The Youth Futsal Club model: a way forward for youth soccer in America
By: Jed Tucker
Tags: Youth Sports, Futsal, Marbletown, Soccer, America

American soccer is and always has been a disappointment. Let’s deal right away with the male chauvinism of this statement. How can that be true, given the US women’s national team has won the World Cup more than any other nation? That’s an achievement deserving of the highest praise, especially given the well-known deficiencies of soccer training in this country. Nonetheless, there have only been 9 women’s World Cups, compared to 21 for men, and there is a general consensus that as the international competition catches up, the women’s record is likely to resemble the men’s. The men’s team has qualified for only half of these and has never won.

But more telling than even our international rankings, the American style of soccer is just plain ugly. Soccer is called “the beautiful game” because real soccer is composed of an endless series of graceful, unimaginable displays of ball manipulation, so subtle they go unnoticed by the untrained eye. The comparison to American basketball is apt, if only more elusive in soccer because your average player doesn’t look like a super-athlete. Sure, Michael Jordan or Lebron James can defy gravity, but look at those guys! Seeing the beauty of Pele, Maradonna, the first and second Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Iniesta, or Messi move out of impossible positions and through a wall of defenders requires an insider’s eye. You can watch an entire match of the US national team and never see anything close. Some have compared America’s professional league, the MLS, to third- or fourth-tier leagues in Europe. That’s generous. That’s not to say you can’t win games playing ugly soccer. The US has pulled off some stunning upsets, but even then, they don’t look good doing it, and we know it won’t continue.

Skills are everything

The aim of what we’re calling a community futsal club is to train kids to play the beautiful game, locally and affordably. Yes, we certainly think this will lead to winning futbol, but it starts with a singular focus on style, and the foundation of style is technique — that is skills-training. You can count on one hand the number of highly skilled players the US has produced. And we’ve never produced a player like those mentioned above. Why not? The problem starts with our failings at the youth-development level. Futsal is the version of soccer played indoors on a small hard court with a smaller, heavier ball. And it holds the greatest promise for addressing the American problem because it is the proven program for developing individual skills.

A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled detailing what is wrong with our youth systems. Most of it is right. I know this as a casual player who started playing in urban parks with my older brother from a young age and progressed into competitive travel programs and as a parent of two (soon to be three!) aspiring players. Too much competition at early ages burns out many kids; pay-to-play winnows down the talent pool, a system whereby parents pay up to thousands of dollars per year for training kids as young as 8-year-olds; long-distance travel strains family resources, both financial and emotional; and though it’s less frequently mentioned, the potential of lawsuits leads to entirely counter-productive training rules, such as precluding mixed-age games even during practices and coaches not being allowed to scrimmage with the young players (this is an actual AYSO rule). But all of this describes what’s wrong with our current system, not how to build one that works.

Just Let Them Play

There’s been an alternative to the conventional, overly formal, anxiety-provoking, and competitive approach. Whereas travel and academy programs are built on scheduled bi-weekly practices, strong team identities buttressed by every-weekend league games and intense tournament schedules with promises of bright futures (leading to dreams that will end up broken), another voice has been around for a long time and has more recently started to gain traction. This is the “game-is-the-teacher” approach. This seemingly simple idea actually has profound complexities. Its strength is the countless examples of top players learning to play by, well, just playing.

I trained 3–4 hours a week at Ajax when I was little but played 3–4 hours every day on the street. So where do you think I learnt football?

— Johann Cruyff

The game-as-teacher approach suggests that the best way to train kids is to simply let them play. At its highest level, futbol happens when the eleven players from one side “pinball” the ball back-and-forth, moving freely down the field, finding or creating spaces among the defending team in an almost spontaneous flow. Futbol, unlike basketball, its closest American counterpart, doesn’t have a series of elaborate set-plays. Tactics in professional futbol are comparatively simple. The game is much looser than other sports, the action less practiced. Plays emerge in real time as the players find openings, move quickly, receive the ball, and then create more openings. What is easily missed in this seemingly unscripted development of a play is the rarest of skills required of every single player on the field. A slightly botched trap, or off-speed pass, a run made just too soon or too late and the entire remarkable grace of the assault collapses. Watch 5 minutes of any EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga or Ligue 1 game and compare it to an MLS game and you’ll recognize this instantly.

For those who lament the negative effects of too much coaching and structure for young kids, just letting them play has the lure of a panacea. The problem with this approach, like all cultural translations, is the ease with which it can be distorted. The game can be a teacher only when the players are relatively highly skilled. In most instances in youth development soccer in the US, we insist on so-called balanced play, and we worry about older kids hurting younger kids, so we end up with allowing a bunch of unskilled 6-, 7-, or 8 -year-olds whacking and chasing the ball around the pitch. You can do this until the chickens come home, and those kids won’t learn to play futbol. The game can teach only when almost all the players on the field trap, move, and pass consistently — i.e., when they are all skilled. Until then, no learning takes place by just playing any more than an instrument can be learned without prior technical instruction.

Casual play is the way

Footskills, like any technical skills, develop through repetition only. There’s no shortcut. And maybe because futbol requires control with a part of the body that gets so little practice in everyday life, footskills might require even more repetitive training than the technical prowess required in other sports. In short, really developing skills, to the level needed to play competitive soccer, beautiful soccer, requires lots and lots of solo practice. In a typical 11v11 game each player is estimated to touch the ball about 20 times, for just seconds each time. In even well structured team practices it isn’t much better. A far more efficient way for kids to develop footskills is to create more casual opportunities for play.

The internationally renowned youth coach, Tom Byer, has developed an entire program focused on at-home training. There are several compelling reasons to explore this. First, kids can play any time — in fact, they can play all the time. Second, a great way to develop ball manipulation with all parts of the foot is to move a ball slowly around the living room furniture. Grabbing a sibling to play keep-away in a tight hallway is essentially as good as it gets. The home, Byer finds, is also ideal because it is a safe space. There kids can explore and be creative without the ridicule they often experience when botching a play on their team.

I don’t believe skill was, or ever will be, the result of coaches. It is a result of a love affair between the child and the ball.

— Roy Maurice Keane (named by Pele to the list of 100 greatest living players)

The next step in skills development can be supported in the move toward small-sided games. Rather than insisting kids play 11-a-side professional style soccer on a regulation-sized pitch, where they barely touch the ball, having them play 5-a-side on a tight pitch forces more touches and more quick decision-making. At Rondout Community Futsal Club (RCFC), based in High Falls, NY, we’ve taken this a step further by switching to futsal for training. Developed in the 1930s in Uruguay to keep playing going year-round, futsal is very much like 5-a-side indoor soccer, except the “field” is a hard court, and the ball is smaller and heavier. The weight of the ball means you need to use more foot and leg strength to maneuver it effectively and thereby build these critical muscles. The hard court makes the ball move very fast, thereby demanding quicker decision-making and quicker bodily movements to shake your defender. Brazilians, like Pele, started playing futsal in the 1940s. Many believe it is why they are known for their extraordinary number of next-level technical players. When British soccer player, Simon Clifford, discovered futsal, he was sure he needed to bring it home. He now has a dozen futsal schools around the world, proving the game can be imported to different cultural settings.

When kids training in futsal move onto a soccer pitch and use a bigger, lighter ball, their advantage is overwhelming. They’re already used to making fast decisions and now they have far more time and space to think, to see the openings. We’re going all-in on futsal.

The Rondout Valley, NY

This place has a lot going for it to try out this experiment. Though a small community it is rich in soccer tradition. Our town recreation program, Rondout Soccer Club, has been running strong as a fully volunteer organization for over 50 years. Affiliated since 1994 with the largest American youth soccer organization, AYSO, RSC has programs for children as young as 3 and draws nearly 200 kids into soccer programming for three seasons of play every year. We have a local travel program, Ulster Futbol Club, offering more competitive opportunities for local kids without having to leave the area and at a comparatively modest cost. UFC currently offers two competitive, co-ed teams and runs an incredible two-week soccer summer camp at the Soyuzivka Ukrainian Heritage Center in Kerhonkson, NY. Slightly older teens can play for the Rondout Rovers, a team that has grown up together with the same coach, a local resident and regular player himself. One doesn’t have to travel far to find larger clubs, such as the Kingston Area Soccer League, where close to 800 local kids can progress from recreation to travel programs without leaving the club. And there are more examples in neighboring towns like Saugerties, New Paltz, and Ellenville. Marbletown also boasts a phenomenal adult pickup league, with close to 30 men and women playing twice a week, all year round. Highly skilled young players meet seasoned veterans of the game for spirited matchups with players switching sides week-to-week and a welcoming community spirit. As soon as the children of these players reach the age and skill-level to play (some as young as 10), they are welcomed into the games.

But perhaps most compelling is the advent of the newest addition to the area, our very own semi-professional men’s team, the Kingston Stockade, launched in 2016. Stockade FC has made it possible to glimpse instances of the beautiful game in our own backyard. Club chairman, Dennis Crowley and technical director, Dan Hoffay, see Stockade as a vehicle for inspiring young athletes and building a community of support for the highest-level soccer. Doubt it? Search for Stockade online and you’ll find numerous blog posts and longer pieces they’ve authored, laying out their ambitions for soccer in the Hudson Valley. Their club offers affordable ticket prices ($40 for the season) and free clinics for kids throughout the year. There may have never been a better time to be a young, aspiring player in our area.

Supporting Youth Soccer

So, how do we make it possible for more young people to take advantage of all these opportunities? And how do we build a system of training that produces talent? Paying exorbitant prices for training by premier coaches is not the way. And let’s be clear, I’m not just talking about academy programs. Charging $300 for a two-week clinic doesn’t sound like a lot to some, but it effectively bars the opportunity for most. Take it from me, as someone who’s invested the time and resources in the best of these they aren’t worth it.

Soccer is a game of the people. Don’t take that as a trite statement masking populist pride. Soccer talent flourishes only when the masses are playing. A player is only as good as her competition. Remember what we said earlier about developing skills? It won’t happen from a single training session, no matter the coach, or even from all the sessions you can afford. Skills that can lead to playing at the professional level — and yes, your child can get there — come from playing the game more than any scheduled series of practices can possibly provide. They come from playing day-in and day-out, for hours on end. Most children don’t have this kind of dedication for any program. But they will absolutely put in the needed time, when they experience what they’re doing as playing, with a small “p.” If you had to pay for this no one could ever afford it.

To challenge the cost of athletic training programs for kids is not the same as saying it should all be free. There is a place for professional training, and professional coaches need to be compensated. Where does this money come from? Our youth futsal club, RCFC, calls it the “adults-pay-so-kids-can-play” model. Very simply, the adults in the community who love soccer, need to realize their responsibility in solving this crisis. First, they need to start playing with the kids. It’s just that simple. Not in clubs that limit how they play, but in casual ways, where the young players can see real skills firsthand. They’ll watch, then they’ll mimic, and soon they’ll be blowing by you with the moves they picked up and made better because they’re younger, faster and hungrier. And because their creativity is at its peak because they are “just playing” while yours resembles a forlorn memory. You don’t need to be a trained coach to impart this invaluable lesson to the next generation. And second, the adults who love the game need to contribute financially. Don’t think of it so much as paying for other people’s kids to play; rather, think of it as paying to support the game you love. If you want to see great soccer in your community, if you want to see the beautiful game live in your backyard, it’s time to stop pointing out what’s wrong with soccer training and take these simple and fun steps to fix it.