New Region 1 Champions League

[Unregistered]

The bar to creating a better league for players seems pretty low for the ones USCS has set up so far. This is probably a step in the right direction.

The distances travel required, lack of promotion-relegation in these leagues, plus the monotony of playing the same teams every season, year after year, is not a perfect system by any stretch. Seems like this addresses those points. We'll have to see how it goes.

Playing the same teams is universal. Happens all the time all around the country and in other countries and in the world. Why does it matter who plays where? Just find what works for your family and let others do the same.

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If you are NEFC and killing everyone in the NENPL league it isn't very stimulating. They would find better competition in MAPLE.

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This is all so interesting and politically entertaining, but if I like the training that my child is getting on team X but realize that my child is not going to play professionally, make any national team, nor likely play division 1 soccer, does it really matter which league he/she plays in? This, I suspect, would be the case for at least 96% of all youth players. Our club plays in a competitive league at home, and travels to challenging tournaments outside. What difference does it make if they are NEP, MAPLE, EDP, NPL, NEPL, DAP etc etc etc? These different distinctions are likely important to only a few.

.....unless you wish to educate me otherwise.

There are kids that have worked very hard, love the game and want the best opportunity to play at the next level. It can be D1, D2, or D3. There are many opportunities and levels that kids can go on to play in college including club at high levels. They want to play on the elite level clubs that offer the best competition. Training is overrated at certain levels and age groups. There is a difference between good training and coaches that can coach well during games and properly use the talent they have to win games and showcase the strengths of their players.

[Unregistered]

Playing the same teams is universal. Happens all the time all around the country and in other countries and in the world. Why does it matter who plays where? Just find what works for your family and let others do the same.

That's the rub with soccer, in the US. Every person with a satellite dish/cable thinks they now how it should be done, to create a soccer power. In absence of true leadership, vision, and a proven/attainable plan to move in that direction, most will think they have all the answers. Fact is this would be a perfect time for someone to step in and bring everyone together, and start working toward that goal. Sadly though, there is not a single governing body, or individual that would have a consensus. However there are a few clubs in the US, who have figured out how to develop better players in the US system. Why not look to implement one, or a combination of the ideas coming from some of these elite club programs, with proven track records?

[Unregistered]

BTDT, thank you for setting up this thread and your comments so far. The fiction story about your kid who isn't going to play D1 and not knowing anything about the leagues with the invitation to be educated further was genius. Hopefully this thread will ignite and you yet again will be able to get into the nitty-gritty details you are dying to review in case anyone has missed your prior 5000 agenda-dripping seminars.

Wow, you are completely off base with this. He didn't start the thread. You might want to consider looking at the dosage of your meds because your paranoia is peeking through.

[Unregistered]

That's the rub with soccer, in the US. Every person with a satellite dish/cable thinks they now how it should be done, to create a soccer power. In absence of true leadership, vision, and a proven/attainable plan to move in that direction, most will think they have all the answers. Fact is this would be a perfect time for someone to step in and bring everyone together, and start working toward that goal. Sadly though, there is not a single governing body, or individual that would have a consensus. However there are a few clubs in the US, who have figured out how to develop better players in the US system. Why not look to implement one, or a combination of the ideas coming from some of these elite club programs, with proven track records?

Here is a document for you to read and a webpage for you to look at that explains a little how the English have their youth system set up.

http://www.thefa.com/~/media/Files/W...20Girls.pdf%20

http://www.thefa.com/womens-girls-fo...TXmyfFmGJZT.01

If you do a little research you'll find out that most of the European countries actually have something very similar because it was all patterned by FIFA.

One of the interesting things that I read in that document was that at the younger ages one of the first things they first teach kids (8-11) how to practice and then teach them (10-14) how to practice to improve. They don't start getting crazy with competition until 13 and don't focus on winning until the high school ages. Take a look at their Elite Performance Camps (EPC's) which they use to pull out the players identified to have international "potential".

Another interesting point is how regionalized they keep everything. England is not all that big to begin with and they keep things very localized almost all the way up to the high school years. Juxtapose that to U13-14 teams travelling all over the country.

[Unregistered]

Here is a document for you to read and a webpage for you to look at that explains a little how the English have their youth system set up.

http://www.thefa.com/~/media/Files/W...20Girls.pdf%20

http://www.thefa.com/womens-girls-fo...TXmyfFmGJZT.01

If you do a little research you'll find out that most of the European countries actually have something very similar because it was all patterned by FIFA.

One of the interesting things that I read in that document was that at the younger ages one of the first things they first teach kids (8-11) how to practice and then teach them (10-14) how to practice to improve. They don't start getting crazy with competition until 13 and don't focus on winning until the high school ages. Take a look at their Elite Performance Camps (EPC's) which they use to pull out the players identified to have international "potential".

Another interesting point is how regionalized they keep everything. England is not all that big to begin with and they keep things very localized almost all the way up to the high school years. Juxtapose that to U13-14 teams travelling all over the country.

England as a model? Is this a joke?

[Unregistered]

One of the problems created by all of this inter-entity squabbling is there is no real pathway for individual players to advance up through. Kids get locked onto teams that are defined based upon yearly age limits. In most of these other places they train the kids in big pools that often cross over multiple of our age groups and then start segregating the players based upon talent.

[Unregistered]

Wow, you are completely off base with this. He didn't start the thread. You might want to consider looking at the dosage of your meds because your paranoia is peeking through.

You are gonna need better head fakes than this. Lemme guess. BTDT hasn't posted in months.

[Unregistered]

England as a model? Is this a joke?

If you start doing a little research you'll find that the German development system is wildly being applauded as the best in the world. Germany is not set up all that much different from England because they are both following philosophies set by FIFA. Hard to make the point unless you read German though. If anything the German's are just more rigid in their approach to development. The English seem to have a little more of a market based philosophy and have a little more freedom of choice than the Germans which makes them a little closer to the way the US operates.

[Unregistered]

England as a model? Is this a joke?

It is always remarkable just how negative some people on this forum continually are. Clearly they are locked into the status quo so any information by necessity has to be bad information. Heaven forbid we look at the way other countries do things so we don't replicate their mistakes.

[Unregistered]

It is always remarkable just how negative some people on this forum continually are. Clearly they are locked into the status quo so any information by necessity has to be bad information. Heaven forbid we look at the way other countries do things so we don't replicate their mistakes.

You missed the point. Germany, Spain, Netherlands of course. England? Are you ok????

[Unregistered]

You missed the point. Germany, Spain, Netherlands of course. England? Are you ok????

They are all more or less following the same sort of philosophies espoused by FIFA and the youth structures are not all that different. I simply used the English documents because I don't read the other languages well enough to ferret out the same information. Here is much the same sort of document from FIFA.

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/foot...devprogr_e.pdf

[Unregistered]

Here is a document for you to read and a webpage for you to look at that explains a little how the English have their youth system set up.

http://www.thefa.com/~/media/Files/W...20Girls.pdf%20

http://www.thefa.com/womens-girls-fo...TXmyfFmGJZT.01

If you do a little research you'll find out that most of the European countries actually have something very similar because it was all patterned by FIFA.

One of the interesting things that I read in that document was that at the younger ages one of the first things they first teach kids (8-11) how to practice and then teach them (10-14) how to practice to improve. They don't start getting crazy with competition until 13 and don't focus on winning until the high school ages. Take a look at their Elite Performance Camps (EPC's) which they use to pull out the players identified to have international "potential".

Another interesting point is how regionalized they keep everything. England is not all that big to begin with and they keep things very localized almost all the way up to the high school years. Juxtapose that to U13-14 teams travelling all over the country.

without a massive overhaul of the US system of youth sports, it is unlikely that the US will ever have a replica system of these other countries. First, these countries have clubs that are regionalized and incorportate multiple towns. Second, only the US is obsessed with the high school sports system whose teams are typically coached by mediocre, at best, coaches. The spread of talent and dilution of player pools in the US, in part, prevents this country from ever building a system that will challenge the worlds best teams.

That being said, I fully support the high school system as it offers kids something far more than just playing a sport. My kid has played DAP (no longer) and two different club sports. He also plays on his high school teams. For him it has been a thrill playing for his high school.

I do, however, recognize that in the spirit of building world competing teams, our current system is not the best. I do think that the DAP comes closest to being that system.

[Unregistered]

My question is where is the funding that FIFA is giving the US going? If they are supposedly doubling the financial support where is it showing up?