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Posted by
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July 8, 2014 |
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Email
Aaron Nielsen
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@ENBSports
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In the days following the USA’s elimination by Belgium from the World Cup, there was a lot of positive support of how both the Americans fared, and how people attached themselves to the team and sport. However, mostly from the soccer community, there have been questions regarding soccer in the United States and its overall development, which effects Canada as well. These issues are not new, have been brought up many times before, and over the last three years I have written about twenty articles on RedNation Online regarding player development in Canada and the United States, and its relation to Major League Soccer.
In a recent article for the London Telegraph American, writer Liviu Bird talked about these issues in his article World Cup 2014: Jurgen Klinsmann's next task should be to smash the American system
bringing up items such as the "pay for play" youth soccer system, lack of an open transfer system, single entity structure, no relegation or promotion, and how MLS cares about making money first. One of his other key points and criticisms was that of the traditional American sports model of players playing high school, college and then getting drafted in the pros.
I agree with Mr. Bird on some of his points. However, I don't feel relegation or promotion would change anything, but the "pay for play" system I will concur is an issue. I know of and am aware of stories of where players have been left behind because of this, and at the same time the MLS academies have not been overly successful and very expensive. While it is still early in its history, players who have elected to go the homegrown route opposed to college have not improved their pro development and it potentially loses them a chance of getting an education.
I think there is an irony in Mr. Bird’s concluding statement: "The first step is for those in charge to buy into the real reason for change: footballing improvement, not economic windfall." This I feel MLS is taking to heart by recruiting players from South America and Europe through the Young Designated Players rule and also convincing more veterans to join the league on what would be regarded as average MLS salaries. This has been seen even in the last month with players such as Liam Ridgewell, Gorka Larrea, Fanendo Adi, Ignacio Piatti all brought in, while cutting young American players such as Ryan Neil, Sam Garza, Guiseppe Gentile and bringing the amount of foreign players in MLS closer to 50%.
I have written in the past about how MLS could succeed by duplicating a Premier League model, by having salaries close to other professional sports and removing clubs from places like Columbus and Colorado and recruiting the top players from around the World to play for big market teams in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Toronto and Seattle. We could also have 70% or more foreign and proven talent playing in the league and arguably this would improve the quality of the 30% Americans/Canadians in the league and make us more competitive for tournaments such as the World Cup. That being said, this was never the goal of the league and even suggesting it causes great anger amongst die hard MLS fans. Funny enough, in a case of reality following fiction, you could say those big market teams are already doing this now.
With all of this being said, if your goal is to improve American talent while keeping MLS American, I don't think the first thing to do is criticize an athletics system that has created the most professionals, millionaires, success stories, and made United States the most successful sporting nation in the World.
It's true that other countries in the world, including much smaller ones, have a better track record of developing quality soccer players than the United States and Canada. However, in most of these countries, soccer is not only the top sport, it's the only sport. Even in countries that participate in multiple sports, no country regards soccer as low as we do on totem pole of professional sports, being the fourth or fifth major sport behind American football, baseball, basketball and hockey.
For those who like the standard European system of developing soccer players, you should also know this is the same system used in many other sports on the continent. A local city, town or region has an athletics community centre that covers a number of sports which children participate in until about the age of sixteen and that point they turn professional playing in reserve leagues or loaned out to smaller teams until they are good enough to play the first team. For example, in basketball, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Ricky Rubio was playing professionally in Spain at 16. However, many foreign basketball players choose to go the NCAA route as they find this increases their chance of being a better pro and making it to the NBA.
If the standard European system of sports development was superior, logically they would dominate in those sports as well, which they clearly do not. That being said, soccer doesn't have the highest priority within our high school and college athletic departments. Having leagues I’ve talked about before, such as the United States Acadamy League, PDL and in Canada leagues such as League One Ontario, are imperative to give players the proper amount of games and training to be competitive with other countries in the world. This is the case right now, where the average elite player can play 30 to 50 games a season, the same as elsewhere.
Yet the question remains, can soccer and people involved in the game do more to improve the quality of the North American player and provide them a greater opportunity to succeed? The answer to this question is of course, yes. It can start from better scouting, training and coaching, which have all been discussed by many. However, I feel another idea that needs to be looked at is trying to get the best North American athletes to play soccer.
Recently, I had a chance to see both PDL and League One Ontario games, and I will say again that I was impressed by the quality of play. My concern from a scouting perspective is that almost all the players I saw were soccer specific players. By this I mean there was good ball movement and skill but they were also shorter, smaller, and outside of players with previous pro experience, a lack of ability to create space. To be straight forward, on a rating system based on pro potential most looked to be roughly a 6 to 7 out of 10.
Of course, all soccer players don’t need to be 6'3 and 200 pounds, although if you look globally at countries who do produce great athletes, they have proven to be very competitive in soccer, even though they might lack in other essentials including financial resources. Strength and speed are two vital attributes of being successful athletically and arguably the game is going even
more in that direction. With this being said, one place where soccer can make a drastic change and encourage more athletes in North America is moving the traditional soccer season in high school and college to not directly overlap other sports, such as American football.
When team sports first became popular in United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, baseball was the main sport with soccer and American football far behind. Soccer was popular in the working class ethnic communities, while American football was popular in the Universities and Colleges and when the media started following University and College sports, soccer was left behind as an afterthought. One of the consequences is that both are played at the same time and it’s almost impossible for a person to play both sports at a high level, while athletes can play American football along with baseball, basketball and hockey, which is common at the high school level.
The NFL has a combine each year where they test athletes on speed, jumping and other athletic feats, and makes this information publicly available to help market their draft. In the 2014 combine, safeties and wide receivers such as Brandin Cooks, John Brown, Justin Gilbert and Jason Verrett are all around 5'10 and 180 pounds - the average height and a little larger than your average English Premier League soccer player. These athletes also ran a 4.35 40-yard dash and had a 40 inch vertical leap, which is competitive, if not better, than the top caliber soccer players in the world.
I'm not going to say all athletes can play all sports, but from following sports at an analytical level for close to twenty years, I will say you can't teach greatness. While a player like Leo Messi learned a lot growing up in Argentina and playing with Barcelona, what makes him great is his natural-born talent. In the second tier are players who are either athletically or intellectually greater than everybody else. The argument by many soccer people is we need to improve intellectually, which I can agree with, however we will still be in a situation of always catching up. Based on the American/Canadian mentality and lifestyle we can always compete against the rest of the world athletically, it is just the case of starting to try and convince our best athletes to play the beautiful game.
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