Second Opinion: Revisiting the U20s
October 13th, 2009 . 4:19 pm . By: Dave DirLet me start by saying anytime we don’t win the world cup I am disappointed in the result. As a coach, I always feel everyone could have improved if you don’t reach the end result. When you put in two years of work and a lot of your soul, you can’t help but believe you are going to overcome any weaknesses and go all the way. Realistically however, this age group has had some serious struggles all the way through the multiple competitions and cycles. I admit in writing this that it will be impossible to not be biased, sound defensive, or possibly read like I am giving excuses for not going farther. I thought seriously about not writing on this subject, but in the end I thought I could approach it with a degree of knowledge and discuss some things that affected this team, which I felt many of you would find interesting and did not have insight into. These factors, while not earth shattering, I believe will have a serious effect on how we move forward with player development in this country. I’ll leave the opinions on performance to the professional writers on this one, but will take a second to touch on a few of my readings. Generally, I have no trouble with people voicing opinions. I think one of the great things about the game is the different ways success can be accomplished and people’s different views of what is successful. But my favorite is when someone takes a portion of quotes about what a team is needs to do to succeed in order to present a false opinion of what a coach values, even though they have never had a single conversation with that coach about what they value, which leads you to believe the coach has a different agenda. I also find many opinions I read are results based, and while very interesting, I do feel people in the profession of commenting on decision making should make their determinations on an examination of the consistency of results and not be so reactionary. It is very easy to see a score, get upset, then write something on a blog that chimes in on the consensus from people seeing a game on TV, and then exaggerate it for the effect as the worst performance, just in an effort to get readers. Talk about insight. Wow, it must have taken someone all of two seconds to dig into the info that supported that well thought out analogy. I have no problem with someone feeling a certain way and voicing it, but if I am going to put any stock in what they say I want them to consider the evidence at the time, what affected a team’s performance, the competition, and then share some well thought out opinions and analysis. I am not disappointed in the effort of these kids, nor the job the staff did, but rather in the final result. Being a member of the staff, that should be no surprise. It should also come as no surprise that when examining the team I am impressed with how Coach Rongen took them through qualifying to advance to the World Cup. The fact that this group went through qualifying without giving up a goal until the final was quite an accomplishment. But I feel that accomplishment helped hide the fact that this U20 age group continues to be a hole in the player development process in our country. There are a few major factors which, I believe, had a serious effect on the form of many of the players. While the MLS Reserve League was far from perfect, or even properly organized, the elimination of the reserve league is very concerning. Having been involved in four u20 world cups now, I have had a chance first hand to witness the importance of having a MLS reserve league. In almost every country we compete against the players are predominately professionals that play consistently with their club, or they play consistently with their national team either in residency or mid week between club games. The focus on improving this critical age group with almost every other country has increased every cycle. Teams in our own federation like Costa Rica regularly trained and played together for 2 years leading up to the world cup and because of the cooperation of their leagues were able to train together mid-week and go back to their clubs on weekends. Trinidad played their u20’s in their first division. While T&T’s results were not great, they vastly improved and competed far better than their past teams in a very tough group. When I look at the US team and our pro-players, only Jared Jeffrey, Bryan Arguez, Mikkel Diskerud, and Kyle Davies (who was injured in the first game) had been playing 90-minute games prior to the event. The only other pro who was getting any minutes was Brek Shea. Gerson Mayen, Danny Cruz, Josh Lambo, and Jorge Flores were rarely seeing any playing time and our leading scorer Peri Marosevic was coming off an injury and had just got back to training regularly. Another pro with little playing time, Anthony Wallace, injured his knee the week before our departure. On our last team over half the players were professionals and all were at least getting games in the reserve league. The end of the reserve league is an even bigger problem for the future, I believe, as it has lead to smaller MLS rosters so far more college players are on the U20 squad. While the College players had at least been playing and been through pre-season fitness, but they were very early in their season, had not played a significant number of games since the college season ended last November, and do not train with the consistency or competition of pro-players. The next factor that hurt this cycle is the magnitude of the world cup, the chances of players who are successful being seen by an overseas club and signed, and the timing of this cup. US players who were making decision on weather to turn pro or stay in school had a much tougher decision than in previous world cups held in the summer. They were now talking about missing a significant portion of school, which many other countries don’t have to deal with. Five members in qualifying, Dilly Duka, Tony Taylor, Sheanon Williams, Shaun Johnson, Gale Agbossoumonde decided to turn pro and had yet to sign with a team. That meant they had not played on a team since last November, with the exception of Gale who recently signed with an agency which owns teams in the USL and played a couple games there while looking for a club. The players who stayed in school were often unavailable for trips in preparation because they were already going to have to miss school for the cup. The players who dropped out of school often didn’t have a quality team to train with in their area and were forced to train on their own, not to pick out these players but to explain the unusual obstacles. Just to name the problems is easy, the solution is much more difficult. I feel the USSF needs to look at a U20 residency program or some form of continuous training and competition to keep from falling behind at this age group. Too many players with national team potential slip in different environments. Only a program that gets the players more quality training and competition on a more consistent basis can fill this void. Buts that’s just my opinion 14 Comments Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI Leave a comment |
“I thought seriously about not writing on this subject…” Dave, the 3rd degree readers will always be interested in your opinion, especially on the tough topics others don’t touch or aren’t honest about.
As far as the reserve league, I feel the MLS execs know the value of it, but felt it needed to be cut due to the US economy and the financial situations MLS teams face. I’ve always felt they will be looking to bring the MLS reserve league back in the near future. Formula 1 and Nascar have had to cut out testing, which has effected car and driver development. It is a product of the economy we’re in.. they will add testing back, and I feel MLS will add the Reserve League back when the feel it doesn’t financially burden teams.
“I feel the USSF needs to look at a U20 residency program or some form of continuous training and competition to keep from falling behind at this age group” – I wonder how much residency programs really help at times. Couldn’t MLS teams loan youngsters out out USL1,USL2, and PDL teams? There is injury risk, but who cares about injuring a player that is developing into a player you can make use of? I think these players could develop more with loan deals to USL than with a residency program and I think MLS teams will still be signing these guys young to claim them, but you can only improve so much in training.
should be who cares about injuring a player that “isn’t” developing – in my post above
Great article, Coach. Excellent insight.
Thats a great article and all, but how exactly do you explain South Korea taking all of their college players and soundly routing us?
Was there that much difference in real playing time for the Rongen lead teams that lead into the 03 and 07 cups? I seriously doubt those teams had players who were playing 90 minutes a game week in and week out prior to those two tourneys.
The problem is coaching. Rongen is terrible when he isn’t gifted a few good players to lead the team. When he has to, ya know, actually coach and prepare, he fails.
Just for grins I googled the fifa site. Korea tied Germany 1-1, beat Paraguay 3-0 in the 2nd round, and played finalist ghana (winner?) 2-3 in the qtrs. A review of their roster shows #10 played 2 games in the Bejing olympics, 7 starters are pros (not sure how much they play), but surely more than our mls’ers? Thats a decent squad. Developing the US players is not currently the mls’s or the NCAA’s concern, so I guess I have no argument with Dir’s observations that for success (if it’s important) US soccer needs to look at another option. BTW looks like England went 0-3! I wondered how mexico’s team did but they are not in the tournament.
Thanks for writing that up, it was a very interesting read especially coming from someone on the U20 staff.
Sounds like a whole bunch of excuses to me. Aren’t all GOOD coaches supposed to take the blame for a loss and give the team credit when things go well? No one has been more critical of SH than Dave Dir, and Dir even joked about taking all of SH’s players with him to the U20’s and how FCD was going to be in a tough jam and have no depth because of all of the PROFESSIONAL players he was taking with him. Well guess what Dave? FCD won in September and October which is much more than we can say for you. Those who live in glass houses…
Less vitriol please.
I don’t see anything especially abusive in the above posts. Kudos to those who call out people (even almighty youth coaches) for being hypocritical. So many people have loved blaming SH when the team was performing poorly. Despite this criticism and second guessing, a team as been purged & forged by the fire of SH and is getting good results. Yet, many of these blamers remain too small to give SH any credit. It’s time to be happy. See you at PHP!
1) Dave Dir doesn’t have to write these pieces. I suggest you don’t drive him away with inane vitriol, just to make yourselves feel better.
2) Dave says above: “I admit in writing this that it will be impossible to not be biased, sound defensive, or possibly read like I am giving excuses for not going farther.
I thought seriously about not writing on this subject, but in the end I thought I could approach it with a degree of knowledge and discuss some things that affected this team, which I felt many of you would find interesting and did not have insight into. These factors, while not earth shattering, I believe will have a serious effect on how we move forward with player development in this country.”
So, he admits that it will probably be biased and sound like he’s making excuses but that he wanted us to be better informed. Yet he is attacked as being hypocritical!? Come on. You can disagree with him and offer insights if you have any, but please be reasonable and “PROFESSIONAL” as ‘hypocrisy at its best’ would say. (What do you think he was going for with the handle?)
I thought it was very interesting to read the opinions from a member of the U20 staff. Usually anything we hear from any coach is mixed in with journalist’s opinions.
Dir speaks from his experience, and people can write it off as n excuse, but hopefully US soccer takes a serious look at Dave’s opinions- I’m sure he and others have voiced this before this- and see if a change in US player development is needed, or if this is a situation that will work out naturally over time.
I agree with saban. We are lucky to have Dave Dir write these columns for us. And its fine to disagree with him… just post how your opinion differs and why… but that is no need to call him out.
I agree, thanks for taking the time to write here Dave. Your insight is much appreciated.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on the need to find a system that allows our younger talent to get game time in. Perhaps each MLS team needs a PDL team that plays regional games against other PDL teams..
Dave Dir is spot on. The MLS needs a reserve league in one way, shape, or form. Almost every league in the world has one, and all of the top leagues have reserve leagues as well as numerous tiers not just three like the US. If the MLS or US soccer in general wants to be taken seriously and make progress we need these leagues, and not take steps backwards by removing the reserve divisions. The reason England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, etc. field such great national teams and exposure is because of how deep their soccer system is and the amount of experience players can get at any age group. Right now as you will see with our own FCD, we have Generation Adidas players who are not getting time and experience because of the lack of a reserve league and cut down rosters. They are not quite ready to make the jump to the first 11, but are expected to improve without getting any game exposure. It is a difficult to be put in these kinds of situations, because the player wants to play at the highest level and is stuck in between a rock and a hard place. And the PDL is not the solution. PDL is semi professional and quite simply is just not at a level high enough for these U20 players to be playing at. These generation adidas and U20 pool players need better competition than PDL in order to improve.