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Health & Fitness

US Soccer: We Need to Change the Program

Soccer in the future -- the beautiful game The United States needs to field a more competitive World Cup team

Recently, US Head coach Jurgen Klinsman announced that he wanted the US soccer academy to initiate a 10-month program for high school aged players to attend. They would not be able to play for their high school team.

Some would think that this is not fair to the high schools, but I believe this is the only way for the Americans to play on a par with the rest of the world. It would involve only the elite players who could prove they are worthy to play for the US World Cup team in the future so it would not impact the high school teams that much.

I know the coaches do not see it that way, but this is how the rest of the world advances its players. In high school, they play 2 or 3 games a week during the season trying to fit in the training sessions, which are vital. In the academy, they will play one game a week on weekends --the rest of the week they are in training. This is how the rest of the world finds and trains players for their world cup teams.

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Let's face it, we do not match up with the rest of the world now and never will unless we change the program. I am a certified coach and have seen many players with skill who could advance but are not given the proper instruction to succeed. Not only that , there are many coaches with many different philosophies about how to train --most are seriously lacking.

The academy will centralize training for those who could advance to the world cup level. Too often, the selection of players is politically motivated, not based on their skill level. We hired Klinsman to take us to the next level in soccer and the academy is a good starting point to be able to do that. 

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