Lousy time to label players
By Tony Waiters
FIFA Instructor
To make the grade in soccer in America, players are almost compelled by the system to play select ball at 8 or 9 - and competitive, must-win, 11-aside soccer for state and tournament championships, and all that good stuff, by 11 years of age. If you are left out of that loop or choose to join it later, you may have already missed the boat. The die is cast. Scary isn’t it. Disgusting, I call it!
A great friend of mine, Verdi Godwin, says soccer “is a game of opinion” and then goes on to support his statement. To back up his oft-quoted expression, he would go on to name his own all-star team of top-class (in some cases, world class) players who had been ‘rejected’ by clubs in the early days of their professional careers. Discarded and discounted by one coach. Encouraged and elevated by another.
It is a game of opinions. And one opinion is often just as good as another. Yet, while Verdi may be right, we are in the process of seeing if we can, take the .opinion” out of soccer development. Try this for starters.
The England U-15 Schoolboys select team has been an on-going program for the best part of this century. Between 1907 and 1988 (we do not have the updated record for the last eight years), every year with the exception of the World War years, 15-18 boys has been “capped” in big-time games against such countries as Scotland, Holland, France, Italy and Germany. In London, the games would be played in front of 100,000 fans at Wembley Stadium.
There were 410 international games during that period of time - an average of over five per year - involving 1,251 different England players. Of those 1,251 players only 29 - well under3pereent-playedsubsequently in the full national program. That is one in every 41 of the best U-15 players identified and selected through a very sophisticated schools competition and tryout process were able to go “all the way.”
Of the 29 who succeeded, some were probably destined for soccer greatness anyway, whether they played for the England Schoolboys or not. Sir Stanley Matthews and Bobby Charlatan were two.
The great Dunce Edwards, killed at 22 in the Munich air disaster,-played for England Schoolboys three years running, from age 12. He was the only player to do that - and probably always will be.
So what does it prove? Except for rare instances, it proves that i4 years old is a lousy age to be labeling players as great or not-so-great and that identification programs need to be careful not to miss the “not-there-yet” group.
