Home

31

Aug, 2013

FOX SOCCER EXCLUSIVE:US Soccer's secret scouting network;Bethesda- Olney holds ID Training Centers

Bethesda Soccer Club, In the News
Bethesda-Olney Academy
Posted/Additions by Deb Warsaw, SATURDAY, August 31, 2013

FOX SOCCER EXCLUSIVE UPDATED JUL 27, 2013 3:23 PM ET

US Soccer's secret scouting network; US Soccer has been quietly building an expansive scouting network.

Bethesda-Olney Academy is part of 'scouting network' holding ID Training Centers. U.S Soccer Development Academy taps Bethesda to hold Market Training Center-Player Identification U.S. Soccer Training Centers are single day, invitational training sessions run by U.S. Soccer staff for elite players in key soccer markets. Training Centers are open to the top players from any team, club or organization at no cost to the player. The purpose of the Training Center program is to identify the best players for the U.S. Soccer Youth National Team program.

Bethesda-Olney Academy have held ID Training Centers on April 17, 2013 and September 3, 2013.

Article Start:
The charge is almost as old as American soccer itself: the United States Soccer Federation doesn’t do a good enough job unearthing talent from the underprivileged inner-city areas. This, many argue, is the reason the United States fails to win World Cups in spite of having almost 25 million soccer players, second only to China’s 26 million, according to FIFA’s Big Count.

Call it the “Unified Ghettos and Barrios Theory.

”Unquantifiable though it may have been, this accusation probably had a lot of merit. For a time, anyway. But FOX Soccer has learned that over the last five years, US Soccer quietly built an expansive scouting network to remedy this deficiency and patch the many cracks through which talent flowed away from its player pool.

Since 2007, the federation has trebled the number of full-time youth scouts it employs from three to nine and quadrupled its per diem scouts from 20 to 80. Four years ago, it staged a dozen so-called training centers, wherein the best regional talent is assembled for extra high-level training sessions for one to three days in temporary camps rotating throughout the nation.

In 2013, it will hold about 2,000.“In the last five years, the network has grown and the full-time staff has grown and everything we’re doing has really expanded,” director of scouting for the US Soccer Development Academy and head coach of the under-15 boys' national team Tony Lepore told FOX Soccer. “We’re not quite there but I think we’ve really developed with our methods and certainly with our intentions.

”All this growth, which the federation consciously didn’t publicize, stemmed from an acknowledgement that progress in talent identification was indeed paramount. “We can always do better in all of these areas,” says US Soccer president Sunil Gulati. “We’ve got a very large country, both population-wise and geographically. I think we need to do better. I think we are doing better.”

“Clearly this game is very competitive and it’s important to get as many players as you can into the pipeline,” says Gulati. “We’re trying to improve on things. This [scouting network] sees players in their natural environment, which any select team program [like the long-running Olympic Development Program] can’t. From that basis it’s certainly a plus. There’s always rationale for looking at players in different ways.

”On the latter point, the US doesn’t have much choice. In most every other country, youth national team scouting begins with the professional clubs. They identify the best young players from the talent pool at large, filtering through the enormity of local youth players, and then the federation cherry-picks the brightest prospects from their academies for its own programs. But this isn’t so in the USA.

With just 16 Major League Soccer teams in the country, not all of whom have academy systems, far more territory is left unexplored than properly scouted. Even the 80 clubs in the US Soccer Development Academy – elite under-16 and under-18 youth leagues, soon to be joined by an under-14 division, populated by clubs adhering to the federation’s stringent best practices requirements – doesn’t come close to covering the entire map. The prevalent pay-to-play model, which can exceed $10,000 per season, can also prove prohibitive.

“We’re not at a point where all we’re doing is scouting academy matches,” says Lepore. “There’s different pockets where we don’t even have academy clubs where it’s important to scout and there’s many players that for whatever reason don’t have access to the Academy. We still have to do a lot of work looking for players and we try not to leave any stone unturned.

”On a typical weekend, about 40 scouts are out watching youth games all over the country, which is split up into nine regions. Each region is overseen by one of the full-time scouts, who commands a network and works closely with local Development Academy teams and national team coaches. Development Academy teams are watched some 15 times per year. But so are other clubs, ranging from serious travel teams to informal sides in unaffiliated local ethnic leagues.

Scouts follow up on tips from coaches in hopes of catching those players without the means to play in the bigger showcases. All scouting reports are filed to a database, sorting every player born between 1993 and 2001 by position and region. Once a week, all the scouts connect on a national conference call and break down each age group.

The full-time scouts oversee the training centers, whose frequency depends on a market’s needs. Major markets get as many as two per month, with a core group of players joined by a revolving cast of fresh talent new on the scene or on the fringe of the age group. “US Soccer training centers are a way for us to keep track of and identify who the top players are in the markets,” says Lepore. “They are now the pathway to the youth national teams.

”These short camps are run according to the same principles as the national team program, looking for the same position profiles and drilling prospects in the same playing philosophy as the senior national team. They represent a path, a route long gone unexplored, from wherever you happen to be playing all the way through to representing the USA at the highest level.

“It’s hard to hide good players,” says Lepore. “If you’re a good player we’ll find you.”

ABOUT THE US SOCCER DEVELOPMENT ACADEMY: Established in 2007, the U.S. Soccer Development Academy strives to improve the everyday environment for the elite youth player. The Development Academy is a partnership between U.S. Soccer and the top youth clubs around the country to provide the best youth players in the U.S. with an everyday environment designed to produce the next generation of National Team players.

ABOUT BETHESDA SOCCER CLUB: is a Premier Travel and Youth Development based in Montgomery County, Maryland, outside Washington DC, with over 30 years of soccer excellence. Bethesda Soccer Club started as three teams in 1979, competing as the Bethesda Boys Club. Today, they have over 60 boys’ and girls’ teams from ages U-8 through U-19 that compete in various leagues in Maryland, Virginia and Region I. Many of our players have gone on to have successful collegiate or professional careers. The Club philosophy is to develop our players so that they are prepared to compete at the next level. For more information visit: http://www.bethesdasoccer.org

ABOUT OBGC, For information, visit:  http://www.obgcsoccer.org/home/ OBGC Soccer (Olney) was formed in 1975 and was incorporated in Maryland in 1981 as a 501(c) (iii) non-profit organization. OBGC Soccer fields travel teams for boys and girls in the National Capital Soccer League (NCSL) and Washington Area Girls Soccer League (WAGS) and Olney/Bethesda Soccer League (OBSL).

CONTACTS: Jonathon Colton, Bethesda Soccer Club, Director of Coaching Boys [email protected]; Pete Wood, Director of Coaching Boys, OBGC [email protected] ; Deb Warsaw, Bethesda Soccer Club, Marketing / PR, [email protected]; More information: www.bethesdasoccer.org  Twitter @bethesdascnews Facebook: Bethesda Soccer Club

©bethesdasoccer 2013 d.warsaw

Website Manager

Southport Little League

News Detail

31

Aug, 2013

FOX SOCCER EXCLUSIVE:US Soccer's secret scouting network;Bethesda- Olney holds ID Training Centers

Local Sponsors

Southport Little League

LITTLE LEAGUE® International