Are club coaches taking their message too far on social media?

[Unregistered]

No one really knows? Maybe BTDT is who people claim he is, maybe not.

If it is him, whose fault is that?

Anyone else on here know who anybody else is?.............

Nope.

Exactly. A few seem to forget that BTDT very voluntarily and quite narcissistically made himself known and still does when in his perceived interest. And the full data will shed quite a bit of light on the magnitude of assaults over time (which I'm sure are beyond what any of us imagine).

[Unregistered]

Exactly. A few seem to forget that BTDT very voluntarily and quite narcissistically made himself known and still does when in his perceived interest. And the full data will shed quite a bit of light on the magnitude of assaults over time (which I'm sure are beyond what any of us imagine).

Misinformation here. That was the norm on the old Touchline, which in essence is now Talking-Soccer. The old Touchline was started by MAPLE for the coaches and club administrators. People knew each other quite well on it. One of the reasons why MAPLE shut down the Touchline and force it to migrate here is because the person running it was letting it go towards the cesspool that Talking-Soccer has become. BTDT was just one of the die hards that kept signing in after it became obvious the trolls were taking over the forum. He wasn't the only die hard and being a die hard still doesn't somehow justify the harassment that is happening on this forum.

[Unregistered]

Misinformation here. That was the norm on the old Touchline, which in essence is now Talking-Soccer. The old Touchline was started by MAPLE for the coaches and club administrators. People knew each other quite well on it. One of the reasons why MAPLE shut down the Touchline and force it to migrate here is because the person running it was letting it go towards the cesspool that Talking-Soccer has become. BTDT was just one of the die hards that kept signing in after it became obvious the trolls were taking over the forum. He wasn't the only die hard and being a die hard still doesn't somehow justify the harassment that is happening on this forum.

No misinformation at all. BTDT has continued to identify himself, sometimes overtly and at other times barely indirectly. He by his own admission several years ago turned TS into his pet project and has controlled the site, it's messages, and the attacks since then. Other than initiating totally unrelated threads about college and conferences, P has responded to BTDT's variety of maneuvers and is not the initiator, and for that has been called every name in the book. Let's not forget that, at BTDT's direct challenge, P was the one who was signing in for a long period of time.

[Unregistered]

Again, who cares? tired of reading the same thing over and over. I go in under a topic expecting to see a discussion, and it is all P and BTDT again.

[Unregistered]

Again, who cares? tired of reading the same thing over and over. I go in under a topic expecting to see a discussion, and it is all P and BTDT again.

No, here is where you are wrong, it is only P and his continual harassment of BTDT. That is a one sided thing. There isn't any evidence that proves BTDT is actually here at all. The only reason it continues is because some are now taunting P to get a rise out of him. The reason P is being taunted is there is a hope that he will meltdown so bad that they lock him up in either jail or a psych ward. The reason for that hope is it is apparent that there is just no way around him because no matter what the topic it always changes and gets focused on BTDT and that is ruining this site for the rest of us. P is treading on very thin legal ice and runs the risk of not only himself landing in jail but the owners and moderators of the site as well.

[Unregistered]

Ok enough already, can we forget about these few individuals and get back to soccer. Go find a different forum to hate each other! You infiltrate every topic and I'm sure most everyone has had more then enough!

[Unregistered]

Ok enough already, can we forget about these few individuals and get back to soccer. Go find a different forum to hate each other! You infiltrate every topic and I'm sure most everyone has had more then enough!

OK. What exactly do YOU want to say about clubs and their use of social media?

[Unregistered]

No, here is where you are wrong, it is only P and his continual harassment of BTDT. That is a one sided thing. There isn't any evidence that proves BTDT is actually here at all. The only reason it continues is because some are now taunting P to get a rise out of him. The reason P is being taunted is there is a hope that he will meltdown so bad that they lock him up in either jail or a psych ward. The reason for that hope is it is apparent that there is just no way around him because no matter what the topic it always changes and gets focused on BTDT and that is ruining this site for the rest of us. P is treading on very thin legal ice and runs the risk of not only himself landing in jail but the owners and moderators of the site as well.

If P doesn't know it's you BTDT then how do you know it's him? Again, let's get this done and fully reveal the site to everyone. How many "Thanks Perspective" posts do you think we might find. How about us getting proof of who wrote the "Suzie" posts and thousands of other attack and defamation posts. If there is some legal action it's not like one side is going to keep their posts protected from discovery. And the identification of posts (or attempts) has been going on for years ("Thanks Pat, thanks Fred, thanks JD, thanks onthree," etc, etc).

[Unregistered]

I actually have nothing against NEFC. I just think they operate the same as the others - e.g. cater to the top teams and offer more to their best players, etc. - and a lot of what is written here does not acknowledge that. It's a business. Any business that does not promote and fully back their best product is destined to fail. All of the clubs should be transparent of that fact, but given the amount of money involved it is understandable why they are not. Is there a Varsity squad anywhere that is not treated better than the JV and Freshman teams? Doubtful.

On the other hand, I do think that the Stars anti-HS stance is a very questionable tactic though (and it absolutely exists and has for years). I understand the concept fully for the boys side as elite males do have an opportunity to make a living off going pro. Aside from NT females, meaning the real NT not the younger teams, no one in women's pro soccer is making a living off it. Call me old school, but I do think that the social aspect of playing in HS is very important on the girls side. And given the influence of JD, I firmly think he is trying to push this concept throughout the ECNL. If the ECNL were to go to a full year schedule, we will know that he was successful.

There are philosophical and personality differences between all clubs. The divide between the Stars and NEFC is a heck of a lot bigger than you seem to think and I think that is exactly the reason we have so much back and forth between them. They are both hyper competitive clubs who approach things VERY differently. I personally think that one of the big reasons for all rancor is the Stars constituency really doesn't fully appreciate just how MUCH different the approaches are. Half the arguments on this forum come down to the Stars saying things are black and NEFC firing back adamantly saying NO, they are white. The reality is neither are wrong, they just represent different opinions on how to get to the same place.

Here is the real issue with the high school situation and how the clubs deal with it actually illustrates the differences between them. What happens during the high school years in every club across America is the player intensity level almost evaporates. There are a lot of perfectly valid reasons for why this happens but in a nut shell high school kids just have too much on their plate to be able to just concentrate on soccer.

This begets two real problems in the club soccer world. The players start to stall their development which also stalls the development of the teams. It also starts to hurt the club's reputation because the kids then aren't ready to move on to college because they haven't worked hard enough to prepare for it. Both clubs are clearly dealing with the same issue.

The Stars are addressing the problem by basically trying to put the kids into a more controlled environment. NEFC is trying to address the problem by creating it's IDP program which is a just a little more voluntary approach. The contrast should be apparent. One goes for tight control, the other goes for a more voluntary approach.

The truly interesting thing is they are both having the same problems with these efforts, the kid's still just are not turning out to participate and so neither have actually found the solution yet. My bet is that they both know it at this point.

I actually give both clubs a lot of credit for trying to address the problem. It IS a problem and it really DOES need to solved. I personally think the Stars approach has less odds of being successful simply because they have to fight a whole lot cultural and logistical issues just to set things up so the players might show up. I think that even if they are successful in convincing the kids to quit their high school team they are going see what NEFC is seeing, that the players are still going to skip the practices because of school work or the myriad of other conflicts that a typical high school kid has. That said, I can see fully the logic behind what they are doing and absolutely concur that it is a valid approach.

In the end the "high school" issue is just a smoke screen really and I think that this forum could actually be quite helpful in solving the actual problem by simply educating the parents to the fact that what their high school aged kid is doing for soccer just isn't enough if their kid really does want to be a high level soccer player that goes on to actually play in college.

Stands to reason the club is at least as interested (if not more) in improving the team's results than in improving the average individual player's results. I say average, because if you have one or two real standouts on your hands, higher quality year round training has the potential to turn those into a NT prospects, which can be worth their weight in marketing gold for a club.

The local ECNL and NPL clubs understand what it takes to compete successfully at national level events, such as at the ECNL Championships or NPL Finals, and probably rightly are perceiving that it takes more than a partial year commitment to the club environment if you hope to have success in those forums, against the big CA and mid-West clubs. Locally, the Stars and NEFC have gotten out in front of the Breakers when it comes to this, and to the extent the Stars or NEFC are successful with one or the other of their approaches, the Breakers will be faced with the decision to either follow, or stick to their guns and essentially concede that space to their local ECNL rival, Stars.

The other poster pointed out the problem with NEFC's more voluntary approach to elite training during the HS season, which is when push comes to shove, the kids are tired from the pace of HS while simultaneously addressing other priorities like homework, part time jobs and socializing.

In my mind, the real solution for the very high level player with NT or professional ambitions is the Academy model -- in the US this means outfits like IMG -- but in Europe there are all the well known youth academies (many of which are associated with the professional-level club teams in EPL, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga, etc.) where academics clearly take a back seat to soccer development. That is still a fringe model in the US, however, as there is a longer tradition of putting academics ahead of athletics here, followed by at least some college, even for kids who aren't all that academically inclined.

I don't know what he solution is, but I do know US Soccer seems to be trying to figure it out.

I think one of the huge misconceptions about Taking-Soccer is that everything is always targeted externally and simply for the purposes of marketing the individual clubs. That is not always the case though. I think we saw an example of TS being used to market internal causes in last springs "broken landscape" discussion. That was really NEFC trying to work through many of these issues. Unfortunately that discussion got shouted down because it didn't line up with how certain constituencies saw things. No bid deal but that did illustrate another example of how the clubs approach things differently.

This high school soccer question is a much bigger issue than just one league or another. It really comes down to the philosophical approaches to developing soccer players and how the pieces fit tighter to support their development. I'm not optimistic that in this part of the country you are going to get anything remotely close to a true academy feel simply because there is just too much competition for the players to choose from. Let's face it that is why we have these massive club battles here on TS, they are all trying to sell roster spots. I just don't know how a club will be successful trying to create a true European type academy in a country were the model is pay to play and in a region with an entrepreneurial club structure. I personally think that you have to go in the opposite direction and go with a more libertarian approach (open leagues, promo/relegation etc) that will allow the best and brightest to bubble up. The problem that with the US Club Soccer leagues is they basically stifle that bubbling up process because there is no place else for the players to bubble to once they have conquered that ECNL/NPL level.

The one other thing I will say about the high school question is that motivation issue is actually pretty important. The kids are being asked to give up an awful lot and if the motivation really is just about developing winning club teams, you do have to question it. In the grand scheme of things virtually no one actually remembers a club team once they have aged out. Half the time you can't even find out what a team did to be remembered for never mind who was on the team. That is just very different from what high school sports are really about. A championship high school team often is remembered for decades and the standouts minor celebrities in the community. I'm sorry but that's an awful lot to give up just to basically enhance the brand name of the club.

Someone is calling for discussion. This thread is about the use of social media and how it is being used to spread club messages. When you strip out all of the hate filled venom this was the last civil discussion focused on that topic. Have at it.

[Unregistered]

Someone is calling for discussion. This thread is about the use of social media and how it is being used to spread club messages. When you strip out all of the hate filled venom this was the last civil discussion focused on that topic. Have at it.

What you packaged has nothing to do with social media. It is all about the high school question and your analysis of what the two clubs are doing about players slacking off. Have at it.

[Unregistered]

What you packaged has nothing to do with social media. It is all about the high school question and your analysis of what the two clubs are doing about players slacking off. Have at it.

Sorry, ran into the character count limit. The discussion actually was more directly related but I had to cut out some of posts that set up that relationship in order to fit.

The relationship between the use of social media and high school soccer was established in earlier posts that showed the Stars coaches bashing it. No sense rehashing the obvious that social media is being used to further the different clubs messages. This part of the discussion had gotten beyond that point and they were talking about the differences in the club personalities and how they were being expressed in their approaches to similar problems.

[Unregistered]

What you packaged has nothing to do with social media. It is all about the high school question and your analysis of what the two clubs are doing about players slacking off. Have at it.

You were given an option to talk about a different topic but it is obvious you are just focused on bringing all the discussion back to one specific topic. That is your agenda and yet you seem to have a problem with clubs having agenda's of their own. Why is it ok for you to use social media to advance your agenda but it is not ok for them? If you want to insist on bringing this all down to a personal level, why is it you can complain incessantly about btdt and by extension attack NEFC but it isn't ok for him (anyone else) to complain about you and complain about the Stars? Why do you feel you have the right to monopolize the discussion here like you do?