Two years of University finished and one left to go. Time for a break away from academic studies and what better way than to take up an industrial placement or two. The opportunity to take a year away from the lovely Bath, to travel to new places, to meet new people and to gain some practical experience in the workplace sounded awesome.
Forthcoming from the uni were offers of help in finding a placement but I had a real desire to 'go it alone' and see where my own endeavours would take me.
Numerous e-mails, an interview, an embassy grilling and a farewell drinks tour later and I arrived in New Jersey, USA. At 20 years of age, I was here to work as a professional soccer coach.
Earlier this year I had successfully become a UEFA 'B' Football Coach and whilst I am also a Level 2 Cricket coach the former had really whet my appetite to utilise my newly acquired skills. The plan therefore was to travel 3000 miles to witness youth 'soccer' american style.
I am being employed by a company named Sports Domain Academy and am living in Montclair, 5 minutes from the company's headquarters and approximately 25 minutes from New York City. I am initially on a contract until the end of November 2012 but have the offer of a further contract for up to 9 months from February 2013.
I have now been here 10 weeks. Two nights ago, I decided to record my thoughts, findings, opinions and observations in a blog format. Primarily to draw upon them in my final years studies but also as a record to revisit as I develop personally and professionally.
It is not my intention to make this blog humourous - I will leave my regularly hilarious witticisms to facebook and twitter. It will I'm afraid concentrate on coaching and not a lot else.
I intend to post articles pretty regularly and of a much shorter nature than this opening tome.
Sports Domain Academy hire predominantly English coaches. The company philosophy in a coaching sense is to encourage close ball control, with lots of touches, eradicating
fear of failure through 'ball mastery' sessions, with a clear focus on fun and
technical development rather than winning, especially for youth age groups
(i.e. ages 3-12). However, as teams mature into 13+ age groups development
tends to focus on tactical knowledge and how this can be applied to win games. I cannot tell you how important this is to me as it mirrors my own philosophy. My big fear about this trip was that I had been given lip service and that the 'dollar' would be the primary, secondary and pretty much every other objective and the 'philosophy' merely a soundbite for the recruitment pack.
My joy at my employers aims has been tempered by those of my American hosts. The general mentality of American soccer coaches, team
general managers and spectators that I have come into contact with is of a
winning mentality. They have demonstrated very little knowledge of not only soccer coaching techniques, but knowledge of
the game also. Many have never played the game and therefore do not understand
some of the physical elements and components of it. This applies to the officials too.
From 7 days a week (for 10 weeks) personal experience of being on the sideline of
youth recreational and travel team games, I have regularly heard the following cried out:- "boot it" "punt it" "big kick" "great boot" etc.
Some that will stay in my memory for a while include:
- "don't ever try that again, it doesn't work" - after an 8 year old player unsuccessfully tried a back heel.
- "we don't want to move the ball with short passes, we want to move the ball with big kicks"
- "great kick" - after an unchallenged defender without any thought process decided to kick the ball as high and far up the field as possible where none of his teammates were positioned, thus giving up possession of the ball to the opposing team when significantly better alternative options were available to him.
- "Mark, I think the girls are coming along very well with their short passing, you can really see them trying to make it work and at times it's been successful, but I think we need to practice kicking the ball hard".
To me, it appears that much of this mentality has come
from an American Football background where the objective is to gain as many
yards down the field as possible in one 'down' (play).
Many of the officials have never played the game before
meaning game fluidity is often reduced due to 'stop/start' whistle blowing.
Soccer officials tend to be officials in other sports but can earn more money
officiating soccer games due to the growing demand of the sport and so have
very little knowledge of how the modern game is played.
The infrastructure of Youth Soccer differs significantly to the UK that I am familiar with. Players are divided into 'travel' teams and
'recreational' teams. Trials are usually held amongst all recreational players
( kinder kickers, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th grade etc ) at grassroots
level, to which the more gifted players are selected to represent travel teams. Those that aren't selected for travel team
soccer play recreational soccer which is predominantly coached by
parents whose knowledge tends to be very limited. The more
talented players make up the travel teams and it is these that are coached by employed professional soccer
coaches. These coaches will spot and recommend the stand out travel team players, to represent academy sides (such as SDFC). These players develop further with the better
coaches and have a defined pathway through regional, state and national sides to progress further..
Leagues are ranked into A, B, C, D, E, F etc flight teams
- 'A' being the highest ranked teams and 'F' being lower ranked teams depending
on ability level.
However, the ranking systems can be misleading in terms of
where a team is ranked in the country/state. It appears that ranking tends to be based on
the number of tournaments and competitions that team takes part in, in a given
season or throughout the year. For example, a team who partakes in every
tournament available but loses every game is ranked higher than a team who
attends half the tournaments and wins every game...?
Time for bed now.....I'll pick up the story again soon, but would welcome any feedback or views.
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| One calm composed coach and one not so. |
