Future Game

What Does It All Mean?

Barcelona Wiped Off Map By Bayern; 

EU Concerned Over Missing City

Football fans on this side of the Atlantic could be forgiven if they were to think that the city of Barcelona itself had been removed from the face of the earth following this week's Champion's League semi-final stomping at the hands of Bayern Munich.  Rest assured, Catalonia-philes, all is just fine in Barcelona.

But the events of the scoreline brought rise to some better discussion by a couple of football's more sensible (and knowledgeable) writers.  A couple quotes from their writing are below, offered up in this space to underline the need of coaches and players (and...dare I say it...parents) to consider the approach taken to the game.  It will be clear that the final score in Munich on Tuesday was not a sudden success.  Bayern did not buy a few players last summer and slap together a squad capable of the accomplishments this team has enjoyed so far.  This game was, in a sense, two students of the same Sensei battling to see who would become the next master of the discipline.  It may not be that dramatic in the end; there are many, many great teams capable of beating either Barca or Bayern on the day.  But if things go the direction we might expect, even the teams that challenge these two will feature similar philosophies.

What this means for my U12/13 teams is simply that many of the principles discussed below will be heavily featured as characteristics we'll seek to emulate.  Several ought to be familiar already!  Will it look like the big boys this weekend? No...nor next spring, nor the spring after that.  But as a student of Physics won't ever master that discipline, people will continue to "discover" new angles, new strategies, and so forth within the game; players must understand where it all came from, what's being done in the game now...in order to evolve into the next generation.  Exciting stuff...if we think more globally, and with the focus on creating students of the game (rather than winning youth events come hell or high water) and fostering a connection between every player and the best-known current method of playing.

Springboks Show Grit

PAGS Matchday 1 

A great, gritty performance by five 'Boks and one good neighbor.  Liza Green kindly played in the net for the first half, and the outfield 6 held the fort even taking a 2-1 lead for a while before losing 4-3 to a scrappy WCUSC team that opted (and quite rightly so) to play with 8 players the entire game.

A couple tricks the 'Boks used to turn the tables and make the game a bit more even bear pointing out to the families and the folks who didn't make the game.

Low Pressure Defending

Coaches always cringe a little when using this term with younger players.  It implies that the defending is not aggressive, or that it is concessionary in it's nature.  But it is simple enough:  High and low pressure indicate a geographic approach.  In soccer lingo, the end of the field where the opponent's goal is, is referred to as "high," whereas the end we defend is the low end...though that term is rarely used; typically it would be "deep."  At any rate, "high" and "low" simply indicate where on the field we choose to defend- and defend like madwomen!

Coventry/HMMS Recaps

A couple solid wins see us heading to the state semi-final this weekend.  Two goals against in 180 minutes of 8v8 soccer isn't too bad.  10 goals in three games is a good scoring clip as well.  A few thoughts, and some themes that we've been working on all year which got highlighted came up the past two games:

The Coventry Goal

A turnover in our half, a lack of ball pressure following the loss of possession, an excellent pass across the width of the field where our midfielder was too close to the wide attacker, allowing the ball over his head and into the space behind; that space was too big for the GK to cover - the ball wouldn't have gone deep enough into the 18 anyway - and it became a simple footrace which Cole lost.  The finish was very good, leaving Henry little chance of saving.

A good goal for Coventry...they worked the situation nicely.  But the turnover, lack of transition speed of thought to defend, the very slight mis-positioning of Cole, and the boys could see how important these details can be.

Quick Boys

FC Providence Recap

Hopefully no one from HMMS or Coventry will read this...

In the FC Providence match, our lineup seemed to cause some problems for the FC Providence defense.  However, whatever the source of the difficulty, the QBoys weren't quite attuned enough to fully take advantage.  Hardly a surprise; 12 year olds have a hard time seeing patterns across whole teams (it's why we play 8v8 at this age group-it's why we coach more technical stuff than tactical, or should be).  But I mentioned it in the team email after the game, and it raises some points that are germane to the understanding of a developmental model of coaching versus other approaches which put winning ahead of other goals.

Here's the general layout....QB's in red, attacking toward the bottom of the picture.  The ball, as a fer-instance is with our right midfielder (Marc, Wyatt, mainly):

College Selection

Food For Thought

A couple weeks ago, Haverford College Men's Soccer held a "Junior Day" for high school juniors who had been identified as high-interest prospective players for our program.  The boys and their families spent the day hearing from Admission, the coaches and players, touring campus and generally getting a nice feel for the college.  Three points jumped out from that morning's events:

1. Of the 10 men who spoke to the recruits, all of them found their way to Haverford via camps- not one mentioned getting recruited via a tournament.
2. Of the class of 2016, 6 of 7 applied early decision (the eighth first year student was a walk-on, un-recruited with no help from the soccer office in the admission process).  The 6 ED applicants represented a 60% success rate (no one who was accepted ED declined to attend Haverford).  Haverford reported an overall admission rate in 2012 of, drumroll please: 22.9%.
3. Of the high school students in the room, every boy had contacted Haverford first.  3(a): Haverford, like most Division III schools has a recruiting budget of a couple thousand dollars.  As a gentle reminder, from a previous post on the odds of making it to the college level as a soccer player:

There are, roughly, 4 million soccer players registered with the USSF-affiliated programs in this nation.  Divide that number by 13 (ages 5 through 18) and we have 307,000 players per year/age group, or 153,500 per gender.  Those high school seniors who play the game are competing for spots on 598 teams (men's division I & III) and 735 (women's division I & III).  The netherworlds of NCAA division II and NAIA soccer are less-traditional higher education options- comprehensive colleges, small state schools, religiously affiliated, etc. - and virtually none of the top liberal arts or research universities fall into these two categories.  Presuming that most players would rather go to Williams or Stanford than Hastings College or Lindsey Wilson College (2011 NAIA Men's Finalists...) we'll work with those numbers alone. 

That leaves us 255 players per year, per NCAA (DI & DIII) team graduating from high school. Over four years, each of the DI & DIII teams have a pool of about 1,000 players to pick from.

If this space offers nothing else, let it be the perspective of what a massive accomplishment it is to play college soccer.  Period.  But let it also be, just a little bit, a source of reminding anyone who loves the game to ask occasionally why they are involved, and what they hope to gain from that involvement.