Letter to the Youth Soccer Coaches of America

Happy almost Friday to all the youth soccer coaches of America, and yes let’s add the global youth coaches that dedicate much of their time to teach the game. By using our unique talents, heart felt passion and love of the beautiful game, arguably the greatest team sport in the world is something we feel we must pass onto the next generation of players: soccer, football, fuBball, futbol, futebol, sakka, il calcio, sepak bola, pika nozna, het voetbal, etc, because of its ubiquitous nature and to acknowledge that there are almost as many ways to teach it as their are blades of grass, grains of sand and molecules of dirt and earth on every type of pitch.

A coach who is French, I have met twice and who knows much more than I about the sport, said it best at my first of two in-person CPD’s put on by Major League Soccer (I am paraphrasing here). Every coach knows that teaching soccer is a “laboratory”. In other words, the experiment is part of the ongoing process for both the coach and the player and that never ends, not even at the highest professional levels. In contrast to elite player pathway coaches, I am taking everything I learn at US Soccer- as I climb the ladder-and at the MLS CPD’s and repurposing it all for the grassroots game. Why do I do this? To slowly take down the wall.

A long time ago, I watched (we now call it a podcast interview) a live interview and discussion with a guest on how and why the grassroots game is the most important and critical part of the development process along the player pathway. As a coach in the UK, he was very specific to point out that grassroots coaches are often the best coaches in Europe (as opposed to the US) where they are essentially “non-essential”. Herein lies the rub, the famous Pink Floyd chorus, “all in all, its just another brick in the wall” represents elite soccer in the US. The brick wall is a metaphor for isolation, emotional detachment and past trauma.

We built a brick wall that protects the US elite soccer pathway and what is good is that is finally beginning to change. The light shines more brightly over the grassroots foundation we must stand on, rely on and that our nation requires to reach our fullest elite potential. An unstable foundation is why the USMNT continues to stagnate, it’s why the player pathway on the girl’s side has 8 players out with ACL tears on a single elite team. We allow numerous showcase tournaments for the players, when we still haven’t learned how to enforce a grassroots “environment” focused standard with the thousands of recreational leagues by utilizing our existing national framework. Another fact we coaches know is that grassroots soccer in other countries is often what we call competitive and unfortunately sometimes even elite soccer. The wall still stands, but, coach by coach, we are making changes and taking down the wall brick by brick. Progress has finally enabled us to see over the wall into the future..