Beezer, I appreciate your perspective and am certainly glad that you have joined this forum. Really good discussions!
Having a "good" high school coach doesn't mean you have more top level players. He can be Lippi, Capello or Scolari but he won't make more players more serious or more ready to be a top level talent. I know some high school coaches who are very good but that doesn't equate to more top level players to play with.
Does having a “good” college coach make more players more serious or more ready to be a top level talent? Do you think Clint Mathis and Josh Wolff became “more serious or more ready to be a top level talent” by playing at the University of South Carolina? How about Clint Dempsey at Furman University, Oguchi Onyewu at Clemson University, or Boyzz Khumalo at Coastal Carolina University?
Does having a “good” club coach make more players more serious or more ready to be a top level talent? How many South Carolinians play professionally? There are a couple of handfuls concerning men’s players. How about women? Any ladies from the Palmetto State in a professional league? Are there any prospects of a viable professional women’s soccer league? Isn’t college soccer for females kind of the end-all unless you are good enough to play at the National Team level? Again, how many and who are from S.C.? How many are from anywhere? Are the “club coaches” responsible for this achievement? High school coaches? Collegiate coaches?
Being able to play both club and high school at the same time is not an answer because, physically and psychologically, the better players will not be 100% when they arrive to training. Again, the club environment should be the best with the best at 100%.
Best for who? The 50 or so players state-wide capable of this level of play? How about the other 5,000 high school players? Should soccer just stop because they aren’t included in “the best”? I know plenty of club soccer teams that are “club” in name only, but they certainly do not constitute “the best” players or coaches.
I agree to some extent, but this is the United States and things are different here – for better or worse. This isn’t a Third World country where soccer is the “great escape”. The educational system is where the majority will realize that escape and collegiate soccer can be a means to achieve that end. Now then, it’s a much better proposition for women’s soccer, because of the extra scholarships available, but it’s also the plateau for women’s soccer – there’s not much after that in this country and if it is, then it’s for a very small number.
The point is, again, development to be a better soccer country! The best players playing as much as possible to give the United States a chance to improve on the world stage.
In my opinion, you are talking about 1% of the soccer players in this state – and anywhere else for that matter. Is the goal of every “serious soccer player” to achieve a National Team or Regional Team status? I think not – at least not in my experience of being involved in soccer in this state the past 30 years. Most of them want to make themselves better so that they can help their teams – club, high school, six-a-side, 3v3, etc., be the best they can. By becoming their best individually, they make the whole that much better. Can individual acclaim come from this measure? Absolutely! Maybe that player gets to play college soccer at a DIII school, while concentrating on academics and soccer as an a-side. Perhaps they realize that at the DII or NAIA level where soccer/academics co-exist. Or, for the few an opportunity exists at the D1 level where that student-athlete has actually been recruited to continue their soccer experience.
Maybe an average MLS player like Brian Kelly, who represented his country at some point at the youth level, would have been more prepared to ever make an actual impact at the full National Team level, where it counts, and help achieve a result if he used 3-4 months for four years playing a higher level year-round. If youth National Team players are giving 3-4 months to high school then maybe that explains our stellar history.
My thoughts are that if Brian Kelly was truly good enough to make the leap to the National Team level, then he should have pursued another avenue to attain that goal. Do what Danny Karbassiyoon and Jonathan Spector did and that was to showcase their talents at “elite level” camps and to perform well enough to sign professional contracts with Arsenal and Manchester United, respectively.
There's just no way soccer within the educational system, high school AND college, helps the development of players. Too many restrictions of 1) time allowed to play and matches and 2) the amount of top level players.
I agree there are too many restrictions – well stated. But, you have to crawl before you walk and the United States may have reached adolescence in the soccer world (men’s team anyway, the women’s squad has been an “old lady” for years . :D
