What is the Future for Canada’s Women’s Teams?

[Richard]

quote:Originally posted by soccerhero

The flipside......all the money in the world would not have helped EP implement and run a successful program. In his case you are not capable of doing what you dont know.

No money and a hapless coach is two strikes against instead of just one. It also reminds me of another senior national program we have right now.

[CoachRich]

quote:Originally posted by Richard

Matters little who the new coach is, the CSA is budgetting to spend just $1,095,00 on the senior WNT in 2009 and that's contingent upon getting the extra $5 player registration tax they're currently begging from the provinces. This is insufficint to run any kind of competitive program.

Most of the Seniors $ comes from the SC in revenues as that is what the team brings in based on their performance. This was the rub that the team was talking about last season where they get very little from the CSA.

Yep, pretty poor budget compared to the US where this last season the players were making $80K US before appearance fees.

[Vic]

Think we can get something like this for a million?

Selected outtakes from:

http://www.ussoccer.com/articles/viewArticle.jsp_9535489.html

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U.S. Under-17 Men’s National Team head coach Wilmer Cabrera and his staff have named 40 players to the 2008 fall semester of the U.S. Soccer Residency Program in Bradenton, Fla. All of the players were born in 1992, 1993 and 1994, and are eligible to compete in the 2009 FIFA Under-17 World Cup.

Of the 23 returning players, seven are beginning their second semester in Bradenton, including the youngest on the roster in Alfred Koroma, while 15 are in their third semester.

The U.S. players live on campus at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and train in the morning under the guidance of Cabrera and assistant coaches Paul Caffrey, Paul Grafer and Keith Fulk, who was hired before the start of the semester as the team’s third assistant. In the afternoon, the players attend classes at nearby Bradenton Preparatory Academy. While in the full-time residency program, the U.S. not only trains daily under Cabrera, but also has access to the IMG Academy’s spacious facilities. The team regularly uses IMG’s state-of-the-art strength-training facilities, as well as some of the nation’s best sports psychologists that work at the Academy. The IMG Academy includes top-of-the-line soccer equipment, three Bermuda grass fields, an indoor dome with artificial turf, two swimming pools, newly renovated student housing and dining facilities.

Since its inception in 1999, nearly 200 players have been through the full-time Residency Program, many of whom have moved on to Major League Soccer, or professional leagues in Europe. Fifteen players have also registered at least one cap with the full MNT: Bobby Convey, Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley, Jonathan Spector, Oguchi Onyewu, Eddie Johnson, Eddie Gaven, Santino Quaranta, Chad Marshall, Heath Pearce, Justin Mapp, Freddy Adu and Michael Bradley.

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The small percentage of players who have come out of this Academy to be great players were destined for it anyway. Adu was offered six figures at 10, Donovan signed with Leverkusen before going to IMG, Beasely was a U17 World Cup star before going, etc.

No doubt a great program and a good experience for a player, but the results don't justify the cost yet (money and human). Perhaps they were disorganized to start and have improved over time, but that take a few years to find out.

The only place we are going to find facilities like this across the country is in the universities/colleges.

[terpfan68]

Would the experience at Bradenton be the American equivalent of the training that Major Professional european teams provide for their youth squads? The only difference is that in England alone you would have over 40 clubs doing the same development with their youth players. That would be a lot more players than Bradenton puts through, and I am sure you would find more "gold nuggets". After all, how many "new" players crack a national team each year?