Preaching Patience But Growing Tired...

I'd like to think that patience has always been one of my strengths as a coach and soccer educator.  After more than 25 years at all levels from U6 to University, camps to North American youth championships I've often championed the cause of "give it time, put in the work and it will happen."

Admittedly not as catchy as "build it and they will come," but taking the long view has been more than fruitful both on and off the field more often and not.

Today though after taking a hard look at the latest update from Alex Chiet, the OSA Chief Technical Officer, on Ontario's implementation of the Long Term Player Development initiative I have to admit my patience is wearing thin.

Don't get me wrong there is way more good news than bad in the update including:

• A focus on developing players, not winning, at early youth levels.
• A new coaching curriculum to be unveiled within weeks.
• A focus on individual skills development with more identification opportunities at local and regional levels.
• A League structure to reflect development for U4 to U12 with less emphasis on winning.
• A move to a league and competition structure that is not about promotion and relegation for older youth players but centred on player development with a club focus based on standards.
• Establishment of L1 Youth League in Ontario.

All good ideas and well overdue.  Chiet himself says it bests when in the update he says:

"Our current pathway is so broken, confusing and fragmented that we can no longer avoid "the elephant in the room".  we have to develop a pathway that not only makes sense for but is also in the true best interests of young players."

Then the head scratcher (or heart breaker) in the deal for me - "Based on our current plan, LTPD will be phased-in, starting in 2013, with the broader "roll-out" expected over the next 6 to 8 years." 


So, I could be wrong but the way I read this is, if you an eight year old currently playing in Ontario you'll be ten by the time LTPD starts and assuming the "phasing in" starts with the youngest age group and adds a level each year after that you will be missed entirely by the LTPD and yet another generation will be lost to development.  In fact even if your six and possibly younger you will not receive the full benefit of LTPD.

Really?  Eight years to basically give 80% of coaches involved in coaching in this province the thing they want more than anything else, a simple tool - a curriculum - that helps them do a decent job and give the bulk of youth players a decent grounding in skills and instils in them a love of the game.  Eight years...

A twitter exchange (not the perfect forum for complex discussions but certainly a timely one) with Jason DeVos a club technical director and someone who is doing more than most to effect change for the better on the game in this country revealed some of the thinking behind this slow phasing in - "It's not about starting with low standards and phasing them higher. It's about starting with high standards and phasing them in, starting with the youngest ages first."

The context being we need to educate and qualify coaches, that the process takes time - "Giving unqualified coaches a curriculum and expecting them to be 'elite' coaches won't work. Education is vitally important."

Very difficult to argue this (on twitter or anywhere) in fact impossible - education is vitally important.  But understanding your "market" is pretty important too and the fact remains the vast majority of our coaches at the developmental level (U12 and younger) - are not certified, have no desire to become certified and frankly will more often walk away than spend a weekend becoming certified.

If the LTPD curriculum becomes yet another "closed document" available only to "certified" coaches who spend (or their club spends) more than $125 for OSA certification than once again the core of the people delivering the foundation of our youngest players will be missed and a huge opportunity lost.

Instead make the curriculum for the first two phases of the LTPD available online - make it simple to use, easy to understand with lesson plans to ease delivery - offer free three hour clinics to show people how to deliver the sessions and answer some basic questions and then move on.  If the quality of the programming is good maybe you'll then hold on to the majority of these coaches after a couple of years instead of losing them and then and only then can you hope to gain the quantity of certified coaches you are looking for.  Consider it a loss leader for the future of the game.

Do it today, not in 2013, do not wait until you have the right number of "certified" U4 and U6 coaches because I'm afraid as patient as I am that day may never come.

LTPD: Making Headlines for the Wrong Reasons

Once again a media outlet in Canada has brought up the issue of how soccer is "banning" winning under the new Long Term Player Development plan that the Canadian Soccer Association is attempting to implement across the country.

Besides simply regurgitating arguments that have been already been made it is obvious from the article the CSA still has plenty of work to do not just with the folks outside of the soccer world but with the very people who are supposed to helping to deliver the message and implement the plan.

This time the LTPD gets column space in Ottawa through a Ron Corbett article in the Sun describing how the local district league has decided not to award medals to divisional champions. Mr. Corbett has decided that this policy says that, "achievement is now something you should be ashamed of, something you should hide from other people and ignore if at all possible."   More of the solid headline making and sure to get a reaction material that has surfaced across the country (Tom Brodbeck brought this up in a Winnipeg Sun blog way back in February which led to my original article addressing this topic).

 My point then was the CSA and other soccer governing bodies had to work much harder at getting the message out to the general public about what the LTPD was all about, how it was going to be implemented and most importantly what it was going to do to improve the state of the game in this country. What I may not have emphasized enough was how much work the CSA had to do within the game as well with the leaders it expected to aid in the process.

According to Mr. Corbett - "This past season, scores and standings were outright banned for all soccer players in the association under the age of nine. It will be raised to 10 next year, and 11 the year after. Before long, you will have to be 12 years old before you are allowed to win a soccer game in Ottawa."

No where in the LTPD does it say that scores are not to be kept or that teams will not be able to win games - it would be impossible to implement or enforce such a policy even if one wanted to as everyone who attends a game be they player, coach, parent or referee certainly knows what the score is and who won at the end.

The point of not keeping standings at these younger ages is to de-emphasize the winning at all costs mentality that has entered the game and focus more on development - nothing more, nothing less. If the league structure would also eliminate promotion and relegation for the younger players this too would be beneficial for development but that is an another debate for another day.

I don't expect people outside of the player development pyramid to understand or even care but the one thing I can assure them the LTPD is not? It is not some communistic plot born of the 1950s cold war meant to mollify the masses and turn them into some sort of non-competitive non-thinking zombies (we have a school system for that) as Mr. Corbett and his ilk like to think.

No, the most troubling thing in the article is not the comments from a headline searching Sun writer, that I expect, what is troubling is the comments from the soccer people quoted in the article. Not because the comments themselves are wrong or even misplaced but they do show how far we have to go to even get all the soccer people on the same page in this country when it comes to implementation of this program.

“Honestly, this is what the experts are telling us to do,” says Wayne MacDougall, president of the Eastern Ontario District Soccer Association. “We don’t set the policy, we just implement it.”

In other words don't shoot the messenger we're just doing what we are told.

Never mind that for the first time in history a district body is just blindly following the direction of the national association in Canada but the fact that there is really no attempt to explain the purpose or defend the LTPD by MacDougall other than, “It’s all part of the long-term athlete development plan that Sports Canada and the Canadian Soccer Association is putting into place,” says MacDougall. “We want to put more emphasis on development, and less on winning.”

Bill Michalopulos president of the 6,300 member Ottawa South United Soccer Club adds to the mixed message, “We don’t live in some Utopian world where there’s no winners or losers. Kids have been getting medals and trophies for as long as there’s been organized sports. Now all of a sudden that’s wrong?”

The answer is - no it's not but making the sole emphasis of a program for players ages 8 to 11 is.  What the LTPD is attempting to do is reset the balance a bit between winning and development put a little more emphasis on one over the other.

Both Michalopulos and MacDougall are long serving in their positions and have done yeoman's work in making the sport bigger and better in the Ottawa area and to my knowledge are firmly in favour of player development and their efforts certainly deserve better light than the Sun's article cast on them - intentionally or not.

But it does beg the question of our national or provincial associations - Have we even bothered or attempted to help  club and district leaders understand the issues in implementation and educate them on dealing with the media in these situations regarding the LTPD?  It seems not and once more shows we have many miles to travel if this task is to be completed.

The Maturation of Canadian Soccer

Things are moving quickly now for Canadian soccer - on and off the field. The signs of change and shift are everywhere around us from the highest administrative levels right down to the local youth scene and all signs point to a maturation of the game here in Canada.

The importance of expected governance changes, the awarding of world cups, development of professional clubs and building and expansion(!) of facilities across the country cannot be underestimated but subtly and sometimes not so subtly, something even more exciting for the future is beginning to happen at the grassroots levels - the professionalism of the game.

The changes have been ongoing, subtle and sometimes swift depending on location and maturity of the local game and strength of local leadership. Changes taking hold as youth clubs professionalize and sometimes streamline their organizations adding paid general managers, administrators and technical directors to their staffs and have started running things on a much more business based basis. Five year plans, budget projections and thinking beyond the upcoming season are becoming the norm not the exception at clubs as paid employees put their talents and expertise to work.

Along with this approach often, at least recently, comes the linking of professional and semi-professional clubs to youth clubs. These arrangements range from complete integration to "technical partnerships" to loosely arranged agreements that basically are in place to provide the "pros" with access to a potential pipeline of talent for the future.

Does this sound familiar? It should because this is how the rest of the world does it and has so for years. Maybe, just maybe, we ready to realize they've had it right all these years and we were kind of making it up as we went along.

It's been fascinating study to watch Canadian youth soccer from both the inside as an administrator, technical director, coach and parent and the outside as a fan, observer and writer over the last 30 years. Fascinating but maddening as time and time again we've ignored the rest of the world (as far as structure goes at least) and continued to go our own merry way obviously thinking we knew something the rest of the world did not when it came to football - the world's game.

This despite our total inability to produce truly elite level talent in a systematic way (granted there have been individual and local change and successes). We have continued to do things basically the same way for the past three generations of players somehow expecting different results despite the fact that no where else, outside of North America, did the model of development entail the separation of the professional game and development of players. Quite the opposite in fact.

Obviously the rest of the world had it wrong and we were right. Not.

There is a reason the rest of the world does things this way and has for a number of years. It works and finally we seem to be paying attention and the signs are there that player development and professionalism are coming together on many if not all fronts for the game in Canada. This is a good, no great, development for the game and our players in this country.

Players will begin to not just see but understand and participate in a pathway of development that makes sense and inspires as well as provides a reward for effort and their passion for the game.

Finally there will a true pyramid of play not a topless one that, in most cases, led no where but out of the game. A true top to the pyramid with growing and natural links between the youth, senior and the "non-amateur" levels of the game.

Obviously there will be challenges, mistakes and stumbles but is that really that much different than the way things are now and have been for the past thirty years of wandering in the wilderness? At least these developments offer a different map and choice of direction.

Conflicts will arise in organizations as people have expectations placed upon them by employers who may or may not be ready for the additional responsibility (and a responsibility it is) of guiding, nurturing and ultimately rewarding or releasing these people.

The recreational elements of the game will be concerned that they are being left out or unfairly being burdened with the costs (they should not be and most cases are not) of developing the competitive side. (This furthers the argument that perhaps it is time for a separation of these two elements within the game but that is fodder for another article.)

Despite these "costs" the rewards will ultimately more than make up for this change in approach to the development of our best players and the long term development of the game.

Perhaps we truly are finally growing up as a soccer nation.