Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #529: A quick youth soccer coaching chat with Will Parchman

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Will made the mistake of tweeting about taking on the job of coaching his son's U8 rec soccer team, so Belz pounced, and they talked briefly about the experience of watching 15-year-old Christian Pulisic play back in the day, what makes a prospect succeed, and ways we can improve coaching in rec soccer, which is foundational to the future of the game in America. 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.

Our guest today is really one of the original player kids proponents, an editor and writer for top drawer soccer for four or five years, who was an early enthusiast for Christian Pulisic, among other talented USM&T players, a sports writer who wrote for Howler and the athletic, and now the director of student media at the University of Texas and a youth soccer coach. Will Parchman. Welcome to scuffed. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. The youth soccer coach thing will take some getting used to, but happy to do it. I remember you used to do episodes with Travis Clark on the Total Soccer Show feed. Those were the days, man. They were the days. The Halcyon days of, gosh, what was that, 2015, 16, 17. Some of that felt like the lost generation at the time.

But, you know, you had some kids coming through. I mean, Haji Wright, Christopher, Blyssick, obviously. A lot of the guys that are coming up now that are 22, 23, 24 that are hitting it in Europe. You were talking about. Tyler. Did you see Tyler Adams as a year player? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, saw Tyler Adams. Jordan Morris. I covered him when he was 14 playing for the Sounders Youth Club. Fastest kid on the field couldn't hit a barn. And obviously he's grown a lot since then. So Matt Miazga, I remember seeing him when he was a young developmental kid with

Red Bulls. He was a stork then and is still calling people short now. So yeah, a lot of a lot of the guys that are kind of stalwarts now kind of we saw when they were youngans. I mostly wanted to have me on because he tweeted about coaching you soccer the other day and that's like an obsession of mine. But a few more questions about back in the day before we get to that.

So when, where, and what did you think when you first saw Christian Pulisic play? Like how old was he? Where was it? Yeah, so he was, it might have been 14, but I think he was 15 at the time. And he was playing with the U-17 national team at the Nike International Friendlies in Bradenton. And at that time, it was the U.S. U-S. U-S. U-17s would play there at the residency there,

which obviously no longer exists, but they would play there. They would train there for a while, and then they would invite, I think it was three other international U-teams, which actually I think were 16 teams. You know, Europe and South America, that's a bigger deal. And so they invited, it was like Brazil, England, and gosh, I can't remember the fourth, but they were playing friendlies there.

And I remember the first, I believe the U.S.'s first game was against Brazil. So you got these, you know, just unbelievable Brazilian youth players coming in. And Blissick was head and shoulders, the best player in the field. I mean, he was not doing anything fancy. I mean, you had a lot of Brazilian kids who were doing stepovers. I think one kid actually did a rainbow, which I'd never seen before. I don't know if I've ever seen that since. In the middle of the game, it was like, this is crazy.

But Christian, you know, he's playing in that ten role for Richie Williams, who some of your listeners, I'm sure, will be familiar with, was the B-17 coach at that time. And was just ripping them hard. I mean, and that kind of installed in my mind, like, okay, this kid, not only is he the best player in the field, not he's the best player in the U.S. national team system right now, but he needs to be a number 10, which I beat that drum for a long time and ended up losing, I think, a couple times on that. But, yeah, I remember. He did play as a 10. He did. He did. I don't know that it went that well. Yeah, I don't know if Earl Halter and, you know, now Pochitino and whoever see him in that light, but we'll see. but yeah I mean he I remember seeing the bleachers with a bunch of the parents and it was

sparsely populated but it was mostly like other national team kids because this was in the context of Development Academy showcase at the time so there's a lot of other development academy teams there which you know obviously we were interested in because we were covering that as well and so you'd have these players these kids from U-14 up to U-18 just lining the fences watching this team play and you had, you know, Haji Wright was there. Alexis Vilella, who at the time was a really big number six prospect. Calvio was there. It was a big prospect.

So, I mean, you had a lot of talent on the field. And Pellissick was just, I mean, it was, it didn't take, it's not like I'm some, like, genius talent spotter. I mean, anybody who was there could see, you know, he was, he was the truth. And then it just sort of took off from there after, you know, they went off and did X, Y, Z. But I think it was that tournament that BVB was at. They spotted him at the same time I did, and they thought, no-brainer. And I think that's what opened a pipeline for Raina and, you know, hopefully future players as well.

What did you learn in those years about, like, what determines whether a player actually pans out or not? Anything? I know it's like a, it's a deep mystery in some ways. but yeah it's it's a good question and it's something i think u.s national team scouts are trying to figure out along with the rest of us it seems like um you know it's interesting so on that to go back to that u17 team you know i think you know you had a lot of big talent on that team and there were a lot of predictions right and i've made a lot of predictions of myself that have hand out and one of them was a kid i don't know if you remember maybe some of your listeners do

a forward named joe guyardo and very much a periphery name now. But at the time, he was the number nine of choice. Like, he was it. Like, we were watching him, and he would, you know, step through tackles and could pull up play, could run at defenders. He was just a terror. I mean, he was right next to Polisic as far as the skill set.

And I think a big part of it is the decisions that you make as a youth player reverberate down the years. And so where do you go? What clubs do you choose to play at? I think of Haji Wright's story. He was with the Galaxy, or youth team, wanted to go to Europe, but the Galaxy owned his rights, couldn't do it until he turned 18,

ended up doing this weird shadow thing with the Cosmos, who at the time were like trying to build a NASL-type development pipeline, and then kind of had to get through there and then went to Shalka, and that didn't work. So, like, he's kind of, you know, worked his way back. But I think he's working from a deficit in the future because of some of the decisions that he made. Whereas Policic gets right into a system headed by Yergen Klopp, and they're very vertically focused, very pulling players up. So he got a lot of, like, really valuable playing time early.

Of course, he's a generational talent. So that helps. But I think the decisions that a youth player makes and their parents and the people around them make, when they're between, let's say, 15 and 18, pretty much determine 18 to 22. Now, you can always claw back, right? There's plenty of examples of players coming back from that. But I think if you look at what players are doing in that time period, where they're going, are they going to Europe, are they staying here?

If they're staying here, what clubs are they playing with? Are they familiar with the first team coach? Do they have a relationship? I think Seattle Sounders do a great job of that year. Brian Schmetser talk all the time about he'll go to youth teams. practices, he knows the names of the players, which means it's a great decision if you go there. It's not a great decision if you're at a different club. It's less vertically integrated. And if the parents don't see that, the kids don't see that, that I think it can hinder.

Because at 15-16, you can be as good as you want to do, but if the system isn't pulling you up through in a productive way, I mean, it's the same thing with brain function and school, right? I mean, if you don't have a great high school experience, you don't. have good teachers around you if you make poor decisions that'll determine you know what happens your college years so i mean there's a lot of factors that go into it but i think ultimately the culture around you i think is an underrated principle because it's not just the talent right i mean most if not all of these kids and these primetime pipelines have the talent to play pro at some time it's just how it's developed how's it nurtured what are the people around you doing and what what are those

decisions look like yeah how much i mean injuries can really cause big problems in those years too. Yep. And how much dog you have in you, as we like to talk about these days. We're all about the dog. All right, let me read the tweet that you sent out a few days ago. You said, my oldest is eight, so at least old enough to have played everything by now. And the general coaching knowledge gap in soccer is easily the widest in the U.S.

Sun is in U-8 now, and I've never seen a coach who knows what a Rondo is. I'm coaching his team this year. I have whiteboards. Okay, let's start with the whiteboards. What are you doing with the whiteboards? We'll see. Maybe drawing like smiley faces with general arrows. I think that that comment is kind of tongue and cheek,

but it's also just kind of like, you're thinking a little bit beyond just like boot it or send it is something you hear a lot from the sidelines. Even coaches, unfortunately, at youth games. So just maybe just a little bit more thought put into what we're doing and how we're training. Gotcha. Okay. So I think this whole question of Rondos, and I mean, I coach in a pretty non-socer rich area myself, I'm coaching U-6 right now.

So like Rondos is about as close to what we're thinking about as, you know, complicated setpiece schemes. We're not doing that. But what is the right age do you think to start doing Rondos? Probably not U8. I mean, my comment is more aimed at like for a coach to be able to implement like Rondo type training. You got to know what it is. You got to kind of know just sort of general philosophy of coaching and know like, number one, when do I start to introduce the more nuanced tactical,

influences into these kids' brains. And when do I not? I think some of it depends on the level of the kids on your team. I think there has to be a level of emotional intelligence to recognize that some U8 teams may be ready for that. Some may not. I think, I don't know, U10, U12, probably too late, but somewhere in that sort of sweet spot,

somewhere between 8 and 10 and 11. But again, it depends. on your team. And I think that's one of the questions that I have, especially in rec soccer in America, is, you know, I've, like I said, I've seen my son play just about every sport now, except for ice hockey. We're in Texas. So that's not really a thing. But, you know, I'll use flag football, an example. Not even like the quote unquote true form of the game, right? It's a facsimile of it. But, you know, they're replicating tackle football. And every coach that I interact. acted with had a pretty if not you know advanced and at least a basic knowledge of like play calling like i'm sure most of them had played like madden at some point right and so like you understand like what a crossing route is what a post is what a play action fake is right these are all to us sound very basic but to a eight year old to a seven year old this is like mind blowing stuff and it's not that does not carry over in soccer you don't have that same terminology lingo understanding

about what a back four is. You're not going to play a back four with kids. You're not even going to have 11 on the field with this age group necessarily. But if I understand sort of those general principles of the game, I can then sort of boil it down into a simple syrup for these kids that they can, you know, palitably understand. So like while we may not be doing Rondos, you know, PEP Gordiola, Barcelona, 2008, Rondos at U8, you know, in Austin, Texas, we are.

maybe backsimileing that. We're creating an environment to where we've got them all in a circle and they're calling out the names of the people on their team before they pass to them so they understand what the, you know, they get an understanding of who's on their team. And we start to pick up the pace a little bit on those. Then we start to kind of, okay,

now you know their names. Now we can, okay, get the ball off your feet first touch, right? It's going to look a little awkward, you know, it's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be somebody, somebody wants to see that they're going to put on YouTube and say, look at these U8 kids. They're amazing.

But it's because you know what a Rondo is, because you've seen it trained at a high level, then you can pull it back and say, okay, what of that can an eight-year-old handle so that I can get them to that point? Because you know what the finish line looks like. And that's what most, if not all of the rec soccer coaches I've interacted with don't know. They don't know where they're going. Yep. That's great.

It's a great point. I mean, the comparison I have is not flag football, but basketball. You know, my kids have, all two of them have played rec basketball. And they've had, I would say, pretty good coaching, you know, from just a parent who got kind of roped into it last minute. But they understand stuff like boxing out and how to like make a layup. And you go out on the rec soccer fields and it's, they're doing stuff that doesn't make sense. sense mostly, you know? Yeah, because, and again, I think it's because a rec basketball coach has watched enough

basketball and ingested the culture of it enough to know, I know what good looks like. I may not be an expert at teaching it, but at the very least, I know what direction you're going. And I think you get like an average dad, and I can tell you about my experience with why I stepped into this role to begin with. Tell me. Yeah. please coaching my son's team but like i think part of it is because the parents around it don't they don't know what they're going towards right they've been seeing the elite they don't know

what they're trying to get out of kids i think that shows but but yeah so the reason why i coached in the first place so we're having sort of this back and forth email conversation because my son's u8 team formed without a coach which i hadn't experienced before and um you know i got a lot of stuff going on so I just figured you know we'll roll with it and if he shows an aptitude for it we'll try a club as he gets older and you know we're getting towards that hinge point so formed without a coach you know I gave it a couple days to see if anyone would step up nobody did you know our first practice was was coming up and the mom mostly the moms were having an email conversation with each other and saying like hey was anybody willing to step up and this just broke

my heart. One of the moms said, okay, well, I guess before the first practice, why don't we all just Google U8 soccer coaching and see if we can come up with some things for the kids to do during their one hour practice? And I was like, oh my gosh, like that is, that's rough, you know, like no kid. Like that's just a waste of time, I think, at some point. Like just, you know, throw them into a gym and just have them run around after school. I mean, it's almost the same thing. And so I was like, okay, I got to, you know, I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll say. But I think how many times has that conversation happened around the country in rec soccer where like the parents are just like we don't like I'll do it. I've never really watched a professional game, but I love my kid. And so I'll step in and try to help. And it just, I mean, luckily I've been around it enough that, you know, I can I can do it. But like, you don't have a lot of Will Parchmans like just randomly in in these groups. And I'm not saying I'm a genius, but I've seen enough soccer to know what should look like, right? So. So, you know, I think that's really where we're coming from is just that tactical nuance just doesn't exist at this age.

Yeah, it's always the moms doing most of the heavy lifting in those conversations. It was so funny. Now the dads were stepping in that, it was like, come on, guys. How do you think U.S. soccer is doing at giving? Because, you know, like you said, not every group has a Will Parchman, just sort of watching the conversation play out. and then deciding to step in. So sometimes it has to be a parent who doesn't know anything about soccer. How do you think U.S. soccer is doing at sort of giving that person,

a busy person, you know, the tools to at least focus the U6 and U8 practices on ball mastery? You know, that's not complicated. Just let's work on ball mastery, keeping the kids engaged. I mean, that's 90% of it, you know? How's the Fed doing it, like facilitating that? Not well. And the reason why it's not entirely their fault is because they've been so focused on, you know, early days, starting in 2007 when the Development Academy started up, they started at the top,

right, on the elite level of developing players that can support the national team, that can support MLS clubs that can get sold, that have more European experience, they can bring that back to the national team and hopefully advance further in World Cups. That was their stated aim from the beginning. It wasn't to grow soccer in America, it was to grow elite soccer players

for national team pipelines and for professional leagues. And it mostly still is. I mean, they obviously have not mastered that yet, and very few countries have. Is it possible to master that without the foundation of... No, no. No. And, you know, I would point to the excellent book Das Reboot about the German national team reboot that led up to their 2014 World Cup win.

and it started in 2002 in the sort of aftermath of that World Cup and it reached down into these regional training centers that essentially brought in a bunch of rec players so that the national team could identify at a very, very early age. Obviously, it's a very different landscape here. The size and scope, you know, makes that, if not impossible, than implausible. So really what should have happened

and what can still happen is U.S. club soccer and U.S. youth soccer, which are sort of the two big club arms that reach into every community all across the country should be hooked into the national team pipeline somewhere. And they never really have been.

There's been some politics there. I mean, some people that haven't gotten long have been a part of that. but they're not really sharing resources, which is part of the problem. And there's just a lot of different people doing a lot of different thing. Beyond that, into the actual rec scene, I think having some more free, easily accessible resources

on like U.S. national team recognizing, you know, U.S. soccer recognizing that, yes, it's going to take time for us to create these free models, these free modules for average parents, and then disseminate those into the state rec league system. So, like, for instance, I'm in Round Rock, which is a suburb of Austin here in Texas, and the Round Rock Rec League runs through, you know,

the Round Rock City system. Why not create a pipeline to where, as the, you know, U.S. soccer, you are directly working with all these, the major to start with the major city systems right um and work with them to provide these free resources to the city themselves that then are automatically disseminated to all their youth coaches like i'm in a group conversation with our sort of city rec league manager right and with as are all the coaches that's a very easy thing for them to do it's just like every email you send out beginning of season this link to u.s soccer endorsed resources you got training videos you've got um just like basic

tactics like if if we can at least get a fraction of the coaches to read that stuff and start following a like unified training program that u.s soccer puts out and endorses that reaches now into rec soccer not everybody's going to do it but a lot of people will enough people will do it that you know you start building on it to where in 20 years now this is just like part of the air we breathe right so there are things like that that i think would be interesting beyond that i mean it's the problem is kind of intractable because you would need the parents to care enough about soccer to just like know if i see a kid doing that that's not what you're supposed to do right we don't want to just boot and chase or just glom up i mean this is the most basic thing ever i mean

how many times have you seen a bunch of kids just run to the ball and they're just kicking at each other's feet in these giant groups. The coaches are not, in my experience, for the most part, encouraging, spreading, encouraging spacing, encouraging thought. It's just like kick it out of there and go score, right? And sometimes the parents are louder than the coaches. And so it is a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution. And I think, yes, we can focus on club and elite all we want, and that will continue to produce

Giorina's and Christian Policics, but, you know, the volume that other nations have, the depth where that comes from is rec soccer, not club soccer. Yeah, couldn't agree more. Hmm. Yeah, I think the,

the grassroots resources on U.S. soccer's, you know, training, like, website, coach education website are, they're not bad, I don't think, like the 4V4 one. But here's the thing. at least where I live, no parent is going to do that because, one, you have to take like a, you have to do like an hour and a half of prerequisite stuff and then you have to do like,

you know, the safety trainings and stuff just to have the right to take the 4V4 grassroots class online. And then it costs $25. And I mean, nobody's going to do it. So there has to be, so there has to be something that's like much, I mean, People have to take training, like safety trainings in their local recs anyway, you know, and they're not always the same as the U.S. soccer ones. Why can't there just be a free thing, like a free module that is, there's no barrier to entry?

This is how you coach a U6 soccer team if you don't know anything about soccer, you know? Why can't we have that? It's got to be free. It's got to be free and it's got to be easily accessible and it's got to be simple. And I think U.S. soccer is coming at it again from the, elite mentality to where you've got D, C, B, A licenses and you're mimicking the way it works in professional realms in Europe and you know, you got to get this certification and watch this training course and do this thing.

That's all very official. And it's not geared towards working parents. It's not geared towards people who have no interest in a certification, just want to coach their kids team and do it well and see their kids have fun. and make the time worth it, most importantly. And if I'm going to have to sit, even for an hour and a half and watch some training program and pony up $25, I'll just say, I'll Google it.

I'll look on YouTube, right? And that leads down the WebMD route of soccer where you're just like spiraling into whatever you find. And if you can, like I said, if you can disseminate to the state rec leagues, again, you start small, the top 25 metro areas in the country. You know, just start there.

It's 25 emails. And, hey, we've got a portal, a bunch of free stuff on it. And we really want you to encourage your youth coaches, who, by the way, are doing this for free. I got an $85 rebate on my son's registration. So that's what I'm doing this for. And, like, they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart. Again, what percentage of these are parents of the players, like huge percentage? And make it easy.

and they're not making it easy right now. Yeah. Let me run by you my theory of the Rondo, like when the Rondo should be introduced. It's basically the same as yours, but there are some details to it. So, you know, there's a lot of people who think at U6, definitely at U6, you should not teach kids to spread out.

It's actually, or to pass the ball, because you want them to become like owners of the ball, take responsibility. And I have actually seen the con, verse play out in my coaching experience where I was before I learned that I was hollering at the kids to pass the ball and a couple of them who were good listeners started doing it and started it they started to be kids who would um didn't want the ball you know they would get it and they would just pass it and and I felt really bad I think I think I triaged and you know fixed it fixed what

I had the problem that I created in those cases but I saw that play out so people say No, don't do it at U6. U8 is where it gets a little more gray, right? But I guess my thought is if you can get every U8 player in your community, if you have a way to make sure every U8 player in your community has the technical ability to actually do a Rondo. You know, because that's a lot of kids don't. Then at U10, you really focus on it.

And then because if you have a lot of kids, U-10 players who can rondo, who enjoy, who get good enough where they actually enjoy the process of rondowing, you have a lifelong soccer fan, basically. It's be hard to imagine a person not loving soccer for the rest of their life if they can rondo at U-10. So that's the, that's the amateur bells system there. Yeah. What do you think?

I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think, like you said, if you know. if you know what a Rondo is as a coach, which is step one, right? Then I think at you, you can try to do something that is a dumbed down version of it. You're slowing it down.

You're making it easy. You're not putting pressure on it being perfect. And if you see, again, it's the emotional intelligence piece. If you see the kids are just not there, like you were saying with the technical ability, like stop, stop doing it. Do other skills, skill drills that will lead them up to that point.

But again, I know a broken record, but if you know where you're going, like I'm working towards this, then it doesn't hurt every now and then to dip your foot back into that pool and say like, okay, let's try it again. No, that's not how you do it. Let's try it again.

Okay, we can't do that now. Let's do some dribbling drills. Let's do some one-on-ones. Let's do some passing drills, whatever, that are geared towards that. then you can get there. The problem is that we're just, in a lot of cases, kick and chase, we're not working towards that.

We may accidentally find a kid who has the skill set, but it's incidental to what we're doing, which is the big problem. So your son, he's been playing soccer for the past few years, or this isn't his first season, is it? No, I think he's been playing for three years, maybe. Okay. four or five and he's had different coaches i guess each of probably each of those seasons

yes every season a different coach and i've been i've i've spent so many years on sidelines rubbing shoulders with soccer parents that i know exactly what i don't want to be and so i've been very quiet you know i'll make comments to my wife like i shunas you know but you know we coach him individually after the game like hey think about this do this but try to give the coaches the space to do things even if I can see that, you know, they're kind of grasping at straws tactically, which, I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world if the kid gets out there and has fun and, you know, doesn't take away, you know, a one-on-one mental skill set. I mean, that's okay. But, you know, now we start getting a U-8. Even at U-6, it starts to get like,

okay, well, we got to get a little bit more targeted here. what we're going towards or else all it's going to be is something I did for fun for a couple years, but I didn't really grasp the inner workings of it. Because I think, you know, I think it's a lot like watching a TV show in season five and you don't watch the previous four seasons. It was like, I have no idea what's going on here. Of course you're not going to continue to watching it. You don't know the plot lines.

You know the storyline. You don't know all the little nuances in the show. And I think sometimes when we don't teach our kids those new things, those nuances at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and they get to be 11 and 12. They're in season 6 of the show, and they're like, I don't get like what, why would I keep watching this? Like, there's nothing there for me.

It's just running and kicking. When, like you said, if you get a kid that likes a Rondo at 10 or 11 and really enjoys doing it knows how, they started it. It's really like starting a season one. It can understand the plot lines. They can see where the story's going. And then it builds on each other.

So by the time they're 16, 17, 18, they've built on their own progress to the point where they can see where the thing is going. I think we just don't do a good enough job of that. It just occurred to me. One other Rondo idea I heard that makes, you were talking about putting them in a circle and then passing and saying the name of the,

of the player you're passing to. But somebody told me that they do it, the way they do it is they just, they do it with no resistance, nobody in the middle. and you just you pass it around and he would time him like and that would that would be the tension in the in the exercises can you do it faster can you get more in a minute than you did the time before without any defender i haven't tried that yet because i think it'd be too boring well definitely wouldn't work with my u-sics but yeah i mean with the u-8s so i do even a variation of that to where instead of a you know one of the players in the middle. I will go in the middle while they're calling out names. And I'll kind of fake pressure sometimes. If I can tell a particular player is really struggling with it, I'll take it a little bit

more easy on them, let them complete the pass just so that they get that sense of accomplishment. And then if they pass to somebody who's really getting it, I'll really put more pressure on them and like let them maybe I'll like fake like, oh, you got it through my legs, you know, like that kind of thing. Just again, to get them, it's sort of different pressures and resistances for different players. Again, I think too often at the rec level, you see like everybody gets the same everything. Everybody gets the same attention. Everybody gets the same pressure. Everybody gets the same skill set. And we know that's never the case. They're never at the same place. They all need kind of unique touches. This doesn't mean you're spending a million years with all of them, but you're giving

them all kind of what they need as they need it with the hopes that, you know, that kind of different pressures will produce, you know, a similar outcome. Right. I mean, I endorse that with all of my heart. You know, the coach being the one who applies the sort of passive pressure to the weaker kids. And it's it's so, so crucial, I think, especially at younger ages. Yep. Hmm.

What else? What else you got? What else is on your mind with, as you embark on this season? Have you had your first practice yet? So yesterday, the most. Monday this week was supposed to be our first practice, and it was like a hundred and six degree heat advisory. So we decided to push it. I also had a procedure over the weekend, and I figured, ah, you know, we'll use the heat as an excuse.

So we'll start in the next week. But, yeah, I mean, I've started compiling some practice kind of sets and some things that we're going to do. I haven't decided exactly what the time will look like because, you know, you want some unstructured time in there as well where they're not, you know, completely. scheduled out the whole hour. But, yeah, you know, I've been thinking a lot, too, about the way coaches interact with parents. Because, you know, as coaches, it's all player-centric, right? Which I think is great.

But there's another component to that, to where the coach can coach the parents on, you know, five minutes after the practice. Like just have a little powwow with the parents that's not just like, okay, here's the practice time. Here's when to show up at the game field. You know, pictures are at this time. It's like, here's like three things you could do with your kid this week that would really help us come Saturday when we have our game. Or, you know, I'm going to send a YouTube video to the group this week that's just like a very basic five-minute primer on what we just learned.

or here's a highlights video of Ronaldinho from 20 years ago. It's only three minutes. It has terrible techno music behind it. But I would love for you to watch it, just so you kind of get a sense of high skill and what it looks like. Because I recognize that not everybody in this group will have seen or even watched a single game of soccer in their life, which is fine. But since your kid is here and you're spending this time with us

and you're spending time watching your kid, you know, a couple hours a week, why not put in a couple minutes yourself and just get like the most basic possible education that you can. And if you're interested in it later, if you want to know more, come with me. We can learn it out to whatever level you're comfortable with. But otherwise, I'll just send you these quick clips every now and then. I'll send it in text chain or the, you know, email chain or whatever it is. And, you know, with the hopes that, you know, they're not.

not going to become massive soccer fans. If they're not at 38, you know, they're not going to just suddenly flip the switch. But maybe they have a little bit more appreciation of what we're trying to do. Like, hey, here's, you know, here's again, a video of Manchester City doing a Rondo, just so you can see what a high level, you know, training plan looks like. This is what they're working towards someday. And so I think it's just an interesting thing for me to explore because, again, as a parent who's been on the other side, I've never gotten that.

And I don't need it, but a lot of parents do. And again, I don't blame the coaches. I mean, it's not their fault. They didn't know any better. But I think as youth coaches specifically in America, I wouldn't advise this in Argentina or, you know, England. But here, you know, spending five minutes a week talking to the parents and kind of guiding them towards what we're trying to do,

I think it's not something I've seen really done before at the rec level, certainly. I don't think club really does that either. So yeah, I mean, it's something I'm interested to explore and we'll see if they yell at me or not. Yeah, no, that's fascinating because these parents are investing a lot. I mean, even rec parents, rec soccer parents, I mean, it doesn't cost a lot of money, but it's a lot of time. And, I mean, I was, I was, just from my experience, my U6 practices, we've had two so far. this season.

No 106 degree heat advisories yet. But I think all of the parents are both there for these practices. They're all sitting there watching. And yeah, given that, of course they would want a little extra, you know, education, I guess. Wouldn't call it that to their faces. I mean, and I think, again, it's the fact that you're sinking this time, and it's your kid, you know, like, we're not doing this for some random person that you're just interested in. It's your kid. And I think you can hit them on that emotional level of like, it doesn't take, I'm not asking a lot of you as a parent. For the most part, we don't ask anything apparent, right? Especially at the rec level. You just, you know, bring out your camping chair. You chill out. You know, you throw water at them during the water. breaks and say go team and that's the end of it and so i think if we can just just like hire the

you know raise the bar five inches and just say here's some fun videos you don't have to watch all of them you don't have to watch any of them all the way through but if your kids interested in this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world right yeah and if you want more you can take it up to whatever level you want what's the skill level of your play i mean i guess you haven't seen the players out on the field yet, but is it, what do you suspect? Is it kids who can trap and pass and dribble with some facility? Rarely, right? At least comfortably, certainly not in traffic.

You know, pressure, I think, breaks kids at the rec level at this age group more often than not, where their brains just scramble. And you see that, I mean, that's not just wreck, it's club, too, to where, you know, pressure is the great equalizer, right? and it kind of separates the elite from the not elite at an early age. And so that's something that we, you know, I've always wanted to simulate is like, I want you to feel under some duress as a player from a very early age because it's that decision-making process that even at the Champions League level separates like a Tony Crose

from, you know, an average midfielder because it's what he does under pressure. There's someone right on his back. And he's thinking like three, four, five steps ahead. So as a UAE youth player in a random wreckly, you're going to do that? Of course not. But the more pressure I can push onto him in a non before you break, right? The more comfortable you get seeing a passing lane because the guy standing, you know, five feet to your left. You know, you're getting past that kid.

There's an outlet, right? Making the outlets easy. So they're not going to get triangles, right? I mean, they're not going to get passing triangles and all that kind of stuff at this age. but if I can just tell a kid to stand right over there and you just run up together, right, five feet apart and you just stay close to him and let him pass to you, then maybe something will click. And then I can maybe, again, that simulated pressure where maybe I can run up and just see when he snaps and just kicks it, right? Because that's not what we want. So that's something I think is still developing at this age.

I think it's the old American story of athleticism, right? I mean, that's what you always see. Like, that's the first thing that a coach sees, in my experience, the rec level, that makes a player indispensable is how fast they can run, because most of the goals percentage-wise come off breakaways. A huge percentage, like 80-plus, I would say, come off of a goal that a kid just gets in behind. You know, they're not playing strict off-sides rules. Like, they'll call it sometimes, but, you know, the refs at this level are, you know.

We don't have it. in the UAE here. Yeah. And so, and they're really loose on it, and they rarely call it unless it's just, you know, a cherry picker or whatever. But, yeah, and so they don't really learn how to pass through situations and, you know, troubleshoot and that kind of thing

because the coach just says, hey, Timmy over here, you know, runs the U8 equivalent of a 4-240. So we're just going to have him sprint up and chuck it down. And hopefully the rugby scrum produces a ball that squirts out. and then Timmy can run onto it and score in an open goal because we don't play with goalies. And so that's like an inordinate percentage of the goals that we end up scoring.

And it's encouraged, right? Like that's the coach-directed mandate. Like, Timmy has Michael Vick speed, so like let's get him out in space. And is it any surprise then that, you know, that's been our MO for so long is like speed on the wings and not a whole lot of skill down the middle.

So, I mean, it's a problem that no single rec coach can solve because you get these kids from other coaches, right? But if maybe you can simulate just a little bit of pressure, you know, just a little bit, get them passing a little bit more and running a little bit less, and I think that's just setting the next coach up pretty well. I don't want to take your whole morning, but the thing about pressure reminds me of something,

I do this game, works with U8 and U6, called Zoo Animals. And they say what animal they are. They go in what I call a cage in either corner next to the goal. And then I'm the zookeeper. I fall asleep. And when I fall asleep, they go. They escape their cages. And they have to go up around a cone in the middle of the field, just dribbling.

And then get back to their cage before I wake up and knock their body. ball out of bounds. And when I put pressure on them, I mean, the game is, the game works with both age groups really well, just for, you know, basic ball mastery. But when you, when you first do it with kids and you put pressure on them and you, you know, I get out there and I'm like, what are these animals doing out of their cages? You know, like, you know, make it all dramatic. Their souls leave their bodies.

They are so panicked, you know, with just me coming even close to them. And, but as they do it, you know, some of the kids that I have had for three or four seasons, after a while, they get good enough with the ball. They don't panic at all. They just, I mean, they're a little more worried when I get near them, of course. But, you know, they can sort of dribble around. And it's funny to see that this season with these little, these little four and five-year-olds, they're just like, you know, it's like they're absolutely terrified. They're absolutely terrified, you know, with just a little bit of pressure. And that I'm just sort of agreeing with you in a long-winded way that applying that pressure, it does, it does yield results, even with basic ball mastery, you know?

That's great. I'm going to steal that game. We're going to run that next week. Yeah, it's great. It's great. I can make these kids. Will,

thank you. Thank you for doing this. I don't want to cut it short. Anything else you're thinking about, besides the thing about, you know, communicating with parents? I'll probably have more for you next week after I see where we're at skill-wise.

But no, I mean, I think... We should just do a weekly update every Tuesday. Let's do it. You don't have anything else going on. You don't have anything else going on. I feel like you're Aaron Rogers. I'll come on once a week and we can talk about conspiracy theories. No, you know, I think it's...

I mean, at the end of the day, like, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, what we're lacking and what we need to do. And I think all that stuff is true. And we need to keep pushing on it. But I think ultimately if as a coach, a youth coach, you see what you do as an honor, that you get to, you know, live into these kids' lives in some small way. And, you know, as we know, we're all in this because sport is, you know, sort of a continuation of life by other means. And I think, you know, if you can feed into these kids' lives in a meaningful way and maybe, you know, kindle a flame that outlives, you know, your influence in their life. I think if we just keep that at the center of what we're doing

and not view this as some like predatory I'm creating future monsters for the Premier League then I think we're on the right track and I think we I think we're hard on ourselves a lot in American soccer I think we we give ourselves a lot of grief because there's a lot to give give ourselves grief on but I think

certainly at the youth level like we've got to filter that stuff out and kind of leave it at the door And I think your, you know, Zoo Animals game is a perfect example of that. They're like kids need to first and foremost, you know, learn these skills through fun. And it is fun. It's a game. And so I think coaches forget that all too often. And, you know, I hope I can bring my kiddo some fun this year and some wins.

Yeah, yeah, wow, well, well. I mean, good luck, good luck and Godspeed to you. I think one last thing for me. I like to think I found a way to fuse those two things, breathing some life into these children in the game of soccer and helping the future prospects of the national team. Because I don't think there is no elite shortcut. This is me editorializing blatantly,

but there's no elite pathway structure shortcut to us competing with... Argentina. It's got to be from the ground up. And soccer's been from the top down, often necessarily in America for the last 35, 40 years. But we've got to have more people who love the game. And I think if you can help a U8 player learn to love the game of soccer, that is just a wild success. Yep. I'll put that on my resume for sure. All right. Thanks everybody for. for listening. Thanks to Will Parchman.

Coming back. Soccer coverage, purgatory. Yeah. Coming back from soccer coverage, purgatory, yeah. We'll see you.