.

“It is necessary to integrate academic knowledge with the empirical knowledge of former players. “ 👏

@AlexiLalas “What if a talented player doesn’t fit?”…

“Vertical integration” is something that’s great in theory but harder in practice. Clubs (and national team programs) ideally want to have an identity/style and pillars implemented through all developmental ages. In many countries this is established and fostered more organically relative to culture and history. But the realities of available talent, competition for talent, limited training, pressure to win, injuries, transfers, geography, coaching personalities, fear of unrealized talent, etc. can test the idealism. What if a talented player doesn’t fit? Are you willing to move on rather than compromise/adjust your style of play? Truth is that, while well-intentioned curriculum and plans are always written, more often than not they end up being more of a suggestion rather than the rule.

"Se dedica mucho tiempo a la forma individual del jugador y no hay que olvidar que el fútbol es un deporte de equipo. Correr más que el contrario no significa jugar más que el contrario". Francisco Seirul·lo.

Others are on the way now, described in the same scouting language, from the same academies and same value-system. Whether any of them turn out different is what the professional years will show. x.com/USSoccerColl/s…

What kind of player is this value-system built to produce? A specific profile — fast, tireless, technically clean, single-tempo, plays alongside teammates more than with them. That profile has already reached the Premier League.

This accurately represents the value-system within American youth soccer.

@jonathanstoop Maybe an architecture around an ontology?

The bottleneck of all bottlenecks is architecting how information is captured, structured, weighted and routed to ultimately make informed human decisions. Without this, the model becomes another data point within a siloed information ecosystem.

Interesting look at how clubs are solving the AI application problem. The intelligence exists but the bottleneck is how to deploy it. One path is to train a model specialized for football, then build infrastructure and design systems/workflows around it.

@bigpicsoccer @JimHaverstrom @Mr_Tennis_Coach On my case I try to get my kid experience every single angle possible lol! Park with mixed ages and me as balance, futsal and soccer academy where all peers are similar level, school where he is Jordan lol! Balance is the key

@mikuengova @JimHaverstrom @Mr_Tennis_Coach My wife's friend's 8yo wrestles. She asked me if she should be concerned that he lost almost every match. I said in school he's still a wrestler, not a kid who loses in wrestling. It takes a lot of bravery to compete. It's good to remind kids of that stuff.

One way to support different groups within the same session is manipulating equipment, space or starting positions for different players. Players stay in the same activity but are encouraged to explore different solutions.

@ChrisWittyngham He reminds me of Brenden aaronson or is it just me?

Was outstanding tonight. The dribbles to take defenders out of the game, through balls should've led to goals. But most of all showed every ounce of creativity he has. An old school winger performance.

In my case I’m becoming the same ‘cultural agent’ my family and neighbors were for me. They showed appreciation for both combination, dribbling and many more things. Which I think circles back to your original affordance point — if we want affordances to appear across a visible gap in skill or age, there must be ‘cultural agent’s’ fluent enough to take part of the game itself and make them available. My touch absorbs the 8-year-old’s bad pass and returns it clean, so the wall pass exists for him — an affordance that wouldn’t be there between him and another 8-year-old. Over repeated exposure he grows into sustaining it himself, with peers. The affordance gets installed, not imposed.

On that floor, though, you’re right kids don’t self-organize toward combinations and forced inclusivity just messes up everything. Recently I read a paper that lined up with my own developmental years: affordance perception is sociocultural, not just material. Free play in Spain or Latin America isn’t the same thing as free play here — depends on what the surrounding culture values.

I guess the point is that at first it wasn't always like that but after familiarity, the implicit constraints took over. My sociocultural background is precisely those environmental constraints--cousins, uncles, father, son with neighbors playing within the constraints im recreating.

This is true! I been working on a 'street/unstructured' environment recently with my son (8) and 'park kids' typically older--12, 13 and 14 years old. I place myself in the play as counter balance and stimulate quick combinations with the way I play the game myself not verbalizing. I dont give indications, im just one more 'kid' playing (im 28 so im still kinda young lol) The results are quite astonishing; the environment has developed a healthy balance of dribbling and combinations. My kid and older kids are fully comfortable with each other regardless of dispossessions or mistakes. The kids understand the nature of making the teams balance. I think the key is that my presence brought implicit order.