Player Development Models as a Moral Issue

Unfortunately, while American coaches espouse a formative player development model: respecting the individual and encouraging creative engagement with the game, most clubs and most associations still employ a exploitative model: recruiting players to produce strong teams to win the most competitions at every age. To be sure, there are counter-examples, and our coaching curricula, best practices, and pedagogical research all point to the formative model. However, there are strong cultural forces supporting the exploitative model, such as the push in educational policy towards standardized testing, as exemplified in the No Child Left Behind Act, nearly universally hated among educators, as it pushes them to train kids to take tests, rather than educate them. Of course, not least of the obstacles facing best practices for development of players is the belief of many (probably a minority, but vocal and significant minority) that the best thing for their child is to be on a winning team, and increasingly this means winning more, winning earlier.

In Western Pennsylvania, the win earlier, win more culture has produced the phenomenon of cup tryouts for U9 players, and formation of teams at that age. (This is counter to what is happening to much of American soccer with the example of Georgia´s academy program now meaning teams and leagues are not formed until U13, though organized, state scheduled friendlies begin at U9.) I´m not convinced there is a good metric to measure a seven year old in May and accurately judge how well the child will play as an eight year old the following June, but even if there is, those metrics are not always applied when selecting teams.

I spoke last week with a father of a very talented eight year old who was just cut from a U10 tryout, though she was offered a non-roster spot. He said he knows he is biased, but his daughter was clearly one of the four or five best at the tryout, but the club was trying to keep a group of kids together from one community, for fear of breaking up a carpool. His child was at a disadvantage being a July birthday, competing against kids 10 and 11 months older, which at that age is a huge difference: over 10% of their lives to date. He wants his daughter to improve and resented being told she isn´t good enough. His concern was that she would see that roadblock and, well, take her ball and go home: just quit the game and go somewhere else she is appreciated. He was relieved she is still wanting to train, and is interested in moving on to another club rather than another sport.

The club with which I work, Century United, is not going to form fixed roster teams at U9 and U10, but rather register player pools, and form ad hoc game rosters. I know that doesn´t seem revolutionary to everyone reading outside of the US, but here a player is registered to a team, not a club, thus there is no roster selection after the tryouts – you select your 16 or 18 for the year in June. When the academy director was describing what we will be doing, one of the fathers, who is also a coach, laughed and said, ¨Sounds great, but there is no way you´ll do it because you have to market to the Pittsburgh mentality of win all, win now.¨

I thought about what he said for a bit, and I disagree -- as coaches we should be marketing our expertise, and frankly, we should know better than the average parent.  It would be hubris to think we care more (and I would hope that parents care more about their kids than we do) but we should know more about development and sport.  It´s what we are paid to do.  Parents are paying good money  and should reasonably expect us to do our best for their kids.  If we aren´t because we are trying to conform to a marketing model in lieu of the child´s best interest, our values are skewed.

The player certainly has a fundamental right to be treated with respect by the adults in their life.  If we, as coaches, believe it is in the best interest of the child to have an open roster pool that recognizes the varying rates of development through a season year of each individual, but we instead choose a different path so we can market to a perceived wider audience, we are choosing money over the welfare of the children placed in our care.  And that is just wrong.  Full stop.

There are certainly legitimate differences of opinion about best practices for player development, but we need to recognize these discussions, disagreements, and decisions, are not mere marketing exercises.  It´s much more important than that.  

Player development, appropriate competition, depth of training, are all moral issues, not marketing.

For further discussion of academy training models, see the Spring, 2011 issue of Insight magazine for an article ¨An 'Elite' Academy: A Discussion¨ by José Portoles, former Academy Director at Valencia CF.