Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #441: High school Champions' League — how it works, why it matters

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

It's a novel idea that started in Tampa and is now spreading to St. Louis and south Florida, with coaches in several other places considering starting one. When it comes to growing our country's soccer culture from the ground up, it checks a lot of the boxes -- free, local, merit-based, and plugged into something that already exists and resonates in America: high school rivalries. We talk with Jim Harte, the guy who started this off in Tampa. We get into a lot, including U6 soccer, of course. Check it out.Find Jim on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MsccampAnd here's the Facebook page for the Champions League that kicks off Nov. 14: https://www.facebook.com/TampaBayTopTenScuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes twice a week, plus access to the Discord and live call-in shows, by signing up for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the SCuff podcast where we talk about U.S. Soccer. Our guest today is a man who coached high school soccer for 36 years and won six state championships in Florida. He was an elementary school PE teacher for 39 years and deeply interested in youth soccer. He's considered one of the great coaches in the history of Tampa. That's talking like all levels. And he founded something called the Tampa Bay Top 10 Champions League, which is kind of the main idea we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about a lot of other stuff. It's an intriguing project.

It's a high school soccer champions league, local, free, merit-based, and driven by the participants. It's not some tournament for rich kids and their helicopter parents. It's an idea that's starting to spread. And I think in the spirit of kind of thinking through how to grow the game of soccer in America from the ground up, it's an idea you'll be interested in. four groups of four teams each were drawn last February on both the boys and girls sides and the first match is November 14th this is the seventh year i believe of the champions league st louis missouri and dade county florida are also planning to launch local champions leagues on the same model

and i think we'll get into a few other things like i said including how to improve u6 soccer coaching i want to talk about that later. But here to tell us more about the Champions League is Jim Hart. Thanks for joining us, Jim. Happy to be with you. Appreciate being invited. You know, I think some people will, this is going to be an idea that's kind of cold. People are coming in too cold. So I just want to try to set it up a little bit more, if you don't mind. We all know, we all know, the pay to play club system is broken. It, uh, it prices out a lot of kids. So it's not merit based. It also creates a bunch of bad incentives. You know, you take your parents take their kids four hours away for the weekend, pay for hotels and everything.

They want to win the games. So it doesn't always encourage the best kind of soccer. So developing becomes kind of a second, third, maybe fourth priority. And it's a mess. So I'm interested in rec soccer. That's why we did that grassroots episode a couple weeks ago. We're going to do more of those. And why don't we just go in and talk.

about like what the Champions League is. I gave the rough format, but um, how'd you get the idea to start it? How's it going? Okay. It's going great. And how I got the idea to start it was after 30 or more years of conversations, uh, back and forth with people about, you know, sort of yes, but but high school soccer offers this, this and this. The thing you get, you get to, Adam is when you're explaining you're losing and if you're the one that has the burden of proof of trying to explain why your thing is worth value, you know, that's not a strong position to be in. And at some stage in my life, and I guess this happens when people get older, I don't know. I just decided, okay, I've had this conversation for 30 years. I'm just done with it now. I'm just going to focus on the thing that I like

and that I believe in, not that I don't like youth soccer or club soccer. I worked in clubs all my life as a director for 20 years, so I've been on that side of it. But I'm just going to focus on high school soccer. So that's where it started, is just deciding, okay, what can make high school soccer better? Well, the first thing was starting this thing called Tampa Bay Top 10. One of the things, early on, maybe 30 years ago, we used to get great media coverage in soccer. We don't anymore for high school. I'm talking about. So I thought, okay, if we can't, if we don't get coverage, let's cover ourselves.

Let's start a Facebook page and let's have, let's make news. And the news we decided to make was a coach's poll. So we drew a circle around a three-county area around Tampa Bay and we invited every coach in a Tampa Bay area every week, send in your list of who the top 15 teams are, in your opinion. These are high school coaches. High school coaches. It doesn't have to be scientific. It's just an opinion. Just your opinion. We would collate that list down to the top 10. You know, like if you got the top vote by somebody, you got 15 points. Second place got 14 points. And whoever the 10 most highest point total people were, that's your top 10, according to the coaches. So it's news, right? So we were creating news and then publicizing it on our own Facebook page. And then blowing it. out to everybody. People love this. They absolutely loved it. And it just is fodder for talk, you know, and it just made suddenly the upcoming high school game is now number six versus number four instead of just two teams playing, right? So that was really cool. People got into it.

Well, then at some stage, and I don't know, I wish I could remember the moment that the light bulb went off, but during the high school tournament, everything's always about the state tournament, right. And here we have three rounds of the state tournament, districts, regionals, and final four. Well, at districts, you have a district champion, right? Bang, there it is. Champion, Champions League. Why not take all the district champions and invite them to be in the Champions League the following year? And that's where it started. So how many districts? How many districts are there? It so happens. We have about 14 in our geographic area. And it just changes because they change the, you know, the spread of schools of districts every two years.

You know, as population grows and fades, you know, different districts are redrawn and schools move up in classification and things like that. But say 14, that's a good round number. And so, therefore, to get a round number of 16 or a good number of 16 for four groups of four, we go to the Max Prep's final statewide poll and we invite the top two teams that didn't win the district from previous year. In your area. In our area, in our three-count area. And we hold that geographic thing tight and that's it. And so we identify.

And what ends up happening is there's a team that has a lot of seniors and wins the district. But then they all graduate. They're coming back with other. But this happens in the Champions League, doesn't it? I mean, in the Champions League, rosters change the following year. Look at Lazio in Celtics Group. They're in like 16th place in Italy this year. But they're a Champions League team as a result of last year's performance.

So that just happens. It is what it is. So we put those 16 teams together. The fun and the best, one of the most fun parts of the Champions League is the draw. and the draw is a media event. We actually do it in public at a bar, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies have been big participants in this. So the Rowdies coach, Neil Collins, some of their players,

and Perry Vanderbeck has now gotten big time involved with us now. He loves the Champions League. And I don't know if you know this at him, but Perry was the first high school player ever drafted directly into the NASL in 1978. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rowdies right out of St. Thomas Aquinas High School in St. Louis. So he's a perfect poster boy for the Champions League. He's the first high school player ever drafted into the pros. And he loves the Champions League, Perry does.

So we get together at this place. We do the draw. A lot of people come. It's exciting. And then you have your groups of four. And then they go into the next season. Well, what happens? So you have the groups of four.

They're going to start their matches on November 14th. That's correct. They play, they do a round, Robin in each group, I assume. Yes, they do a Ron Robbins. And then only the winner of each group advances to the semifinals. So you got four winners and then a final. Exactly.

Yeah. And so, yeah, so December 16th is when the final is. When what we do, this is funny. You know, we do this dance with club, right? And we used to try to get our dates off of whenever their latest can't miss showcases that you have to be at. No, you don't, but according to them, you do, right? And so what we decided at some stage was to say, you know what,

we're just going to pick our date for the Champions League final, and that's just going to be it. And if they have to go to the showcase, that's okay. They'll have to miss the Champions League final. Not a problem. But what we do, we put the semifinal in the morning and a final at night. So you have to play two games in one day to win the Champions League, which is, of course, not ideal.

90 minute? 90 minute games. You have to play two 80 minute games. One in the morning, one in an evening. The reason we do that is not because we think it's, obviously it's not the best thing, but it decreases our footprint on dates because it used to be that high school soccer time was respected, but it isn't anymore. So club teams call practices, schedule games, go to its showcases.

it doesn't matter what the high school teams are doing. So we just have to say, no, this is when we're going to do the Champions League final. We will do it all in one day, so it only takes up a day. We hope, and what we've seen, it's funny, as time has gone on, it's so cool that this has happened. On the boys' side, which has been going longer than the girls, boys are saying to their club coaches, I have to be at the Champions League match. I can't come to practice tonight or I can't be at this game this weekend.

And they just don't know, it sets their hair on fire because don't you know that high school soccer sucks? How can you not be coming to my great practice? The cones are perfect. Didn't you know that? You know what I mean? Like they're so caught up in themselves. And this is where you're a point. about incentives is so on point because their incentives are one thing. The incentives of the kids

are a different thing sometimes. Yeah, I know your practice is important, but I'm playing for my school and we're playing the cross-town rival in the local derby that you guys crushed when you consolidated and put us all in different leagues. But it still matters to us and all of our people. I see this, let me interject real quick, I see this in Dalton, Georgia, which is a town not too far from me. I don't know if you've read about what they have going on there. Tell me. The high school, so the town is like half Latino. And they have a really rich soccer tradition because Latinos have been living there for a long time.

A lot of carpet factories in the area. That's cool. Yeah. And so I don't know, I don't remember the exact numbers. but I think a high school from Dalton and I think there are five or so high schools in the area has won something like six or seven state championships in the last five years.

I mean, it's crazy. And they, that local derby between, I think it's Southeast Whitfield County High School and Dalton High School is a huge, huge deal. And it's such a big deal that people who don't really know anything about soccer are into it, you know? Yes. It's because it's something they can get their heads around.

Yes. These two high schools are both really good at this sport and they're playing against each other and it's really meaningful to everybody. And even people who, you know, one of the parents of a kid that is in my daughter's first grade class at school, he runs the Longhorn Steakhouse in Dalton. And they hold a two pancake breakfasts every year as a fundraiser at the Longhorn Steakhouse for the Dalton High School soccer team. And man, he is so proud of that.

He, you know, this is not a soccer guy, but he is so proud of the fact that they do that and that they're kind of part of this thing. And so, you know, when you say that local derby is going to be, uh, is important to the kids, man, I believe that 100%, you know? It is. Is it, and it, it's either that or go play at a showcase in front of nobody, you know, at like a giant soccer complex. Of course the kids are going to choose the derby, you know.

I have a great story for you, Adam. Do you know the name Terry Mickler? I don't. He's a high school coach out of St. Louis. He is entering his 52nd year as the CBC High School head soccer coach. He's coached over 1,400 games. Oh, Christian Brothers. Christian Brothers, yes.

Terry Mickler is the icon, and he's one of the main people in the St. Louis Champions League, by the way. he and some of these other iconic St. Louis High School coaches, they all love this and they're all making it happen. It's really exciting. But he tells a story of a game at the soccer park where Christian Brothers is playing one of their main rivals, pick one of the Catholic schools in St. Louis. I'm not sure which one. It could be, so they're playing, right? And on, say, field five, whatever. And there's 5,000 people at the game. Over on field one, Scott Gallagher is playing some team from Chicago and there's maybe friends and family, if that, in lawn shares on the side. But he said, the thing is, the kids on the field and people are sending messengers over to the other field to keep up with the game because that game is so meaningful, even to the kids playing in the academy game, who can't play in this game but wish they could. And so this is exactly what you just said. You know, and why people can't see this.

It's just amazing to me. But it's a problem. It's a blind spot. Well, the reason, I think one reason people can't see it is because they think, well, that's never going to get my kid to the elite level, you know, playing for the local high school. But the, but the brutal reality is neither is the, I mean, most of those kids, I mean, there are some kids from Scott Gallagher that are, that have made it, obviously. That's an iconic club in our country for development. I mean, Josh Sargent grew up there. I think Tim Riem played there too, right?

Yes. But for the most part, most of these kids traveling three, four, five, six hours over the weekend to go play games on an empty field, it's not going to do anything. No. You know? No. And people don't care about it that much. I mean, people, obviously, the people playing the game certainly do. But like if I say to you, Adam, listen, we're going to.

go play, you know, Melbourne, Florida, All-Stars or whatever, across the state today. And you'd be like, oh, good, good luck. Let us know how it turns out. But if I said to you, you know, the blue of my school is playing the red of the Cross Town School, you know, like, everybody's got, oh, my God, that is so cool. How does it look? You know, people care about those games. And, and, you know, so, but getting back to your point about what it's going to lead to, you know, okay, how many people are going to be pro soccer players? We all know that argument. And most people know they're not going to be pro soccer players, but they can play for this team that everybody loves. And I can walk the school halls and be somebody. And, you know, and most people know that. It's within their reach. And it's

hard to sell somebody because the sales pitch is so cynical, in my opinion. Okay, so for every Adam that could be a pro soccer player, we need 15 other guys there to create the environment within which Adam can develop and be a pro soccer player. But the price of that is you have to give up your high school career. So you can come in obscurity and create this great training environment so Adam can become somebody. That's basically what it is. And you have to pay tons of money, fly all over the country to do this. And you have to skip this cool, fun, free thing that, you know, really is meaningful. But no, you have to wrap your head around the idea that that sucks because we told you so.

And what we're telling you is this is real over here. And that's what's happening. And, you know, it works to a certain extent. But the Champions League is if you put it, if you put all of that story that has to be sold up against generic high school soccer, okay, that's one thing. But now you're putting it up against the Champions League. It's not, it's a different thing. It's a different thing. The Tampa Bay Rowdies are putting the final this year in Alang Stadium, where they play.

And they are full on, you know, video scoreboard. message, you know, advertising boards are going to be up, you know, the PA. It's going to be like what they say is, we want this to be like coming to a Routi's game. That's how we're going to make it. So what are the crowds, what are the crowds typically like? Okay, well, we're hoping for a four-figure crowd, four-figure crowd in that game for, you know, more than a thousand. But the crowds for the Champions League game aren't in the thousands. seen one yet in the thousands. Maybe the final last year was close to it. We did the final at

St. Leo University last year. But the crowds are bigger and getting bigger because the Champions League is becoming known and cared about. So it's definitely on a growth mode. And I think this moving it into Allang Stadium is going to really put it in a different category. And listen to this, Adam. They're going to start, as you said, down in Dade County. It's actually Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. All three of them are going to do their own. They're going to do something super cool. They're going to invite 32 teams, and they're going to seed those teams. So first, seed's going to play 32nd, second play 31st. In a one game play in, the winner goes into the Champions League, the loser goes into the Europa League.

And they're going to have two of them going. So then the winner of their Champions League is going to come up in 2024 and play the winner of our Champions League. And we're calling it the I-75 Super Cup. And then the winner of their Europa League is going to come and play our runner-up in the Champions League. And the Rowdies are going to be on for hosting that. Then in 2025, we're going back down there. And we've already started a fund to collect money to pay for that trip for those teams that go down there. Because one of the things we are really into is this free idea.

You know, and if we're going to, you know, if we're going to be the ones that tell you you have to travel somewhere, we'll pay. Yeah. Not you. I like that. Yeah. You know, and we're only going to do it once every two years. when you have to go down there to play. And the funny thing is, I-75 goes through Collier County, which is where Naples is, Lee County, which is where Fort Myers is, Charlotte County, Sarasota County,

Manatee County. Well, all of those coaches are like, wait a minute, you're doing an I-75 Super Cup. We're on I-75, and what we have to basically say to them is get a Champions League going. Right. You know, we'll help you. And we will, you know, we will. You know, But people in soccer are conditioned that everything costs money and that everything's a slick marketing campaign. And all you got to do is buy it. And then they'll send you everything. And the Champions League, the beauty of the Champions League is it's grassroots.

It's high school soccer coaches doing this together within the framework of their own regular season schedule. You know? So, like, I'm going to make a regular season schedule. As long as I know who my Champions League opponents are, then they'll be on my schedule. And we'll just schedule them next year. But what we do is we have match days, match day one, match day two, match day three. So all the games happen on the same day, which is super cool. And it's always on a Tuesday, which is super cool because that's Champions League Day.

And so everybody knows it's going on. But once the high school coaches wrap their heads around this idea that, wait a minute, you mean we can do this ourselves, we can make this happen. We don't need somebody's permission. There isn't a governing body that's going to stop us. No. Just make it part of your regular season schedule and have a gentleman's agreement among all of you or a gentlewoman's agreement that this is, you're going to call it the Champions League. But it's just your regular season schedule. Yeah.

And you're just doing it in the open, hiding. in plain sight, just doing this cool thing that nobody owns except you. And all you have to do is when you make your regular season schedule, we do the draw as soon as the district tournament is over, but before even the state tournament happens, that's when we do the draw for the following season because we already know the district champions. And everybody's thinking about high school soccer during the state tournament. So we have the spotlight at that moment. And to stick the draw in the middle of that,

it just sucks in some of that. It all falls into the whole high school soccer thing. Right. So people pay attention to the draw. It's hard to get people's attention when the spotlight's not on high school soccer. So now that we have the draw and you know the groups, you don't start making your schedule

until after a state is over. and you get into afterward, but you already know three of your games now. And so you schedule them. And then the higher ranked team in the final max prep state poll is the home team. Okay. Got it. Seems fantastic. And it'll be fascinating to see how it goes in St. Louis and in South,

Florida. It will be. St. Louis has just come up with their field of 16, by the way, this week. Oh, have they? For next year. They have a different challenge. See, we have this cool thing where the smaller schools here are competitive in soccer with the bigger schools. So we have the chance of, you know, Hickory High School, Cusers situation going on where a team can compete with the big boys. Not so in St. Louis. The smaller schools can't compete with those big, giant, you know, St. Louis teams. So what they've done is they've decided to take more. more at-large teams, less automatic births. I think they have seven automatic births and nine at-large teams. And what they've done is created a way to get in the Champions League that allows

for a smaller school, if they're good enough, to work into an at-large berth. But they're not saddled with the district champion of a terrible district that the team's just going to get killed going into the Champions League. We don't have that. So, the cool thing about the Champions League is it's different in every market. Yeah, it can be customized, I guess. That's it. And nobody knows the customization better than the local coaches. Right.

I want to be clear, though, that I'm not thinking, and I'm sure you're not thinking that Champions League is, the high school Champions League is like a, you know, a better alternative to developing elite talent, right? It's not that. No. I don't think so. But what is the long-term benefit of it for soccer in America? Get real big picture with me, Jim.

Well, I think your pancake breakfast guy is the big picture. He's excited about this soccer game. What other soccer would he be excited about? And I just think it's, it's, as you said, high school sports is an American thing. It's an American thing, right? And why not tap into something that already is in play that already exists and let soccer get some of that shine? I just think it's a way for soccer to, you know, so soccer gets that. But I also think you talk about that elite player.

Okay. This is me talking now. I think that there's a value, there's a developmental value in come Adam and you're on this great academy over there. But we need you in this game. And you are in the game and you're going to put the team on your back. Kind of like what Policicic tries to do. you know, what he tried to do in a World Cup? I'm going to put, I know, and I know.

But, I mean, there's that element of, you know, where it's so great the way we were talking about the right side, you know, how the right sides decide. And we all kind of can see that, right? But like, there's a thing in soccer of, you know, Massey or whatever, the guy, the go-to guy, the guy that doesn't shy from the spotlight. the guy that steps up when the game's on the line in the last moments of the game. I think the academy structure doesn't allow for the development of that player as much because it's all training. It's all sort of scientific, you know, it's all esoteric. But what about when the blood is pumping, the blood is flowing, and the game is on the line

and somebody's got to kind of score that goal that Pulisic scored in the World Cup, where he just threw his body in there. That's high school soccer. That was a high school soccer goal. Right. If you think about it. I mean, maybe the ball, maybe the diagonal from McKinney wasn't a high school soccer diagonal ball, but.

Yes. Yes. But the determination and the courage and the just like the fearlessness. Right. So I think if you think about the total package of a fully developed player, that's a slice of it. And there is this place. That article I sent you that, Arson Wenger talked about wild football.

One thing we've lost with all of these academies is what he calls wild football. Just free, you know, play games in a park that people are just trying to win just for the sake of winning. That, you know, when you dress everything up and clean everything up so much, you're losing a little something. And high school soccer has that little bit of wild element. but so it's not it's a little messy the fields are narrow you know the other team isn't perfect they don't play perfectly they're just trying to win and if you expose a player to that uh to that ability to come in and participate in something like that where the motivation is so high I just can't see that as a negative now to have that player be a part of a high school soccer team

come to every single practice, play in every single game, all the bus rides. You know, they've got school to go to, they've got their academy training to keep up with. That should take priority for the elite player. But to say to the elite player, I know this real cool opportunity to play soccer is happening, we won't let you go do that at all. I just, to me, I think if you're really thinking about maximizing every possible benefit for the development of a player. Why would you say no to something like that?

It doesn't make sense to me. For me, what I want is a soccer culture in America that is deep and full of participation and that produces eventually a men's national team that can actually compete for a World Cup trophy. It's a long ways off, right? But I guess what I see with this is, and like my guy with the pancake breakfast, and, you know, all these, this excitement around a high school soccer game is I could see, I can imagine or I can envision, it would be like being like a Friday night football game where you have, you know, there's tons of little kids, local high school here, football game happens. There's like an open area next to the stadium.

And there are five to 12 year olds throwing footballs around. It's like a scene from a World War II movie. There's just like footballs flying everywhere. You know, that's culture. That's American culture happening right there. And people will say, well, we don't need better coaches. We don't need better anything. We just need a pickup culture.

I've had several people tell me this in the last few weeks. And I'm like, yeah, great. But how are we going to get pickup culture? You know, how do you, you can't just mandate that. And so I guess I see this as, I see this as like one part of the puzzle. in improving American culture, inspiring more children to love the game of soccer.

Yes. How does that strike you? I think it strikes me great. I think you're right on Target. And no, I think you're wrestling with something that I think about a lot. And it is because the people that try to answer this question, this how do we get their question,

they're all coming to it as people who already love soccer. And they're trying to share their, love of soccer with people who don't know anything about soccer. And I think the connection point doesn't happen around soccer. Soccer's not the thing that brings them in. And that's the thing. If you're one of the intelligentsia, you think everything has to do with soccer. And everybody that doesn't see soccer your way is a fool or doesn't know or whatever. But like, go ahead. Or they think, well, if I could just show them a video, if I could just show them a video of Barcelona 2010 and all the triangles and diamonds, they will be converted, right? They will get it, right?

And they're like, come on, you know, so people don't think this way. The pancake breakfast guy doesn't think this way. But he does like certain things. He likes the idea of this high school soccer rivalry. So you have to go meet him there. You can't meet him on the soccer ground. Okay, little kids, they don't care about soccer so much. But one thing, and I sent some stuff to you about this,

one thing I think I know they care about because I've done it is music. They love music. And everybody loves music. So if you can come to this place where loud music is being played, played, okay, now you have my interest. I don't know a single thing about soccer, but when I play baseball, I never heard music. I'm hearing music now, so you kind of have me a little bit. And then when you can weave, the other thing kids love is stories.

And when you can tell a story, and it doesn't have to be a soccer story. like we would have in our I used to be the what they called the academy director which meant under nine under 10 competitive and also the recreation director of this club the last club I worked at before I retired and we would we would do these these things that were season long themes okay so we would have a theme so like one of one of of the themes was, and this helps, by the way, volunteer coaches who don't have the first idea of what they're doing, but they can understand a theme. And one of the themes was, it's not just the bricks, it's the mortar. That was our theme for the whole year. So what, first thing you've got to do is explain to kids, what is mortar? It's that little place between the bricks that holds the bricks together. People think the wall is about the bricks, but it's really about the mortar. That's kind of what's happening on the right side of the U.S. right now. The mortar, right? We've

had bricks, but the mortar is coming together, you know, the thing that binds them together. So people can wrap their minds around this idea, not just in a soccer context, but in a general context. You know, it's about you and me working together to lift this table and move it, because neither one of us could carry it ourselves. That's mortar. So, you know, so having this theme, a kid likes a story and they like an idea that, oh, that's cool. And it just becomes to, you know, recurs again and again and again. So you have a theme. You have music. If you're music and even tie into the theme, like maybe a couple of the songs, the lyrics of which happened to, oh, that's the mortar, isn't it? you know, and it all kind of ties together. And you're doing this with soccer, right? Now, now then,

the other cool thing that music does is, okay, I like in listening to the last podcast that you had about this topic, the question was always how, what do these volunteer parents do at practice? What do they say? How do they address the kids? They don't even know soccer themselves. How do they set up a practice? But people always think in terms of coaching is about a person talking, people listening, and then they go do what the talking person said to do. What if you could remove the talking part? What if the music is the talking part? Right. And now kids don't come and know exactly what to do when they hear music, but you could teach them what to do when they hear music.

This is what you sent me. You said, like if you play. a certain song, they do a certain activity. Yes. The next song signals they move to the next activity. That sounds really cool. It would take a few weeks to get everybody on board. It does take a few weeks.

It does take a few weeks. But what happens is it grows. It begins. It's like planting something. You know, the roots start to grow. It starts to, and pretty much all you're doing is watering it. You know, but it does take a little work at the beginning. But it's very doable.

And you talked about. in that podcast about, you know, how to get kids excited or good enough to play Rondos by the time they're 10 years old. And one of the key objectives is like when I hear the people talk about what to teach the kids, you know, it's like it's too soccery. It's too soccery the objectives are. But think of this objective is to free their eyes from the ball. If that just becomes a our objective, our only objective, is to free their eyes from the ball. What frees their eyes from the ball? Comfort level with the ball. The less comfortable you are with it, the more you watch it. The more you watch it, the less you watch the game. And if you can change the amount of time they're

watching the game from watching the ball, and what allows them the comfort to take their eyes off the ball is a comfort level with the ball. Which is just getting them as many touches as possible, right? Repetition. Repetition. So if you dedicate yourself to this idea of repetition, then you use little curver, repetitive ball manipulation exercises and you teach them and you methodically teach them one by one and you connect that exercise to a song.

So now, and then you think of an elementary school classroom, old school classroom, where everybody had their own desk. So everybody's in their own workspace, and they were responsible for their own work. If you could set up a situation where you have this grid of squares, five by five on a checkerboard grid laid out over a field, and everybody had their own space, and they were responsible for what was happening in that space.

If they wanted to do nothing, then that's what happened in that space. But them doing nothing in that space didn't affect the kid in the next space who wanted to do something. Every kid had the space and room to perform and do what they wanted to do. Then if you set that up, you give each kid a ball, you teach them what to do. So you have a, think of a square in the middle of all of this, like the center of a bingo thing or whatever, you know. And then kids come around that square and they watch, this is what you do. Boom, boom, boom. Now go out to your square and do it.

And then you have parents or even older youth players who can do this stuff. And they just come and walk around from square to square. And they see somebody struggling and they stop and help that kid in that square one-on-one. The music's still going. All the other kids are still going. The leader who's running the session is still supervising everything. But this one little pod, there's some one-on-one instruction going on. Why?

Because that kid didn't know that particular thing. And so you have all these people walking around. And if there's no one to help, they're just encouraging people. That a boy, good girl, keep going, blah, blah, blah. Or maybe singing along with the music. And so what kid doesn't like to see somebody singing? a Taylor Swift's on or whatever, you know, just it's happiness. And so you create, and what are they doing? They're moving this little repetitive ball exercise. So you're putting in the touch as necessary

to free their eyes from the ball. So that at one point, your goal of having 10-year-olds do Rondos can happen. Yeah. Well, we've very quickly moved deep into the grassroots weeds here. But I, Can you send me your Spotify playlist or something? Sure. Send me your playlist and the activities that go with it. Well, you know, it's funny because... Unless it's proprietary, you know. No, no, no, no.

None of this is. And what I learned is that authenticity is important. And I never used like the current music the kids are listening to. I never used that music for a couple of. of reasons. First, it isn't my music. No, no, no, no. I mean, some of it's good. Some of it isn't, I don't know, right? But I know what I like, right? I know the music that excites me. And so I know I have to be excited as a starting point for this to even happen. But I also know, I use some of the music, some of the current music, but not much. I also know that I could come across as inauthent

if I'm trying to appropriate their music for one of my things. It just doesn't, you don't, that's not what that is. Coach, be quiet, you know. But if I'm bringing in some classic rock or something else, it's music they don't really know, but maybe they've heard it from their parents or whatever, but it's good music. Why do we know it's good music?

Because if a song is the number one song in 1975, there's probably a reason for it. It was probably a pretty good song. The fact that nobody in 2023 has heard it doesn't change the fact that it's still pretty good song, right? It has a beat to it or it's catchy or there's some beginning part. So I would search for songs like that, you know, and a little off to be like we used to use, I've Been Everywhere by Johnny Cash and just different kinds of songs off, you know, out of left field music. But the cool thing about the songs is you change them every 30 seconds, you know.

And that's something kids like is sudden changes, sudden change, change. Suddenly we're doing something else. Suddenly we're doing this. Suddenly we're doing that. So you're operating at the speed of kids. So just on a very detailed level, do you actually change the tracks from one of the next? Yes, with my phone. Okay.

I just hold my phone in my hand and I, boom, I hit the next, the button that goes to the next song. I see. I see. And I do it intentionally. Like if I look around and it looks like it's going pretty good, I'll let it go five, ten, 15 more seconds. Or if it feels to me like, okay, change it now. You know, I have the power.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So this is mostly like curver exercises that you're doing with this music? Repetitive, curver exercises. And some of them are, you know, like just ball manipulation, things you would never do in a game. Right. like the triangle or something, you know, moving the ball around. But some of them are things you would do in a game, like little outside of the foot cuts or whatever, you know.

It's very interesting to me because in three years of coaching, like six, seven seasons of rec soccer for me. Uniformly, the kids hate any ball manipulation exercise. That is, that is, but we haven't used music yet. So, like, they don't even want to do toe taps or TikTok, they're all like, oh, brother. Yes, they hate it. They don't want to do that.

They hate it. But suddenly you're enveloped in this, you know, and the sound sort of creates this mist that everybody's caught up in. And it's hard to explain unless you're doing it. But, and then the kids like it. And it just gets them going, you know. And then they like the familiarity of it. You know, people like routines.

Kids like routines. You go into any good elementary school classroom. There's routines. Every kid knows this is where I put my bag. I got to clap the erasers. It's my job this week to do this. And it just buzzes like a little beehive. You know, everybody knows what to do. And the teacher's just up there. It takes time at the beginning of the year to set up the routines. But, you know, a well-functioning classroom, the teacher appears to be not even knowing what's happening, but everybody's doing something. Right. So if you set it up with that in mind, and that's where I get back to the education background that some of the intelligentsia doesn't have, they don't really know how to get groups moving and give roles to people and expect them to perform. Everything they do is just so soccer related, you know. But this is this is about freedom and choices and agency. you know how do you how do you rate the um i mean i noticed when i took the first ussf

the first time i took a ussf grassroots class just how much of it was focused on pedagogy and um i mean you're you're way beyond that level of taking those those 4 v4 and 77 classes but i don't know if you've ever seen them what how do you rate the way they do that because it seems like a major uh component of coaching training with the Federation is, you know, understanding human development is almost like, almost like a parenting class in some ways. Like, here's how you, here's how you help a kid, you know, discover things. Yes. So what do you think of all that? I think it's all really useful. I, I, um, the, I took the national youth license in 2014. Uh, at that time I was 50, no,

how well was I that? Fifty eight years old, maybe. I. I. didn't need it. But a great mentor of mine was Dr. Tom Fleck. I don't know if you've heard that name before, but he kind of spotted me when I was a young guy and taught me a lot of things. And he's actually a guy that's written a lot of these coaching manuals. He wrote the basis of the National Youth License. And it's all about that stuff. And the reason I went back to the National Youth License as a 58-year-old is because I'd seen so much. of this coach training that was too soccer related and not enough into the other stuff. And I wanted to just dip my toes back in those waters and see it again and feel it again,

what I'd learned from Dr. Fleck 30 years earlier. And I was pleased to see that they did spend a lot of time on that and that pedagogy. But I'm a geek for that. I don't think most people are. Yeah, no, no. I don't think most people are. So that's a problem. them. Most people just, you know, want to know what to do. That's all. Just I don't have time to learn all this stuff. I just want to know what to do. Well, you know, not to use your own point against you, but we do have to meet people where they are. Yes. We got to meet. We got to meet the pancake guy where he is. We got to meet six-year-olds where they are. And we got to meet the volunteer coaches where they are, too. That's right. That's right. They don't want to, they don't want to three hours of instruction on pedagogy before they roll the ball out there. They don't, and I don't think we need to have every coach be this person. See, I think a model of, like, at least what worked with us was one guy or two people or three that know all this stuff, and it can set up systems that don't require that all of the other people know all this stuff.

Like doing this training, like that whole play, what is it, play, practice play. Okay. So that's really a good idea, gets kids there early. What we used to do with play practice play was, you know, we always, like you even said it in, I think in that last podcast about the thing everybody loves to do is the old pass the ball, lay it off, shoot on goal. Who doesn't love to? Every kid loves to do that, right? But it doesn't have that much developmental value. But every kid loves to do that. So we created a game called knockout. That just became the most exciting thing for kids to do. And this is what we did during the play, the first play part. Knockout is the coach stands next to the goal. There's a line of kids out there, you know, around the top of the box. The first kid in line comes in is the goalie. The coach rolls the ball out to the second kid who gets a one-touch shot at the goalie.

If they score, the goalie's knocked out of the game. but if they win or if they don't score, the kid gets from goal and runs back in line. It's still in the game. But then as soon as you shoot, you're the next goalie. And then you have to make the save to stay alive or hope the kid misses the goal. And it's just very fast moving. And then the kids that are knocked out, they shag up the balls and make sure the coach never runs out of balls. And it's just this ongoing game.

It always gets down to two kids left and somebody wins and then the whole line forms again and you just keep going. And what we did was we did that at the beginning. So kids would run from the car. They would literally run, drop their bag on the way and run to get in line. And we'd play knockout until, you know, five minutes after the start of practice. And then we'd start with the music. You know, I do something similar. And it's just kind of evolved organically.

And we call it goalie. The game is called goalie. And it's just the kids do. it naturally now. They don't even, I don't even tell them to do it. But they just, it's similar, but it's a little different. They line up and there's one kid as the, whoever gets to be the goalie first, just gets to be the goalie first.

That's like the big honor in the game to be the goalie. Because if you get scored on, then you have to go to the back of the line and come and shoot again. And if you score, you become the goalie. And you're the goal as long as you keep, as long as you keep stopping people. So nobody ever gets knocked out. Oh, I see. Yeah.

So nobody ever gets knocked. knocked out, but the big honor is to be the goalie. Yes, I got it. They, man, they love that game. I don't know how much development of value it has, but they do enjoy it. Well, no, I mean, there is, it does develop. I will say that their ball striking ability definitely develops. I can tell you that, you know.

And scoring is something we need a little work at, you know. So, so. Let me ask you another very specific question. Sure. on the U6, U7, U8 stuff. What is the right age to introduce Rondos? Because here's why I ask, here's why I ask. I know there's sort of conventional wisdom

that you're not supposed to tell a U6 or a U8 player to pass. You know, you're supposed to tell them, you know, take space on the dribble because you want to foster this like love, not just love for the ball, but this confidence with the ball. And I really get that. I can see it in my own experience. But what's the right age? When do we switch them over?

I mean, I don't know the age per se, but I know that I could get under nine kids to keep the ball. So much of it depends on the size of the space, the number of defenders, number of players, and the restrictions or lack thereof that you put on there. And so the, there's no, I don't think there's a magic number, but it has to do with their ball competence and their ball mastery. I don't think six-year-olds can do it, seven-year-olds, you know. There's the odd seven-year-old that is just amazing. But, you know, about nine, ten.

I mean, and then you start, you know, you start with, you know, four versus one or whatever the numbers will bear, that they can actually string a couple passes together. But I think it's boring for them. They don't see the point in it. And that's okay. But that's not a reason not to do it. And they do get, this is where a real good coaching ability comes in, I think, because this is where a coach's mannerisms in their way they talk and the excitement they show.

That was awesome. Oh, look at that. those type of things really come into play, really matter. This running, they used to call it, I don't know if they still do, the running commentary, the coach that can talk and move and, you know, and then coaches that have personality, even more so. And I think one thing I would encourage coaches to do is develop a personality, be yourself, you know, whether it's the grumpy old man or the excited guy or whatever it is,

but it's you and then you work that personality into your feedback of like let's say you're the curmudgeon you know and oh you just find all kinds of ways to make my day unhappy oh my gosh you just join the rest of the world all right let's start up you know so you're you're you're being you know and so they focus on that but then you you are your comments always bring them back to better soccer. But if the comments are so vanilla and they're just about the soccer, no, there's space, the this, the that, it's always about soccer. They don't relate to that. They relate to a character, you know, of some sort, you know, and somebody who's, and it has to be real. It has to be not artificial. But I think that's really where that comes in. That person isn't necessary.

in this music thing. You can't even hear them. The music carries you. And then it doesn't necessary in 1V1. They don't hear any. They're just playing 1v1 or 2v2 or whatever the case may be. But in those Rondas is really where that's a thing, I think. Yeah, makes sense.

I've noticed exactly what you said about being a character that really pays off. like if you if I do a lot of hollering like um yeah like like good nature but like it's a little scary for him at first you know like it just really like that was incredible yes just like scream like kind of screaming it and at first they're like whoa it's kind of scary but but after a little while they're they're like oh they're so proud when they hear that they get it they get it no that's because and that's your connection point and then uh and And then you, what you've done at him is you, like, you can create an alternate persona. Okay.

So now your persona is, that was incredible and those things you do, right? So you can, at some stage, you can sit them down and say, by the way, you know how I always say that was incredible? Well, there's another side of me. It's called Mr. Boring. And, you know, and then you start talking at a different way. And now all of a sudden, you know, somebody happens, you go, you don't want to see Mr. Boring, do you? Come on. You know, and so now you've worked an alternate ego in, but it's all part of this drama of personality that that captures them. And then if you can bring the soccer in with that, I think that's where the real true coaching is, is getting across that message using your own personality and on a level that kids can get, which is very emotional, gut level, funny, or something, you know.

Yeah. Something like that. I think that's the difference. That's the secret right there. We got a, we got a small community of, you know, U6, U8, U10 coaches on the scuffed podcast Discord who are, you know, lapping this stuff up. Any other tips for people in that world? because it's important. Music and themes. Music and themes. Another theme we had was the 20th kid.

And so what we did was we used to say, you know, just in general, we would say there's this thing out there where a lot of people think the same way, but one person thinks a little differently. And sometimes that person can have an answer that no one else has. That's the 20th person. and 19 people out of 20 think one way one. Then we bring it to soccer. There's a lot of soccer players who play the same way, but then there's that one player that really is special. That's the 20th player. And then we say, how do we make that 20th player?

In other words, how do you become the 20th kid? We want all of you to be the 20th kid. And so that became a theme for the whole year. And so then it's a hook. what will what what can I do to become the 20th kid and then it's always has to do with ball mastery and confidence and you're you know different things you know it ties in to the kind of soccer players that we want to create and so anyway the idea is themes not just the bricks it's the mortar you know whatever you come up with that works so this so you have a story going on this ongoing story the power

of story. I think we don't really get that. One year with some girls that I had that were a little better, maybe they were 10 years old, I assigned each one of them as one of the members of the U.S. national team. So you are Mallory Pugh, she was at that time. Why? Because this is how you play, and this is how she plays. You are this. And so I would start calling them. Mallory, you know, use those names with them. You know, urtsy, nice ball, you know, whatever, you know, and even nicknames of. So those little tricks, you know, identifying, but it brings the kid, coach is calling me, and I wonder who this person is, let me find out, you know, and then they take pride in that.

They take pride in that unique recognition that somebody's bestowed on them. But it's really thinking like a kid as opposed to thinking like a person in a soccer coaching course or something. Right. You know? This is all, this all makes me want to bring a kindergarten teacher out to the practice field and have her, well, I say her could be a man too. But have the teacher show me how to create that. I think that's wise. I think PE teachers.

P.E. teachers are the overlooked PE teachers. people. You know, we have this vision of PE teachers that are lazy or whatever. I don't know where that comes from. I'm sure it's well deserved in many cases. From the movies, I think. Yeah. But PE teachers are like at elementary schools, PE teachers are the answer person usually. They know every kid. They have to make things happen outdoors often and in unconventional, unconventional settings, you know, where the blood is pumping and they have developed a skill set that has nothing to do with soccer, but everything to do with soccer. That has to do with being with kids outdoors.

And I think they're underutilized personally. You do get a lot of practice in dealing with just being outside with kids, dealing with, you know, the kid who gets mad every time they lose the drill or the exercise doesn't go their way. or the two kids who are always fighting over the ball whenever it goes out of bounds or the six kids. But you do get, it takes reps to sort of figure out how to like quickly sort of diffuse that stuff and kind of keep moving.

Yes. Still, we've got a long way to go myself, but, uh, it isn't easy. You've got millions of reps. You've got millions of reps.

Oh, I do want to ask you one more thing. Um, where does college soccer fit in for you? Like in your, in your framework because there's you know you have built-in rivalries you have an existing system it doesn't seem like college soccer is producing you know for my purposes as a huge men's national team fan and women's national team fan more on the men's side it doesn't seem like college soccer

is producing the players we need it to right now so so where does it fit into the whole scheme so when you ask me that do you mean where does it fit into the scheme of developing players for the u.s. national team Well, yeah, I'm interested in that, but where does it fit into the scheme of culture, like, you know, building a soccer culture? Yeah. So it's two separate questions. Yeah. I think it's, I'm going to run the risk of being more negative than I probably want to be.

But I think one of the big things with the intelligentsia is always about college soccer, scholarships, showcases. this whole thing that I think is incredibly inauthentic and incredibly in many ways almost deceitful. There's not a, there's a, there's a financial interest on the part of people that work at clubs to create a picture of what college soccer is going to be or could be that isn't really the right picture, isn't really real. And the money isn't what, you know, they allow people to think scholarship, you know, and they don't correct people's, you know, they don't tell people, this is exactly what the money is and this is what it isn't. There's not a lot of truth-telling on that. And it serves the interests of the club for their not to be truth-telling, for to let people fill in the blanks

themselves. And in some cases, to be deceitful about what is actually out there. So I think that's, and that's so that's all a college soccer thing. Another really insidious development, I think, is the idea that clubs will pay a college coach to do an appearance fee at a showcase. This is, I think, an insidious development. I understand it. I understand that college soccer recruiting budgets are small. I mean, I get that. I worked in college soccer for three years back in the 1980s. But what has happened in much the same way that we pay youth coaches, and then they, they, they, they expect the money, they take it for granted, they expect it, you know, all these expenses to be picked up for them, and are they delivering? I think college coaches, some of them, I don't know

how many, I haven't done a study on this, but I know there are college coaches that show up, collect an appearance fee, sign a book, stand on a sideline for 30 minutes with a clipboard or whatever, and then they're out of there. They've made their appearance, pictures have been taken, people can say the college coach was there. And this is really insidious, I think. I think it's bad. And then college coaches have to get over themselves. You're just a person in soccer. You're not somebody amazing. You're just a guy or a girl doing a job. And I think sometimes they, the way our culture is set up, we make it seem like these are just, you know, our betters. They're infallible.

You know, they're the college coach. Well, you know. Especially if they have a British accent. Yes. And they believe it more than anybody else. And it's just not real. Got a closing thought? Any sort of closing thought?

I do. I just, my closing thought is to all the people that are involved in soccer, just the the intelligentsia isn't always right. They're smart. They offer some things, but they aren't always right. To trust your instincts, it is high school soccer. doesn't suck. There are some, certainly some high school soccer programs that do. There are some club programs that do. Everything has that element in it. If the kind of thing you want to be is

the person who looks at a whole collection of things, picks out the ones that aren't good and points at them and dwells on them, think about what that, who you are in doing that. You're focusing on this one negative thing about something. That's not the kind of person you want to be. That's not the kind of person you are. And so apply that to your soccer. You're there for the kids. In the case of a U6, U-9, U-10, you eight, whatever, you're there for the kids. You know you want them to be happy, have fun, be smiling, be, can't wait to get to practice, can't wait to get to the game. Make sure that that's happening. And it isn't happening because you're so focused on things like 2V1 and all these soccery things.

You know, those are important things to understand that are going on, but the kids don't care about that stuff. They just want to have fun. And you've got to, by the way to make their thing fun, not by, but work that into the soccer somehow. It's not as easy, but it is easy. And I think to my closing thought to people involved in it is, trust your instincts, trust your parenting instincts,

your mom instincts, your dad instincts, and you're probably going to do a good job. And then be smart enough. Like, look, Adam, if you had to make a will, you wouldn't try to write it. You would call a lawyer. If you had to fix your plumbing, you would call a plumber, right? When you get a soccer problem, go talk to the director. You know, go talk to the director. Hey, hey, I need this. Okay, I'm good now. Now go back and work with your kids, you know or or or you know one of the guys in the last thing that you had talked about that mojo app i think you know get yourself one of these i ran across this app called super coach out of sweden that i thought was really good uh had videos you know trust your instincts uh this

is what i would say to the coaches trust your instincts there's too much of this narrative of Americans, you don't know coaching. Sit back, listen to me and my accent. I'll teach you what this is all about. Trust your instincts. Yeah. Hey, if anybody listening wants to get in touch with you about starting a Champions League in their town, I know you're talking to tons of places about it.

Yes. But if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that? The best way is probably on Twitter. And my Twitter handle is at MSC. C-A-M-P. M-S-C-C-A-M-P. Yeah, that was what it was when I had my soccer camp, Marauder Soccer Camp. So I just kept it, you know, even though I don't do the camp anymore.

So if you can go on that, the other thing is Tampa Bay Top 10 is a Facebook page. And they can just search Tampa Bay Top 10 and they'll find that Facebook page, I'm sure. And they can contact us there as well. Well, awesome. Jim, thank you so much for your time, your insight, for your service to the game. Thank you, Adam. All these many years. Thank you. Thank you for this great podcast. I love the way you delve into this stuff. And the enthusiasm you guys have for it all. It's really cool.

Appreciate that. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.