| British Invasion (May 2005) |
By Schellas Hyndman
The NSCAA was organized in 1941. In the 64 years that have elapsed since the association was formed, a number of changes have occurred in soccer in the United States. The NSCAA is an organization that today serves to educate, support and advance the American coach through coaching education.
I first joined back in 1976. During my time with this organization, we have seen the face of American soccer change quite dramatically in a relatively short period of time. We have seen professional leagues come and go and come again. We have seen our Men’s National Team go from a team of young amateurs fighting their hearts out in 1990 to a well-organized contender in 2002. Our Women’s National Team burst onto the scene in the late 1980’s and has maintained its place at the top of international women’s scene.
We have been a part of two national soccer organizations in the U.S. that have made coaching education their priority, and we have seen the benefits of this focus. Who would have believed in 1976 that the United States would have a Men’s National Team coach in Bruce Arena, who is respected around the globe as a great coach and master tactician for what he has accomplished with the Men’s national team? Or that our Women’s National Team coaches would be in demand as lecturers all over the world?
I look at what we have done and personally feel a great sense of national pride to have been able to see soccer and soccer coaching develop in the U.S. It is with this in mind that today I would like to join with someone who may seem the awkward ally of the American soccer coach, Paul Gardner of Soccer America.
In his article of March 21, Paul wrote of his concern about foreign club teams coming to America to start academies designed to teach and develop young American players with the hope that some day they could go to Europe to be professionals. I would like to commend Paul and join in his concern about the influx of foreign soccer academies coming to our shores.
Like Paul, I believe that we have come too far in developing our game and our coaches to allow these foreign clubs to come and attempt to take the lead in developing the next generation of American soccer players.
We have developed many fine young coaches ready to meet this challenge, and we as a national soccer community need to take responsibility for our own development. We should view these foreign academies coming to the U.S. as a challenge to take our developmental structures to the next level. It is time for U.S. soccer clubs to start academies and perhaps look for ways to have our MLS teams involved.
The logic behind these foreign clubs coming to the U.S. is easily understood. For a club like Everton or Charlton, the U.S. provides a great market in terms of business opportunities and a virtually untapped stream of soccer talent. Americans have high per-capita income, love sports and, as the recent Manchester United tours of the U.S. have shown, there is an interest in high-level international soccer in this country.
Athletically America has been producing top-level athletes in all sports for a long time. What these foreign clubs see is the possibility for numerous Eddie Johnsons, Brad Friedels and DaMarcus Beasleys. Recently we have seen MLS being offered $4 million for Eddie Johnson by Benfica. It is good business for clubs to try to unearth our next talent. If they can discover this talent in U.S.-based academies at a young age, they will not be paying these transfer fees.
I believe these foreign clubs are coming here to make money, but it would be naïve to believe they want to develop the next generation of American players to help us continue our ranking among FIFA’s top 10 countries. I do not believe they are coming here just to generate revenue from training fees, coaching clinics and jersey sales.
The money that these teams hope to make is the money they can save by finding the next Landon Donovan early, and just as importantly the money they can make by selling the rights to that next Landon Donovan. Last year Everton sold Wayne Rooney for nearly $20 million. This money pays for years of Everton’s England-based academies as well as buys new players into the club to replace him. For these foreign clubs the possibility of a $4 million sale of an American prospect every six to seven years represents a good investment.
As a free market society we cannot challenge these clubs’ right to be here. America believes in survival of the fittest and market competition. As a soccer community we should respond with our ability to provide a better soccer product than these foreign clubs. Such an effort must start with our pro teams and our large youth clubs.
Gardner hypothetically asks of Charlton and Everton “how would you guys feel if, say, the MetroStars or the LA Galaxy were to announce the setting up of their academies in London and Liverpool?” My feeling is that these clubs would not care because they know that American clubs would have very little pull for the serious English soccer player who dreams of playing in the Premiership. The vast majority of these clubs have little regard for our ability to coach and develop players, which is demonstrated by their new presence in our country.
Around the world coaches believe that America develops fantastic athletes. These clubs think they can take this athletic prowess and develop young men and women into top soccer players better than we can. This is a great challenge to us as American coaches and we have two choices: sit back and let it happen or step up our commitment and design our own academy programs.
For years we have understood that one of the problems with our developmental system is the practice-to-games ratios. In the U.S. the average ratio between practices to games is 2-1. This is based on the logic that most teams practice two times a week, then play on the weekend. Around the world this ratio is closer to 4 -1 or 5-1 for the serious soccer player. For a variety of reasons we simply do not train our teams enough to develop and implement any type of training program.
In the U.S. we have taught ourselves to coach game to game, trying to solve the problems from the last game that will improve play in the next match. More practices would allow us to focus on the most important issues and help these players become better for the next month or next year or in three years. By increasing the number of practices per week we would allow development to take place in practice with a program of training while still focusing on a big game on Saturday.
The United States soccer academy structure would be different from the European structure in that it would reflect our values and culture. The European model is reflected in the U.S. U-17 National Team Residency Program and the IMG Academy club teams. While these full-time academies are ideal and do a fantastic job developing players, local home-based academies are the most viable option we have.
In this country we are education-based. We respect the importance of an education and preparing for life after sports, so our structure at first will need to revolve around the opportunities our young men and women have for education.
While reading the January issue of 4-4-2 magazine, which is published in Britain, I was stunned to see some of the facts that surround the English academy system. Much of how the academy system works does not necessarily match up with our values. According to the article “Are Academies Working?” by Chris Green, the kids who are in the academy structures are required to attend school only 12 hours a week due to English FA regulations and many are failing to maintain this standard.
According to the same article, the “chances of a player making it all the way thru the academy from age 9 to the professional team are 1 in 100.” These two pieces of information alone tell us that the American development structure has to be different to reflect our different value system. With this in mind we need to build our academy training programs to allow the players to attend school during the day and join their club at night.
In the U.S. we have two full time academies, both based at IMG in Bradenton, Fla. These two groups have designed a program where academics are a fundamental part of the player development structure. The players attend school until early afternoon, then spend the balance of the day training.
We can look at the success both of these programs of training have had. Under John Ellinger and now John Hackworth, our U-17 residency program has developed many of our great young talents, including Eddie Johnson, Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley and many others. The IMG Academy, our nation’s first full-time academy, has produced Michael Parkhurst of the New England Revolution and its team won the U-19 division of the prestigious Dallas Cup. This success shows training players on a more regular basis works, and both of these groups have designed plans that are helping the players improve. The other idea we can take from these programs is how we can design similar programs in our towns with our high school and club programs, which do not require residency.
In many of our cities we have major clubs that could start academy training programs today. Players could come for training four times a week and each club could instill its philosophy about how players should be developed. Two of the big clubs in my area, the Dallas Texans and Dallas Sting, easily could train the players more often with the quality of their coaching staffs.
The academy system also would allow young players to train with older players, coaches could make training more functional and fitness experts and goalkeeper coaches all could be employed under the same price structure already in place at many of these clubs.
Our youth clubs are doing a better job of finding and helping the inner-city players Gardner refers to in his article. Clubs like Houstonians from Houston, Texas, show what can happen when we work to find a way to get these players training and competing. I give club coaches in this country a lot of credit for the job they do with players – now we need to get the kids involved with these coaches more and start setting up our own full-time training programs.
One possible area, which often is overlooked in our country, is high school soccer. If we look at the situation from the outside, the high schools provide a load of resources that are not being utilized. Our high school coaches see the players every day, often have good facilities and have many resources funded by state and local taxes. In every other mainstream sport in the U.S., high schools are considered a major part of player development. We may be missing a great opportunity by not utilizing them more in our sport.
In many cities youngsters do not play high school soccer and concentrate only on their club teams. With the resources at a school’s disposal, we may be denying a great opportunity to our players. If we can support and educate the high school coach, this could be a good area for players to get a daily training program. The NSCAA is committed to educating coaches on how to train teams and players. High school coaches are one area that we are striving to serve more professionally. We believe that as we help these coaches, we could see a direct reflection of their improvement in their players.
In this country I think the youth clubs and high schools will be responsible for the day-to-day training of the young players for the foreseeable future. However, with MLS now in its 10th season, the time is coming when we can look to the professional ranks as the next step in this process. While the idea of having a year-round league featuring only MLS academy teams may be far-fetched, there are some ways in which we can get the best young players into a professional environment at a younger age to coach them and show these young players what a professional’s lifestyle is like.
I cannot pretend to know the day-to-day financial responsibilities of an MLS team, but it seems there should be a way to gather together the top players in an MLS team’s region for a month to two months every summer to train and live. This summer setup would be cheaper for the MLS teams than a year-round program, and perhaps could be funded by the MLS camps.
I understand this may not be the plan that works for us and it only covers the development of academies for boys, but I see a time when MLS teams can serve as a supplement to the ODP system and offer top players another outlet. In this situation the MLS teams work to find the best players in their area and help train them to be our next generation. This could be beneficial for all involved because it puts our best players with our best coaches, starts our system of professional academies and can increase fan interest in MLS as the teams perhaps will be made up of more regional talent that fans can identify with. At this time with no women’s professional league in the United States, many of these challenges will remain with the clubs and with the ODP system. This also hopefully will spur on the quick redevelopment of the women’s professional league. (I know…one thing at a time!)
As I said before I do not know if these are the only answers to our country’s developmental needs. I put these ideas forth simply as one coach’s opinion and hopefully open a dialogue on how to take our coaching and players to the next level. I think American coaches are suited for the job and I want all of them to know that the NSCAA will support them any way we can! After all we are here to help aid in the development of the U.S. coach. I believe if we can start these academy training programs, we all can take a major step forward. |
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