This weekend was the opening round of the State tournament for all of the pay to play clubs. As usual, there was a pre-tournament referee meeting where we went over points of emphasis, house rules, substitution rule changes, and administrative requirements. Then there is a special subject lecture at the end. Last year it was an exhortion for us to be more aware of persistant infringement, the year before we talked about concussions, and the year before that, we went in depth on tactical fouls at the mid field. This year’s special subject lecture was an expansion of the automatic cards for talking.
The general rule of thumb for youth ball on trash talking is that we as referees want to minimize it. The more specific rule of thumb has cards coming out for anything that is likely to piss the other team off if it is not directly related to play. For instance, a Blue player telling a White player “Great left foot” after a shank is probably okay, but “Great left foot idiot” is at least public word by the referee if not that and a yellow. Traditionally anything sexual or racial will be at least a yellow card with an ass chewing but far more often a straight red for taunting in high school rules or foul and abusive language. The abusive language does not have to be English for a red card to be issued and backed by the appeals board. I have functional red card vocubularies in five languages and three English dialects where if I hear a word or combination, I’m going back pocket as the intent is there.
So that is where we’ve stood with language for years. The goal is to stop the fight before it starts. And then it changed. Anything sexual, anything racial is still a big No-No, but there was an addition — and that was economic class. Anything about money should now be considered half a step below calling someone a slut or a faggot in our immediate reaction.
This is needed. The pay to play clubs tend to be upper middle class dominated. It is not uncommon for a team of eighteen players to have sixteen full price players, a half fee player and a fully sponsored player. Between club fees, equipment, travel and extra training sessions, top tier club ball costs a family $5,000 to $10,000 per player per year (one of the many reasons why the US game has not developed enough on the international level). There is a local club which is a rich guy’s hobby where the average player’s family is lower middle class. The families pay for cleats and shin guards while the club covers everything else including travel.
There are serious class issues on the field, and it has gotten to the point where fights are getting started and retaliatory take your knee out tackles have occurred that we need to look at class in the same light as insults about race and sex….
raven
Outcasts United is the story of a team of refugee boys, the remarkable woman who coaches them, and the town where they live, a once-sleepy southern hamlet that has been upended by the process of refugee resettlement. It’s a story about the challenges posed by our quickly changing world, and one that reminds us of what is possible in this country when we put our values in action.
Keith G
Wow, Richard. Thanks for this look beyond the pitch, as it were.
Our re-evolving class segregation is beginning to become apparent in my central-city (Houston) neighborhood that heretofore has been mixed in every metric one might consider.
WereBear
It’s not just soccer.
It’s an attitude that leads to Upper Class Twit of the Year. If the only people allowed to be our meritocracy are the ones who can afford it, the ones who are the “right” sex and color and country of origin, the pool shrinks until we have… well… the Bush family.
I haven’t seen so much as competence out of the likes of them. They hire competence.
MomSense
I was relieved when my kids chose cross country.
Aimai
Fascinating ! Thanks for posting. My nieces play siccerand foosball in the off season.
Nunca El Jefe
This stuff is all new to me as the oldest of my boys is only now getting to the point where we start to hear about these “travel teams”. The thing is, here in the Chicago suburbs it’s every sport that has developed this culture: soccer, football, ice hockey, baseball… and it’s to the point that, for six and seven year old kids, parents are talking about how this will affect a child’s ability to make a team in junior high or high school. The kids themselves seem to be, thankfully, clueless about this whole dynamic, but it very, very clearly is a system that favors the economically fortunate. As a parent that is trying to instill a love and appreciation of physical activity it’s a crappy hurdle to have, especially when the rewards of team activity are most impactful (junior high, high school). CREAM, as ever.
cmorenc
@raven: There’s another excellent soccer-team-of-migrants series called Los Jets (on the Nuvo tv network) – all six episodes from the series can be viewed here. Los Jets is about.the high school varsity soccer team at Jordan-Matthews High School in the small North Carolina Piedmont town of Siler City, whose players are nearly all Hispanic, a fair portion of whom lack documented immigrant status. The high school was reluctant at first to support establishment of the team, but Paul Cuadros (who became their coach) was eventually successful in getting it supported and established, and the team grew into a source of community and school pride as it became competitively successful and then won the state 2-A championship. Though the focus is of course the soccer team, each episode goes into the backstory of several of the players and their family and personal situation (e.g. the problems of trying to plan for college when you have undocumented status). Just an excellent look into the community dynamics of Hispanic immigrants grabbing onto a small piece of the American dream and integration into the community via high school varsity sports
raven
@cmorenc: Cool, thanks.
Punchy
/picks up jaw off floor
Richard Mayhew
@WereBear: It is ridiculous… and to WereBear — a good chunk of the class does not hire competence, they hire competence appearance and are prime targets for affinity fraud. At the soccer level, one of the best local clubs for actually developping young talent to play smart soccer plays on less than ideal fields in less than ideal towns, while charging lower than average fees with less travel than most clubs. They continually lose their good but not great players to other clubs that look “better”.
@Nunca El Jefe: From watching players, at least in soccer, getting the kids kicking a ball and running is 90% of the challenge to age 10/11; it really does not matter what type of coaching they are getting as long as it is supportive and knowledgable, so someone’s mom/dad at the park who knows WTF s/he is talking about is all they really need if they want to try to play medium level ball as a teenager.
Lee
I live in the epicenter of this (North Texas). Both my daughters referee. The oldest works some club level games and has run into this only in the U-17 games (she was working AR, so she did not have to deal with it). Thankfully the rec level and younger club games seem to be free of this.
I completely agree that the pay for play system we have now hurts us internationally more than it helps. It would be nice to see more of the European system come into play here. While my girls were playing the parents all commented that it would take just one club to make the switch and they would all switch. The problem is money. As an example for years FC Dallas was making more money from their club program than they were from their pro team.
Richard Mayhew
@Punchy: Yep, talked with one of the coaches about the economics of his U-17 girls team yesterday:
$2,500 club fee for 3 hours a week of training from December to July. Pays for coaches, fields, insurance, referees, etc.
$250 uniforms and warm-ups (colors change every 2 years)
$250 to $400 for cleats, running shoes, turf shoes, sandals etc.
$1,000 for one of Goalkeeper Academy, speed training, big butt personal training(how to do squats and uphill windsprints) 1 hour/week
$750 for Regional League play ($250/weekend for Regional League play for hotel, gas, food etc 3x a year with 6 to 8 hour drives and 2 nights hotel.)
$500 for 2 preseason warm-up tournaments
$1,000 to $3,000 for summer tour (either fly to Europe for 15 days and 6 games, or go 2 time zones over on tour bus for 2 weeks and 8 games, it varies)
Higher end players will then have Olympic Development Program identification events, college scouting tournaments (not really needed except the parents believe they are), more individual coaching, health insurance deductibles as usually at least one girl is rehabbing a knee reconstruction at any time etc.
dww44
@raven: Thanks for the link. I had heard about the refugees and my sil grew up in Clarkston, so I knew a bit about the town in its altogether different relatively recent past. But then, the demographic changes in the Atlanta metro region over the last 30 years are profound.
Joey Maloney
@WereBear: I haven’t seen so much as competence out of the likes of them. They hire competence.
After 3-4 generations they lose even the competence in hiring to hire competence, and then we get Donald Rumsfeld and Doug Feith.
Lee
If you travel for the ECNL league all bets are off on the upper limit.
I’ve got a couple of interesting stories about this.
I was speaking with one mom about club soccer and she told me the story of her daughter. The team she was on was really good. They played a couple of tournaments in Europe and won good. SMU (high dollar private college in Dallas) offered the entire team scholarships to play. Only about half took it as most were burned out on soccer (her daughter did not).
Friends of ours have a daughter that is a year older than our oldest. They did the full club soccer experience; played all over the country, played with the Olympic Development League, went to camps every summer, etc. I would guess they spent closer to the $10k a year than the $5k. At the end of it all she was offered a spot on a Division 3 roster. Which from what I understand does not offer sports scholarships.
Richard Mayhew
@Lee: Yep, D-3 is no scholarships for atheletics, although schools are quite creative in finding merit based financial aid that amazingly is only offered to atheletes… or at least my alma mata did that frequently.
WereBear
@Lee: From seeing sports at this level up close, but on the outside: it’s as much for the parents as it is for the children.
Yes, they do want to see their kids go as far as their talent will take them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it becomes a club of parents, with social elements and a close-knit (though somewhat competitive) culture along with it.
Schlemazel
5 to 10K?!?!? That makes travel hockey here in Minnesota look very cheap.
I am glad that class/money is being recognized as similar to other insults. There were a couple big fights after high school playoff (US) football last fall. In both cases the well to do private school lost to kids from less privileged backgrounds. The one case the fight clearly started by a private school kid the other there was no video and of course opinions vary. But who knows what was being said, either way, during the games? My experience when I have been close enough to hear things being said is that the referees allow just about anything & that needs to change. Glad to hear that it could be happening.
Richard Mayhew
@Schlemazel: For the referees to change, it will be a 5 year process as it is a cultural change, and some of the dinosaurs need to retire. At the club level, the class issue is not as extreme as the clubs are coming from a fairly narrow band of players, at least at the U-15 and above level. I agree with you, the big issues are at the high school level where the poor town teams play the rich white flight suburbs and the big religious private schools… those games are the nasty ones.
MobiusKlein
@Richard Mayhew: I’m finding it disturbing that my U-13 daughter has been getting (via my email) pushed to go to ‘College visibility experiences’, where you pay to get your kid seen by coaches.
Seems scam-ish to me, somehow. Playing on parent’s fears about college scholarships to suck more $ out of us.
Richard Mayhew
@MobiusKlein: U-13s — get real… she has not completed puberty (decent chance, she has barely started it). At that level, you can tell if a player rather be picking daisies or be on the field, and that is about it.
If your daughter is any good, and if she is playing for a decent pay for play club (State Cup level etc) she will be seen by college coaches. They will find her at the state tournaments, they will find her at the pre-season warm-up tournament, they will find her at the Regional League game (NB, I was reffing a U-16 girls Regional League game on a random Wednesday night between the home team and team from an hour away, and there were seventeen colleges represented (4 major D-1 scouting #17 Blue and #8 Green, 3 minor D-1 and four D-2 (#8 Green, Green keeper, #21 Blue, #29 Blue) 6 local D-3 programs looking at the rest of the roster). They will find her. Now ODP is slightly different as it is a showcase but also a developmental experience, that might be worth paying for/taking time off work for the long ass drive
MobiusKlein
@Richard Mayhew: They are beyond the ‘pick daisies / play soccer’ level, at U-13, but point taken. 13 is still damn young to get your career cast in stone.
Team is ranked around 40 in CA north, so not quite State Cup level. It’s still fun to watch, and games are clean with no serious misconduct.
What is ODP?
Lee
@WereBear:
That is one of the things I loved about rec soccer. At the games most of us parents were chit-chatting and having a good time while the kids played.
My oldest played club for while. We found a few similar parents and hung out with them. A significant number of parents were as you described.
Lee
@MobiusKlein: Olympic Development Program.
Richard Mayhew
Part 2: One of my favorite recruiting success stories was for a collegiate All American defender….
Player A was always fast, ridiculous closing speed that was obvious even when she was playing against top tier opposition. She was a bit of a lazy player as she had speed to burn. Going into her U-17 year, she had a couple of nibbles from minor D-1 and D-2, but nothing too serious. One of her teammates was a High School All American midfielder who was getting heavily pursued by all the programs this side of the Missisippi.
Coach X from a major D-1 school an hour away was recruiting the teammate, so had popped up to see a good local match where the opposition had a state 100 meter sprint champion (D-1 sprint scholarship athelete) as their high forward. Player A was playing a high line as the 2nd to last defender and the ball got played over her. She was flat-footed. She turned, looked at her coach, gave a thumbs up, and chased down the sprint champion who was flying with a 5 yard head start by the time she got to the top of the 18.
Player A received a full scholarship offer a week later from Coach X.
mainmata
On our daughter’s high school and travel teams, you can get a yellow card or at least a strong lecture for mouthing off at a referee for his/her call.
mainmata
@Punchy: Our daughter’s very competitive travel team costs about 1/10th that amount including uniforms and parents driving the girls around. So, this must be a Beverly Hills team or something (ours is in MD near DC).
MCA1
One story of hope and the occasional helpfulness of the free market in the ever-expanding children’s sports arms race. My kid’s 8 and soccer’s his 4th favorite sport, so he’s not incredibly serious about it. Contrary to some others, though, we’ve been fortunate to be in an area where a number of different styles of program have popped up. It’s not “play full-on, 4-5 days a week travel ball or quit by age 9.” We’ve got AYSO, which is still parent coached, cheap and open to all. Then there’s the older travel program that’s functioned for a number of years as the quasi-sanctioned feeder program for the local high schools, which include some of the top programs in the state. But recently a third option has arisen, too, as an intentionally less intense, less expensive and less time-consuming “travel” option.
Our boy’s doing that middle way program. They get actual coaching from guys who know what they’re doing (no offense to parent coaches – I’m one for baseball and girls basketball; I just know our limitations) and, because they’re not parents/part of the community, are licensed to both make decisions based on talent/skill/tactics and, perhaps more importantly, to get on the kids in an age appropriate way in order to bring out their best. They practice once a week, with a game Saturday. They’ve also started an open play on Friday evenings where the boys just show up if they want, and run around without much intervention from the coaches. I think it’s a great idea, and gets them to remember it’s just play, and maybe builds a long term love for the game. Sure, these guys are eventually trying to compete with the big time travel program, but their presence and lessened intensity for the under 10 crowd buys us a couple of years before we’re siphoned off. It also helps us stave off the pleas of our son to do travel baseball or year-round tennis and other absurdities for 8-year-olds. As long as he’s got soccer and would have to give it up to focus on those other things, he’s so far decided that variety rules.
MCA1
@Schlemazel: You can still call Edinans cake eaters, though, right?
Richard Mayhew
@mainmata: but are you driving to NYC to play 2 games on Saturday and then down to Charlotte next weekend either —- those are the teams that can run $10G for a U-17 player.
If you’re driving 45 minutes max, then yeah, a couple hundred bucks a season including ice cream at the end of a hot day is reasonable.
pseudonymous in nc
Richard, others–
What’s your recommendation for a talented 10-year-old (nephew) who’s outplaying the rec league he’s in and needs some higher-level training and competition before he gets either bored or too big for his boots?
If I were back in the motherland, there’d be school teams and clubs that would find him his appropriate level, as well as the local professional sides who scout down to that age, and a lot of the cost would be borne elsewhere because talented young players are a cheap investment. But in the US, it’s hard to tell which of the teams in the vicinity (sprawly suburbs) offering Academy setups are there to take money from more affluent parents, and which ones are actually going to take player development seriously.
trollhattan
@MobiusKlein:
My spawn’s team went pretty deep into State Cup two years ago as a Nor Cal U12, but the team was so large and competitive she saw very little field time and wasn’t developing much. Last season as a U13 she played in a different, lower ranked league and began to find her way, even scoring quite a bit late in the season. The team’s final tournament saw then do so well they went from gold to platinum ranking, jumping a couple thousand places nationally. They missed winning out by one pesky goal. And then the team disbanded because the coach’s daughter quit soccer. So it goes.
Back at it but the new year got off to a bad start when my kid injured her knee and is on a nine-week rehab. The check cleared anyway.
Richard Mayhew
@pseudonymous in nc:
Couple of things:
1) See what teams are playing in the Developmental Academy system if he really is that good. These teams are U-15 and up, but they tend to have youth divisions as well. They are designed to produce the next cohort of MNT players:
http://ussda.demosphere.com/Clubs/index_E.html
2) If DA is not applicable to you, ask around and watch a couple of U-11/U12 games if you can. Questions to ask:
a) are players locked into a single position at U-11/U12 (if yes, run like hell away from them)
b) Is the focus on winning at U-11/U-12(if yes, run like hell as U-11s can play tactically hideous soccer but score a lot if they have the two big kids to play kick and run — puberty is an equalizer, possession is an equalizer)
c) How much training and how many games per week ( I really recommend 3 or fewer total organized team activities a week for U-15 and below — their bodies can’t handle it)
d) Do they demand 100% committment/no other sports, all weekends — if yes, run like hell.
e) For the U-17/U18/U19 cohort, how many of those kids started with the club and how are they doing (a lot of transfers means either kids got tired and left, or the club can’t develop but they can poach)
Now while watching games, what are the kids trying to do. Are they sending straight balls to straight runners? Are they boom and chase? Are they trying to dribble past everyone? All of those have very limited places in a tactically mature game, so if that is all a team is doing, be very suscipious of the club’s developmental strategy even if they are winning a lot of games. If they are playing a lot short 5 to 10 yard passes, lots of movement, and lots of off ball rotation, then the kids are learning how to think the game through when they get big enough to do what they want with the ball.
Look at pregame — is it a line of kids taking shots on the goalie? Or are they playing some form of keep-away, or something where everyone is moving, everyone is talking and everyone is involved?
Finally, look at the players, are they having fun?
trollhattan
@pseudonymous in nc:
My corner of the realm (N Calif) has a mind-boggling array of leagues playing at all levels, so there would certainly be an avenue here for an advanced 10YO. Sussing out the leagues takes networking with other parents and perhaps scouting tournaments and observing. Nothing more revealing than seeing how players, coaches and yes, parents conduct themselves in matches that count.
The true cost is often measured in travel time and distances, not just matches but practices. Will the parents be willing to haul the kid 25 miles each way 2 or 3x/week? I’ve seen it, and it can be the path to burnout.
MobiusKlein
@trollhattan: My daughter is the Goalie, so plays every minute of the game. Team is platinum too. But it’s getting crazy with the injuries out there, with the knees and stuff. Her team has four players out – Knee, knee, broken toe, broken arm. And the knee injuries are soccer related.
YoursintheSnow
My son grew up in Italy and played club football. He has German passport otherwise he would have been ineligible. On moving back to the US we considered club soccer or spending the money on SAT/ACT prep and AP Exam prep. As he is going to the college of his choice in the fall on a 1/2 paid academic scholarship and will enter as a Sophmore, I believe we made the wise decision.
trollhattan
@MobiusKlein:
Funny, mine was goalie from about eight on, always the only player who actually liked being there, until the new (to her) U-12 team had a permanent goalie so she transitioned to the field. It’s probably for the better, as she’s stalled on growing and that box got a lot bigger as she moved up. Somewhere there’s a lab producing six-foot tall twelve-year-old girls, who just kind of appear on the soccer pitch. Uncanny, I tell you.
Her knee specialist warned about the rash of ACLs among the girls (hers is a tibial bruise/fracture, they weren’t completely sure even after the MRIs). Concussions are the other big concern; the science of knowing with precision when it’s safe to return isn’t there yet, so everything remains a guess.
MCA1
@Richard Mayhew: I think I’m the designated rose-colored glasses guy in this thread. I think everything our esteemed expert on all things PPACA and soccer reff’ing says above is right, but it just prompted a few thoughts on the state of soccer in the US and the belief most have that we’ll never develop the right kinds of players the way we teach kids the game.
As noted in my prior post, my son’s 8 and on the B level U8 team in his quasi-academy type program. It is amazing to me the contrast between the things they’re working on, and are on the cusp of doing correctly in games, compared to what I was doing in the final season of my decidedly not illustrious soccer career, two years older than he is now (a lot of us were just waiting around to be old enough to play American football starting in 5th grade, so needed a fall sport). We were still a roving swarm of bees, and then eventually the ball would squirt loose or get kicked long and the fastest kid with dribbling ability would emerge and go score. My son’s team is spaced out and getting yelled at if they bunch up; they work in practice on things like controlling with first touches, looking up and surveying for open passes, and not instinctively just booting it out of their own end if there’s no pressure. They’ve started to crash the box looking for crosses if someone gets wide. My son scored on a fairly solid shot with his off foot yesterday. I know one anecdote is far from data, of course.
Advanced athleticism and gaps in physical maturity still show through and make a difference, but most of the teams I’ve seen this spring have figured out how to stay in front of their man, or that just the tiniest deflection of the ball stops that really fast kid, and no one just bulldozes their way to a goal anymore. So winning is already not solely dependent on who has the best one or two individual athletes. Our team has a kid who’s preternaturally calm on the back line, plays the ball off the outside of his foot to control it, and has that timing you can’t teach to always be there right at the apex of an offensive player’s dribble, so maybe it’s just that he’s exceptional, but I’m seeing 3-2 final scores already. I honestly feel like a year from now they’ll be making overlapping runs and heading it into goal. That has to bode well for the future, right?
I would submit that it’s not just the high school/college paradigm that holds U.S. soccer back from breaking into the first or second tier and staying there. It’s more the fact that of the 10 best athletes at any given high school in America, 9 of them are playing football/basketball/baseball/hockey/lacrosse/tennis/swimming. Regardless of facilities, money and all of that, we’re effectively the size of Peru in terms of the talent pool driven toward soccer. Demographics may change that, but it’s a slow change.
richard mayhew
@MCA1: So it sounds like your son is in a program that is developping kids right… enjoy it as soccer played with touch, with thought, with aggression, with precision is an absolutely beautiful game.
I would say a third of the State Cup eligible clubs in my state sound a lot like your son’s team, another third do alright and the bottom third are money grabs with minimal development at the U-10 to U-14 levels.
pseudonymous in nc
He’s good, but raw: really raw. Small, fast, well-balanced. Parents tried him out in the “traditional” American sports, because that’s what they understand, but he hated them and is physically suited for soccer. He watches Messi videos on YouTube and tries to copy what he sees on the pitch, and runs rings around the opposition — and his own teammates. He’s done a couple of short camps in the big city where the coaches have said he’s going to get bored and frustrated with rec league play, and needs some sensible long-term coaching.
Unfortunately, I’m too far away to be able to scout out the nearest clubs at close hand — his grandmother (my mother-in-law) is willing to do some of that and put some money towards the costs if the club’s doing things the right way. (She’s thinking ‘college scholarship’, but that’s by the by.) I might go down to help her out during the tryouts at the end of the month. The nearest Developmental Academy clubs are probably a bit too far away, which is what makes it frustrating: serious club operations in the cities, rec leagues in the sprawling burbs, not sure what fills the gap.
Like I said, if this was back in Europe I’d know where to look, and he’d have been playing U7/U8 with scouts doing the rounds.
burnspbesq
The movie “Crooked Arrows,” which is hokey as hell but still a lot of fun, was directly on point. Rez kid who got a scholarship to ritzy prep school because of his lacrosse skills comes back to the rez in his 30s and tries to rebuild the rez school’s team so that it can compete with ritzy prep school. The action sequences are fantastic, and if you look closely you will see a bunch of Native D1 players on the rez school team (including Lyle Thompson).
The documentary film about the older Thompson brothers, “The Medicine Game,” goes into some detail about tension at Lafayette High School, where the Onondaga Reservation kids are thrown into a middle-class white environment, but the class difference really doesn’t play out as much on the field because Lafayette is a Class C school and the schools from the more affluent suburbs of Syracuse, like Jamesville-DeWitt, are in a higher enrollment classification.
MobiusKlein
@trollhattan: My son, yes. 6 ft at age 13. Daughter not so much only 5’6″ or so at 13.
You can’t teach height, but the tall ones don’t seem to learn technique somehow.
burnspbesq
My favorite soccer-parent story:
Julie Foudy’s father was legendary in Orange County, not just among the soccer-parent community but among sports fans generally, as “that guy;” loud, abusive, and all the rest. When she was a freshman at Stanford, the Cardinal came down to play at UC Irvine, and Foudy pere started his notorious schtick. After about 15 minutes she looked at him and said “Shut up, Dad” loud enough for everyone in attendance to hear.
Tree With Water
I well remember being chewed out by a coach as a 12 year old before a baseball game in which we played a catholic church sponsored team. I made a 12 year old’s inappropriate remark about the cruxifiction, and got emphatically jumped on by a coach who had never once spoken harshly to me in all the years I had known him. I had it coming, however, and it did me no harm. Quite the contrary, in fact.
The Gray Adder
@WereBear: No they don’t. They hire loyalty, competence be damned. Never forget Brownie.