U.S. Soccer

So yesterday's post and comments got me to thinking a bit about the state of soccer in America.

Pippa wonders if we should abandon the practice of going straight to college and I think that I have to say that I think the path through college is necessary here - and not just because I'm a proponent of a good education.

What the college system serves as here in the U.S. is a very large extended network of scouts. The country's too big and U.S. Soccer is too small. Basically, we allow the college coaches to scout and recruit talent that U.S. Soccer doesn't have the time or manpower to find.

We're not necessarily talking about the guys that play for Indiana. Everyone knows who they are and that they're good. We're talking about the guys that fly below the radar and that may not even play D1. No one may ever have heard of them, but if they shine at thier level, this network allows us to see new talent.

I'm not saying that this is the ideal situation, but I do feel like it's better than anything U.S. Soccer could come up with themselves. U.S. Soccer doesn't seem to want to put the time, effort or manpower it would take to truly scour this country to find and develop the best natural talent we possess. The Olympic Development Program is spotty at best.

Plus, we're a society more obsessed with high school than club. Club is what you do "in the off-season" You play club in order to stay in shape for high school.

That's backwards and it's keeping us from truly developing the talent we have.

Club teams are select and draw from a huge base. They can, and should be, the elite. They should allow the best players to get the best training from the best coaches and play against others that are at a similar level. High schools are drawing from limited numbers and suffer from having to be fair and balanced. They usually can't afford the best coaches and soccer definitely doesn't take a priority - in scheduling, in fields, in allocation of funds.

Until we rectify this thought process, we will never reach a point where we are developing our pre-teen and teenage players into internationally viable players.