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Mauricio Pochettino
- Thread starter Dorothy
- Start date
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Luka Modric
Interesting to here someone voice this issue, there are still many sports in Britain where location and socioeconomic status limits opportunity for youngsters.
Bishop
Paul Walsh
Belgium would have had to have an off day (and yes they are very capable of that) for the US to win. Their squads and starting 11s are not comparable at all. The only reason we think poorly of Belgium is because their performance levels rarely match the ability we all know them to have. That doesn't actually mean that the US have a good side. Btw Senegal are a very good side, getting outplayed by them is nothing to be ashamed of, the US would as well.
AJLB92113
Phil Ifil
As a US fan, I was wanting to play Senegal just because they are as inexperienced as we are in those pressure games.
Belgiums early games made people doubt them just like USA's early games made people get overly excited about us. That first game against Paraguay was one of the best attacking games USA ever played. A mix of the energy, a poor opponent and our star players all being on that day.
My fear with Belgium was exactly what we saw. They have experience, do not cave under pressure and have players that are World Class on their day. We needed a lot of luck to beat them.
In the end, we finished 16th and are ranked 16th in the world. About fair and expected for USA.
The problem is, 75% of our country will forget about football now and look forward to the NFL and college sports until the next World Cup.
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Nick Barmby
I’ll say again, a US side locked in, motivated, playing free, playing with the confidence they had from the group stage, could have beaten Belgium. I’m not saying they definitely would have, and I’m not saying Belgium don’t edge it in terms of talent, I’m just saying the US could have won. And it’s my belief that Trump’s intervention significantly reduced those chances by undoing the motivational theme that Poch had been emphasising through the tournament.
Bishop
Paul Walsh
Belgium don't edge it in terms of talent, they are levels above them, multiple levels. Please actually look at the two staring 11s and their squads, that is not a serious take.
The US could be as dialed in and filled with as much confidence as they want. It would have taken Belgium to perform poorly (very possible) for the US to beat them. Period.
Mosquito_Coasting
Mauricio Taricco
I think this generation of Belgian players in underrated because it comes after the golden generation. They still have some decent players.
MartyFunkhouser
Vic Buckingham
Having lived in Canada I would say the issue with "Soccer" is there is not the same trend as there is elsewhere in that "all you need is a ball" and create your own game. Like many of us did in summer holidays, 6 weeks of pure football, all daylight hours, jumpers for goalposts, called in for dinner, clean the d0gsh1t of your trainers and start again tomorrow. Canada like the US as far as I can tell doesn't have the same culture of that, there is no hunger for those formative years of taking an elbow to the face, getting up and going again with your mates over the park, unless its ultra competitive and organises sports they are not anywhere near as interested in it. And with that comes the expense of organised sport.
Football is likely one of the least expensive sports out there, you need a space and a round thing and thats where nearly every professional footballer in British (and others) history started. Thats the important part en masse that other countries trying to catch up miss, that organic nature of it.
If I was to run a marketing campaign to follow up the WC in the US it would be a montage of clips of kids playing in parts and the favellas followed by the text "all you need is a ball"...........and work in collaboration with a sports brand to flood schools especially in deprived areas with free footballs
robp135
Terry Fenwick
100%.
Even if you factor that in to training. Because of the fee, the coaches have to make it look like they are doing more to the parents. That means complex drills. And even…
For 7 year olds ffs.
Do some headers and volleys. Shooting practice. Then a 5 a side match. Simple.
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Luka Modric
Under 12 s are not allowed to head ball, I played with a lot of over 18s who would do anything to avoid heading the ball.
Lost Mango
Didier Zokora
totally ridiculous for 7 year olds but I would say that having coached school teams for the last 15 years there is a massive drop off in terms of game awareness now (I appreciate that this is a sample size limited to the kids who have passed through the school). Kids seem to watch highlights rather than full matches and don't actually have that positional or match awareness that they/we used to. I wasn't the most technically gifted CB or goalkeeper but I made up for some of that by understanding what was likely to happen.
Even worse in rugby, tennis and cricket.
SissokoWasGood (BoL)
Nick Barmby
I’m not sure I agree that the gap is that massive, and I simply think the US could have beaten them. A lot of the US talking heads that don’t usually follow football were throwing out comments like ‘Wow! Are Belgium one of the best teams in the world!?’ and it’s just not the case. The US didn’t get beaten because of inferior quality, they weren’t even mentally in the game. Stupid, schoolboy errors.
Robinson, Dest, Mckennie, Adams, Pulisic, Balogun, Reyna. They are good players. And Poch has made a career of building a *team* that helps every player play beyond their station.
Bishop
Paul Walsh
Those are ok players, Belgium actually have some very good players. Then the rest of the US team is championship quality. The gulf large my friend, very large.
You know they played each other earlier this year and the US lost 5-2 at home. You've got wrapped up and carried away both with the Poch aura and the WC hype. Yes Belgium are losers who won't actually do it when it matters, but the US isn't a team they to do it against. They are mediocre, Poch or no Poch.
thfcsteff
Ricky Villa
The tricks which worked for me when training ages from 9-14 (obviously different 'groups') was to -
1) encourage them to use both feet
2) body shape and approach to both the ball and the game, including always 'scanning'
3) literally cone areas of a modified size pitch to show how to play a ball into space and also how to run to the space and not the ball
4) make sure to show how running off the ball to make space is a huge 'team' thing and to make sure that any goal celebration included kids who made those runs
5) to keep shape and focus during games - mistakes will happen, and if they're happening because you're trying to do the right thing, great, but regardless, never worry about those, however always make sure your shape is good and with that focus i.e. if your teammate goes wandering make sure you cover for them
6) never leave a team-mate without a short-passing option
We'd also warm-up to dance music about 25 mins before (a boom-box) and then 5 mins before they went to play, I'd tell them to lie down on the field, close their eyes and I'd help them 'visualize' the game they were going to play - themost important ingredients being that it was going to be fun, that the ball was their team friend and that they would have fun protecting their team friend and keeping it from the other team!
Finally, I also made it clear to parents that if they came to matches, encouragement was great but any 'touchline coaching' from them would result in me quitting. I told them we were going to work on stuff they would not see the results of for a whole, and I would write a report and explain what was going on after each game. I also told the kids that they were 'safe' from their parents on matchdays and that they should ignore everything they said to them during games other than support and positivity. I also never shouted instructions during games, we had two signs for 'shape' and 'focus', everything else I'd save for HT and training.
It was always a lot of fun, the teams ended up doing really well, and I have been invited to a few high school graduations whch was great.
I find that video about absurd, and observed many people trying to do the same.
Oh and p.s. I made sure I had an assistant who was really good too. One of the worst things you can ever do in youth football is have groups which are too big and kids standing around.
robp135
Terry Fenwick
I was shocked when I got to college in the US at the lack of technique or ability to improvise. As a keeper I was the only player in my team that could pass the ball with both feet. Although my time in Spain was to thank for that. Once I moved up to D1 there were better technical players but most of them were international students. The American coaches will still favour the more athletic, bigger players though.
Bishop
Paul Walsh
I think a bigger problem that is glossed over is they just don't have the culture of going outside and just playing with the ball. That's how we drill technique. The coaching and academy side of things is overstated, the player's core skills already exist before they join an academy. That is what gets them noticed in the first place.
Think back to when you were younger, what did you do before school, during break, at lunch, after school and probably when you got home and again on the weekend. Jumpers for goals posts, the kerb game etc. We all had a ball at our feet and yet despite all those hours of play, easily hitting the 10,000 hours mark we still weren't good enough to make it.
The American model is all about coaching, but the players have already missed the basic skills building steps and by then it's too late. You don't gain good technique from organised coaching at 11+ years old. All the professional players already have it down by that point. Coaching is just about refining and further developing those raw ingredients and giving the players a framework to best utilise the attributes they already possess.
thfcsteff
Ricky Villa
Absolutely and on point.
It is why the immigrant kids are infinitely better with regards to touch and technique, because they generally do this as kids as it is cultural. I agree with regards to 'academies' which seem to be very 'important' to a sub-sect of US patrons in terms of the 'name'. And I think you're largely right.
I will say that for some of the kids who missed obvious technical development in the sense you're talking when it comes to basic control and passing, there are a couple of very simple yet repetitive drills which can really help them. In fact the simplest yet most effective I ever saw came from Paul Scholes. All you need is a wall and a ball. And it's so simple, pass to the right foot, then left, then right, then left from about 8 feet away. Once you've got that pattern, every time you pass to the wall look over your shoulder to the right, then receive/control and pass and look over your left shoulder. He said it helped keep his awareness and peripheral awareness sharp, and it was claimed he would do this drill throughout his career. But yes, in terms of tekkers it's baked in by then and they either have raw tekkers which can be fashioned, or not much at all....which is where a basic understanding of the game can mask an awful lot.
Finally, to your point of potential over-coaching, it is so important to give kids the room to express themselves and have fun when they're younger.