WRG wrote:Was having a conversation with my brother in law about my 8 years old club soccer and academy teams and coaches, and he thought I was crazy.

He played D1 college soccer and grew up playing select in the Dallas area. He noted that he played rec. for his Dad's team until U11 and felt we have bought into the overhyped soccer culture of getting them into the club scene too early.

To get back to the point of the post, your brother in law's information is very dated, as is the information of posters with older (U16 or above) players. Today, it is very difficult to get to D1 immediately without Academy (club) soccer unless the player is an absolute phenom.

There are two reasons. 1) The clubs have gotten so aggressive at the younger ages that younger players are outpacing rec kids at an earlier age and at a greater pace than before. Several posters have pointed this out. 2) Rec leagues are a shadow of what they once were because many of the stronger players are playing academy only. This is a relatively new phenomena and certainly wasn't happening when your brother in law played rec.

However, I do think it is possible to completely avoid club academy soccer and still get to D1 and I can think of a couple of ways to do it. For the first way, the player plays rec for a decent coach and then for select moves to a high level Plano/Arlington team or a lower level (D3) classic league team. After a couple of years or so with a good coach, a strong player could move to D1.

For the second way, the player plays for a very good rec coach who also forms an independent academy team so that the players get exposed to the speed and skill of the better players. I guess this isn't technically avoiding academy soccer but it is avoiding the club scene.

I have a 96, 98, 02, and 05 so I have seen first hand the changes in academy soccer over the last 8 or so years plus I have kids who are at point where a decision about academy soccer has to be made. I have been doing a lot of thinking about the role of academy soccer and in particular club academy soccer at early ages lately. I still don't know whether it is a good thing or not but I do know it is here to stay.

Specific to the U8 academy discussion, there is no doubt that professional coaches have more to offer in many regards than a dad who may or may not even have played the game. That's just simple truth. That doesn't mean that an athlete can't catch up at a later age but he will be chasing other athletes that have 100's of hours more development that the rec kid.

The aspect that was touched on briefly, but I think is really the decision point, is what would you be doing as a family if not spending three (or more) days a week at soccer related activities? I for one have found that the academy environment has forced the family to spend much more time focused on being together. What would we be doing if not soccer? Kids watching TV and playing video games? Playing golf with my buddies instead of family? Maybe it's just rationalizing on my part, but the frequency and intensity of club soccer is more than just about soccer to us.

My post was about my son who is a U8 player but I think a lot of the information on here has been very good. While I don't think a U8 kids needs to playing 30 games a season, tournaments included, if you leave him rec in this day and age, it is no challenge. We have seen all the better players leave rec. so if you stay, your kid does not get challenged.

On a side note, I was speaking to my Brother in law again this weekend and he said that if he had a kid that was really good, he would make sure to put him in the FC Dallas system just because they have a pro club. Anyone else made the jump to FC Dallas for that reason? I know, I know, it is a pipe dream, but at least if your kid does pan out to be a superstar, he has all the options open. This won't be my kid as is first love is basketball, but thought I would throw it out there.

WRG wrote:My post was about my son who is a U8 player but I think a lot of the information on here has been very good. While I don't think a U8 kids needs to playing 30 games a season, tournaments included, if you leave him rec in this day and age, it is no challenge. We have seen all the better players leave rec. so if you stay, your kid does not get challenged.

On a side note, I was speaking to my Brother in law again this weekend and he said that if he had a kid that was really good, he would make sure to put him in the FC Dallas system just because they have a pro club. Anyone else made the jump to FC Dallas for that reason? I know, I know, it is a pipe dream, but at least if your kid does pan out to be a superstar, he has all the options open. This won't be my kid as is first love is basketball, but thought I would throw it out there.

If you think the pro team coaches are best at teaching eight year olds then send him there. But at eight years old that doesn't give your kid an inside track to being a professional. At 15 years and up, playing and training with a pro team does give the player an slight edge in becoming a professional.

I saw an 04' FCD team...I think it was Snell's team and those 7 - 8 year old kids have amazing skill. When my kids were that age, they were no where near that level.

Find a good coach that will teach them skill but not burn them out. It's hard to do, but it can happen.

Don't worry about the team name, worry about the coaching. It's sometimes easier to make a top team by coming in from outside of the same club: a case of if someone else thinks he is good, he must be good; and not wanting to hurt their colleague's team by pulling his best players.

One thing FC Dallas has is Liga, started a few years ago, (2?) which is all about development, not winning, at the younger ages.

From the website:
FCD Liga is our “in house” development program exclusively for FC Dallas Junior teams on Sunday afternoons at Pizza Hut Park. It was created to provide a better environment to develop our players. We wanted our soccer “classroom” to be positive and nurturing where players can experiment using their tricks/skills to solve the soccer problems on the field in a healthy and competitive environment. We felt the current youth leagues produced too much stress and negativity from the sidelines that suppressed creativity and promoted a fear of failure, win at all costs mentality. The Liga format is 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 so players maximize ball contacts (touches) as well as their “soccer experiences”. All experts agree that this is the purest form of soccer and it’s widely known that most of the best players in the world were developed playing in the “streets”, so we wanted to replicate that as best we could. Additional information will be provided to you regarding the format. Liga is mandatory for all our U7 and U8 teams.

How the teams are doing since then I have not looked into but by reading the posts on this forum it looks like they have a pretty good 01 team. Anyone know if they have a top '00 team in CL D1?