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Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 1740235, member: 153"] I disagree with whoever said that other countries develop players in unstructured environments. I know for a fact that countries like Italy are highly structured and from a very young age. Germany is hypertechnical. In fact, the mantra at the lower levels is not to play unstructured games but to practice, practice, practice. As many touches as you possibly can. The German team for instance. Those guys went through a system in which they hardly played any games. The points Zoocougar brings up are good, but I find myself confused. Our inner city house league hosts a lot of immigrant families. So many of them fall off for different reasons. Parents are busy with multiple jobs. No transportation. The cultural differences when it comes to coaching style is sometimes difficult to overcome (i.e. coach expectations). We have very few soccer fields in the city. Our house league feeds into our travel teams which feed into our premier teams which are affiliated/run by a Boston org funded by Bayern Munich. Of the few hundred immigrant kids (300 of 1500 players) in the house league, only 2 or 3 end up on each travel team. Of those, maybe one goes up to premier. The scholarships are there, but the support is more difficult (more travel for practice because of difficulty finding fields, more time for practice because parents each work 2 or 3 jobs). In other words, I think this is an American lifestyle/cultural situation. In Europe, parents work 30-35 hours a week, and kids are free to roam their burgs, perhaps on good public transport, so they can take themselves to practice. It doesn't happen here. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach