I recently took a look at the United States Soccer Federation’s guide for better coaching practices. I was impressed about this free compilation of very good information into a 70 page or so guidebook. Honestly, it does have very good tips for coaching and how to develop youth soccer players.

My two main concerns or problems with this guide are as follows:

1. The guidebook is great and all however my position(Goalkeeper) is shunned from overall selection until the U-12 to U-14 age. I don’t know about this proclamation. They say that a goalkeeper should not be selected until around that age. While many famous goalkeepers from Brazil and many other countries were first strikers then keepers…it just kills me. I think 8-10 is a good age. It gives 10-8 years to develop into a keeper and learn the role, position, and pretty much gives the most experience required.

-Most keepers like myself until my injury are frantic to find playing time because I was a late bloomer(15-16 when I became a keeper) but others started at the suggested age and we are frantic for playing time. That is what makes us better and what makes us feel comfortable in an already difficult position. The more seasoning and aging on something can only improve it, not hurt it.

-They do have 1 single point that I like in a little bit of a way. Goalkeeper can be very demanding. For example, after a tough loss to a very good team, I found myself driving home crying and wanting to quit soccer altogether because I thought I wasn’t good enough. Keeper burnout could occur, however with the right training and constant match-play every mistake could be forgotten or never occur in the first place.

-Last thing: It takes a long time to develop the type of leadership that you need to be a keeper. If you truly know the position, 5-10 years at one position will give you that, then you will be a good on-field leader and defense controller.

2. The guidebook suggests that a player only train a certain amount of days with enough time to rest 3 days in a week. It also says a player should never play more than 160 minutes in a 72 hour period w/o a day of rest. I have a definite problem here. Take my next words with a grain of salt. Pros train 3-4x per day. Thats on a single day with probably a 2-3 hour session. How can we get players to go a total of their suggested 4 days of training=4 training sessions if they need to work up to the level of 15-20 sessions per week…maybe even more. Talk about burnout.