From this week's Sports Illustrated. Great stuff on the US youth soccer system:
No team in the World Cup took fewer shots than the U.S., not even such lightweights as Trinidad and Tobago (seven) and Tunisia (eight). And the ultimate blame for that lies in a youth system that rewards order over imagination.
While the problem with U.S. basketball is the decline of fundamentals, the bugbear of American soccer is essentially the opposite. Where is the individual flair on the ball to split swarming defenses? Where is the improvisation to build attacks on the ground? The answer isn't complicated: It's being developed on playgrounds in Brazil and Ghana, not on the regimented fields of American youth soccer. "There's probably too much coaching [in the U.S.]," says U.S. captain Claudio Reyna, who announced his international retirement last week. "When I grew up, I just went to the park and we put up two cans for goals and played seven-on-seven for hours. Now when I see youth soccer, I see too much organization, too many kids standing around in line waiting to shoot."
It's worth noting that the U.S.'s best player in Germany, 23-year-old midfielder Clint Dempsey, spent his formative years inventing moves on the dusty plains of Nacogdoches, Texas -- not sucking on orange slices in suburban youth leagues. Likewise, Reyna has kept his sons, Jack, 7, and Giovanni, 4, from joining structured soccer leagues.
"I roll the ball out and we just play," Reyna says. "They can worry about learning tactics when they're 15 or 16, but until then it's all about letting them enjoy it." With that, Reyna hugged his two boys and left the World Cup stage, taking an underachieving U.S. team with him.
