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a nation turns its lonely eyes to you (photo credit: Dave Osborne)

On Monday, USSF officially announced a national academy as part of new initiatives in their development program. The press release announces, “In a move designed to improve the development environment for players throughout the country, the U.S. Soccer Federation has taken the initiative in formalizing a nationwide development academy slated to begin in the fall of 2007. The U.S. Soccer Development Academy will begin with up to 80 elite youth soccer clubs from around the country being selected to join the program.”

I’ve said it before, and I still believe it to be true. Nothing is more important to American soccer than youth development. There’s no lack of lively debate over what shape the youth systems are presently in, but no doubt coverage of said debate is lacking (at the time of this writing, none of the top outlets – ESPN, SI, NYtimes, etc - have even a mention of it on their soccer pages). The Toledo Blade does have a piece about Wal-Mart funding the refurbishment of a soccer complex for the Adelante Latino Resource Center and Latin Soccer League, and it’s no surprise that Stephen Goff, the lone ranger of on-staff soccer beat reporters, pays it some attention, but even that is at his Insider blog (not the Post’s true soccer page), and it’s from last week when the decision to launch the academy was being discussed.

Does anyone care? The fine print and what it all means is after the jump…

It’s hard for me to avoid a comparison with the environmental movement. The across-the-board acknowledgement that we aren’t doing all we can. Moreover, the fact that we’ve been selfish and greedy in creating inequality. The immense challenge of wholly changing long-entrenched problems across the entire nation. Accepting the fact that some people, some jobs will financially benefit while others made obsolete.

Read the fine print from USSF here.

John Hackworth, U.S U17 Men’s National Team Head Coach and director of the USSF Residency Program, said, “It’s a concept that youth soccer in this country desperately needs and our goal is to truly shift the focus towards increasing player development. I think it will create a day-to-day training environment that will allow players the opportunity to develop to the best of their ability. Right now we have only 40 players in that type of environment (at the U-17 Residency Program in Bradenton, Fla.), but this Academy will allow us to put thousands of elite players in a similar environment, which will help us raise the entire level across the nation.”

I’m all for that, and in that regard this academy has to be looked upon as a decent start to an enormous problem. How well and how fast can it be implemented? Baby steps. As players, parents, coaches, and fans, we all have an interest in creating healthy, constructive, and productive environments for our players. My caveat is that ‘our players’ should mean everyone’s players, including and possibly initially focusing on bringing under-represented communities into the fold, something that I am not confident this new program gives sufficient weight to.

As any ex-athlete can attest to, and what the NCAA’s best commercial advertises, sports brings both growth and opportunity largely unseen in our greater isolated society, and those facts should be addressed. Just as important it is to find, create, and incubate our best athletes, any program with the word ‘youth’ in the title should be focusing on creating the best adults. Because “most of us go pro in something other than sports.”

In any situation like this, the implementation of solutions faces roadblocks from hegemony. The powers profiting from the status quo have little interest in change, so USSF is moving slowly, trying to negotiate a tight space between the present club structure and some degree of oversight. Another unavoidable analogy is that of the United States’ educational system. Most of the same problems – geographic inequality, financial inequality, racial inequality, the inability to properly and fairly evaluate, the pressure and politics of hierarchy and dictatorship – persist. Make you want to holler.

Robert Ziegler, editor of Top Drawer Soccer, the web’s authority on everything amateur soccer (I did an interview with Robert after I met him in Bradenton this past winter), emphasizes these points and much much more with his 95 points on the subject. Now that’s my kind of top-ten list! That list was compiled while the national academy program was just a consideration. His reaction to yesterday’s official announcement is here.

Since my trip to Bradenton, I’ve been fascinated with the depth of this topic, and I’ve been doing a lot of research. I hope to share some of those stories as the summer progresses.

I’m not expecting people to start watching and paying equal attention to the amateur game – one of the main points of this new program, after all, is to begin to remove the largely unimportant weight presently allotted to trophies, wins, and losses – but we should all prioritize the need to set up a solid youth system (no child left behind?) that we can entrust with the future. Contact your Congressman (USSF)!