge the gap, run by dedicated people for not a lot of money, or who can secure funding to teach kids quality at low prices, but it isn't easy and it takes special people to do that. Hard to make a national model based on something like that.
On the one hand US Soccer is responsible for developing high level youth talent that shows up in national team competitions, and when national teams do poorly the national federation gets blamed massively. When the uS men didn't qualify in 2018, literally the president of US soccer was voted out of office (actually he decided not to run again because he knew he wouldn't win, but you get the point.) Many supporters are still obsessing over that failure.
On the other hand US Soccer should also be responsible for increasing overall participation and access, as it claims it is. But when participation goes down, as it did after the birth year change (which the federation made to bring local participation in line with international standards), nobody got voted out of office. If the US had won the World Cup after that change, they would have given the president of US soccer a ticker tape parade even though overall youth participation went down.
I'm not sure this conflict is different in other places. England has its academy teams for its premier league and championship league clubs to develop talent for it, thanks to the enormous revenues of those clubs. The same is true of many other countries.
I'm only aware of a few places where the national FA has been credited with helping expand access. The story of how Iceland did it is one example. The book Das Reboot, about what Germany did after its failures 20 years ago, is another.
In both cases, the local FAs focused on producing more coaches with training, so that even kids playing in local leagues could bank on being coached by someone who knew what they were doing. Iceland also massively increased the number of fields available in the country, though it's a small country and easier to do.
Free youth sports are always a good idea but have limitations also. Having experienced HS soccer for years, I know that the people who run it often have other agendas. Coaching can be terrible and coaches are often selected by ADs who themselves know nothing about soccer. Often the priority for who gets hired, or who stays on, is politics. Unfortunately, it's precisely in those towns where kids can't afford to play club soccer that the towns themselves don't hire quality committed coaches, maybe because they don't think it's important. One local town in north jersey had a HS team coached for decades by a former cop, and would often go 15 or 16 games without a victory in a season.
Every once in a while you find local programs that bridge the gap, run by dedicated people for not a lot of money, or who can secure funding to teach kids quality at low prices, but it isn't easy and it takes special people to do that. Hard to make a national model based on something like that.
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