CBC-Sports

Offside: Fixing Canadian Soccer – Training and competition

May 11, 2009 11:52 AM | Posted by   Jason de Vos  

CBC Sports soccer commentator Jason de Vos examines the state of Canadian soccer in Offside, a multi-part blog series exclusive to CBCSports.ca. This week de Vos, a former captain of the Canadian national team, takes a look at training and competition.

It is widely believed that reaching the elite level in sport requires somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000 hours of training. If an athlete trained for an hour a day, every day, it would take over 27 years to reach that milestone.

While an hour a day might seem like a big commitment, in reality it is nowhere near enough. If you consider that most kids don’t begin to take their sport seriously until age of 12, an hour a day isn’t going to get those athletes to the elite level by the time they are 20 or 21.

Our current system of player development falls well short when it comes to reaching this training milestone. Club soccer in Canada is predominantly focused on results; playing and winning games, leagues and tournaments. While winning these competitions might seem like an achievement, it fails to fully develop the potential of the athletes.

I was always told that in a 90-minute game, the best player on the field would only have the ball in his/her possession for between two to three minutes. If our focus is primarily on playing games, it is no wonder that we are failing to develop players who are comfortable with a ball at their feet.

Less emphasis on games, more on skills

There is currently no mandate at the club level to ensure that players are spending more time training than they are playing games. Some progressive clubs ensure that their players are on the training pitch three or four times per week, but that is the exception rather than the norm.

There is also no mandate regarding the quality of coaching that is occurring at any of these clubs. It is all well and good to get players to train, but if there is no regulation regarding the level of that training, it can do just as much harm as it does good.

And let me make this point clear: I am not talking about house league or recreational teams here. There will always be a need for well-run, well-organized recreational programs across the country. Every child needs a place to start, somewhere they can fall in love with the game, and that generally happens at the house league level.

When I talk about there not being any mandates for training and coaching standards in our club system, I am talking about competitive clubs who market themselves as having the highest level of competitive play. They attract players by offering them the possibility of better coaching, better training and better competition. Yet there are no nationwide standards for any of these criteria.

So how can we change that? How can we ensure that our most talented athletes are being given the opportunity to receive qualified coaching on a consistent basis, so that they can begin to log the hours of training necessary to reach the elite level?

Implementing an academy system wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Merits of the academy system

As I said in last week’s blog, what I like most about the academy system is the training-to-game ratio. With a minimum of three training sessions per week, the emphasis is on player development, not about winning games.

In order for us to reverse our fortunes at the international level, we have to find a way for our most talented players to spend more time on the training field, because that is where players learn the fundamentals of the game.

How many times have you heard a professional player tell you they learned how to control a ball by kicking it against a wall for hours at a time, day after day growing up? It is the time spent practising the fundamentals that allow a player to be comfortable with a ball at their feet in a game situation. You don’t learn that skill from playing games, you apply it there.

An academy system would also ensure that when players do have competitive games, they are just that: competitive. By mandating that academy teams only play in a league with other academy teams, the elite players in those academies would be playing with and against other elite players.

In our current system of competitive club soccer, far too many of the games that competitive teams are playing are not competitive at all. I have had coaches tell me that over an entire season, their team might only have a half a dozen truly competitive games where their players are being tested.

Competitive teams are also travelling here, there and everywhere to play in tournaments where they are being asked to play two or three games in a day. That isn’t beneficial to player development, and if anything it can do more harm than good.

While I’m not in favour of our current club system being used to develop elite players, I’m not suggesting that we scrap the system entirely.

Build a love for the game

For many kids, the fun of playing in games and tournaments with their friends is part of their love for the game of soccer. It is a long time ago for me, but I still remember how much fun it was to travel to tournaments with my father, staying overnight in a hotel, and I’m sure there are many people out there for whom those same happy memories exist.

I believe that there is a place in Canadian soccer for at least three levels of competition; house league or recreational soccer, for those players who just want to have a bit of fun with their friends; competitive soccer, for those players who are more serious about the game and show the potential to play at a higher level; and high performance, or academy soccer, where the emphasis is on maximizing the potential of the athlete in a structure that is highly specialized in terms of coaching, training and competition.

At the moment, we already have the first two levels of competition. It is the third level, the high performance level, where we are lacking right now.

The provincial associations, who currently run the high performance development programs, are struggling to produce talented players. There are numerous reasons for this, not least of which is lack of funding, but the fact of the matter is that the system we have now just isn’t working. If anyone out there disagrees with that, you only have to look at the poor results of our national teams at the international level for proof.

Yet all is not lost. We can change our system for the better, and we only have to look south of the border for an example of a country that has done just that.

But it is going to take some strong leadership on the part of the Canadian Soccer Association, and a great deal of co-operation from the provincial associations, in order for that to happen.

And that is exactly what I will be discussing in next week’s blog, so stay tuned.

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