Character Commitment Leadership Determination WORLD TTTRENDS IN YYYOUTH DDDEVELOPMENT Training the Individual and the Team To: MSC Coaches From: Troy Letherman, Technical Director, Matanuska Soccer Club Date: 2/24/2009 Re: Total Soccer—creating a development plan for the year-round club IIINTRODUCTION After decades of toiling in anonymity, with little to no relevance on the international stage, US Soccer thrust itself into the spotlight during the 1994 World Cup. This was the game in its grandest form—played in our stadiums, in front of our fans. The sport’s popularity spiked in the aftermath of the tournament, MLS was launched, and most importantly, the US Soccer Federation for the first time grew serious about creating a cohesive plan for youth development. At the time, Americans plying their trade in the top leagues in Europe were tragically scarce. In fact, only six members of the 22-man roster were playing overseas. But less than a decade later it was no longer a novelty to see Americans on foreign rosters: Claudio Reyna was captain of Rangers; Jovan Kirovski was picking up a Champions League winners’ medal with Borussia Dortmund. Today the change is even more apparent. Americans are currently playing in 15 different European countries, including those that host the planet’s top leagues like Serie A, La Liga and the Premiership and Bundesliga. More telling in evaluating the upgrades made in youth development since 1994, several members of the US team that so impressed during the 2007 Under-20 World Cup were already on European rosters or have since made the move: Freddy Adu is playing for Benfica; Michael Bradley is starring at Heerenveen (and about to break the record for goals by a midfielder in the Eredivisie); Danny Szetela is at Brescia; Gabriel Ferrari plays for Sampdoria; and Sal Zizzo, Bryan Arguez and Preston Zimmerman are all in the Bundesliga, playing for Hannover 96, Hertha Berlin and Hamburg SV II respectively. Jozy Altidore, who just turned 18, won’t be far behind. That this kind of representation abroad marks a sea-change in world opinion about the quality of our players is more than obvious. But it also says that in the nearly fifteen years since the World Cup final was played in the Rose Bowl we have become much better as a nation at identifying and developing our soccer talent. How we got there is important to understand. AAA DDDUTCH SSSTART It should come as no surprise to find lessons from the Netherlands at the base of the US Soccer development pyramid. With a population numbering fewer than 15 million, a professional league only 50 years old and a comparative lack of financial resources, the Dutch have managed to compete at the highest levels of world football by becoming experts in youth development. No other country in the world has squeezed so much talent from such scarce resources as Holland. As a testament to that prowess, even the most soccer-rich nations on the planet take MATANUSKA SOCCER CLUB SOCCER MATANUSKA youth-development cues, if not coaches, from this tiny Western European nation (Thomas Rongen, coach of the US Under-20 team, is Dutch, making it four-out-of six foreign head coaches of US national teams on the boys’ side). Matanuska Soccer Club PO Box 876997 Wasilla, AK 99654 Website : www.matanuskasoccerclub.org WORLD TTTRENDS IN YYYOUTH DDDEVELOPMENT --- 222 --- But becoming this good at developing young talent is down to more than necessity—it takes ingenuity as well. “Because we’re such a small country, we have to be very inventive” says Guus Hiddink, current manager of Russia’s national team and probably the foremost of the current crop of Dutch coaching exports. “That’s why we get the best out of our young players and that’s why our training for coaches is long and hard and spread over many years.” In the U.S. we have been quick to absorb key Dutch ideas and in fact have become a leader of youth development in our own right (that title is still largely self-proclaimed, however, as despite our laudable progress, we’ve yet to win a major international tournament at any level or to produce a truly world-class outfield player). Though it’s been in place since 1971, US Soccer’s coach-licensing programs have undergone several curriculum overhauls in the intervening years, culminating in a current system that looks a lot like the player-development program instituted by the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), with its emphasis on small-sided games and individual technique, especially at the youngest ages. In helping to build our national program, Tim Carter, former director of youth development for the US Soccer Federation, made a whirlwind research tour to evaluate player development in some of the world’s foremost soccer programs, where he discovered that while many had varying philosophies on youth training, the quality of the people they had instructing was consistently excellent. Based on this tour, US Soccer concluded that the prominent reason for success was the ability of those who were coaching the young players. Or, as legendary North Carolina women’s coach Anson Dorrance wrote, it boils down to strength of leadership, including enthusiasm, passion, commitment, connection—all the many ways that people inspire and motivate others. Today, the scope of coaching education in the United States is as large as the country itself. As our society is woven with the threads of many cultures, so is our soccer the product of the styles and experiences of the many diverse communities across the country. While this presents us with a set of challenges that are unique to the United States, this diversity also helps to continually breathe life into our soccer community. It is against this backdrop that US Soccer approaches its R CLUB R responsibility to prepare coaches to bring the game to our young players. Still, just having some ideas on coaching and curriculum hasn’t proven to be enough. Andy Roxburgh, former Scotland manager and current UEFA technical director, explains that approaches to youth development boil down to two categories: by chance or by design. “The preparation that goes into youth development in Holland is very detailed,” he goes on, noting that if anything Dutch technical directors are over-prepared. They study it all, analyze everything (think about how Wiel Coerver famously used slow-motion video of world soccer stars acting instinctively to develop his individual-skills training method), but they don’t just make the kids do training drills. “In Holland, they train regularly, and then they’re given time to practice on their own so they can develop individual skills, too.” That last point ties together two of the next hurdles facing American soccer. One, our players are entering the international arena behind their counterparts around the world technically, in discipline and commitment and in tactical knowledge and understanding of the game. And two, the environment of the elite player is not good enough, especially as regards limited training sessions. Our best players never learn to train in a professional manner, and it shows. Following a comprehensive review of elite player development in the United States and around the world, US Soccer has come to the same conclusion, reiterating that the everyday training environment is the most critical aspect of improved youth player development. As a result, using the U-17 National Team Residency program as a model of training and focus, they’ve created the US Soccer Development Academy, which while reaching a much greater number of players than ODP, remains too narrow. To compensate, the USSF has again stated their desire to shift more focus to the local level, where, if the United States is to improve as a soccer-playing nation, the clubs must have a scheme in place for the development of all players, in all age groups and at all levels of play within the club. MATANUSKA SOCCE MATANUSKA EEELITE DDDEVELOPMENT AND THE AAACADEMY SSSYSTEM In today’s soccer climate, with competitive parity commonplace and player transfer fees and salaries spiraling into the stratosphere, youth development has taken on more importance than ever before. Now every major club in the world administers its own youth academy, networks of scouts scour the seven continents in the hopes of unearthing the next WORLD TTTRENDS IN YYYOUTH DDDEVELOPMENT --- 333 --- gem and national teams have gotten involved with youth training at ever-earlier ages. And within the competitively- charged arena of youth development, if there is a universally acknowledged story of modern success, it’s in France. In 1973 the French set to work on creating an academy system in an effort to improve their national team. Within their setup, the elite French youth can progress from his local club to one of nine regional training centers, and from there to the national academies. But it’s not only recruitment—for over two decades the emphasis in the French academies has been on technique, from top to bottom, and it has paid off: By 1998, les Bleus were world champions. Two years after that they’d won the European Championships as well. Six more years and they were in another World Cup final. It was an unprecedented run of success, and all down to an academy system put in place 25 years earlier. Conversely, in England the story of modern youth development has come under much scrutiny for failing almost as spectacularly as France’s program has succeeded. Though there is plenty of blame to go around, much of the consensus fallout from England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 has focused on the belief that English players just aren’t good enough technically to compete at the highest levels anymore.