Originally Posted by GloryDayz
Broken? I see so many kids in competitive youth sports, soccer with a huge level of participation, I'm not sure the argument that the system itself is what's causing us to not produce the world's best players.
What I might argue is that our overall system with raising kids to experience as much as they can and find their passion, which I agree with, is that we do our best to make sure our kids diversify (to some degree) growing up and know few limits. I'm not arguing that our kids aren't becoming one-sport kids, many are (my younger kid only plays hockey as a competitive sport now), but we still, generally, ask our kids to try anything and everything that looks interesting, the find their passion.
I've coached both my sons in football, baseball, wrestling, and hockey (only one of them in hockey) in the competitive sports area. They've also become very-experienced SCUBA divers, and they play 10-20 rounds of golf a year as non-competitive life-long sports. Add Scouting, playing a musical instrument, and being deeply involved in school (both have chosen band and Robotics to immerse themselves in) as the only things they "must" do to the list and they've experienced a lot, including trying youth soccer and basketball too.
While casa-'de-GloryDayz might be bit of an exception, I really don't think it is. I think most of us "generally" nudge our kids to to try as many things as possible, find their passion, then peruse vigorously. I think we just have a lot more things for kids to try.
Now back to my thoughts on why the soccer stock from USA-born stock might not be up to winning (getting into!!) the FIFA WC and I use my European life experience for how I connect the dots. My family spent 6 years in Rome, IT in the 70's living on the economy (in town, not on a base - my parents hated living on bases!), and while I loved Italy and the whole experience, and anybody can argue that swimming, volleyball, archery, and fencing were options as sports for Italian kids, 99% of their sports lives revolve around soccer. On top of that, like some USA youth and a basket ball, if the Italian kids weren't in class, sleeping, pooping, or in church, they prolly had a soccer ball on their person. I think that's a very common model around the non-USA world, and it helps to produce more experienced stock.
It's both a numbers and a "gained experience" deal IMO. I'd ask this, how many hours of soccer, on average, compared to prospects in other countries, do American soccer players have by the time they hit the age of 22? It may not be 10:1, but if it's 2:1, or even 1.5:1, that's still huge.
And I like our system better.
Sorry for the book...
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