Domenic Mobilio is still remembered very fondly

 

Domenic Mobilio has just won a Twitter poll I put together to determine the best male Canadian soccer player ever. It was one of those COVID-19 ‘stuck at  home’ kind of things that everyone seems to be doing. It got reasonable traction and ended up being quite fun when it took on a life of its own at times.

Domo passed away in 2004 after suffering a massive heart attack while driving home from watching a local men’s game. It shook the soccer community deeply. There are really three players that would come to mind if you asked Vancouverites who they associate with the game in this city: Bob Lenarduzzi, Carl Valentine and Domenic Mobilio. Bob and Carl, being older, had the opportunity to earn their fame through playing at the 1986 World Cup and for years in the NASL. Meanwhile Domo played in an era where the NASL and Canada in a World Cup were fading memories. He plied his trade in the CSL and then, when that collapsed, in the A League. With 14 seasons there, Domo really is the patron saint of Swangard Stadium.

As Rob Reed, a fantastic striker himself, who I played with in the CSL with the Edmonton Brickmen and one season at UBC, said on Twitter yesterday…

This was so true. Centrebacks and strikers see the qualities of natural strikers more than others. Strikers recognize it inherently, if they’re good strikers, because they know the value of that quick shoulder drop, of finding the blind spot off a defender’s shoulder and sitting in it at the right moment, of not going into a space too early. They know and respect that in another striker. Centrebacks know it and hate them for it because it makes their lives more difficult. As a centreback you want a predictable striker, not one who creates doubt in your mind and forces you to adjust, shout instructions and focus disproportionately on them when they don’t have the ball.

With 14 seasons there, Domo really is the patron saint of Swangard Stadium.

One of the replies on Twitter last night during the poll linked to a goal Domo scored in World Cup qualifying at Swangard. To most it just looks like a fortuitous goal that he just kicked as hard as he could from a bad angle. It’s much, much more than that.

Here’s the clip

 

At around 20 seconds into the clip the ball goes to Mike Sweeney, who also did well in the poll. Domo looks across the line to ensure he is onside and can stay in behind the defender. He also sees there is no covering defender and he is essentially 1v1 with his defender He pulls him wider and gives him a shove to create some space as he shows for the ball. Not only has he created a 1v1 and given Sweeney an option to play to him, he has made a much bigger space for Bunbury to use centrally.

Sweeney opts to play into the space for Bunbury. Most strikers at this point are pissed off they didn’t get the ball themselves and either tune out or just look and hope that Bunbury does something with the ball. If you look carefully, before the ball has even gone past him and into the box, Domo is already preparing for the next phase of play. He has peeled off, spotted the ball, figured out the space he has to work with and is calculating the time he has and how that will affect that space.

Honestly, I’m not making a meal of this. This is what excellent strikers do and why they end up scoring exactly the sort of goal that Domo is about to score.

As the ball goes to Bunbury, the space contracts as defenders scramble to re-organize and deal with the ball that has found Alex deep in their box. Domo has found a small space in case Alex passes to him. It’s a space that still allows an angle for him to shoot on goal. As great a player and as great a career as Alex had, that was a shocking first touch he took there! It’s not a pass to Domo but a sudden ricochet that gives Domo half a second to calibrate, get his feet set, see/sense where the keeper is and decide between slotting near post, going between his legs or going hard to the far post. He chooses correctly, a trademark, and scores.

I’m getting texts and DM’s as I write this about the poll and Domo. An interesting one was from someone (won’t say names since he chose not to put it directly on Twitter) who played with and against Domo who recalled a high school game where he and a teammate who also had some youth international experience combined for five goals against Templeton, Domo’s school. Should’ve been an easy win for a high school team with two players in a national team pool. Domo calmly notched five. Game ended 5-5.

That’s what he did. He scored goals. He developed a connaisseur’s nose for where to be and when to get there and coupled it with the calmness of Hannibal Lecter when dispatching the ball to where it had it go.

If you have the good fortune to play the game for a long time your mind tends to catalogue two things. Success and laughs. Playing at a high level is a fantastic opportunity. It’s also physically and mentally challenging and can take you from euphoria to anger to heartbreak in 90 minutes. You need some respite from that and it usually comes in the form of being with people who can both relate to what it’s like and have a laugh about it with teammates.

This is where Steve MacDonald, aka Stevie Mac or Smack, comes in.

Most teams have a few guys who can make you laugh. Some are great at it. Often there’s a few that can riff off of each other in the dressing room and get everyone laughing for a few minutes. I’ve had that on several teams whether it was in dressing rooms, travelling on buses or planes, or having beers in hotels or bars. It’s an essential part of the experience.

Domo and Stevie Mac  were inseparable. They could each light up a room and hold court on their own with stories and banter but when you put them together…they could have sold tickets. One of my best road trip memories with the 86ers (besides Sammy Saundh impressively talking Halifax police into releasing Ivor out of the paddy wagon they’d thrown him into after a disagreement in a night club…) was Domo telling us about his time at Dundee and then Stevie coming in and giving his version of how Domo convinced him to come join him there. The details aren’t important but there were probably six or seven of us in the hotel room listening to this for twenty minutes as they hammered each other about that fiasco. I remember it clearly. On the other hand, I scored three goals for the 86ers but I only remember one.

So for his ability, Domo deserves to win this poll. He was that good. For the type of teammate he was and the sense of humour he had, I’m glad he won it.

I just want to touch on one other thing that emerged from this poll.

The first round of the poll saw Mark Rogers  go up against Alphonso Davies. There had already been a couple of ‘this is dumb, just give the title to Phonzie now’ tweets but Wycombe Wanderers were having none of that. With one tweet, this happened…

Most of these polls, 127 in all I believe, had 90-120 votes but some exploded. This one had the most votes of any and was neck and neck down to the last half hour. Incredulous Davies fans were not happy. Mark and I thought it was hilarious. We spoke on the phone soon after he won. “I’m laughing my ass off. My kid thinks this is great.” So that alone was enough to justify the work in getting the poll up and then getting it across the finish line.

But Mark had something else to say about it. I knew he’d played at Wycombe for several years and been their captain. I didn’t really know anything about the club though. “Wycombe fans remember their players. The club is big on its history and they really appreciate when former players keep in touch with the club.” Rogers had gone back several times and is still held in high regard there. So it just took one tweet to their official account and the re-tweet from them saw the votes pile in over the next 24 hours.

But the most interesting thing Mark said when we spoke was, “People here don’t get the sort of culture that exists at clubs like Wycombe. They stick by their players. They respect and remember them. We don’t have that here and it’s special.” I agreed. We don’t have a truly embedded culture here that stems from a network of professional clubs that all have their own identity. We have a different model for professional sport (franchises) and the distance between cities erodes away support and thus rivalries. Those things all contrive to inhibit, here, the sort of supporter culture that clubs like Wycombe have.

So we don’t have that with our professional clubs. At least not to the degree that other parts of the world do.

But we did have something really special happen in that vein. It just wasn’t from a professional club fan base. It was from Coquitlam Metro-Ford. CMF have long been considered one of the best, if not the best, youth club in our province. They consistently produce very good players, are very well run and have a culture that sees their top players return to coach there. Its an aspirational club with a strong identity.

Domenic Mobilio was the TD of one of the two clubs that was in the process of merging  to form CMF when he tragically passed away in late 2004.

That’s sixteen years ago and CMF still honour his memory with an annual Friendship Jamboree that has run for 13 years. All the t-shirts for those who attend their summer camps have his number 10 on the back.

It is a club with a strong sense of community. More than any other club they got involved in this poll and encouraged their members to vote for players who had a connection to their club. Alfredo Valente and Dale Mitchell coach there. Craig Forrest and Carlo Corazzin played at clubs that merged to form CMF. They all got the support of current CMF members but none more so than Domo.

The poll is a bit of fun for trying times but the response from CMF members was what we need more of in this country. They feel a part of their club. They are proud of its legacy. They weren’t too big or too good to show their support in numbers in a piddly Twitter poll. They had fun with it and it added another layer to the sense of community they already have; to the culture they have built and continue to build. All for someone who never got to actually see the birth of the club.

Domo’s legacy at CMF exists even though there is not a single youth player playing there now who was old enough to play when he passed away.

Sixteen years is a blip for supporters Wycombe (c. 1887) and Rangers (c 1872, bankruptcy aside); another club that mobilized votes massively – Scott Arfield in their case. It is not a blip in BC youth soccer circles where staff and board members come and go and priorities change almost as much. To keep Domenic Mobilio’s memory alive and thriving all this time is impressive and my hat is off to them. So well done Domo and last word goes to Coquitlam Metro-Ford and their machine of a Twitter account 🙂

We really enjoyed this and getting our members involved. Always great to reflect on some of the amazing talent that Canada has produced! Domenic will always be an integral part of our Club and players like him deserve recognition #10!

— Coquitlam Metro-Ford SC (@CMFSC) April 18, 2020

 

 

Messi’s El Clasico goal: so many coaching points

It was spectacular theatre. Thirty seconds left in injury time when the clip starts with Pique receiving the ball three yards off his end line. Eighteen seconds later the ball is in the Real Madrid goal and Barcelona have won the Clasico at the Bernabeu 3-2. How does that happen? This is how…

91’30” : Sergi Roberto plays a pass back to Gerard Pique drawing Mateo Kovacic and James Rodriguez towards the centreback. Pique audaciously lifts a pass beyond both to Sergi Busquets.

91’32” : Both Roberto and Pique are already moving forward to support the ball. Sergio Busquets does what Busquets invariably and flawlessly does. He takes a silky touch to settle the ball, drawing Kovacic back towards as well as pulling Ronaldo forward to him. His second touch breaks the press from Ronaldo and Kovacic and does two things. It is placed in Roberto’s path in such a way that he receives it in stride and so that Luca Modric is tempted to pinch in and intercept it. Roberto gets their first and in four seconds from the time Pique plays the ball, Barcelona have played two passes that have allowed Roberto to break clear of four Real Madrid players.

At this point, context is important. Beyond the score and the time remaining, keep in mind that Real Madrid have lost Sergio Ramos to a red card and did not bring on another defender because they were losing by a goal at the time of the ejection. Having had to replace the injured Bale with Marco Asensio and Casemiro with Kovacic, due to Casemiro being on a yellow and likely just one more foul from a red, Zidane opted to take Karim Benzema off and put Rodriguez on. Real Madrid were essentially playing with three at the back: Dani Carvajal, Nacho Fernandez and Marcelo. As Kovacic had pushed up, Toni Kroos had dropped off.

91’35” : If you freeze the video at 91’34” you see Marcelo move over to try to tackle Roberto. You also see Asensio on the far side. Real Madrid have six of their nine outfield players in the attacking third with less than thirty seconds left and the game tied when they are down a man. Add in the fact that Messi is on the field and this is unforgivable on their part. It’s about to get worse though. Marcelo can end this madness and preserve the draw by simply fouling Roberto for the price of a yellow card at 91’36’. One tactical foul and Roberto does not charge forward across the halfway line. Real Madrid get goal side before the free kick is taken and the game is done. This does not happen though and Roberto is into the Real Madrid half in what becomes a 6v3 at 91’37”. Note where Pique is and note that you cannot see Ronaldo at all. In fact the next time you see him is at the end of the clip complaining that others should have done more.

91’39” : Barca’s 4-3-3 utilizes width in attack and you see it here from Andre Gomes, Jordi Alba and even Ivan Rakitic to some degree. The ball to Gomes forces Carvajal to go wide and Alba, having made an amazing overlap run pulls him even further. Rakitic maintains width on the right that forces the recovering Modric to pay attention to him. Messi at this point slows as he sees Alba’s run has forced Carvajal, Kroos, and Fernandez to drop deep while Modric drifts back rather than sticking tight to him.

91’45” : If you pause here you can see the combined effect of Alba’s wide penetration and the deep runs by Pique, Suarez and Roberto. They have opened up room at the top of the box for Messi to swoop into. He holds his run until he sees the space will be there and Alba will be able to first time the ball back into it. To top it off, Suarez uses his body perfectly to ensure Fernandez will not be able to get close enough to block Messi’s shot. It’s a crucial piece of the puzzle. As the ball goes in nobody is closer to the Real Madrid goal than Pique. He started the play 18 seconds earlier a few yards from his own goal line.

You can categorize the mistakes made as felonies and misdemeanours. Here’s how I see the crimes stack up:

Real Madrid pressing so many players forward to win the ball back with 30 seconds when they are down a man and do not need to score: FELONY

Modric pinching to try to win the ball off Roberto and failing: MISDEMEANOUR

Marcelo (who had a great game otherwise) not taking Roberto down when he had a chance: FELONY

Ronaldo not chasing back: MISDEMEANOUR

Once it got beyond this point I don’t see much blame for Carvajal, Kroos and Fernandez. They were dealing with a 6v3 that incorporated Messi and Suarez. If they had denied a goal in that situation they would have deserved medals. Barca played it perfectly though and Messi lived up to his reputation as the greatest player ever to score with ten seconds remaining.

Rarely does such a high profile game end in such a spectacular manner and with a passage of play that offers us so many coaching points as coaches. You may find more. If so, feel free to mention them in the comments.

Brazil 2014 – Lots of flights and even more tickets

About 18 months ago I wrote this. While going to the World Cup in Brazil was indeed something I was determined to do, writing that piece was one of those things you do to force the issue. Publicly saying you’re going to do something tends to add more resolve to the effort and drives you forward through doubts and obstacles.

Regardless of whether it was a catalyst that made it happen or not, I’m going. There will be three of us going. Myself, Colin Elmes and Markus F who both Colin and I played with at UBC and Westside FC. What’s really cemented it is the incredible luck we’ve had in getting tickets so far

For me, researching a trip like this is a pleasure. I want it to go right given it’s really a trip of a lifetime for me so I threw myself into the ticketing procedure as well as flight and accommodation details. It’s been pretty cool and we’ve been very lucky in regards to tickets so far.

There’s four aspects to the trip: getting tickets for games, flights to Brazil, accommodation once you’re there and internal travel between host cities. At this point, it’s two down and two to go.

As would be expected the biggest concern around going to a World Cup is your ability to get tickets. There had been an opportunity to get FIFA Hospitality packages about a year ago on a first come, first serve basis. You could get first crack at tickets if you were prepared to plop down a minimum $1900 for three first round games. At the time, when we really thought we’d be having to procure tickets in the secondary market (scalpers) in Brazil, it was tempting to plop the big bucks down in advance knowing at least we had legit tickets in hand and that they would be Category 1 tickets that gave us access to a FIFA Hospitality bar inside the stadium and a separate entrance. Problem was you had to order a minimum of four tickets for each game you wanted and our numbers didn’t match up well with that. We passed on the chance to put tickets for all three of  Spain’s first round games in our pockets for just under $2000. Most of those packages eventually sold out including the one that topped out at something like $1.2 million for private suites for up to around 30 people for all the games that you’d go to if money were no object.

When we passed on the Hospitality packages it was time to focus on the distribution system for the great unwashed. There are five parts to this system. The first two have now finished and, obviously, preceded the actual draw. If you were willing to select games that simply gave you  a fixture date and location along with “B1 v B3” (#1 seed in what will be Group B vs the team drawn from Pot 3 into Group B) you could enter the lottery phase that began in August and ended in October. Each person could request up to four tickets for each of up to seven games and for each one you had to list who would be getting any other tickets on your order and include their passport number. This is FIFA’s attempt to limit the secondary market and reduce scalping. Does it work? Apparently not from what I’ve read online. While your tickets arrive with your name and passport number on them, there’s never been anyone checking ID at the gates (can you imagine the lineups?) so there’s rampant buying, selling and exchanging of tickets from accounts by people who have been to previous World Cups where this has been in place.

The other consideration was that you could not have multiple requests for the same game. If I put in for a game with Colin and Markus on the application and Colin did the same with my name and Markus on the request, it would be thrown out.

So we plotted a strategy that tried to tread the line between seeing top seeded teams and avoiding the highest demand games. Obviously the highest demand games were in the knockout stages but even the first round games in Rio and Sao Paolo were listed as high demand on the ticketing portion of the FIFA website.

With the ability to request tickets to 21 games we focused primarily of first round games in Fortaleza, Rio and Sao Paolo along with the semis and the final. We hoped we’d get 1 or 2 games but knew that even if we got nothing there was still the ‘first come, first serve’ portion of this phase that would follow on about a week after they’d notified all the lottery winners. After that the entire process would roll out again once the draw had been made and now people could ask for tickets knowing who was actually going to be playing. The last phase is essentially a garage sale slated for April for anything that was left.

As the date for notifying lottery winners drew near FIFA put out an email announcing the draw was being delayed for about a week. So a few days later, still in advance of when the draw was supposed to start I was surprised to get a call from VISA saying there’d been some unusual activity of my account and they needed me to verify some transactions.

The first one was “$2100 FIFA, Zurich, Switzerland”. I actually started laughing and interrupted the guy to say, “That one’s good. Let that one through!” It had actually just been an authorization so I had to wait another week while the rest of the lottery was conducted (an audited affair held in Manchester). Turns out I got filled on the first day for four first round games. All Category 1 tickets ($175 each). Colin and Markus called their banks and told them to let anything from FIFA be processed as stories started coming out about banks declining authorization requests thinking it was a scam. It looked like we were only (!) going to get those four games until the last day when Markus got filled for one game in Belo Horizonte. We were grinning for days, boring anyone who’d listen about how we’d ended up with tickets for five games; three in Fortaleza, one in Salvador and one in Belo Horizonte.

FIFA then put everyone on notice that a small number of tickets from this allotment were still available and the first come, first serve (FCFS) portion of the phase would start at 9am Brasilia time on November 11. That’s 3am PST. Again, we plotted and with very little info as to how a global FCFS would look, came up with an approach and targeted games that made sense for what we wanted and what we already had.

3am came and we checked in with each other by text. Well, two of us did. Colin was noticeably quiet I recall. Upon logging in to your FIFA account at 3am you were greeted with a screen that said you were in a “virtual queue” and an alarm would go off to notify you if you had been accepted into the ticketing area. I half thought this was FIFA covering up the fact that their servers had crashed under the demand. I was looking at a full day of coaching at a Remembrance Day tournament followed by a club Board meeting in the evening so I was really only prepared to wait 15-20 minutes. Five minutes later though my computer made a funny ‘alert’ noise and I was in. “I’m in!” I texted. “Windup” was the disbelieving reply. It was akin to waiting outside a store in the middle of the night and being let in not knowing if there’s anything on the shelves and if what there is on the shelves is any use to you. A quick scroll through the menu though and it was apparent there was lots of worthwhile games left. What they didn’t tell you was that as soon as you selected any game and put it in your ‘shopping cart’, a countdown started that gave you ten minutes to complete the transaction. Now I was on a clock and had to move. I grabbed two games and went to check out fearing that if I went for my seventh and last game I’d time out and may get kicked out the store. I thought I’d picked a 2nd round game and a quarter final, both in Brasilia. I’m actually all but positive that’s what I had as they were clearly labelled. It was only days later I realized that I’d been billed for the second round game but only a Brasilia first round game. No sign of the quarter final. I’ve no idea if I completely misread the screen or if it was coded wrong and billed me for the first round game while displaying a quarter final. Their site was clearly under massive strain. My first attempt to pay did not go through (several others reported this among other problems) but in the end I got those two games and it very surprisingly let me stay in the store rather that booting me out and letting someone else in. I grabbed another first round game in Salvador with a top seed playing. I’d hit my max and was done. Markus never did get in and Colin finally did at 6am and grabbed all that was left that made sense: one more first round game.

So that’s left us sitting on tickets for nine games. Stunned. And still more rounds of ticket purchasing to come. We have requests in for the remaining phases as Colin and Markus still have six spots left on their FIFA dance card.

The exciting part was then watching the draw. Colin and I watched it in a soccer friendly coffee shop in Richmond. Amidst seniors moaning about none of the TV’s showing any curling we waited to see which games we had tickets for. When Spain was drawn into Group B, I pretty much didn’t care what other games we got. We have a game for the Group B #1 seed so I knew I was going to get to see the team I most wanted to see. When it came down to that game being either against Holland or Australia we did hold our breath though. When Holland was announced we burst out laughing and yelling. That game was the last one I grabbed in the middle of the night in the FCFS. None of this made sense to the curling fans nursing coffees waiting for whatever it was we were watching to be over.

In the end we got some doozies and some blah games:

13-Jun	Salvador	Spain	Holland
14-Jun	Fortaleza	Uruguay	Costa Rica
16-Jun	Salvador	Germany	Portugal
17-Jun	Belo Horizonte	Belgium	Algeria
21-Jun	Fortaleza	Germany	Ghana
24-Jun	Fortaleza	Ivory Coast	Greece
25-Jun	Salvador	Iran	Bosnia
26-Jun	Brasilia	Ghana	Portugal
30-Jun	Brasilia	1E	2F

Hard to complain. We’re going to dump the Uruguay v Costa Rica, Belgium v Algeria and Iran v Bosnia games because it just makes it way more logistically do-able. That leaves us with two games in Salvador (Spain v Holland and Germany v Portugal) then two in Fortaleza (Germany v Ghana and Ivory Coast v Greece) and then two in Brasilia (Portugal v Ghana and a second round game featuring the 2nd place team in the Argentina/Nigeria/Bosnia/Iran group v 1st in the Swiss/France/Ecuador/Honduras group). We won’t be at all disappointed to see the Argies stumble in the round robin and place second.

The next task was flights. Fortunately the three of us all have enough RBC Avion points to cover the cost. It was just about getting in and out on the dates we needed. I really can’t say enough about how helpful the booking agents at Avion were. I spent two 30+ minute calls with them and in the end got into Sao Paolo the day it call kicks off with Brazil v Croatia (we’ll go to to the stadium and see how much tickets are going for) and directly out from Brasilia right after our second round game. All within Avion’s pricing allowances for flights to South America and with minimal taxes. Still, it’ll be three flights to get there and three more to get back. Plus three flights between cities in Brazil.

Now we deal with Brazil directly…internal flights and accommodation. The early quotes on accommodations ranged from suspiciously low to laughable. A hotel (granted it was 5*) in Brasilia wanting $4000/night for a basic room that only slept two and another $4000/night to sleep the third. Several on airbnb.com that wanted $800-$1000 night for small, dated one bedroom apartments. Fortunately there are more reasonable folks out there willing to settle for simply massive markups as opposed to incredulous ones. We hope to finalize bookings in a week or so once our three internal flights are booked.

We’re just getting over the numbness from the luck of the number of tickets we picked up and then the quality of the matches. Still lots to plan but so far, so very, very good. And only 128 days to go.

Tiering + Fluidity = Retention and Development

Twitter can be a fantastic forum for conversation around a topic, the immediate exchange of ideas and the presentation of media for others to consider. I use it heavily and have benefitted from it considerably in terms of being introduced to people and their ideas around youth soccer development.

The downside is the ‘silicon tower’ effect that is long on, often vaguely supported, theory and short on practicality and overall reality. Take the idea of “talent selection vs talent identification” raised in an article by John O’Sullivan who runs a site called Changing the Game Project.

It became a source of Twitter interest last night amongst several of us who wring our hands over the state of youth soccer here in Vancouver.

Boiled down the article chastens, rightly, the win at all costs approach in teams sports before high school and warns of the perils of selecting players based on current abilities rather than potential future abilities. O’Sullivan advocates for non-tiered playing environments that keep a larger pool of players engaged for longer periods of time and not over-training.

First thing to note is that O’Sullivan is American and coming at this from an American youth sport point of view which is a somewhat, though not entirely, different perspective from those of us in Canada. What is true is that the club structure in the States is generally delineated into elite clubs and recreational clubs with elite clubs being much smaller and much more expensive while recreational clubs generally have lower costs but fewer resources in terms of professional coach or technical director support.

In Canada, generally, soccer clubs offer all, or most levels of play available within each age group. The number of levels of play averages around eight on the boys side and six on the girls side in Vancouver.

My reading of the article gleaned these assumptions being put forward by Mr. O’Sullivan:

 

• Win at all costs youth culture is the status quo
• Kids quit or move to a different club if they don’t make the top level
• Kids all aspire to the highest level of play
• Kids are content playing with players who are either far better or far worse at an activity than they are
• Kids will develop just as well in a non-tiered environment up until U14 than they will in a tiered environment
• Talent identification is an art

The article interests me primarily from the angle of tiering vs non-tiering and how that affects development and player retention.

First off, the environment here is becoming more progressive, perhaps not in a linear fashion and perhaps not across all clubs and coaches but its moving away from early ‘success’ and towards valuing coaches who have evolved past this and are committed to longer term development. We also see this in leagues not keeping standings or having Cup competitions before U13. We’re moving in the right direction and sometimes need to remind ourselves of that.

Looking at player retention, the statistic stating 70% of kids stop playing organized sport by age 13 is shocking. It’s also un-supported by citation in the article and I’d imagine getting that number like that measured across all sports in an entire country would be a massive research project. I’m not denying it’s true but I’ve yet to see a reference to the research that supports it.

My experience is that if a club provides multiple levels of play and can offer a level that is suited to a players current technical and tactical level of play that also fits with their commitment level, you will likely retain that player. If you just tell them they didn’t make the one team you can offer and cut them loose to go find another club, yes, you are more likely to see that player quit the sport due to a lack of support and a lack of ability for them to continue playing in their community. I find having up to eight levels of play at our disposal when we form teams to be a highly beneficial tool.

If kids were all as focused on playing at the highest level it would make sense that participation in lower levels of play would be minimal but a casual look at league tables indicates that there are many, many kids content to play at levels that represent the bottom third of what is available in their age group. Kids don’t quit because they didn’t make a particular team. Kids quit because adults don’t facilitate their continued play on terms that make sense for them.

Perhaps most contentious for me is O’Sullivan’s assertion that kids should not be tiered before high school age and there should simply be larger pools of players playing together. This is where theory seems to like the sound of its own voice too much and conveniently ignores practicality, logistics and reality. It should be noted that O’Sullivan does not say put players of a similar ability together for training and games and allow quick and easy movement between these groups to ensure players are always suitably challenged. Beyond that, there’s no detail on how to organize these teams, if there’s leagues that make sense to put them in and the difficulties of coaching to a wide range of ability and motivation.

I have worked with youth soccer players in Vancouver since 1997 and professionally since 2000. I have a very clear idea of the range in ability at each age group and at what point that range starts becomes too wide and begins to warp how the game should look. The assumption that O’Sullivan’s model is an enjoyable experience for kids and that it doesn’t hinder their development is entirely wrong in my experience.

This expectation we have that we should just let kids play without guidance from knowledgeable coaches and that somehow they will learn from their mistakes is wishful thinking. Just because we can pull quotes from a handful of exceptional people who managed to do this, or at least believe they managed to do this, does not prove that its a sustainable model for the majority. The reality is that the model for elite development is defined by top European and South American clubs and they provide excellent coaching in a highly structured environment for the best players they can find. Yes, there is a definitely an element of talent identification involved and often patience in waiting for some players to physically develop but there is not a wide gulf in ability in their training groups and the amount they train is higher not lower than the average player who likely trains twice per week.

The situations you see in a U11-13 bronze game are monumentally different than those you see in a U11-13 gold. Everything from time on the ball, quality of first touch, defensive shape, attacking shape, everything is massively different. So how does it make sense to expect that U11 bronze player to enjoy and thrive in an environment with U11 gold players? Why would we expect them to be able to combine with gold level players at this stage in their development? Why would we expect that they feel they are contributing to their team and develop a love for the game when they are clearly in over their heads and increasingly marginalized by stronger, naturally competitive teammates who don’t involve them in play? Conversely, how does it benefit the stronger player who is being told to work co-operatively on the field and move the ball around the field to teammates when it breaks down as soon as the ball goes to certain teammates who haven’t developed the necessary technical skills yet? How many times will they continue to look up and pass to a teammate when they know it will, 9 times out of ten, lead to a dispossession? This is definitely a source of frustration for kids at both the higher end of the spectrum and the lower end and it does nothing to help either develop.

And I’m afraid it’s far from convincing to use, as O’Sullivan does, a non-contact, individual sport like tennis to support an argument about contact team sports like soccer. But even if we do use tennis as a discussion point, would it work to have a ten year old who’s been playing tennis since she was five and receiving excellent, professional coaching from that age, rally and play against another girl who just picked up a racket six months ago and is still learning the basics even if it’s also with the same excellent coaching? One gets bored, one gets embarrassed at being put in that environment by adults who must surely know it does neither an ounce of good in terms of their development as players nor their engagement in sport in general.

We have to stop pretending that tiered environments are wrong and elitist and accept that the solution for all players begins with an environment that feels safe and nurturing in terms of parent support, adequate coaching and being able to play with and against peers of a similar ability. That means creating multiple playing environment to meet those needs rather than jamming them all into one environment.

What would make our current system better is to build in more fluidity between levels so that players aren’t locked in for a year before they can move. I’ve been an advocate for this for some time. And once that tool is made available, over use it early on to normalize it so that young players aren’t overly-excited or overly-nervous about being moved up a level or overly-stigmatize by moving down a level.

Do this and the whole idea of talent selection vs talent identification moves away from being a systemic issue rooted in a ‘desire to win at all costs’ to ensuring sufficient resources are put into coach education so that correct decisions about talent identification are actually being made. This then helps us move them up and down through levels of play as they acquire skill and knowledge of the game.  This benefits both their enjoyment of the game and their development.

To finish, I’ll open another can of worms. As alluded to above, moving from ‘talent selection’ to ‘talent identification’ is not as simple as just changing gears. O’Sullivan says talent identification is an art form. Another way to say it is that it’s a very, very difficult art to guess what an 11 year old will look like as a player when they are 14. The degree of acumen needed is not just a function of coach education but a long track record working with players at these ages and levels. We already have a dearth of coaches truly capable of working with young players to develop them effectively. I’d suggest the number of coaches capable of accurate ‘talent identification’ is even less.

Eye opener

I’ve been running a series of meetings at our club for a variety of House (U5 to U10) groups. Some are for parents and some are for coaches. There’s 12 scheduled and I’ve done eight to this point.

I’ve made a point, with the ones for U5 parents and the ones for U6-7 parents (the age split is based on the program they are entering) of asking three questions and asking for a show of hands in response.

The first question is “Who has heard the term Long Term Player Development.” The next is who knows what “Physical Literacy” is and the last is “Do you know who Jason DeVos is?” (I use a quote from one of his blog articles on LTPD in my presentation).

While hardly scientific and really just based on a quick count of hands and a rough count of those in attendance at the meeting, it has made me realize that we are just scratching the surface in terms of getting any sort of message about progressive approaches to youth soccer out to people.

At no point in any of the four meetings I’ve run for these two groups has any more than 10% of the crowd answered affirmatively to any of these questions.

There’s a vocal, committed group of local soccer coaches and parents who contribute to this debate, particularly on Twitter, and there’s a continuing push that will likely see this start to spill offline to actual meetings around the ideas of best practices and curricula but enveloping yourself in Twitter conversations about local youth soccer issues can be a exercise in circlejerk-ism. It has to go beyond that.

There are good people out there and good ideas out there. They are not reaching beyond a small group and as a result the vast majority of incoming soccer parents are not apprised of what a good youth soccer experience should look like and thus not in a position to hold lazy, non-progressive clubs’ feet to the fire and demand programs that ensure their kids are taught the game properly.

Just as I’ve mentioned a few times that elite level soccer in the form of BCPL really is entering a critical year, it’s third season, and needs to demonstrate why people should continue to support it and have confidence in it, all clubs at the grassroots level should also be looking in the mirror and examining how they can improve their U5 to U12 programming. I know what my club is doing and I’m not trying to use this as a forum to say how wonderful we are but the onus is on Technical Directors like myself to push for better and different ways of doing things rather than just reflexively being content with ‘good enough’. The push to improve will eventually come from parents as they get more educated about LTPD and what well-structured age and level appropriate soccer practices look like and what separates good coaches from average coaches but we’re not there yet. Change is still going to be driven from the top down in the absence of parental insistence. The last two years have seen the start of change of soccer in this country but the heavy lifting is still ahead of us.

Note to parents: coaching over levels

I ran three meetings back to back last night. They were for various groups but all were about our Evaluation process for forming teams at U11 to U14. The first was for current U10 Age Group Coordinators and coaches. They are the ones heading into tiered soccer for the first time. They will also be the front line for questions from parents and players so it was important they got clear information. The middle meeting was for U11 to U13 Age Group Coordinators and coaches. For the most part, they have already been through our process, have bought in and it was just a matter of bringing them up to speed on some relatively minor changes we’ve made this year.

The last meeting was with the parents of U10 players. This was the group that I had to be address most carefully. I’d already had several emails, discussions and phone calls from people in this age group letting me know about rumours circulating “through the grape vine.” Misinformation is common each year as we approach team formation time so I really wanted to get a clear message across.

Poll results: What Canada needs in 2013

UPDATE: Added my own answers to the poll with a brief explanation (at the bottom).

Here’s the results to the recent poll I stuck on the site a few days ago. Thanks to the 45 respondents who took part.

For me the surprises are that so many people feel we should invest in a top men’s coach right now and the level of support for low-fee CSA Academies. I started righting a piece on this idea that I haven’t finished yet and thought I’d float it in the survey. Interesting to see the degree of enthusiasm for that ahead of free programs like Prospects.

Strong support for allowing players to play multiple sports to U14 and even more support for the idea of mandatory LTPD coaching courses for all parent volunteer coaches.

Also interesting that the majority felt developing a national curriculum should be Tony Fonseca’s top priority yet it only narrowly topped increasing coach education courses and options in Question #1 below.

Results after the jump…

Poll: What Canada needs to do this year

Everyone loves a poll. Most of them are at the end of the year asking what you thought the best movie or album of the year was. This one asks what’s important going forward for Canada as a soccer nation. Still woeful on the men’s side but pushing to get amongst the very best on the women’s side, what steps do we need to take for future development that sees us do better in both the men’s and the women’s game.

If the formatting above is a pain, you can also access the poll here

UPDATE: I thought there would be an option to let people see the results of the poll after they filled it out but it doesn’t look like that’s possible. I’ll post results here tomorrow or when it looks like interest has died off. Some interesting trends already though…

What I’ve learned so far

I’ve started to get a bit reflective about coaching youth soccer. Part of that is definitely due to the fact that I’ve coached my daughter from day one at U6 and her team is now in their final season at U18. That has been a great experience as both a dad and a coach. I realized a while ago that the best way to leverage my experience as a coach is to help other coaches as that assistance is then passed on to all the players they work with. At some point in running this blog, specifically when the whole HPL thing was kicking off and parents were desperately looking for information, I also realized that parents of motivated players are really not given that much information to navigate their way through the landscape and be in a position to discuss options and opportunities with their kids. I’ve tried to address some of that within VUFC, the club I work for, but I think there’s room to throw some random bits of accrued knowledge out there here as well. So…

These women, these players, these Olympians

I did not think they had a chance.

I openly questioned the selection of some players, lamented the lack of opportunities for younger players to compete for spots and thought John Herdman’s openly stated goal of a podium finish reeked of ‘rah rah’ cheerleaderism.

I thought, going back to the CONCACAF qualifiers, that Canada was nowhere near as athletic as the US Women’s National team and we were more in danger of being caught up in the next few years by Mexico and Costa Rica than in catching up with Abby Wambach and company.

I felt that while moving Sinclair into an attacking mid position in a diamond midfield was a smart move it was rooted in desperation, a move that was down to a lack of depth. I thought Tancredi looked like a one trick pony, Schmidt was out of shape and our back four was generally porous aside from Chapman. It seemed like we had hit the point with this generation of players that suggested contesting for honours would be futile and our lack of depth and commitment to inculcating new blood into the national team setup would simply see us caught up by more progressive nations currently a bit further down the depth chart.

I was frustrated that we had to resort to bringing in a player with the most tenuous of connections to this country and hand her a starting position because we had no other options at left back. Our centre back situation looked just as dire as, again besides Chapman, Zurrer, Moscato, Buckland and anyone else that was given more than 15 minutes in the position looked completely incapable of dealing with emerging world class strikers like Alex Morgan and several French players.

And our tepid start to the Olympics did nothing to dissuade those feelings that we were merely going to be chum for the big fish to feed on. Japan, who looked a shadow of themselves when we played them in the first game, still turned us over at will and two horridly naive goals saw us staring at what could have become a rout.

Now I’m not sure if you could call it a defining moment or a turning point because we didn’t exactly catch fire right afterwards but when Tancredi slipped in off the shoulder of her Japanese mark in the second half and bullied a half chance into the net to draw us within one, it helped. It helped calm nerves. It seemed to help some of the players buy into Herdman’s vision of what this team could do. Was it a 2-1 game? That probably flattered Canada by a goal or so but they held their own in what was supposed to be their toughest game and knowing they were just sitting at -1 probably helped affirm that with two third place teams going through to the quarter finals they had good cause to believe they would be playing in the knock out rounds.