By Tim Bradbury, Director of Coaching Instruction
Sometimes youth soccer appears to be just a collection of problems with several of the key groups often looking to blame each other for the next issue that arises. In my newsletter last month I took great care to both applaud soccer parents and try to help them understand how important their voice can and must be.
Youth soccer is an enormous multi-million dollar industry which, thanks to the wisdom of the godfathers at US Soccer now has more leagues, cups and tournaments than there are fans at the average Red Bull game. There are several key areas where this proliferation of governing youth bodies is generating more harm than good. Easily the most visible, understandable and simply ludicrous is in the number of games that a youth player is now expected to play in a season. Several teams within our state with uneducated trainers at the lead and slightly insane team managers ( the role that the parent coach really takes on) are now playing in the following this Spring season: