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0:01 hello everyone coach KW here nice to see you again this is not the video I was planning to make but um in response to a comment I got from someone from outside
0:11 of the United States I thought it was important to make this video for really everybody's benefit because it is a different world here in the US where my
0:19 videos really are focused on the content for coaches volunteer coaches here in the United States but I'm not necessarily sure that everyone gets what a different environment it is here in
0:31 the United States versus the rest of the world especially when it comes to soccer and also frankly the scale of which we operate on in terms of distances and
0:42 things like that and the resources that you all have outside the United States compared to honestly the scarcity of resources we have in the US um there's
0:53 lots of differences we're going to take a look at some maps that I pulled up so we can look at some of those things but you know understand
1:00 how the United States at least in my neck of the woods here in New England works and a lot of the rest of the country works is radically different
1:07 than it is in the rest of the world and I'm super happy that I have international viewers that's very exciting I love your comments you come with a different perspective but I think
1:16 maybe it's helpful to for even us in the United States to understand the differences that are going on because here in the United States soccer is obviously probably our fifth sixth maybe
1:28 sometimes seventh most um important sport in the country uh it's not one with a deep history obviously there's not a lot of familial connection to it your grandfather and
1:41 your great-grandfather and your father and your uncles aren't passing down stories and knowledge and playing the game and all that that they would be for lots of other sports whether that's
1:51 Baseball American football um hockey basketball all those sorts of things so there's not that ingrained culture and so as American coaches in our way that we get organized and put together um
2:05 most coaches for most kids are not professionals it's not paid it's all volunteer and it's moms and dads who are either volunteering out of the goodness of their heart maybe they've played some
2:17 Youth Soccer maybe even high school maybe even College which is rare for us around here um soccer or they've had their arm twisted and they're volunteers like literally have never played the
2:28 sport and are grown into the mix uh straight away soccer STS pre kindergarten prek fourth grade fourth I'm sorry four-year-olds four-year-olds on the cusp of being 5-year-olds um prek
2:41 and K kindergarten soccer it's usually an hour on a Saturday the kids come they have some skills work for about a half an hour in a group of 8 to 10 and then
2:54 for for another the last half an hour they play a quote unquote game against another group of kids who were learning on the other half of a tiny little field
3:03 usually 3v3 sometimes 4v4 to small Nets and it's really you know you know what prek and kindergarten soccer looks like maybe uh here in the United States it
3:13 looks like um it looks like a Rugby scrum it's it's six to eight kids all cluster around mostly the same ball chasing it around and that goes for what
3:22 training is when we go to first and second grade here so uh we do things by grade based in town soccer uh club soccer is is birth year based but
3:32 everything else here is grade based um and so here in the United States after kindergarten we go from first grade to 12th grade to graduate high school if
3:40 you don't know different education systems work different ways first and second grade it gets a little more structured where usually a group of kids will have an hour to an hour 15 practice
3:53 during the week one practice and then on the weekends on a Saturday they'll have a 1-h hour game against another team of first or second graders sometimes they
4:01 combined in what we call u8 uh although in our town we've made it single grade for many reasons we've split the genders at this point so it's boys and girls
4:10 separately in first and second grade where it's co-ed and kindergarten and prek and they have a game usually on a slightly larger field again it's 4v4 here in the United States against small
4:21 Nets no goalkeepers and that's what goes for training in that first and second grade year that's where kids start to really have some attachment to it and
4:31 start to play um and start to show some interest and obviously as they get older in that first and second grade year we're talking uh six-year-olds seveny
4:41 olds they're developing their bodies developing their likes and and wants and some kids show um you know start to show a buting love for the game and that's
4:52 really what's going on from prek to second grade is really starting to get them to love and learn the very basics of the game but it is the Basics we're
5:01 teaching kids here in the United States literally how to dribble a ball because they've never done it before we're teaching them how to pass the ball because they've never done it before
5:10 they never seen it before unlike what maybe uh happens in other households outside the United States where it just happens because everybody in the family has played soccer most of the time no
5:21 one in the family or even extended family has played soccer at any level uh before they land in Pre kinder Garden for a second grade soccer uh usually all
5:32 these programs uh they usually run about 10 weeks in the fall for us here uh here in the United States that would be you know September to November before it
5:42 gets too cold at least in the Northeast where I am uh and snow and everything else to happen and then we have about a 10we season in the spring starting in
5:50 about April to the end of school about mid June it costs anywhere from some places are very cheap $59 $69 I've seen prices as high as150 in my town it's $89 per season
6:05 that helps pay for um our fees to the state to register each player for our insurance for our field rentals all those sorts of things but again it's a
6:16 volunteer board and volunteer coaches who are out there organizing all this and playing there is no Club oversight there is no soccer team that's associated with it that's putting it all
6:29 together it's all volunteer for the most part in different parts of the country they could be big bigger organizations that still do the same concept and it's
6:37 different in different parts of the United States we're a huge country as you're going to see in a minute um but that's the basics at third grade most towns and cities programs
6:49 give an option to have what's called travel soccer and travel soccer just simply is we have a try out process kids in second grade try out they get placed
7:00 into teams based on their ability in third grade fourth grade U10 is usually the bracket it's in again in our town we've moved the single grade teams
7:09 wherever we can because we think it's beneficial for Player Development at that point you have some kids that still play as we call in town they organize
7:17 recreationally they play in our town we have to group them uh grades three four and five together because we just don't have enough players to make individual
7:26 age or grade teams um and they have a practice on the week on during the week and have a game against one of in I my town There's four or six teams for each
7:36 um gender so there's four to six boys teams and four to six girls teams usually 7v7 um and they play for travel soccer it's a little bit more of a
7:45 commitment they'll have practices two times a week about hour and a half each practice and then on the weekends they'll have a single game against another town nearby within our region um
7:57 sometimes as far as about a half an hour 40 minutes away uh in other parts of the country or other parts of the state it might be a little bit further travel but
8:05 the idea is you're playing neighboring towns organized in a more or less County or divisional grouping and that's where you play and that's the special te that
8:16 I work in is that town travel soccer again it's volunteer coaches there is no Club involvement and this travel soccer moves all the way up to seventh or
8:27 eighth grade um in our town on it stops in seventh grade because our high school is a little different than a lot of other towns traditionally high school in
8:34 the United States is 9th grade to 12th grade and usually there's High School soccer and players usually will play that in the fall in you know September
8:44 through November and then they'll either play other high school sports or League uh towns like us we do then have a high school age teams for the spring for
8:54 those players who want to play in the spring want to play that sport again but it's a little bit more informal um those usually no practices they just play a
9:01 game really basically it's Sunday League they play on Sundays against other high school age teams from other towns um so that's kind of the structure uh all of
9:10 that is volunteer all of that there is no professional coaching of any way shape or form if you watch my last video on Coach coach education here in the
9:19 United States um we run a program for about 800 kids from preate of seventh grade I probably have 120 coaches and of that 120 coach probably less than 10 or 15 actually
9:32 hold even any of the basic licenses that are available here in the United States it's truly is all volunteer and that's why um this channel exists a little bit
9:42 um one of the comments was it's a lot of tactics it's a lot of like is this appropriate for U10 first of all everything I do on this channel I've
9:51 done with my own teams in grades three and four but B this is very much more of a primer I'm trying to shortcut a process that for the rest of the world
9:59 you guys are brought up in this environment you understand so much of the game natively because your father your grandfather your great-grandfather your uncles everybody has played and
10:10 watched the game over and over again you just live it whereas he in the United States it's just not the case so these volunteer coaches really come into the
10:19 game not knowing much more than between zero and what they might have seen on TV and that's about it and that's a big jump to be asked to try and train prek
10:30 first graders third graders fifth graders how to play to get them ready to perhaps when they go to high school to play high school soccer where the
10:38 coaches there sometimes have some experience but not all of them um and you know it's a different level now we have a club pathway but here in the
10:48 United States if I join a club I can tell you like when my kid was in third fourth fifth grade playing club soccer the fee for that was sit down somewhere
10:58 between three $4,000 a year for him to play it's not like they go to an academy and they get scouted and they play for free and they
11:07 move along that's not how it works here if you've ever looked up it's called pay to play it's a system here in United States that we don't love but it is what
11:16 it is it's the land of capitalism and unfortunately for um Sports there's a lot of that and there's some top tier clubs and middle tier clubs but they're
11:26 not affiliated most of them with professional teams and we'll take a look at the scattering of professional teams that are here in the United States uh in
11:34 just a second but that's just kind of the landscape that we have here and so that's what these videos are for they're for those volunteer coaches who wish to
11:44 learn more who want to do better for their kids but they're not professional coaches they're not affiliated with any program maybe they played some Youth Soccer maybe they played some high high
11:54 school soccer maybe they played some college soccer in their past but they just want more information so a lot of these first videos these first 14 videos
12:03 of stuff is really this background information to try and shortcut what the rest of the world just grows up with we're going to take a look at a couple
12:11 of interactive maps that I pulled together just to help illustrate some other points and the differences because I think I know I have friends from other parts of the world when they come here
12:20 to the United States it's easy to say that they get the scale and the idea between what's happening between home and here but to you've actually lived it
12:30 or see it um it's really hard to describe so we're going to take a look at some maps and hopefully maybe I can drive some of that stuff home let's go
12:36 look at those now okay we're back here what we have here is obviously a map of the United States that we've uh outlined here we've pulled up on some maps and what I wanted
12:47 to do was for both our International and for our us folks is to really kind of drive home the scale as to what we're talking about uh one of the latest
12:55 comments I got was from Germany so we're going to Overlay Germany on top of the United States and specifically I'm going to Overlay Germany across basically where I live in New England here in
13:05 Massachusetts and just give a sense of the scale of what we're going on here um we're going to look at some other overlays in a minute but that's Germany
13:15 over this now my kid who's 14 year 14 years old um my one of my kids he plays for MLS next which is about the highest level you can play before you with a
13:27 quote unquote professional Academy with one of our MLS teams for example he played a game this weekend that was 6 hours away to that spot over in New York uh just underneath
13:40 Lake Ontario and for reference we drove out there on a Saturday slept over watched the game and drove home on the Sunday six hours each way and that was
13:50 honestly one of the easiest trips we've done because it didn't go through any major cities it was very quick it was actually very picturesque but if you
13:59 look at that map we basically drove across the entire width of Germany in six hours and back again in a two days and that's not a big deal uh we've
14:10 played games as far away as Maryland and Delaware in another League that we played we went down for a weekend played on a Saturday and a Sunday and then
14:18 drove back home seven and a half eight hours and we haven't even made it out of the Eastern time zone so little reference there if we overlay England uh
14:28 great not honestly the UK you can see here we get down to Washington and we get up through Montreal if we want to get up into the upper Islands here in
14:36 Scotland but again in terms of the size and scale that's what we have going on if we take the UK and just put it over Texas it barely makes it bottom of Texas
14:49 is way down here here's the upper Islands you can see that's just one state in the United States now in terms of professional soccer teams and professional cies and
15:00 the density in the United States here are all the MLS teams overlaid on the United States now now you say well you know there's other the lower tier ones
15:09 you're right there's a second tier the USL championship this map may be slightly out of date but again take a look at the width and the density
15:17 remember Germany and England basically covered the New England states and New right and now we're looking at how many profession these are the MLS teams our top league in the United States here's
15:33 the second lowest USL Championship now we're going to take a quick peek now here are all the professional teams as listed on a website I looked in Germany
15:43 alone so you can see the vast difference in the landscape of how soccer Works uh just for fun here here is all the Champions League teams from
15:55 2324 and if I press play here we're going to overlay the United States over this now these are the best the very best teams in the world playing in
16:06 Champions League and they basically stretch the distance of what the United States does with a few outliers there in Aban and Iceland obviously but again the density of your professional system
16:21 versus what we have makes it that our players really are mostly trained by volunteer coaches they're not associated with any professionaly because there's just not that many of them across the
16:37 entire country and at the scale of the country that we operate if we had the same density as you did we'd have what maybe 600 professional teams in the
16:47 United States compared to the density right let's take a look at this and then we take a look at this it's not even close so that's why my content maybe
16:57 doesn't always connect with with the folks outside our country and that's okay I hope you get a perspective and I'd love to hear your perspective but that's some information for you in terms
17:07 of where we are as a soccer playing Nation so I hope you found that interesting and a little bit enlightening and can understand maybe why I started this Channel and why my
17:18 content might seem a little strange and different for you who are watching this internationally um again I'm super honored that you do watch and I'd love to see more comments and interesting
17:28 facts from you um even love to be able to talk to some of you on some platform eventually but you can see the United States it's not the same as the rest of
17:36 the world in terms of its soccer playing Heritage its background its knowledge and so a lot of the things that I'm doing here on this channel are trying to
17:44 shortcut some of that learning for these volunteer coaches who are wanting to learn more but are really starting from zero from both a historical and a personal layer that they just don't have
17:58 that relationship with with the game that the rest of the world does and that makes it very difficult as a volunteer coach who wants to do well by his kids
18:06 to learn more my content is very much background but it's not necessarily teaching you how to coach and that's why that licensing video If you haven't watched it go back in that's another
18:17 process to learn more of the technical pieces of the game and lastly honestly being a coach being able to execute even some of the basic techical skills
18:26 passing receiving the adults learning right along with the kids in many cases they don't know they're usually one or two pages in front of them in the book
18:34 if there was a book uh to be honest so I hope you found this video interesting and enlightening and can gain some perspective both on from a US
18:43 perspective if you're here in the country and you're watching this and for our International viewers which again I love that YouTube lets us reach all us people together uh keep the comments up
18:53 uh until the next video which I was already working on last night I'll try to get that out pretty soon uh I hope you're having a great time on the field
19:01 my team was lucky enough to literally just have their second game in a 4-we season and tonight we have another game because New England snow rain mud
19:11 cancelled two of the four games already in our season so it's been a strange season already this year so I hope you're having better luck in terms of
19:19 weather and playing and practicing and until next time I'll see you later bye
