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Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 4978141, member: 153"] Picking this up again because of a discussion on the basketball board about AAU and how it's hurting sports like baseball and basketball: If you look at men's soccer and the USMNT, you'll see that 95% of the team and many of those playing in Europe all trained under the DA (Development Academy) program that was in place from 2010-2020. It emphasized practices over games and tournaments, and US Soccer poured money into the system. Many of the DA clubs were bankrolled by US Soccer. The catch was that they had to follow US Soccer's strict training regimen so that all players in the DA clubs across the USA were linked together. I've seen this play out as top coaches around the world were hired and brought into the DA clubs; they got weekly assignments that were highly specific and well beyond what you'd get at any top club without US Soccer guidance. I've seen 2 hour practices emphasizing speed of play which were absolutely exacting about one single element drilled over and over and over. The money was key for the players too. My older daughter's club had a team out of Rochester in the girls Academy, her coach was UEFA licensed out of Toronto and would drive down 4x a week. The tuition was half of what we pay for the same club with a lot less expertise in Buffalo. Even better, the Rochester DA part of the club bought a team luxury bus and so 3 or 4 teams traveled to all their away games without parents. Hotels were paid for, absolutely free, and so was the food. Mandatory 3 hours study and silent time on every long trip. I pulled my daughter from that club after 3 months because of the strain of 2 hours driving round trip several times a week. We instantly ended up paying double in tuition for a lesser product, not to mention we had to cover our food, gas and hotel expenses (and more games!). The point is, before US Soccer went belly-up bankrupt during Covid, we actually had a system of support in the US that made soccer relatively cheaper for families, it taught fundamentals, emphasized practice over games, and best of all, it succeeded in creating the greatest generation of soccer players the US has ever seen. I remain skeptical that the next generation now developing under MLSNext (with no overarching soccer philosophy, no subsidies or guidance) will be as good as this last generation which was nurtured in a system and also subsidized with real money. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach