Now we’re a bit more educated, but still have a long way to go on the rondo front.

Today I want to introduce another topic, that of ‘checking your shoulder‘.

Many have been saying that phrase quite often but, much like the rondo, most are missing a ton of depth and nuance. As a result, we’re not correctly identifying this player attribute.

By far, most players [outside elite pros] you identify as ‘checking their shoulder‘ are doing it to see if there’s pressure nearby. By far, they are not scanning the field to assess what their next decision is – not to mention what 2 or 3 moves into the future could be.

That, my friends, is truly ‘checking your shoulder‘. That’s next level. And that’s what separates special from average. Well, let’s be careful; we’ve also got to consider what level the player is exhibiting this at. Context matters.

Learning to ID these players who are next level takes a ton of experience. But at least now we’re aware there’s more to it than witnessing a simple head swivel.

Below is a video to help illustrate.
The Player: Carlos (Charly) Anguiano (b. 9/28/2000)
The Comp Level: Highest global club (vs FC Barcelona)

p.s. Oh … and good luck with analytics, on its own, capturing this. Topic for another day.

1. The household/parent/family influence.
2. The playing on your own influence.
3. The pickup game influence.
4. The structured club training influence.
5. The personal training influence.

Each taps into a piece of the puzzle.

Some may be more important than others.

There’s definitely overlap between each.

And finally, in the end, there are still matters of circumstance that can make or break you.

All that complexity is what leads to differing opinions, nitpicking, and of course many thinking they’re an expert.

In the American soccer environment, the following is what has been validated by my experience time and time again.

1) The household/parent/family influence varies between cultures.

The “affluent suburban culture” is generally not conducive to top level player development for quite a few reasons. Here’s a couple:

• The values in this culture heavily emphasize academics, strict rule-following (kills creativity and street smarts), a soft ‘everyone gets a trophy’ mentality, among other things. All of which breed player mediocrity.
• A large proportion of parents in this demographic don’t seem to have much, if any, playing experience. Certainly not at a decent level. Nor do they have a soccer heritage where knowledge, culture, and experience can be passed down.

Do you guys understand that certain cultures are better equipped for achieving excellence in certain areas?

Shouldn't be so controversial.

— 3four3 (@3four3) May 22, 2017

If you want to help remedy this, you better double down in the components below, and allow other cultures to permeate a player’s core values.

2) Playing on your own

Yes, we’re all aware of this. Go find a wall, and make it your best friend. Go find videos of world class players and try to mimic them.

3) Pickup Games

This is a huge deficiency in the traditional American player, particularly the suburban club soccer player. That’s a problem. As pickup games are perhaps an indispensable source to developing what is special in a player.

Without pickup games … the intangibles of flavor, technique, and mentality are compromised. Without pickup games, there’s a high probability a mediocre player is the end result.

4) Structured Club Training

This is where team-specific training is, and should be, the principal focus. Remember, football is a team game (11v11), it is not a player’s game.

In this regard, just about every club in the country, with the exception of maybe a few clubs that happen to be housing an outlier coach, completely fail with respect to top level player development.

They are not necessarily to blame, though, as there is little to no incentive to pursue the development of top level professionals.

As such, club business models are not aligned with excellence in training.

The mentality is soft.

Technique is not a priority.

Tactical training is essentially non existent.

5) Personal Training

Perhaps the only passing grade American soccer gets, is in this category. Maybe.

Not necessarily because what’s being offered is great, but rather an appreciable number of players subscribe to this, and it’s difficult to screw up. By far, the value proposition of personal training – as it currently exists – is large amounts of touches/repetitions.

Across the globe, players of all ages from 7 year olds to adults benefit from the street game – that informal pickup culture the American player lacks. The barrio, as hispanic/latino cultures call it, is where strong mentalities, ball skills (of the smooth, not mechanized variety), and the dark arts of the game are forged.

• This is something you can’t get at your club.
• This is something you can’t get with personal training.

And this is something that is critical to top-level player development, perhaps most critical.

If a player doesn’t have this throughout their early developmental years … well, the player will likely never have “it”.

Again, remember this is not us speaking in theoretical terms, or parroting what countless world class players have said. This is us speaking from decades of personal experience working with players at all ages and levels, up to and including the cutting edge in the United States.

I’ve been quite outspoken about the ‘soft suburban culture’ over the years and how that negatively impacts a player’s formation. The best players, historically, and from personal experience, by and large don’t come from a soft, pampered, background. They come from struggle, and having to earn every inch of progress.

Nothing does that better than the self-regulating streets.

Nothing does that better than pickup game culture:

• Where you clown, and get clowned.
• Where you may not get as many games, or any, as the next guy because you don’t get on a team that often.
• Where you may be called ‘little man’ because you’re younger, smaller, or just not as good as everyone … yet.
• Where even the best baller in the barrio may get shown up by an up-and-comer, a new-comer, or a ringer.
• Where every inch of respect is earned, not given.

Privilege and entitlements go out the window here folks. This is the jungle.

But these are also among the fondest memories of virtually all footballers. Aside from building irreplaceable footballing skills, it builds character that lasts a lifetime.

After years of wanting to bring this to the suburban community, we’ve finally acquired a field and are building this for players within reach of Fullerton, CA. If you want in on the action, here’s how you can get the details.

If you aren’t local to us, we hope you’ll launch pickup games yourself or find a location where it’s already happening.

Players at the earliest of ages will gain more from a weekly experience in that environment than practically any structured club program.

Cheers!

Date: January 12 from 5-8pm

Location: The Fine Arts Building in downtown LA. The room we’ve secured is beautiful.

Everyone in the soccer community from coaches to media to businesses are welcome.

Get your ticket now free of charge (as soon as we reach room capacity, no more tickets):

Like our facebook page to stay aware of future events.

We’ve called this meet-up “The Clubhouse”. It is a concept and partnership between 3four3 and Home Field Advantage (a non-profit started by our dear colleague and current Mexican Federation scout, Sacha van der Most).

If you’re not in town, not to worry, we’d like to expand this concept across the country in the form of “chapters”.

“Clubhouses” are a key component of a developed soccer culture. It doesn’t exist in the US, and we’d like to change that.

I hope to meet and shake all of your hands next week.

Listen to this 3four3 Podcast below …

Brian touches on a lot of important topics in a short amount of time, including:

• International youth competition
• Why forging an identity is important
• And how to develop a winning culture during training (example in the video below)

Here are two links for the top-level international matches mentioned in the podcast:

• Man City vs LA Galaxy
• FC Barcelona vs Chivas USA

Want to see and hear more from Brian? Check out the free coaching course where he goes through some key components of the training methodology.

You can also subscribe to this podcast on iTunes:
3four3 on iTunes

I opened up quite a bit in an interview, but that’s where John Pranjic – host of the 3four3 podcast – led me at times.

I’ll be happy to engage with any of your thoughtful follow up comments, questions, ideas.

Listen to the episode here.

Last thing, if you appreciate the work John is doing by interviewing great people like Bob Bradley, Hugo Perez, among many others, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher and leave him a 5 star rating and a stellar review. You guys are awesome!

You don’t hear much public criticism for a variety of reasons

1) Incumbent American soccer media has been practically curated by the establishment. An establishment that naturally doesn’t want to be critically examined, particularly not at the foundational level. Hence, it neuters its media. How does it accomplish this? Well, it  holds a monopoly over the ecosystem. Anyone who doesn’t align with its foundational narrative, its founding culture, is in danger of losing access.

2) Incumbent culture has a recreational mentality – a property that is the antithesis of the hardcore culture the rest of the world has. The soccer structure we live in has been built of, by, and for a casual soccer demographic. It extends from youth all the way to the pro level being addressed here.

When something is casual, there are no stakes. When there are no stakes, nobody gets too heated over things.

After all, “it’s just a game“. That phrase, right there, is the [convenient] foundation upon which American soccer has been built. It’s no wonder we’re mediocre, anybody with that kind of mentality will not achieve excellence.

Contrast that with the rest of the world, where a portion of people’s very identity and self esteem is hinged on their clubs and national teams.

Now, before you robotically react and think that’s sad, reserve judgement until you understand that clubs and national teams across the world represent people at a social, political, economic, and cultural level. It is their flag.

3) Most soccer-first households (the largest and most critical of demos) in the United States aren’t paying attention to American soccer. Because well, it’s low level, inauthentic, and most importantly has historically discriminated against them – preferring instead to cater to the soft suburban soccer-mom demo.

As a consequence, it’s that soft culture that both dominates the narrative and creates policy when it comes to the American game – it has inculcated that softness into the very fabric of American soccer.

Yes, the soccer-first demo, like 3four3, does call it like it is (eg as Colin put it, “Michael Bradley is completely pedestrian”) but that has historically, and to this day primarily occurs in relative isolation – as anyone from this demo is not hired and graced with a large media platform. If one is hired, they are systematically neutered.

But there is someone with a heavyweight platform that has dipped his toe in the culture challenge.

Jurgen Klinsmann

Jurgen has criticized the players, and has been trying to send the message of “not good enough”, and lists reasons.

The result of his action and criticism?

The soft soccer-mom media turned on him and [at the behest of its master, MLS] launched a smear campaign against him that continues to date.

• Prior to the World Cup, he stated the US can not win it. In other words, he told the unvarnished truth. He was real.

• He deemed Landon Donovan not a good fit for the 2014 World Cup squad. (Note: Assessment of a player goes beyond his ability on the field, there are other critical factors a coach considers in making selections. This is a team game, after all. It’s not about 1 player.)

• Players should go overseas to challenge themselves. This was an indictment of MLS, and the domestic culture.

• He transmitted disappointment when he saw some of his key pieces coming back to MLS (eg Dempsey, Bradley, Altidore).

• He said many moons ago, and continues to say, that our players are naive and “need to be nastier”.

There have been a variety of other incidents where the soccer-mom culture looked at him as “throwing players under the bus”.

They were also pissed when he suggested the media needed to further educate themselves in the game.

See, the culture here is precisely as Cowherd observes. The culture is soft. Even the words and phrases we use are soft.

For instance, “Late bloomers”?  So we’re like precious little flowers that bloom, or we’re like delicate things that blossom.

Jack Harrison is blossoming with #NYCFC: https://t.co/UVq3x2B96M #MLS

— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) July 15, 2016

If you look at what incumbent soccer media’s reactions/responses to Cowherd & Whitlock’s comments were, you are hard-pressed to find support for their observations. Quite the contrary, most that’s been published whether on established media outlets, or social media commentary, was crafted to undermine these observations and uphold the soccer-mom status quo.

Alexi Lalas represents the establishment’s [convenient] myths

Jason Whitlock hits the truth, again.

Absolutely. Absolutely that certain cultures, are better fit to becoming great at soccer than others. Those coming from an affluent suburban American culture, in general, just don’t “have it”.

Those coming from a socio-economic strata below affluence, in general, are better suited. There’s a particular mentality and set of values the latter has, and the former does not.

Some of the biggest inhibitors the suburban players face are:

• The “it’s just a game” mentality. The other demo treats it as an arena to “best” others, since from a societal perspective they are looked as ‘lower class’. It’s personal.

• The suburban players are brought up in an environment where ‘following the rules’ of the traditional American industrial complex is sacred, where self expression is only ok within narrow boundaries. In other words, being robot-like automatons vs flavorful full-range humans. Top level “creativity” isn’t being stifled by coaches on the field, their cultural upbringing is doing that job.

• The suburban player derives his self-esteem from things other than how good he is in sport. For instance, getting good grades on some standardized test. They measure themselves on how good they are at following societal norms. They don’t need to be great at soccer.

Alexi has it totally wrong about pretty much everything. And he really goes off the rails at the end of the video when he tries to defend the absurdity of expecting the US to beat Argentina. It’s completely disingenuous, derived from the campaign to fire Jurgen Klinsmann, and frankly condescending to all US Soccer fans.

When an admitted soccer layman like Jason Whitlock can sniff out the bull shit, you know we have a serious problem.

Please take a moment, go on Twitter, and thank @WhitlockJason and Colin Cowherd for at least spotlighting and telling one critical truth about American soccer. A truth the establishment obfuscates.

As such, the past 5 years we’ve gone on international trips with a group of players to play in legitimate competitions against the best academies in the world. Full matches vs FC Barcelona and Man City, among others, have been captured.

The latest installment was with our neighbors down south, Mexico.

The top 4 Mexican teams joined 4 MLS sides in a round-robin at #LigaMXInternacional.

Our first 3 games were vs MLS sides. All of them were won with 6 GF, 0 GA. 9 points. Which practically assured advancement to the final.

In the final we lost 4-2 to Xolos.

I encourage you to watch the match as I think there’s a lot that can be learned.

I’m more than happy to comment on the array of conclusions that were drawn (hint: they’re almost all positive – the team was excellent, and the individual players are on a top level trajectory).

There’s one overarching conclusion I’d like to share here though. It’s the one I opened this article with, and is a constant across all our international experiences.

With due respect, playing against youth clubs with no pro team (i.e. amateur clubs) does us no good. It’s too easy. Pound for pound, not only is our roster superior, but the entire development environment from proper training, to facilities, to incentives, make the team too good to play against the amateur sides.

Against current domestic opponents, our players can take plays off knowing we’ll rarely get punished.

Against current domestic opponents, our attackers can take 7 touches in the box and still get a shot off and score.

Internationally, you don’t have these luxuries.

Same goes for every player in every position. Domestically, there’s far more time and space. Internationally, you can barely breathe.

In other words, our competitive environment instills poor habits and impedes development.

Remember, the context is developing top shelf professionals. That’s the objective of a legitimate academy.

What’s the status quo solution?

If MLS academy teams are the strongest, then superficial logic drives one to conclude they should just be playing each other and not against academy teams from amateur clubs.

For us, though, that would still be a problem. MLS teams are all pretty much the same. They don’t really give you different looks in terms of style of play. On the team front, there’s almost no top-shelf orchestration going on. Yes, a few coaches are trying some orchestrated tactics, but it’s simply not up to snuff.

On the player front, in general, they don’t have that intelligence, that nastiness, that craftiness, that wisdom, their international counterparts do – they’re very naive. That, in turn, contributes to our players staying naive as well.

Yes, in terms of the scoreboard, a game may be lost here or there. But the lessons derived from those losses aren’t remotely the same.

Now, that’s just looking at our particular player development needs. If we zoom out, the status quo solution is still a poor one for all clubs and franchises across many factors – from the impracticality of economies of scale, to the lack of establishing a wealth of fierce regional competition which makes for a healthy local talent pipeline.

What’s the proper solution?

Well, the reason MLS academies are stronger than youth-only clubs is simple – they have a pro team.

That, by default:

• Siphons the *better players away from the amateur clubs to the pro organizations.
• Generally provides a better overall environment.

How?

You open the soccer economy to all clubs. For those of you who aren’t aware, that means opening the pyramid (aka promotion & relegation at the pro level).

When you open the pyramid, there is more competition for MLS franchises.
They will no longer have a monopoly on their geographic player pool.
They will no longer be the only ones with an incentive to develop professionals.

Opening the pyramid provides a real business case for existing lower division pro clubs to take player development serious. Currently most don’t even have youth teams, let alone take it serious. So of course MLS academies aren’t being challenged.

It also provides historically youth-only clubs a real business case for launching their own first teams. That, in turn, obviously stimulates them to take player development seriously.

It mobilizes investors & capital currently locked out of MLS to flow into lower division clubs, which as mentioned above, would now have a strong incentive to develop and field far more serious youth sides.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how top performing ecosystems work.

It’s called an open economic market. Open markets create fierce competition.

Competition, which as we’ve described and MLS academies will attest, is currently weak.

So, if we want to give the LA Galaxy academy fierce local and regional competition, this is the solution. If we don’t, that’s fine, just start understanding our country’s development potential will not be realized.

No, it’s not.

It’s an economic market like any other.

There are businesses in play, livelihoods at stake, communities to consider, and consumers that should be looked after.

This is an ecosystem with real people, with real consequences, who depend on responsible governance.

• Clubs (independent businesses) get affected.
• People working with or for those clubs get affected.
• Members and customers of those clubs get affected.
• Every community and the general consumer gets affected.

While the relative magnitudes vary, anyone who has an economic touchpoint with this market gets affected.

US Soccer (aka USSF, aka the United States Soccer Federation) is the governing body presiding over the American soccer ecosystem. It is implicitly, if not explicitly, chartered to look out for the interests of all its constituents.

Read that again, “all its constituents”.

So when someone says “it’s just a game”, it diverts attention away from real people being negatively impacted by the establishment, and diverts attention away from those who currently reap the mass rewards of the establishment.

I’m hard pressed to find another multi-billion dollar economic market, outside American soccer, where a phrase such as “oh, no need to deeply investigate how we govern the market and conduct business, this isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things”, works so well in deflecting deep dives.

So when they say “it’s just a game”, it’s genius.

Have they indoctrinated you to say it?

p.s. I’m aware of the wider sports generalization in this context. But due to its profile, American soccer in particular has been remarkable in evading deep investigation.

Going into this match, this team, our team, the LA Galaxy U14 team was undefeated with a 19-0-2 record in the US Soccer Development Academy with 101 GF and 12 GA.

You rarely, if ever, see us publish or mention our domestic exploits (we could be doing it weekly), because that doesn’t really matter.

What matters is the global context. We are helping drive the state of the art in the United States, and the benchmark is the best in the world. That’s the measuring stick.

It’s why we’ve published our matches versus FC Barcelona in years past, and now Manchester City – to teach and to show where we’re at.

It is here where players get exposed.
It is here where players get validated.
It is here where cutting edge coaching gets challenged.

If the objective is to develop quality professionals, competing against the standard is where we all have the possibility of learning the most important of lessons.

This match was a semi-final in the Cayman Airways U15 Invitational. And to offer some context, this Manchester City team had just won the Premier League in England and is considered one of best teams, if not the best, in Europe.

Their results leading up to this match had been:
Man City 5-1 over MLS’ DC United
Man City 9-0 over MLS’ Houston Dynamo
Man City 5-2 over Cuba’s National Team

Without further ado, the video:

Brian Kleiban, the coach of this team, will of course be a presenter at the 3four3 Summit this July 29-31. Come join us.