New plans for US youth soccer - Wellness to World Cup - US style????

[DJones]

Be prepared for some more change coming out of the US.

How will this affect Canadian Youth Soccer?

While the Americans continually re-re-re-re-invent the American wheel of player development, Canadian youth soccer continues to trudge along failure after failure with little to no change.

http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ap-ussoccer-reyna

Claudio Reyna, newly hired US soccer youth technical director, talked before the USMNT game vs Czech Republic tonight.

He stressed that a nationwide plan for developing talent would eventually boost U.S. fortunes throughout the sport, from youth teams through high school, college and the pros.

It appears that USSF will release its curriculum later this summer.

It will concentrate on three levels: Zone 1 (under-6 to under-12), Zone 2 (12 to 18) and Zone 3 (elite players, including colleges and professionals).

It will be interesting to see how close it is to the Canadian "Wellness to World Cup" - if at all!

Sounds like changes to the USSDA is on the horizon and could be for Super Y League.

Super Y league will be changing in BC next season. Word on the street is that the Provincial Program will cease and the players will play in a BC Y League instead operated by BC Soccer and the Whitecaps. Not everyone is in agreement although most clubs will be ecstatic with the dissolving of the BC Program in the present form.

Will other provinces follow suit? Should they?

[Macksam]

Americans b*tch and complain just as much as we do with regards to their development system. I won't hold my breath on what kind of good ideas the USSF has.

[Trillium]

Americans b*tch and complain just as much as we do with regards to their development system. I won't hold my breath on what kind of good ideas the USSF has.

US in the world cup.. Canada not.l

Clearly their system is working they are succeeding.

So to say you do not think they are on the right track is ... well not bourne out by the success they have had.

Benchmarking a program requires you be honest.. and ask what was the goal, for a men's national team its to qualify for World Cup

the U.S. now does that consistently, we dont.

[Macksam]

US in the world cup.. Canada not.l

Clearly their system is working they are succeeding.

So to say you do not think they are on the right track is ... well not bourne out by the success they have had.

Benchmarking a program requires you be honest.. and ask what was the goal, for a men's national team its to qualify for World Cup

the U.S. now does that consistently, we dont.

That's mostly from the fact they have had a professional league for the last 16 years where their college players could go to. If the CSL survived, we would be in a similar position. Besides a few guys from the Brandenton academy, their development relies on the NCAA churning out numerous journeymen in the hopes that some of them become half-way decent.

[Guest Ed]

That's VERY optimistic. The fact is that the CSL went under a long time ago and the USA has made every World Cup from 90 onward, well before the MLS was even an idea. It comes down to two things:

1. Everybody else has gotten better at developing national team players (god, in the 80's, parts of CA were a war zone and in many countries surviving, no sport, was a going concern).

2. We are developing LESS players thanks to the mindset of our provincial/national elite developers. The clown who couldn't find the reasons to pick Klukowski, de Guzman AND ********** when (arguably the top 3 pro soccer players Canada has developed in the last 15 years) to a youth team being a prime example of that.

Clever buggers have someone's name coming up as an obscenity. Clue: -------> Conceived in Bolton.

[Macksam]

That's VERY optimistic. The fact is that the CSL went under a long time ago and the USA has made every World Cup from 90 onward, well before the MLS was even an idea. It comes down to two things:

1) No it's not, and more importantly, why are you calling a "what if" scenerio optimistic?

2) Canada lost out on away goals in the pre-lims for the 1989 Concacaf Championship, which determined qualification at the time, so I wouldn't put any emphasis on who qualified for the 1990 World Cup considering we only played two games towards qualification.

3) USA were the hosts in 1994 while Canada finished second in qualifying, losing to Australia on penalties. Had there been 32 teams in 1994, we would've went through.

4) Back to the CSL, you or I can't really say what it would look like today had it survived, but 90% of our downward spiral has to do with it going belly up. Problems 1 and 2 that you point out would not have existed over that time if the CSL still survived considering a natural progression to being a pro would've existed for kids. We have a crappy, underfunded development system now because it went under. Only now are we picking up the pieces since professional soccer is slowy returning in Canada.

Don't get me wrong, I think what Reyna says about starting their players off young is the right way to go. However, whether the execution of this strategy works is another thing.