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:

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.




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.