TXSoccer.net Insanity: Ranking 9-year-olds! Really?

This story will make a few coaches and parents squirm...

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/54328/gotsoccer-insanity-ranking-9-year-olds-really.html


Any coach who has taken a USSF E License knows that the 9- to 12-year-old age group is known as the “Golden Age of Skill Development.” According to USSF best practices in Long Term Athletic Development, the years prior to the growth spurt for both male and female players are the time when their bodies are most sensitive to developing sport specific skill. It is a time when technical training is crucial, and games should be used as a training tool and a way to measure development.

This age is a time when players need ample game minutes to hone their new skills at a variety of positions. Players need to be encouraged to take risks. Defenders and goalkeepers should not be afraid of playing out of the back. Attacking players need to develop the confidence to beat opponents on the dribble, and possess the ball instead of launch it up the field. Any coach will tell you that these things usually go out the window if your sole focus is to win your games. Unfortunately, that is what the new GotSoccer rankings will do; hinder what little emphasis there already is on development and put all the onus on winning games.

In GotSoccer, you don’t get ranking points for style, or possession, or close games. You don’t get points for letting all your athletes have playing time, or putting your fast goalscorer in the back or midfield to develop his all around ability. You get points for beating teams, and for winning games and tournaments. You earn points and the higher rankings that go with them for focusing on winning at the exact ages when that should be the least of your worries as a coach and as a parent. It is a terrible message being sent by an influential voice.

I am not naive enough to think that this does not happen already. We all know that youth soccer has stopped focusing on children competing against other children. We all know it’s often focused on adults competing against other adults through their children. A hyper-competitive, win-at-all costs mentality has already taken over youth soccer down to the U9 age group in many places. It is causing many talented, developmentally focused coaches to quit rather than make sure their U10 team wins all its games.

It is causing many parents to have their 7-year-old specialize in only soccer so they can make the travel team at 9 and be a star, only to burn out by age 13. This environment is driving far too many kids to quit the most beautiful game in the world. It is causing them to hate soccer!

We all should know better!

Gavin Owen-Thomas states on his bio that he has a USSF and a UEFA A License. He states that they have had many requests for 9- and 10-year-old rankings. From whom? The USSF, U.S. Youth Soccer, or perhaps the NSCAA? Of course not. The requests come from mis-guided parents who are living out their unfulfilled athletic dreams through their children. The rankings serve these parents; they do not serve the best interests of the children!

I do not know Mr. Owen-Thomas, but hopefully this message will reach him. Sir, please reconsider your decision to start ranking 3rd and 4th grade soccer teams. If you are really a person who is concerned with the future and growth of the game in the United States, please do right by the kids, and stop this nonsense.

You have a choice. Your legacy can be one of a good soccer man who made a mistake and fixed it, or you can be the guy who enabled little Johnny’s dad to proudly proclaim “My son plays on the No. 1 ranked 3rd grade soccer team in the whole USA.”

Choose wisely Mr. Owen-Thomas, for our kids’ sake.


(John O'Sullivan is the author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High-Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to our Kids,”  is available on Kindle and in paperback. O'Sullivan's blogs at changingthegameproject.com/)

Dang it!  I'm really going to miss my yearly Christmas card from Mr. O'Sullivan. Last year's one, with the Christmas tree decorated with all of those little soccer ball ornaments was priceless!!!

Where is Sting Hanlon on the rankings? They have enough games against 05 teams don't they? Just wondering, thx again for even doing this!

NoChance wrote:Where is Sting Hanlon on the rankings? They have enough games against 05 teams don't they? Just wondering, thx again for even doing this!

Help me out here a bit with this "mystery" team... I have some results from PLD for this team, but then I can't find them in any regular scheduled league. They seem to show up randomly for 1 or 2 games in SDL, but I never get scores for this team. Rumors that they are playing in the informal Sting 8v8 league on Sundays?

If you know the inside scoop on this team and have some game results I can use. Please PM me with the details and I'd be happy to add them back in.

I really have no extra info on them either. My Dds team played them in the Plano Labor Day tourney, thy seemed to be a pretty good team.

"In GotSoccer, you don’t get ranking points for style, or possession, or close games. You don’t get points for letting all your athletes have playing time, or putting your fast goalscorer in the back or midfield to develop his all around ability. You get points for beating teams, and for winning games and tournaments. You earn points and the higher rankings that go with them for focusing on winning at the exact ages when that should be the least of your worries as a coach and as a parent. It is a terrible message being sent by an influential voice.

I am not naive enough to think that this does not happen already. We all know that youth soccer has stopped focusing on children competing against other children. We all know it’s often focused on adults competing against other adults through their children. A hyper-competitive, win-at-all costs mentality has already taken over youth soccer down to the U9 age group in many places. It is causing many talented, developmentally focused coaches to quit rather than make sure their U10 team wins all its games.

It is causing many parents to have their 7-year-old specialize in only soccer so they can make the travel team at 9 and be a star, only to burn out by age 13. This environment is driving far too many kids to quit the most beautiful game in the world. It is causing them to hate soccer!

We all should know better!

Gavin Owen-Thomas states on his bio that he has a USSF and a UEFA A License. He states that they have had many requests for 9- and 10-year-old rankings. From whom? The USSF, U.S. Youth Soccer, or perhaps the NSCAA? Of course not. The requests come from mis-guided parents who are living out their unfulfilled athletic dreams through their children. The rankings serve these parents; they do not serve the best interests of the children!"

Sadly, this is the environment of many teams in the N. Texas area.  Perhaps this is part of the reason why we don't have as many girls representing our community on the national team rosters as they get older.

Indy28 wrote:"In GotSoccer, you don’t get ranking points for style, or possession, or close games. You don’t get points for letting all your athletes have playing time, or putting your fast goalscorer in the back or midfield to develop his all around ability. You get points for beating teams, and for winning games and tournaments. You earn points and the higher rankings that go with them for focusing on winning at the exact ages when that should be the least of your worries as a coach and as a parent. It is a terrible message being sent by an influential voice.

I am not naive enough to think that this does not happen already. We all know that youth soccer has stopped focusing on children competing against other children. We all know it’s often focused on adults competing against other adults through their children. A hyper-competitive, win-at-all costs mentality has already taken over youth soccer down to the U9 age group in many places. It is causing many talented, developmentally focused coaches to quit rather than make sure their U10 team wins all its games.

It is causing many parents to have their 7-year-old specialize in only soccer so they can make the travel team at 9 and be a star, only to burn out by age 13. This environment is driving far too many kids to quit the most beautiful game in the world. It is causing them to hate soccer!

We all should know better!

Gavin Owen-Thomas states on his bio that he has a USSF and a UEFA A License. He states that they have had many requests for 9- and 10-year-old rankings. From whom? The USSF, U.S. Youth Soccer, or perhaps the NSCAA? Of course not. The requests come from mis-guided parents who are living out their unfulfilled athletic dreams through their children. The rankings serve these parents; they do not serve the best interests of the children!"

Sadly, this is the environment of many teams in the N. Texas area.  Perhaps this is part of the reason why we don't have as many girls representing our community on the national team rosters as they get older.

Could not agree more. Sadly, you are banging your head against a wall with this group. They salivate over the latest FBR so they can sit proudly and gawk at the ranking of their 2nd or 3rd grade girls soccer team.  

Competition is one of the hallmarks and foundations of our society, and is one of the reasons our country is as great as it is today.  You will not get rid of the competitive nature of people in this country, nor, IMO should you try to do so.

Bringing it back down to the discussion of youth soccer... I'm going to float an opinion that I haven't seen in any of the bulletin board discussions, here in NTX, or at the bottom of any of the articles about the recent foray of GotSoccer into FBRland...

Competition and development are NOT mutually exclusive.  In fact, if done correctly, competition should absolutely enhance development.

When it comes to soccer, I'm an outsider looking in, so I have no preconceived notions from growing up immersed in the sport.  I'm also an engineer by trade, which means I step back and analyze a problem, looking for a solution.

From that viewpoint, the problem I see is not that we are competing, keeping score, trying to win, and coming up with standing and rankings, the problem is that at below U12, we are keeping the WRONG score.

Everyone goes on and on about how focus on winning soccer games at ages <12 is leading us to focus on using the biggest, fastest, athletes, to win, rather than develop highly skilled soccer players.  Well... CHANGE THE GAME.  Come up with a game that swings the balance toward the proper combination of athleticism, quickness, and skill over brute size and top end speed.

Get rid of the goals!  Play two 30 minute halves of KEEP AWAY.  Set up an official on the sidelines with one of those clocks the chess players use.  Every time possession changes, hit the clock so that the other team is adding possession time (hell, there's gotta be an iPhone/iPad app that will do this?).  The team that wins is the team that holds possession longer.  The final score will be something like 35.4 to 24.6.

Ever met a kid that didn't love a good game of keep away amongst their friends???  Don't tell me the kids won't go full bore to win and won't develop moves and skills to keep the ball.

Constrain the size of the field and the # of players to maximize age-specific skill development.  Develop rules and "fouls" that prevent it from being taken over by over-physical brute force. (kind of like the no-contact rule in Futsal).

Start a league, keep standings, both for W-L and for cumulative time of possession, heck, I'll even create an FBR to rank the best 10 yr old Keep Away teams in NTX, no different from ranking outdoor soccer teams.  Everyone will want to have their kid on the best Keep Away team, so they will flock to the clubs/coaches that teach the best skills, because then, at U12, when you do bring the goals back into play and start to play "real" 11 v 11 soccer, the "keep away" studs will suddenly be the best players on the pitch.  The Nation and the World will start to take notice at the incredibly skilled players NTX has developed, because they put in place a competitive structure that emphasized, incentivized, and rewarded the development of the specific skills through competition, that build successful soccer players in the later years.

I will now put on my full kevlar body armor suit and let the rest of you blast away at me (and to think, I was perfectly sober when I wrote this    )

bwgophers wrote:Competition is one of the hallmarks and foundations of our society, and is one of the reasons our country is as great as it is today.  You will not get rid of the competitive nature of people in this country, nor, IMO should you try to do so.

Bringing it back down to the discussion of youth soccer... I'm going to float an opinion that I haven't seen in any of the bulletin board discussions, here in NTX, or at the bottom of any of the articles about the recent foray of GotSoccer into FBRland...

Competition and development are NOT mutually exclusive.  In fact, if done correctly, competition should absolutely enhance development.

When it comes to soccer, I'm an outsider looking in, so I have no preconceived notions from growing up immersed in the sport.  I'm also an engineer by trade, which means I step back and analyze a problem, looking for a solution.

From that viewpoint, the problem I see is not that we are competing, keeping score, trying to win, and coming up with standing and rankings, the problem is that at below U12, we are keeping the WRONG score.

Everyone goes on and on about how focus on winning soccer games at ages <12 is leading us to focus on using the biggest, fastest, athletes, to win, rather than develop highly skilled soccer players.  Well... CHANGE THE GAME.  Come up with a game that swings the balance toward the proper combination of athleticism, quickness, and skill over brute size and top end speed.

Get rid of the goals!  Play two 30 minute halves of KEEP AWAY.  Set up an official on the sidelines with one of those clocks the chess players use.  Every time possession changes, hit the clock so that the other team is adding possession time (hell, there's gotta be an iPhone/iPad app that will do this?).  The team that wins is the team that holds possession longer.  The final score will be something like 35.4 to 24.6.

Ever met a kid that didn't love a good game of keep away amongst their friends???  Don't tell me the kids won't go full bore to win and won't develop moves and skills to keep the ball.

Constrain the size of the field and the # of players to maximize age-specific skill development.  Develop rules and "fouls" that prevent it from being taken over by over-physical brute force. (kind of like the no-contact rule in Futsal).

Start a league, keep standings, both for W-L and for cumulative time of possession, heck, I'll even create an FBR to rank the best 10 yr old Keep Away teams in NTX, no different from ranking outdoor soccer teams.  Everyone will want to have their kid on the best Keep Away team, so they will flock to the clubs/coaches that teach the best skills, because then, at U12, when you do bring the goals back into play and start to play "real" 11 v 11 soccer, the "keep away" studs will suddenly be the best players on the pitch.  The Nation and the World will start to take notice at the incredibly skilled players NTX has developed, because they put in place a competitive structure that emphasized, incentivized, and rewarded the development of the specific skills through competition, that build successful soccer players in the later years.

I will now put on my full kevlar body armor suit and let the rest of you blast away at me (and to think, I was perfectly sober when I wrote this    )

This is what our coach uses... It does just that, tracks time of pension, number of passes, strings of passes, shots, goals (# build up passes to the goal), but all ears if someone has a better app

http://soccermeter.com/wp/ipad-home/

FriscoSoccer05 wrote:

bwgophers wrote:Competition is one of the hallmarks and foundations of our society, and is one of the reasons our country is as great as it is today.  You will not get rid of the competitive nature of people in this country, nor, IMO should you try to do so.

Bringing it back down to the discussion of youth soccer... I'm going to float an opinion that I haven't seen in any of the bulletin board discussions, here in NTX, or at the bottom of any of the articles about the recent foray of GotSoccer into FBRland...

Competition and development are NOT mutually exclusive.  In fact, if done correctly, competition should absolutely enhance development.

When it comes to soccer, I'm an outsider looking in, so I have no preconceived notions from growing up immersed in the sport.  I'm also an engineer by trade, which means I step back and analyze a problem, looking for a solution.

From that viewpoint, the problem I see is not that we are competing, keeping score, trying to win, and coming up with standing and rankings, the problem is that at below U12, we are keeping the WRONG score.

Everyone goes on and on about how focus on winning soccer games at ages <12 is leading us to focus on using the biggest, fastest, athletes, to win, rather than develop highly skilled soccer players.  Well... CHANGE THE GAME.  Come up with a game that swings the balance toward the proper combination of athleticism, quickness, and skill over brute size and top end speed.

Get rid of the goals!  Play two 30 minute halves of KEEP AWAY.  Set up an official on the sidelines with one of those clocks the chess players use.  Every time possession changes, hit the clock so that the other team is adding possession time (hell, there's gotta be an iPhone/iPad app that will do this?).  The team that wins is the team that holds possession longer.  The final score will be something like 35.4 to 24.6.

Ever met a kid that didn't love a good game of keep away amongst their friends???  Don't tell me the kids won't go full bore to win and won't develop moves and skills to keep the ball.

Constrain the size of the field and the # of players to maximize age-specific skill development.  Develop rules and "fouls" that prevent it from being taken over by over-physical brute force. (kind of like the no-contact rule in Futsal).

Start a league, keep standings, both for W-L and for cumulative time of possession, heck, I'll even create an FBR to rank the best 10 yr old Keep Away teams in NTX, no different from ranking outdoor soccer teams.  Everyone will want to have their kid on the best Keep Away team, so they will flock to the clubs/coaches that teach the best skills, because then, at U12, when you do bring the goals back into play and start to play "real" 11 v 11 soccer, the "keep away" studs will suddenly be the best players on the pitch.  The Nation and the World will start to take notice at the incredibly skilled players NTX has developed, because they put in place a competitive structure that emphasized, incentivized, and rewarded the development of the specific skills through competition, that build successful soccer players in the later years.

I will now put on my full kevlar body armor suit and let the rest of you blast away at me (and to think, I was perfectly sober when I wrote this    )

This is what our coach uses...  It does just that, tracks time of pension, number of passes, strings of passes, shots, goals (# build up passes to the goal), but all ears if someone has a better app

http://soccermeter.com/wp/ipad-home/

Very interesting concept.  Will the official be able to keep track of skill moves - step overs, Ls, scissors, etc.?  We all know how important those are... Just remember, possess is to possess as a team.

TatonkaBurger wrote:
Very interesting concept.  Will the official be able to keep track of skill moves - step overs, Ls, scissors, etc.?  We all know how important those are...  Just remember, possess is to possess as a team.  

To little ol' uneducated me, I'd have a scorekeeper who's sole responsibility was to keep track of possession and nothing more.  The only "score" would be time of possession.  

One or two field Referees to officiate on field play.

I'd leave it to the rest of the soccer intelligentsia to figure out what other rules would best foster the necessary skill development (size of field, # of players, limit on censecutive touches by a single player, something akin to the old "5 second" rule in college b-ball where if a defender engages the player with the ball and the player with the ball can't make a 1v1 offensive move to get around the defender and/or execute a pass to a teammate, possession is given to the other team, etc.)

There are a lot of small sided games that have "goals" of passing to certain locations or players, and in certain combinations. These games are directional, and possession happens because the teams are trying to achieve the objectives or "goals". The good news is that coaches can have their teams play these games, and keep score, at every practice. It is hard to imagine a solid developmental program not using these games in practice often.

FriscoSoccer05 wrote:
This is what our coach uses...  It does just that, tracks time of pension, number of passes, strings of passes, shots, goals (# build up passes to the goal), but all ears if someone has a better app

http://soccermeter.com/wp/ipad-home/

Thanks for sharing! I found an Android version too

What's the name of the android version? I tried looking for one.

DTexansMoreno wrote:

FriscoSoccer05 wrote:
This is what our coach uses...  It does just that, tracks time of pension, number of passes, strings of passes, shots, goals (# build up passes to the goal), but all ears if someone has a better app

http://soccermeter.com/wp/ipad-home/

Thanks for sharing! I found an Android version too

A friend in Tulsa used the iPhone version this weekend for his daughters TSC game and he said the buttons are too small on the iPhone version. The iPad version works great, so I do recommend the iPad over the iPhone version.

Never mind I found it.