Let them be kids first

Sweet_feet99 wrote:With coaches being so caught up in winning these days, I think they fail to realize that these are still just kids. And when the fun gets taken out of soccer, well lets just say my DD went backwards. With a new coach and the fun put back into soccer, my DD is playing harder than ever. You can have all the knowledge about soccer, it does you no good if you can not connect with kids.

10sDad wrote:Having been all the way through the club scene with an older child, and now starting with my 04DD, I can pass on the following two questions a parent must constantly ask themselves:

1 - Does my child PLAY soccer? Or is it their identity?
2 - Does my child LOVE soccer? Or do they love their parents and want to impress them?

Club soccer can be good or bad for kids, but it depends on the kid (and the parents). Did you really pay all that money so you can go to work and brag to your buddies that your child plays on FC "X" and they won this prestigeous tournament, when in reality you are nothing more than a financier for the scholarship players and your child plays left bench? Go to Soccer corner and just buy the shirt if you want it that bad for yourself...

Club soccer is a partnership between a coach that has no loyalty to the players, and players that are looking at the club as merely a stepping stone to the next level. Get emotions or pride involved, and feelings get hurt. Rec soccer is for socializing and friendship. Each has their place.

10sDad wrote:In my experience, the top teams coaches are better recruiters than developers. The coaches that are the best at developing players are generally more honest and caring, but lack the ABC (always be closing) sales mindset - they forget that they are selling a service. So who wins? The coach or the recruiter?

Unfortunately, its usually the recruiter that wins. By nature of the competitive system, the top teams that make Div I generally attract (and recruit) the top players from the developmentally-minded teams. This cycle repeats itself each year, with players that USED to be really good moving down, and players that have been developed moving up. A couple years in the minors, and sometimes they move back up again. There may be a coach out there somewhere, somewhere, somewhere (haven't found him/her yet) that can focus on development and still attract top talent while still focusing on standings and rankings.

Development requires a coach to let players make mistakes. Case in point - you have not officially learned a new "move" if you have not used it in a game, right?. If your coach is going to yell at you for attempting the new move and failing...well, you don't have a developmentally-minded coach, and you as the player are too scared to make a mistake - thats not good. But...mistakes can lead to a goal for the other team, and that can be the loss that makes your team go home from a tournament early.

To sum up, top-tier club coaches are very good at what they set out to do...which is field the best team possible, win tournaments, and win D1 championsips. Development coaches are very good at what they do...which is develop individual players into top level talent - their teams are usually very good, but seem to just miss out on the championships. Unfortunately, the two options are generally mutually exclusive of each other.

Don't get me wrong - I am not dogging on the top level coaches by saying they can't develop or coach. If they were just spectacular recruiters, they would be coaching the Texans Southern-Northwest Quadrant Blue #2 team. Which is basically a rec level team that pays Hassan money to wear the shirt. The top coaches run their programs more similarly to a college program where they have top recruits trying out each year, and no spots are guaranteed through loyalty. Somebody will make the team, somebody won't. The top coaches expect players to continue their development more or less on their own, and they work on strategy in practice - not skills. If your skills have gone down because you haven't been working outside of practice, its not their problem. Heartless, perhaps, but if your child is planning on playing college soccer in the future, that's what they will get when they show up on campus.