u/TrustHucks

I'd see what they see as areas of need for him.

White Chocolate is really fun to watch.

Reggie Miller.
Ray Allen.

I'm a big fan of theirs. My wife is from Argentina, so I feel like its more of an inside joke.

I don't even think he's being evasive when he talks (although there are critics who do so) I think he just rambles for a very long time and you get exhausted and at the end there's not even a huge punchline.

My commute to coaching is sometimes 40-50 minutes of waiting in traffic and I find myself listening to him rant/ramble with a ton of passion and confidence that will tease us for something mindblowing but we'll be 30 minutes in and it only leads up to "and it's all because the coaching doesn't take itself.... seriously"

I think US soccer kinda stuggles for a variety of reasons.

Even clubs that are tethered to MLS clubs don't really receive strong direction that is followed by incentives to follow those directions.

At the youth level even the T1 teams don't have much oversight or guidance from the organization in terms of what types of development players should be getting.

You could take it as amazing or horrible, but coaches in the US are in a Wild West system. There's not a ton of money in coaching club soccer, but coaches here get their reputation from winning. Coaches overseas sort of gain their reputation from the players the developed. 12 players who have developed well is how you'll get a nice job in the pros after working in youth - and they'll sacrifice winning a game to challenge a player to do something bold/brave.

I don't recommend any type of serious weights until 11-12 and with that I always recommend that a professional teaches them. You don't want any micro-injuries from improper weight training or just extreme amounts of it and generally with weights and endurance the rest days do pay off.

Plyometrics can increase strength and I know players on my teams that are high level defenders that did limited weight training and mostly did plyometrics until they were 14-15.

To some regard the customers of Uber are blindsided by the amount of money that Uber makes from both the restaurant and the delivery. Uber has a commission that they take in from the restaurant/customer that goes straight to Uber. They make $75 from that $300 sell. The Uber driver only makes about $8-10.

You generally see 90% of players regress in this field because team practices for 11 v 11 will be fairly tactical related.

This is something that I have a tough time with players and maybe coaches in general. Players get so focused on passing that they don't want to challenge pressing players and try to advance in space.

Think there's a fear of scouts seeing their tape and losing a possession while trying to advance the ball is not worth the risk. There's also a larger team and a fear of if you aren't a player who passes the ball then you might be exiled a bit for being a reckless gamer.

got it , didn't remember that part - thank you

I understand that the MCU just took note of the comics and kept to it, but I'm kinda surprised that Vision wouldn't name his kid Tony to honor him?

It was like going from Heath Ledger's Joker to the Minion Movie with that character.

I'll die on a hill with my belief that Joshua Wynder, -right before the WC - was playing at such a high level, he could have provided USMNT with a better in-game option than Ream.

I know that "Ream was a leader" is a narrative, but players like Richards and Adams are natural leaders. We needed players in that Belgium game that were fast enough to cover and press in the box. And on the flip side we needed an extra option for a last-two-minutes corner kick.

I don't think Pulisic had a good WC. At the same time Ream couldn't build up to midfield because losing a press from a quality forward attacker would be end game. It felt like Wydnder could have brought us an option to widen the field and allow Puli to change the shape of the defense a bit more.

Absolutely (note I live in Texas, but have relationships with coaches in Florida, the Beltway, and California).

The simple answer is that they have strong communication with the pipeline beyond Mexico. There are communities of Latin Americans from multiple regions of Central and South America in the major cities in the US and many are bonded through soccer.

You'll see people who have worked at that Academy level travel to these communities and work for a summer for offseason / indoor training and then go back. And those coaches will keep connections with them and also internetwork with their network.

If you want to discuss the development side ... I'm reference a player who is u11.

Since he was u8, he would have a practice every day. One with an established larger club that he was on scholarship for. One for an IP team that was more community based.

The Established Club he was on max rostered every game. It was about making money so even though he was the best player, he had close to equal playing time with 13 other players.

With the IP team (that his club gave permission for him to play with as long as it didn't conflict with their games) he played on a team with 1 sub in his age group. And then he played on a team that was 1-2 years up with 1 sub.

They sacrificed the "corporate club" model and "winning divisions" for development and getting him to play with incredible pace, more touches, and focus.

I know so many clubs, even ones with ties to the MLS, that are fine with a kid getting maybe 24-30 games at the u9-u12 level.

Then there are kids here in October here in Texas that are u10 that have probably played 40+ games and logged in 5 hours of practice every week since tryouts ended.

I understand its a marathon not a race. But every weekend I'll see a parent make snide remarks about some Latin Independent Premiere team having players belonging to a bigger club and "cheating" - when in reality that IP team knows that here in the US we are overloading rosters and decreasing playing time for the wrong reasons w/ coaches who can't even handle 10 kids in a practice let alone 14.

The opinion of US Club soccer players is that they should be ashamed, but when you see a kid who puts in more time and the Latin club is responsible for developing their touch, physicality, mentality, and endurance the truth is that the jokes on all of the other parents who didn't realize they could've done the same thing with their kids in the first place.

There's about 100 American born players that went to school and played competitive soccer in the US that are u17-u19 playing soccer at some level in South America / Central America / Caribbean. They are dual passport holders.

There's a misconception about the Latin community that they are "lost" in competitive soccer. I would say that there are probably about a dozen or so coaches in the top 10 soccer communities that have a far better grasp of the system than the typical franchise model soccer club.

My take is that they simply don't do the traditional route and probably do extra with the understanding of development being key. The only area where they face challenges are the big brand tournaments and to some degree their independent clubs aren't making agreements with MLSN or ECNL.

As someone who has been a club head before, I'd reach out. If one of those coaches really stood out as someone who connected with the team maybe reference them to take over.

With the age group change there's been a shortage of quality coaches and coaches in general. Even top clubs are hitting the phones to fill in gaps.

Note, I'm from Texas and also spent time coaching in California. My wife is from Argentina (but ironically coaches basketball). Our club is easily 50% Latin players.

I would say that because the families are so tight knit and soccer is a huge part of their culture - Latin players know how to work the system better than any other "group". They hold onto their player cards and will "guest roster" in many tournaments. They'll also have the kids play 2+ years up.

As an NCAA D1 scout / club coach, I have a few observations :

1. I've always searched around for any official data but doubt I'll ever get anything. But the highest level players that are US Immigrants as youth or children of immigrants, sometimes explore going to Peru, Chile, El Salvador, Guatamala as a pathway to get to play in Mexico, the US, or elsewhere. Because they have dual passports or parents with dual passports it's easier for them to work in those countries than it would be an American doing the same.

Some do leave to go to Mexico, but I feel like there's as much distaste in the Liga Academies as there is in the MLS.

Again with players that spent 2-4 years in US Academies / ones with MLS ties - There's sort of a stigma that US Soccer is especially soft and that playing in Peru would improve their development and they already have the ties to maybe come back to the US with more of a resume than if they get lost in the MLS Next system that really guarantees nothing.

1. This isn't regulated to just the Latin community. Its all of them. But there are so many kids who have metabolism crashes after puberty that get worse whenever they go through injuries. The TLDR is that as a kid they had a really poor diet but played soccer for 7 hours a week. When they got the girlfriend or the first job to buy their first car, that went down to 5 hours and their body didn't develop at the pace of a kid who was u16 and on year 4 of private training + 4 practices a week with 2 clubs.

There's sort of a threshold with kids that are talented with foot skills. In u12 they can work against 70% of t1 players and 100% of any player under t5. When you get older those skills are not the only thing that is judged but the speed after.

Again not singling out just one community, but there are players who do great when you can sub in and out everyone. But when we really start to get into actual soccer, you have to be seen as a potential 90 minute player and sometimes teams really get held back from this.

This is what came to mind as well. Almost make it an independent film.

I mean Live From New York came out a couple of years ago.

Ugh. No idea where to start with this one.

Obviously I don't know how long they've been working on this. But these are drills that can be improved with solo practice at home with a rebounder or something like a brick or concrete wall to practice touches. Maybe even inspire the team to juggle more often in their solo time.

You can't get a team to do this efficiently in 1-2 practices of 10-15 minute drills. You can only refine and give notes of what part they aren't successful in.

If this were my club I'd literally shake the hand of the parent and diagnose the issue and see if they can motivate the kid to spend some time at home working on it.

This type of stuff doesn't inspire kids to work for approval. It's poor consequence management and takes the love out of the game and the journey of development away from a kid.

To quote my counterpart - run.

I thought the actress who played Alice was phenomenal. Just thought the writers gave her and the team pretty low hanging fruit storylines.

Alice has social anxiety and obsessive passion. Would have loved to see the writers give us more on what made her that way.

Look they better enjoy that run if that's the case. ;)

I see a ton of parents see their kids as victims when they are not focused and taking away focus from practice. Even the best coaches need to have consequences in place for poor behavior. Poor performance requires you to be patient and if they aren't patient in these scenario I agree w/ what you're saying... probably leave.

I'll counter the running part. Great coaches need to inspire kids to believe running is fun. If you get to a high school level or MLS Next level you have to see running as a rewarding process.

Running being constantly enforced as a punishment can get players to hate training/conditioning.

As for OP. I only give consequences for bad behavior. Not failure of a skill/drill. I would just fully make sure that the director / coach didn't see your child's failure as a poor attempt in a practice. If they weren't focused or were chatty and that led to the failure of their part , it's more understandable.

But if they were truely trying then they should just re-teach and re-train until they get it right and give them positive feedback.

Yes and No. The starts off showing us Wanda being a tragic villain and then tries to absolve by putting layers of blame on Agatha. The people of the town forgive her and she has a redemption arc.

Then MoM flips on that ending very quickly and by the time we see Wanda after the series she's a villain and it feels very disconnected from the WandaVision series.

TBH - I wanted Wanda to sort of remain a villain at the end of the series and I think some people were let down by the series not having balls to do things. IE - Evan Peters is just Ralph Boner.

People rationalize everything so it's in their favor. It's human. Even when I apprenticed in the Netherlands I saw similar types of "that should be a red card" scenarios and coaches don't do much.

The inner-politics of everything are too locked in. Coach makes the moral move and the player leaves the clubs because parents rationalize that the coach is soft and their kid "really didn't mean to injure that opponent" .

Had multiple times where slide from the back happened this weekend and refs didn't card (only called fouls). The truth is that refs are already at a point in the year where they're fatigued from the parents/coaches yelling at them. They can't wait for the clock to hit the final minute and be out of there.