Proper Development Is Not the Americans’ Style

America’s high school and college coaches are failing miserably in preparing players for the demands of the professional game and for international competition.

That is the only interpretation that can be put on remarks made by the man who coached Brazil to the 1994 World Cup and the man who will coach the United States to the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Carlos Alberto Parreira, coach of Major League Soccer’s New York/New Jersey MetroStars, told Soccer America magazine columnist Paul Gardner

recently that MLS cannot ask more from some of its American players.

“In their development, they have not been exposed to high-level soccer,” Parreira said, “so you cannot expect them to react to that level. They cannot do it.

“Sometimes, we get a little frustrated because the response from players is not what we expect. We’re not asking for a Pele or a [Diego] Maradona, but we find there is a need to coach the simple things--defensive covering, give and go, a better understanding of the game.

“I’ve never seen a college game, but Ralph [Perez, the MetroStars’ assistant coach] tells me that it’s normal in college--on the first pass you already lose the ball, so it becomes like table tennis, one side to the other.

“It is so difficult to play that way. A team that cannot put five passes together cannot play soccer.”

Parreira said that by the time a player comes out of college, at 21 or 22, he cannot be taught the fundamentals that should have been learned much earlier.

“No, too late, too late,” he said. “At that age, you cannot fully develop the players. You can improve them, [but] I know we cannot ask for more. That’s why the foreigners who come [to MLS], they have to make the difference.”

MALAYSIAN QUESTIONS

One coach who has particular reason to appreciate Parreira’s viewpoint is Clive Charles, assistant coach to Steve Sampson on the U.S. national team and the man charged by U.S. Soccer with qualifying the American team for the next Olympic Games.

Charles, who also is the men’s and women’s coach at Portland University, flew to Malaysia earlier this summer to see first-hand the problems he faces.

There, the United States’ under-20 national team (and therefore potentially the basis for the Sydney Olympic team) was ousted in the first round at the ninth FIFA World Youth Championship.

The American team, which included several MLS players, defeated China, 1-0, on a 90th-minute goal in its opener, but then lost three games in a row--2-1 to Ireland, 1-0 to Ghana and 3-0 to Uruguay.

In other words, it barely defeated an Asian team and lost to teams from Europe, Africa and South America. Global supremacy in reverse. In four games, the U.S. scored two goals and gave up six.

The feeble performance brought instant reaction from several fronts:

“It is clear that everyone else’s college-age players are better than our college-age players,” said Hank Steinbrecher, U.S. Soccer’s executive director.

“We’ve developed some good American players, but we haven’t bridged the gap,” said Jay Hoffman, who coached the U.S. team in Malaysia.

The question is: Why not?

Charles, who played for West Ham United in England and later for the Portland Timbers in the North American Soccer League, thinks it is because American players are coddled too much.

“What it requires [to be competitive at the international level] is being involved in an environment that replicates exactly what you’re going to have to deal with every day,” Charles said. “Every day. For years. That’s how it works.

“In the rest of the world, they put you in that environment. All you see when you watch Argentina or Brazil play, is the end product. And you go, ‘That’s great.’ What you don’t see are the ones [players] who fell by the wayside. Thousands of them don’t make it. Thousands. And it’s just simply a process of elimination. You do it, you stay. You don’t do it, you’re gone.

“And that’s the environment these [foreign] kids have grown up in. They’re worrying about a [pro] contract at 16. They’re dealing with all that stuff then. So it’s a tremendous advantage for them. We know that.

“Our kids at 16, their moms and dads are still taking them to the park, saying ‘Good game, Johnny.’ ”

THE SOLUTION?

Project 40, through which promising young players go directly into the professional ranks, bypassing college, is one answer to improving American teams’ chances.

Another is to encourage top-quality prep players to grab the opportunity if they can join a professional club in Europe or in Central or South America.

And a third, said Charles, is to beef up the level of competition U.S. players face at home.

“It [international play] is a totally different game,” he said. “It’s far more tactical, more physical, it’s quicker. We have to teach them [U.S. youngsters] to be more professional, and obviously the best teacher for that is putting them in that environment.

“When I was 18 and I made a mistake, there was probably a guy playing alongside of me who was 30, who made me accountable for that. I mean, you’d have a Scottish center half who would want to kill you because you made him look bad, and you learned quickly.

“A lot of our kids play from the age of 14 all the way through to 22 in the same age group and they’re not accountable. When they’re 15, they play under-15, when they’re 16, they play under-16, and so on and so on. And they’re not accountable.

“In the rest of the world, you are. You are in a situation where, if you take liberties in training, someone’s going to plant you.”

Charles said he will try to get U.S. Soccer to allow him to train his Olympic hopefuls alongside the full national team in the next couple of years so that they can learn from their elders.

UPSETS ENLIVEN U.S. OPEN CUP

Further evidence that MLS teams are not that far superior to their minor league counterparts has arrived in the form of upsets at the current U.S. Open Cup.

Eight MLS teams entered the 84-year-old tournament, which was won last year by Washington D.C. United. Already, two of them have lost.

Coach Ron Newman’s Kansas City Wizards, leaders of the Western Conference with a 14-7 record, were ousted, 2-1, by the third-division San Francisco Bay Seals.

“We just told ourselves we had nothing to lose,” said Marquis White, who scored both Seal goals at Negoesco Stadium in San Francisco. “We had everything to gain. It was just like we talked about. If we stuck to our game, we could play with them.”

A more telling quote came from Tom Simpson, the Seals’ coach. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that they are slow in the back,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle.

That upset was followed by another as the Colorado Rapids, under Coach Glenn “Mooch” Myernick, crashed out of the knockout tournament, losing to the Chicago Stingers at Arlington Heights, Ill.

Four other MLS teams survived to fight another day. The San Jose Clash defeated San Luis Obispo’s Central Coast Roadrunners, 5-2; the MetroStars ousted the Richmond Kickers, 3-0; the Dallas Burn sank the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers, 3-0; the Tampa Bay Mutiny defeated the Rochester Rhinos, 1-0, and the Long Island Rough Riders defeated the New England Revolution, 4-3, in double overtime.

QUICK PASSES

The next foreign test for Americans comes Aug. 12 when the U.S. team under Coach John Ellinger leaves to compete in the World University Games in Sicily. Tanner Rupp of Aliso Viejo is the only Californian on the team, which will play China on Aug. 18, Russia on Aug. 20 and the Czech Republic on Aug. 22. All games are in Palermo. . . . After that, it is Coach Jay Miller’s turn to test the foreign waters when he takes the American national team to Egypt for the FIFA Under-17 World Championship. The U.S. squad’s opponents are Oman on Sept. 6, Brazil on Sept. 8 and Austria on Sept. 11.

The Galaxy’s 4-1 victory over Santos Laguna of Mexico on Wednesday night at the Rose Bowl marked the first time a U.S. club team has eliminated a Mexican club team from a CONCACAF tournament. . . . Defender John Jones, waived by the Galaxy, has been signed by the club’s minor league affiliate, the Orange County Zodiac. . . . Mike Edwards of New Mexico was elected chairman of the U.S. Amateur Soccer Assn. at U.S. Soccer’s annual general meeting in Orlando, Fla. He succeeds Gianfranco Borroni. . . . The 1998 Goodwill Games, to be held in New York July 19-Aug. 2, have added soccer for the first time.

MLS Vice President Bill Sage announced the league’s playoff schedule, with the top four teams in each conference advancing to postseason play. The best-of-three quarterfinal series will be played Oct. 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12. The best-of-three semifinal series is set for Oct. 15, 16, 18, 19 and 22. The one-game championship final, MLS Cup ‘97, will be played Oct. 26 at RFK Stadium in Washington and televised live on ABC at 12:30 Pacific time.