SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer Academy Players Can't Play High School Soon?

When the Academy program began in SC, the teams were composed entirely of kids from the Lowcountry. Two years ago, after the association with SCUtd, the pool expanded greatly to include kids from the Midlands and beyond. For the 2011-12 season there are a few kids coming from the Upstate. No one has suggested that every single player in the state who is good enough to play in the DA is doing so, or always will do so. There will always be reasons that individual players will choose a different course (e.g. finances, personality conflicts, ability to get to training, etc.).

Many clubs around the state are more than willing to encourage their best players to try out for the DA and take pride in their having developed them to point where they are good enough to train and compete at that level. Some clubs (not many) choose, for their own reasons, to hang on to their players like grim death, regardless of whether it is in the best interest of the player. I can only say that with each passing year that becomes more difficult, as the landscape of elite soccer changes.

Having now recovered from nearly choking on the irony of your comment about money, let me put your mind at ease. SCUtd Development Academy runs on a break even basis. We operate on a shoestring and our coaches often waive part of their fees in order to meet budget (translation: to keep the cost to players as affordable as possible). You are free to make any criticisms you want. However, implying that our folks are somehow in this for the money is beyond the pale.

SoccerLoony wants D.A. players to be exposed to 10 months of training not interupted by H.S.( whose training he calls largly unstructured) Is this gentleman considered qualified to visit a typical practice and label H.S training in this fashion--just wrong.
When the Elite status arose several years back, Bridge and CESA seemed to emerge as frontrunners . Now Bridge has waned and DA is activly recruiting CESA's elite and so the feeding frenzy ensues. And by several posters own admission, some of the states best players are staying away.
I'll tell you what none of the above has--longevity, a proven track record and it will be interesting to see where this all is in a few years.
The DA leadership is interseting but admittadly employs some quality coaches who curiously list their HS Coaching experience and accomplishments in their profiles before any club affiliations.Are these the same HS coaches you say will tell their DA players they can't play their senior year in HS? Yeah, good luck with that.
Back to the leadership--does anyone wonder why things didn't work out at SSC or Bridge? Yup--someone should have researched that.
I am like everyone else--I want to see a competitive national side do well and in the past decade, I think we have gotten better but there are times I want to question the Academy model alot of the world seems to have adopted.
You have to have team oriented tactics to win--I get that, but a system that does not encourage any "taking a man on" until the final third has IMO hurt creative individuality.
Messi(who is truly a great creative player) might be the world's last without baggage(Rooney--too inconsistant, Ronaldo--too soft)I am not positive why, but today's adopted systems have to be part of it and as Coach Robinson said, when players are identified, the clubs only care about quality--not technical background.
Pele, Best, Cruyff, Eusabio and a few others all played at the same time and gave the game more flair. Messi IMO today stands alone.
And SoccerLoony(since you insist on pointing out my non error) read the Dempsey profile again--he was not recruited by the Texans but rather was at his older brother(Ryan's) tryout when he was noticed juggling on the sideline.
All of this said--I am for anything that helps develop our best state players into hopefully national ones, just not ready to jump onto this bandwagon yet until a reputation is established and attempting to force quality players to not play for quality HS teams their senior years is not getting off to a very good start

Pelton,
You are right, I am a nobody. A nobody with an opinion. Where you went wrong is when you claim that I referred to HS training as "largely unstructured". What I regard as unstructured or adhoc training is what you call STREET ball or pickup games. I regard HS training as unstandardized in comparison to academy training.


With regards to Clint Dempsey, I am at a complete loss as to what you are still trying to squeeze out of this scenario to collaborate your point. You seem to be stuck on the word "recruited". Please refer to your post dated "05/26/11 07:10 PM". You quoted the wikipedia article as saying that <b>"but it was young Clint, juggling on the sidelines who was noticed and recruited." </b> You were correct because that is exactly what the wikipedia article says. Now in your most recent post you are reversing yourself and misquoting the article at the same time when you say <b>"he was not recruited by the Texans" </b>

This could all be a semantic mix up, I think what you were trying to convey is that Clint was not SCOUTED by the Texans as his brother was. You are correct in this assertion. In the same post you indicated that magically clint had touch, skill and vision even before he played for the Texans. You went ahead to attribute Clint's development at an early age to STREET ball or pickup games. My argument here was that the success of Dempsey and any others who may have developed some skills before becoming part of structured development environment does not lead us to the conclusion that structured development at an early age would not have yielded for them the same results or even better results. You have to be careful with these examples because they are not measurable. For example do you think we would have a better midfielder in Dempsey if he had found his way at an early age to say the Barcelona academy or indeed if he had stayed with the Arsenal Academy? Or do you think the Dempsey we have is the best Dempsey we could have ever got?

Quote:

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Anthony Pelton
-- I get that, but a system that does not encourage any "taking a man on" until the final third has IMO hurt creative individuality.

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I have some thoughts on this if you care to listen. The game of soccer evolves over time. Any evolution process will strive to make the evolving system as efficient as possible. In soccer the offensive primary objective is to get the ball in the other goal as quickly as possible and as often as possible. One way of doing this is to move the ball in one kick to as close to the goal as possible and have a target forward try to bring the ball down and score. We all know how easy it is to defend this approach. Another approach is to have dedicated ball carriers (midfielders), they will bob and weave through the midfield dribbling and passing until they get the ball to the forwards who will try to score. Defenses have fun playing these kinds of teams because they can hack at you in the middle of the field with no fear of costly penalties. Yet another way is to have a mid-field that is committed to passing the ball until it can be passed to a forward who then might engage a defender and score. Ofcourse there are hybrid variations of these approaches. Of all three it appears that the game is evolving to recognize the third option as the most optimal way of playing soccer. The Modern Game is the term I hear. Just about every team at the highest level of soccer plays a game that is heavily weighted on passing in the mid-field. Now Barcelona, what a shining example of the modern game! So why doesn't every team just pick it up and do it, it is just passing the ball right? Why doesn't Arsenal win as much as Barcelona? It ends up being that the art of passing effectively and efficiently is very difficult to master both for individuals and for a team. There is as much creativity needed in the passing game as is often displayed by the best dribblers out there. It ends up that when yo have three open people that you can pass the ball to, you need to figure out which of those three is the right one (if any)and that your option might be the guy who will get open when you fake instead of passing. This apparently requires years of training to master and the US National Team is lagging years behind. You mention Messi being a creative guy. Please remember that he does most of his creative runs in the final third. Yes he will hit a dribbling lane from 40 yards out and run in that lane but he rarely takes on players 1v1 until he is near the goal. The person you forgot to mention when you started talking about creativity is Xavier Hernandez. El Maestro XAVI! And he does it all with one or two touches. Not to sound obnoxious, but isn't it interesting that Argentine National Team Messi doesn't compare to Barcelona Messi.

By the way. What a lot of teams struggle with and is really tough to teach even when they commit to the passing game, is knowing the trigger points for the transition from passing the ball around and moving into attack mode. That is the difference between Arsenal and Barcelona. Well ofcourse Messi,Xavi,Iniesta have a lot to do with this difference These three live and breathe in the transition area, they know the triggers and everyone else fits in around them. A good example of someone who has a real problem with this on the Barcelona team is Alves. He is routinely out of sync with the pulse of the frontrunners. This in my opinion is also why Arshavin has struggled to make an impact at Arsenal, the ability to play 1-2 touch and transition into attack. He said it himself in an interview that when he moved to the EPL the one hard adjustment he had to make was to learn how to play 1-2 touch because whenever he didn't he would always lose the ball. The elite midfielders and defenders will beat you down my friend and take that ball from you They did this to Robinho and drove him out of the EPL.

You know what player I am really excited about though, Neymar the young Santos player who is likely to move to the EPL. He is a very exciting player in that he creates off the dribble anywhere in the mid-field. It will be interesting to see what adjustments he will have to make in order to succeed in the EPL if he makes the move.

I think the academy is a great vehicle for helping aspiring soccer players to continue down the road of developing their skills to the fullest potential. Some may end up on the national team , some may end up playing professionally, some may play in college and some may quit soccer after academy. All in all Ithink they will be grateful that someone gave them an opportunity to fulfill a dream.

You aren't that looney. Great post!!!!!

This really isn't about Academy....but you brought Barca into the mix and so I'll comment. Wow, they play a game I couldn't even dream of understanding. How many times yesterday did you see them play the ball into the corner and then serve it into the box? Uh, maybe once or twice. How many times did you see someone other than Messi take repeated touches with the ball in the final third? Not too many.....

What I saw was a triangle everywhere on the field. DIdn't matter where, it quickly organized. Everything was 1 or 2 touch passing, movement off the ball was unbelievable. Creativity and vision, unselfishness. Players moved and filled gaps..almost like it as a pickup game without positional responsibilities. The non handball call in the box would have been on David Villa,how as he defending im a transitional attack? I regularly saw Messi dropping in behind Xavi and Iniesta.

Coaches always talk about playing as one. Barca has perfected that. 11 players disolve into 1 living breathing unit that understands implicitly what every part of the body is doing.

Just a joy to watch.

The move towards year round high level soccer isn't new and didn't start with the USSF Academy. Not that it started with CESA either....but their Premier teams are very active in the Spring, playing a handful of Showcases plus the program they have in playing D2 college teams.

Academy or not, the push for the highest level players is to train and play more at that level.

Its not anti-high school.....nor is it forcing anyone to choose. Its jsut going to be a part of the program and kids will have to evaluate upfront if thats what they want. Either option is fine. Play at the highest level or play at a little lower level and play with your friends in hs. Mixing the two isn't likely to be an option in the very near future.

Looney,
Unstructured---non standardized---don't seem very far apart to me.
I will leave the Dempsey thing alone--perhaps it is semantics.
Some of your modern game references are interesting and not without merit.Man U clearly looked lost yesterday and a Berbatov at the midfield may have helped here(not sure why he didn't even make the bench).
We can hem and haw this thing all day long, but usually as games evolve, stars in various positions emerge, which every game IMO needs.
The game has stagnated some in the past 20 yrs( again IMO) and I will let my references in my previous post speak for themselves.
I have received this past week 5 emails that reference 6 different players and I quote here"will be told in no uncertain terms that playing HS next Spring will not be an option" so it will be interesting to see what happens.
I don't feel it is my place(and I have been asked for discretion) to list the names of these young men but I can tell you only 3 will be seniors. I cannot believe "Happy" and others who seem to be in the know have not received the same info I have. Conflict may be coming sooner than you think.
I don't mean this in an agressive manner but I include my real name and address every time I post, so if you are ever in this neck of the woods I think I would enjoy discussing our difference of opinions.

high school soccer is where academy/premier players go to relax...it's a different game, it's about winning, there's no time to develop much of anything...just my opinion.

I certainly don't know anything about Coach Pelton's emails, but whatever the reason for them, it isn't because players for SCUtd FC Development Academy have been told they can't play HS next year.

Anyone with specific questions about the Academy program is encouraged to contact SCUtd FC DA coaches.

Emails didn't state "have been told"--all stated "will be told".