I play pick-up footie indoors every Monday and Friday—Wednesdays I’m lamentably in class—and it’s approximately the same group of 30 or so guys. One nice dude who plays all the time is English, and after playing today we started chatting about player development in countries like England, Mexico, and the United States. He made a number of cogent points about how today’s American players tend to be sterile and over-coached.
“There’s no creativity there,” he says. “Today America is producing technically good players but it’s all very predictable. But when you can just tell when players haven’t been coached. You for instance,” he says, (cue drum roll for impending compliment) “No offense intended, but you haven’t been coached, have you? You can just tell.” (blushes) 
That’s a weird thing to take as a compliment, but that’s how it was intended and that’s how I took it. But let me self-deprecate for a moment. I play much differently today than I did when I was a kid due to two factors: one, I’m slower and fatter; and two, I’ve watched a lot of footie over the years. When I played in my teens, the most important thing was going fast. Everything had to be done at a sprint. Now, I’m much more about making passes that aren’t obvious. This means cutting the ball back sharply against the run of play or squeezing it through a pack of players. I also float around and always try to give the guy on the a ball an option.
As a consequence, I get the ball a lot and spread it around. I’ve had a few guys say they like playing with me, and that’s probably why. I’m really not that good anymore, but I do understand that game and that makes a big difference. That’s one of my theses about American soccer: one reason we will always be behind the world is because watching a ton of footie changes your perspective on the game, and not enough young players watch enough footie. (You may remember from my writing page that I used to write a regular “Soccer on Television” column in a youth soccer publication; this is the very reason.)
Anyway, I love my footie so it’s nice to get a compliment, even if it means the damning of an entire generation of American players. 
2 Comments
Funny you should mention this at this time. Today I was reading a book on soccer coaching called “Coaching Soccer Successfully.” It was so technical it was insane. It’s from 1997, but had a rear cover quote by Bobby Howe, WSYSA Director of Coaching. You don’t know him, do you?
Yes, I do. He’s a great guy. He was the Director of Coaching for US Soccer while I was there. He now coaches the Portland Timbers of the A-League. I don’t know his coaching philosophy.
My coaching philosophy is that organized youth soccer sucks. There are three billion kids playing soccer in America, bit it’s manufactured and not organic; it’s social, not cultural; it’s about expensive team uniforms and warm-ups, not pick-up games in the park. All the coaching in the world can’t change that, and fancy coaching systems just make the problem worse. I honestly believe I honed most of my skills playing stupid games in the backyard with my brothers who were three years older, bigger, and faster. When I think about the stuff we did—one guy trying to keep the ball away from two, punting the ball as high as we could and then fighting to see who could trap it—are all the skills that end up making a difference. But we didn’t do them as drills, we did it because we were having fun.
Rudimentary tactics and even positions should be completely abolished until kids turn 14. I get annoyed when people at pick-up (grown adults, mind you) tell everyone to stay in their positions. Positions? The perfect footie team resembles a giant amoeba with no defined shape. The game naturally ebbs and flows and so should the team. There’s a time for positions, man-marking, and tactics, but it’s not during a pick-up game and it’s certainly not for kids. Pick-up is a time for trying crazy, audacious shit—back heels, volleys, one-touch passing in tight situations. You know, the stuff you see on TV.
What’s funny is that the loudmouths generally suck. They want to compensate for their lack of ability by shouting out instructions so everyone knows that they “know” soccer, and all they’re really doing is calling attention to the fact that they’re no good.
But for the most part, the guys I play with are great. And for the most part, the guys that “get” how to play aren’t American.