There are plenty of takes on tournaments out there, all echoing the same sentiments. My take will be along those same lines, with my only contribution to the discourse being to call them money hungry wankers, that put profit over child development.
Prior to working in the job I am about to leave, the American soccer tournament was the stuff of legend. Friends and colleagues would regale stories about amazing facilities, exotic locations, luxury hotels, and the adventures involved with travelling with your team. It's almost like you're a real team! So much of American youth soccer is make believe. Our kids play at expensive facilities, they travel the country like they are pros making a living, they wear expensive brand name kits, have their highlights plastered all over social media, and have clipboard throwing coaches that treat every game like they are in the Premier League. It's time to wake up.
Before we dive into this, let's set a few things straight;
Talking to them, they would much rather someone with a bigger house just hosted the team for a night in sleeping bags. Kids, parents, coaches go out to play lazer tag or bowling, maybe followed by a friendly game. Then we go back to the house for barbecue or pizza. Everyone eventually leaves, until the kids are in their sleeping bags, playing video games and watching movies. The next day involves team breakfast, another activity such as swimming if anyone has a pool, and perhaps another friendly. Job done. The kids get to socialise (which is at least 90% of the point of tournaments, even if nobody can admit it) have fun, play games, and it doesn't involve travel, expensive hotels, and forking out tons of money.
- The vast majority of tournaments do nothing for the development of the players, and are more likely to actually hinder them.
- No kids below U13 should be doing this.
- You win a tournament simply based on the bracket you are placed in.
- You could achieve the same results with a sleepover and a friendly.
- If we start to advertise them as fun rather than crucial to development, they start to make a lot more sense.
Last week, I attended a tournament which is a big event for our club. It's only up the road in Kansas City, which is close enough to need to stay overnight, but not so far away that it's a bugger to travel to. This was my third time, and it is the most fun date on our annual calendar. It takes place over Martin Luther King Day, so three day weekend. It always snows, which gives me a chance to see which of the suburban/4x4/pickup driving parents is the biggest wuss, despite operating a vehicle which thrives in such conditions.
My record at this tournament is pretty good (because, you know, it's all about the coach - I may even be the most winningest!) Eight teams entered, five finals reached, five gold medals won. Five out of eight is the standard for domination when it comes to winning European leagues, so I guess that means I am in with a shot of the next big job that opens up. It's a fun tournament, as it is the 6v6 indoor game, native to these parts, which is really enjoyable to play. It's almost football, which is why it's so fun.
And last weekend, I was doing some thinking. I have long known that tournaments are a money grab, but we are not a money grab... but parents were saying it feels like a money grab? I started to break down the numbers.
The games are 6v6 (or 7v7 if you're younger, but remember that U13s should not be doing stay away tournaments).
The games are 40 minutes long.
We are guaranteed 3 games.
That means we get 2 hours of game time. Potentially 2 hours 40 minutes if we make the final.
For a team of 6, we took 11 players. Only need 9, but that then means you have to cut someone, which leads to tantrums, which means the club is short a couple grand come next season.
Assuming the keeper stays in goal the whole time, that makes 5 positions to be shared among 10 players.
If game time is fair (although some parents will count the seconds, and will bring it up) each player will get 20 minutes per game, looking at an hour playing time, or 1 hour 20 minutes if you make the final.
If you make the final, it means you stay an extra night. This year the hotel cost $140 per night. That's $420 (blaze it).
You'll need about three tanks of gas, so let's make than at easy $100.
At least one parent and one kid will go. If breakfast is free, we need meals Friday night, x2 Saturday, x2 Sunday, and likely x2 Monday, at around $15 a pop. Make that $210. Double it for a family of four.
Some players need to buy the uniform too, but the costs are already horrific enough, so I will avoid that now.
My rough calculations come to $730 if parent and child go. $940 if it is a family of four.
(not included the tournament fee, as this differs from club to club)
Staying three nights and making it to the final is $730 for 80 minutes game time, costing $9.125 per minute of playing time.
Truly insane that anyone would pay that. But people here are so conditioned into doing so. Why? And it looks like my failure of pickup futsal, charging $7 for an hour of play, seem utterly ridiculous. $7 for an hour, or $9 for one minute.
This is indicative of the reason the rest of the world looks down on Americans.
The biggest driver of profit in American youth sport is fear of missing out. Somebody else out there is going to get it, and you're not, so you better pay through the nose to get what they're getting. And that's how we get you. You can't afford to go to this tournament? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were a serious soccer player...
What else do these tournaments typically come with? Curfews, and bans on unhealthy food and using the pool. Remember, these are children, not highly paid athletes. Even though the games only take up a couple hours of your day, the rest of the day must be spent absolutely not enjoying yourselves. Don't you dare even think about it. I have known some coaches to ban their players from going to events that coincide with the trip, like say if there was a baseball or NFL game in town. Players have to stay here in the hotel and focus on the game. And it's as if forcing them into captivity improves team bonding.
Some of the parents stay up late and get a little drunk. I like to stir the pot, and this is when things get real. They begin revealing to me what they really think. One dad told me that due to his job and limited time off, these tournaments are the only quality time he gets with his daughter. That's why many of these parents look forward to these things like they are mini vacations. In a similar vein, another dad told me he was tired of these tournaments. The first couple are good fun, but then they become kinda samey. And when you do two a year, and you're on your second child, it becomes a chore. How many more times can you spend a couple nights in a hotel in Indiana, Memphis, or Kansas? It's sad, but they all feel compelled to keep doing it.
Why do we keep doing it if we all know it's stupid? We come back to the fear of missing out. This tournament is going to be great, real high level stuff, potentially even some college scouts there. Always follow the money. Clubs and organisations make huge profits off of tournaments. For many, it's the majority of their revenue. There are some clubs who make so much money off of their tournaments, that they can make their club fees significantly cheaper, which is kind of perverse if you think about it. We do it because there is a lot of money to be made, and all the time there is money to be made, those who profit will find a way to convince you. They know that soccer parents are ignorant and insecure, so they prey on that. If you value your kid's development... if you want that scholarship... if you're serious about soccer... if you want to prove yourself against the best... like no one ever was...to trick soccer parents is my real test... to scam them is my cause... SOCCER MOM! Gotta scam 'em all! |
| I am not spiteful, I am a pacifist. I do not wish for anyone who owns such a chair or one like it to die in a fire, but I will also not be upset upon ever finding out that someone with a chair like this ever died in a fire.
Youth sports in the US is worth $17 billion. The NFL is only worth $15 billion. That's coming right from your pocket. The best tournaments have the best facilities, which means more money, thus generating more income. I went to a tournament in Indiana. The venue had seventeen 4G astroturf pitches, including three full sized 11v11 which were enclosed in a specially made building. This place was better than St. George's Park, the brand new, state of the art training centre for the England national team. And most states have several facilities just like this. We have three on the same road in St. Louis. And as I looked around at this gorgeous facility, the stuff that only dreams are made of, I took it all in for a moment. My girls were decked out in full Nike kit, many with boots that cost over $100. As were our opponents. And every pitch there for that matter. It looked amazing... until you stopped to look at the football. I scanned all the adjacent pitches to look for some quality. Fields and fields of players wearing about $200 worth of equipment, and they couldn't string two passes together. Sidelines full of parents shouting nonsense like "Hustle!" and "Get there!" while intimidating coaches, (bald, arms crossed, sunglasses, calf tattoo) scream cryptic messages about finding feet and... going through her? I will not type either of those phrases into Google.
Part of me died that day. And unlike pretty much every character in any kind of peril in Star Wars Episode 9, this death is permanent. But it does signal a rebirth. An evolution perhaps. I have now seen how the hotdogs are made, and I want no part of this scam. The time, effort, and resources put in this race to nowhere, by all the parents and their clubs. Everyone is barking up the wrong tree, and rather than trying a different tree, they are just barking louder and more furiously. It's not just two bald men fighting over a comb, it's thousands of bald men fighting over conditioner and hair gel.
I really don't know where we go from here. Are we too far gone? Is this now such a loud echo chamber that it is impossible to conceptualise a world where we don't blindly fork out thousands of dollars for these pointless experiences? Or is there hope? I have been sensing growing apathy among parents, who seem less and less enthused each time. There might finally be a straw that breaks the camel's back. Enough people stand up and proudly proclaim "No! I can't afford it!" Doubtful, in middle class white America.
What immediately struck me about tournaments is how incredibly patronising the whole affair is. We should ban the word "champion." If you're winning a bracket which is not the top bracket, you're not a champion. If it only takes three or four games, you're not a champion. Once, with my older boys, who are really good, we were put in the lowest bracket in the tournament. Us and three teams, which were in our league. We had smashed all three of them in league play, and then smashed them again in this tournament. We progressed to a pointless final, where we faced the runner-up of our group; the team which we smashed the least during the previous three games. We then smashed them again. Both teams were called up on stage at the conclusion of the final. We were both awarded trophies. First and second, of a four team bracket, in the lowest bracket, went on stage to receive trophies that were two feet in height. Our massive trophy was painted gold, while their massive trophy was painted silver.
And remember that a team's ability to win a tournament is dependent upon which bracket they are put into. Let's say you're the lowest ranked team in the gold bracket, going into the tournament, chances are you will lose all your games and finish bottom. Then another team enters, and you are bumped from gold, and now go into the tournament as the highest ranked team in the silver bracket, which means you really should win. My first tournament in Memphis, my U12 girls came second. Big celebrations as we stormed our way into the final, made a heroic comeback from 3-1 down to 3-3 in the last seconds of the game, only to lose on penalties. What a surprise! What a performance! What a great tournament! But I had to be Sergeant Buzzkill, and point out to the parents who asked for my thoughts, that although the girls had played fantastic and I was immensely proud of them, we were the second ranked team out of twelve before the tournament started, and that we finished... second place. We did what we were statistically supposed to do. There were ten teams that were worse than us, as determined by the GotSoccer ranking ahead of the event. Any guesses on the ranking of the team that beat us in the final? First. Amazing.
This pointlessness does not stop coaches from using it on their resumé. Coach Dave, U8 runner-up bronze bracket at the Mother's Day Classic. Clubs too. Clubs that claim to be all about the D will be posting all about the W if their teams obtain any silverware. Sure, it goes against their mandatory mission statement PDF but WE WIN TROPHIES COME TO OUR CLUB!!!!!
 Have any of you ever travelled out of state to a tournament, only to play a team from your hometown? "These dicks? I thought we had come all this way to get away from them!" My first tournament here, we shared a hotel with a team from here. Some of the girls knew each other. Or when you go far away to another state, only to play an affiliate(s) of teams you play back home, who employ the same ignored philosophy as the teams you play back home. To be fair, American soccer is pretty
Tournament to tournament, there's no real variation in quality or playing style. Most states I have been to for football offer the same standard variation of crap. Not even the accents change. We think we have to take our better teams out of state to play other state's better teams, but 90% of them offer the same bland challenges the teams in our own state do. They play the same way, with a bunch of players that are not technically good, and tactically have little knowledge of the game. So what is the point? What do we learn from those experiences? And it's not like we can prepare. Who we play at tournaments are in the vast majority of cases are teams we don't know. Imagine if we had opponents that we knew something about, that played in different ways.
I think this would help. We're playing three teams in this coming weekend. One plays like Ajax, one plays like Atletico, and one plays like Liverpool. Now we can prepare to combat their strengths. This might actually be of some use. Instead, we always play long ball merchants, whose defenders can't trap a bag of sand and are banned from passing sideways. The fast kids play up front or on the wings. The goalkeepers don't ever receive a pass or leave their box. There's no diversity of challenge for the kids to experience. Some of the bigger tournaments even go as far as paying European academies to send their teams over. That's the equivalent of your mum having to pay someone to be your friend. If these tournaments were so good for the development of young players, all these clubs would be coming over. Most of the time, if they do come, they play in closed high end tournaments, that are invitation only. The scum aren't allowed in. And they participate in such tournaments because they are mostly playing other good teams; European academies, top DA, and top Mexican and South American teams. They're not playing the winningest ECNL twats, containing a bunch of 6'2'' twelve year olds, coached by Coach Khakis and Sunnies.
Honestly, just market tournaments as fun. Because that's what they are. It's immoral to say that they are beneficial or necessary for development. They're not. Or at least in the vast majority of cases. Very few times have I ever come away from any local or out of state tournament with a team in the US and thought that it was an experience that enhanced their development or understanding. In most cases, due to the bracketing, we either smashed everyone or got smashed. Once lost 27-0 with U14 boys in a 70 minute game at a tournament, because the opposition were placed three brackets below what they should have been. My final tournament in Memphis, my U17s won it without stepping out of third gear, because the opposition were woeful.
What was the purpose of it? We had a great time socially. The parents got drunk and talked bollocks. I bonded with the kids. We ate junk food. The kids ran around the hotel causing problems and getting up to mischief. The football experience did not benefit us one bit. It rarely does. But we have to present tournaments as being beneficial to player development because we know parents don't value fun. They wouldn't fork out a grand for a three day trip because it was fun. They have to believe that the money they are spending is an investment, with the return being that by the time we return Sunday night, their kid is a few steps closer to that scholarship. Anyone who doesn't want to go or can't afford it is then coerced into going, because we all know American parents suffer greatly from FOMO. You don't want to go to this tournament? Why? Do you not love your kid? Do you not value their soccer playing careers? Do you not want them to get that scholarship? So they take three days off and spend money they don't have so their kid can play three or four pointless games against the same crap they play locally, but this time from different states.
This is a big part of the reason why parents become so emotionally invested. It's because they are so financially invested. And this is due to the lies we sold them. They scream, shout, cheer, fight, because their time and money is on the line here. Whether their kid wins or loses justifies their investment or not. Their kids' futures are at stake. The scouts won't come looking at my kid if they play for a losing team. I can empathise with that. We know the parents are ignorant, but they become deluded because they are lied to so much.
I think local tournaments are even worse. Most tournaments are simple a ruse for big clubs to make money. Have a look at their finances if you can, and see how much of their annual profit is generated from hosting such events. Locally, we play people we know and play frequently anyway. Still paying a fortune for the pleasure. It interrupts our regular schedule, and is an absolute bugger for parents as their entire weekend is gone. At an out of state tournament, you can view it as a mini vacation, but locally? At the same fields? In the same parking lots? Against the same morons? All twenty minutes from my house, which I would rather be sat in, relaxing, after a long week at work? The sadist in me finds the sheer panic in the days before a tournament when there is bad weather projected so thoroughly enjoyable. Try not to care. It's not important. Your kids aren't missing out if it is cancelled. All that's happening is some rich twat doesn't become even more richer. I have proposed, with much intrigue, that instead of doing an out of state tournament, do the following; - Play at a local tournament. - Have a team lunch. - Do something stupid like trampolining or laser tag. - All stay at someone's big house as a slumber party. - Goody bags. Less cost, less hassle, but with the same effects socially, and the same amount of football development has occurred. Don't be fooled by the FOMO nonsense. Stand up to the peer pressure and the bollocks within youth sport. Value your wallet, value your time, and value your kids.
In many cases, good teams try to get out and go further for real competition, but if you drive eight hours for a game, or fly to games, what's really the point? Some regional leagues and competitions require air travel to away games. Kids and parents spending a fortune, giving up entire weekends, for one or two games. And having seen those games, they're not better than what one can find locally, only faster and more aggressive. It's not like your local league is full of idiots and ECNL or MRL or NPL is full of young Xavis and Iniestas. It's the same kids, only a couple inches taller, a couple metres faster, sometimes with a six-pack. The skill, intelligence, decision making, vision, tactical understanding etc. are not better enough to justify the huge increase in price and commitment compared to your local league.
It's like paying a personal trainer $20 per hour to lose 10kg in six months, or paying a personal trainer $100 per hour to lose 12kg in six months. Is it really worth it? Especially when that high level, isn't all that high compared to a global scale. And if you're rich and can afford the fees, and don't care that your kid won't go pro as it is all about getting to college, why are you seeking a scholarship for your kid? Have I missed something here? Maybe my calculations are way off. Maybe there's more parents who have given up work to be with their kid, than there is stay at home parents who can be supported by a rich bread winner, on the sidelines of these leagues. My mind goes back to a flight from Detroit to St. Louis, where half a girls U14 team was on my plane heading to St. Louis for a tournament. Supposedly high level. But why St. Louis? It's crap. And why a plane? If we were going to Barcelona, and going for more than a weekend, then yeah, let's do it. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. A weekend in Missouri... isn't that. I don't believe there is a justification for it, other than the one these large organisations have convinced gullible parents of. If you're travelling such a long distance on behalf of a programme at such an inflated cost, and it is just for one game, is it really worth it? And if you're playing multiple games, are you recovering enough in that time? And if you're not recovering enough, so that you can't play these high level games in a short space of time, at your absolute best, again, is it really worth it? I'm well aware the US is a victim of large distances and in most places does not have the population density to help with football development, but we really could invest such time and effort into becoming better locally, and we really should stop tricking people into spending fortunes with no return on their investment, and robbing kids of their childhoods. As always; enjoy spending time with your kids, enjoy watching them grow up, be a good role model to them. It's their game. |
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