Over the next year, I am going to produce a series of articles that document my thoughts and feelings on soccer in this great country. Now yes, many will feel that I should be saying "football" but the American version of the beautiful game is such a diluted and deranged version of the beautiful game, that I believe "soccer" and "football" to be two entirely different sports. Americans play soccer, the rest of the world plays football. And this is where we reach an impasse.
What do I want to do with this? Maybe someone will collate everything and put it into a book for me. Perhaps some parent somewhere will stumble across my corner of the internet and will be red pilled into change. Or even one of the dickheads I am going off on will realise that they are a dickhead. This is a very complex landscape, and so much is nuanced. Not everything can be made right. Not everyone will agree with me. Not everyone will walk away from reading this without being offended. But here goes.
Soccer In The USA: Private Training Charlatans
In my experience, this is something which I feel is unique to the United States. Hence why we play "soccer" here, and not "football." Nowhere else I have worked offers such a service on such a grand scale. I suppose there are two factors involved here; soccer is catered to middle class white kids, other people in other countries play more football and thus have little need for private training.
For those who may be unfamiliar with this, for those who were born outside of the Matrix, it often goes a little like this. One coach with between one and four players, working on individual skills. They are quite pricey, and can, depending upon the reputation (not quality or level of expertise) of the coach, can be upwards of $100 per hour. If you are like me, and believe to subscribe to some semblance of morals, you may feel this is wrong. If you wish to capitalise on the ignorance of others and make a lot of cash, this is your opportunity.
Let's first talk about the price of these sessions. The market here is strange. Parents are unaware that soccer coaching credentials exist. As someone with an accent who owns multiple tracksuits, I could quite easily fill my boots. Go out several times per day, charge a fortune, and make tons of money. My conscience doesn't allow me to do that. There are hyper-competitive parents out there who wish to buy their children into success. I do think some are genuinely trying to do the right thing, and are just misguided, which is where the morality of it creeps in. What something is worth is simply defined by what people will pay for it. What am I worth? However much I can get, really. So how much can I get? A lot.
I feel that outside the Matrix, the need for these sessions does not exist, because of three main factors;
1. Kids play football with their friends, so do not need to pay an expensive babysitter to supplement their soccer training.
2. Parents outside the Matrix are not stupid enough to pay an extortionate hourly rate to dribble around cones while coach yells at a kid to hustle.
3. Parents outside the Matrix still play with their kids, and do not need to offset that quality time to outside agents.
We shall discuss these factors further.
1. Kids play football with their friends. Simply, the more you do something, the better you get at doing it. Quality of training is more important than quantity of training, yes, but the training here is so formalised, kids are not afforded much opportunity to play. For every one hour of a formal practice, young players should be engaging in four hours of unstructured, unsupervised play. This does not happen in the Matrix, because black people, and everybody is a paedophile (for those of you new to my humour, it's worth noting that I think the biggest cowards on the planet are white middle class Americans. They drive big cars, wear camo, tactical sunglasses, but are afraid of their own shadow, set security cameras around all over their house, have apps on their phones which allow them to view their house cameras at any time, and some even have panic rooms. I mention black people, because so much of the fear held within the average American is based on race, and paedophiles because this demographic believes that everyone is out to get them. They watch Fox News, so everything is a threat to their life. I will not be explaining further jokes in this article).
Kids can't be dropped off at the park, left in the street, or even allowed in their back yard, such is the fear that permeates American society. I live in a very safe neighbourhood, but never see kids in the parks. They are always accompanied. And every second of kids' lives have to be scheduled. There's no time left over for dossing around with their mates and making up games. Kids wouldn't know how to. They literally do not have the skills, because parents do everything for them. When left to their own devices, American kids really struggle to initiate in play. More on this in a later article.
2. Parents outside the Matrix are not stupid. Not true in absolute terms, but relative to this sport, yes. If you asked an English parent for £60 to coach their kid for an hour, they would probably smack you in the mouth. £60 for an hour? Four hours with that one coach, and that's their entire season's club fee paid. So you see, it's all relative. Americans pay a fortune for soccer anyway, so what's an extra $60 or more for ONE ON ONE PROFESSIONAL TRAINING. And as they were not born into the Matrix, they are not plugged into this pointless competition, which is a zero sum game. The hyper competitiveness of parents inside the Matrix leads them to spend vast fortunes of money to gain the smallest of edges over other kids. American kids spend more on boots than English kids spend on football in a whole year. Why? Is it because American kids care more? No, it's because some charlatan has duped them, robbed them blind, and left them with their pants down. The charlatan is often not around by the time it all comes crashing down when the kid's journey is over. They have skipped town, found other clients, or the kids are at a different club, different, high school, or have left for college.
The ruse is simply if you want to be a better soccer player, pay for training with me, and you will learn new things. The parents fall for it. They are desperate through fear of missing out. They want to be a good parent. They want to win the dick measuring contest against other parents. It's like being told you need oxygen to live, and being convinced to live in a room that is 100% oxygen. It's not doing you any good. And as I try to tell people, one guitar lesson with Jimi Hendrix isn't going to solve anything, especially if they don't know how to hold a guitar.
3. Parents outside the Matrix still play with their kids. I think this is a huge factor culturally. Parents outside the Matrix actually know how to play football, so can join in with their kids. Parents inside the Matrix don't know how. The ones who told me they used to play in high school or college, upon seeing them in action, are shockingly bad. I mean kick with their toes bad. I mean fall over when trying to control a ball bad. And it's no secret that American parents aren't necessarily the most physically active. Some can hardly walk for two minutes without wheezing and needing a sandwich. So essentially they pay someone else to parent their kid for them for a while. Then a picture of it will go up on social media #baller #superstar #futureUSWNT to indicate that they have been duped into giving away vast sums of money, while offsetting their parenting, like a true American capitalist.
"But Will!" I hear you cry, "What does it matter if some snakeoil salesmen are ripping off people with deep enough pockets for this to just be spare change?" Good question. I am glad you asked. The United States soccer sphere has a problem with recognising what is actually important in football, and what is required to be good or successful at it. These charlatans with their bland advice and their obstacle courses, simply obscure and muddy people's judgement.
Coach A, who played in high school, works at a local club, and has an E license, high fives my kids, has nicknames for them, and has taught them all these cool tricks, like how to do toe-taps around cones, jump over hurdles with the ball between their feet, and juggle a tennis ball.
Coach B, didn't play in high school, has qualifications and experience that I can't understand, and isn't eccentric in his personality, simply told my kid that they need to reconstruct the way they strike the ball when shooting, because some coach should have taught them that four years ago. Most of his work is slow motion, repetitive, and isn't full of high fives. How am I supposed to tell who is better?
A big part of American training in general is that it lacks realism, and is based off of gimmicks. Gimmicks sell. People here want something tangible. My kid can do 300 juggles! My kid can do an around the world! It looks cool, but it is largely unhelpful. It's enough to pull the wool over their eyes, and make them think their kid is doing something useful. I have a boy who is fifteen who started coming to our practices. He has never played football before, but he has a good attitude, and is a quick learner, so we are going to give him a chance. He has learnt how to do an around the world. What he can't do is strike a pass, control a ball, or move into space to receive. Those things are hard to measure, and therefore, it becomes harder to sell the progress made to parents. Fundamentals are boring, but you can easily trick people into thinking they had a good time with catchphrases and high fives. I learnt that at Disney.
How can I, a force for good, affect positive change, if these charlatans are lying to parents? It's very difficult. And people inside the Matrix do not like negativity, as it threatens their world view, so they tend to switch off, or tell you to quit your bitching.
I don't believe that most personal training coaches are deliberately trying to deceive. Even worse, I believe many are so ignorant of real football, how to break it down into smaller chunks, and how to teach it, that they end up doing a bad job. Most people who get into coaching emulate the coaches they had, before realising that they were complete idiots, and then changing their ways. How terrible would you still be as a coach, had you not experienced that epiphany? In England, I did the FA Goalkeeping Level 2. In the US, I completed the USC 1, 2, and 3 goalkeeper courses. I am far more qualified than people out there who charge a fortune, and I also have less confidence in by ability to effectively deliver, thanks to impostor syndrome.
With keepers, it is different. They are a different animal. I do believe they require one-to-one work, and many footballing parents would not have the expertise required to help them. Still, a parent outside the Matrix could at least hit a few shots on target for their child to dive around for.
Look at it this way. All sessions, regardless of size, need to be ticking these three boxes; repetition, realism, relevance. Often in private training, the only box ticked is the repetition. They repeat the wrong things, or unhelpful moves. So much of the private training lacks the context of the game and the perceptual cues to have any useful transfer to the real game. Every now and then, a video will do the rounds on social media, some kid performing amazing skills with a ball, but when you take a step back, these are all circus tricks. They are essentially trained seals. But it looks cool, so people will pay for it.
We should call them for what they are. Most private sessions are just SAQ with a ball. That's fine. There is a place for that. But nobody is turning an average kid into a superstar by doing an hour of SAQ with them every now and then. Complete the obstacle course, do a million stepovers, and then volley a tennis ball into a pugg goal off a rebounder. Private sessions could be a great opportunity to work on coordination, but that would require a level of expertise far beyond what most of these trainers could obtain. Going into the mechanics of how a player's body moves, and then working to make it more effective, that is hard work. If their striking technique or balance is off, they might need adjustments. It is boring, takes a lot of hard work to affect, and needs to be constantly reinforced. It could even be a great opportunity to work on something psychological, like confidence in front of goal. Could your private trainer break down the decision making required to put the ball in the back of the net? No? Well here's a tennis ball. Do a rainbow.
Working with better players is fine. They bring the skill, the intensity, and the focus. Plus you're not reconstructing, but topping up. Most of the sessions we do are with disinterested ten year olds who have been dragged out by their parents. They do everything half-arsed, and keep asking if they can go home. They will not think about football again until they are dragged to their next session. But hey, as long as the money keeps coming in, keep charging, right?
It's 99% parent lead. The players don't get involved. They aren't lying awake at night in their beds thinking about how they need to spend a fortune on private training to become a professional soccer player. The parents though, they are tossing and turning. And then they talk to me with sheer hope and desperation in their voices. "My son just really loves soccer and he is not being challenged enough on his team" and then reel off a bucket load of clichés about all sorts of nonsense; kid needs a heavy foot, he's fast but doesn't use it, sometimes doesn't hustle, can jump really high, doesn't take enough shots, and on it goes. The kids don't wake up begging their parents to take them out to a private session. They, as the player, realise that what they are about to work on, will not really transfer very well, because it lacks teammates and opponents, so they become disengaged. They're not interested. Who can they beat? Who can they show off to?
And the market is full of gimmicks. Here are a couple of the more flashier ones.
Don't get me wrong. There is a use for this kind of thing. Especially for players that don't have the time or space to get a coach. That's why programmes like Coerver, Beast Mode Soccer, and Football Starts at Home are so good. They help you work on fundamentals in your own time, at your own location. And the advancements in technology, they are great for tracking your progress. My question will always be about the impact long term. At what point will kids get bored of this? How many days until it is stacked in the cupboard and never brought out again?
These gimmicks are not the difference makers. You don't buy a kid an expensive piano if they are not inspired by music. Having a Fitbit to track your exercise and weight loss makes no difference if you do not first attack the psychological problems that have caused the weight gain or lack of exercise. Spending loads of money on gimmicky toys and private training will make no difference if your kid does not actually love them game.
Have a look at where Usain Bolt trains, and the equipment he uses. Hardly what you would expect. The Bolt Supremacy is a fantastic book. Essentially, all the gimmicks in the world do not make up for lack of desire and poor fundamentals. I'm not saying don't invest in better training or better training equipment. I'm saying don't spend a fortune on a kid that isn't really that interested. Don't fool yourself into thinking it is necessary.
And try spending more time being mum or dad, rather than being their agent.
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