The Lessons of the 2010 US U-17s

2010 was not a good year for the US women’s soccer program, and talk of focusing more on development, which has been in the background for years now, has now became the main conversation. Recently, US Soccer has appointed full-time positions for Technical Director and Development Director for women’s soccer, to oversee the US women’s youth teams up through the Under-20s. (USSF has said that this was not a reactionary move, but the timing is… interesting.)

The conversation in women’s soccer, particularly in the mainstream media (if at all), typically went something like this: a short article about how the US senior team lost against Mexico in Cancún, which forced them into a playoff with Italy just to qualify for the World Cup; maybe some mention of how the US has struggled in other recent games; and then a single sentence about how the U-20s lost in the quarterfinals and that the U-17s failed to even qualify. Usually in so many words.

This view reduces the U-17s to a problem of results without looking at the way they actually played. Ironically, one of the key points in the resulting criticism of US soccer development is that too much emphasis is placed on winning, instead of developing skill on the ball and technical teamwork. In short: the poor results at the youth level show that there is too much emphasis on results at the youth level.

At the senior World Cup, there little excuse for losing – those few games, every four years, is the entire reason they’re playing internationally at all. Everything else leads up to that. Maybe a losing team can shrug their shoulders and say at least they played their way, at least they showed character, but even then, that must only be consolation if they’ve won in the past.

But the same can’t be said at the youth level. The U-17 and U-20 World Cups were started by FIFA to promote the development of the game, especially in countries not known for focusing on soccer – here the playing field would be a little more level, so small countries can see encouraging results and use that to work toward joining the big players at the senior World Cup. But for all countries, the U-17 World Cup is, in a sense, practice for the later U-20 and senior World Cup. Do you go into it with the sole objective of winning it, or do you focus first and foremost on developing your young players, so that later they have the skills and confidence to play at the highest level possible? Would you focus on winning a U-17 World Cup at all costs if it meant you would never be able to really compete for a senior (“real”) World Cup? In other words, is a U-17 World Cup an end in itself?

I am not saying that winning isn’t important, or that the U-17 World Cup is just another set of games. No one sets out to lose a game, or doesn’t care if they do. For a U-17 player, surely stepping on the field for a World Cup final would be the highlight of their career to that point. But while each game can be won, no matter who the opponent is, you can’t win all your games. The problem is, what lesson do you take from losing a game at the World Cup, or in failing to qualify for it? While the answer to that should always be dependent on how the game was played, but it’s never more so than at the youth level.

The U-20s and senior team played fairly poorly all year, with a few exceptions (notably for the senior team: the friendly against Germany in May). The U-17s, on the other hand, played better soccer in their loss to Canada than the older teams did in many of their wins. The one team that was doing it right, that showed that the US already has good, skilled, technical young players, shouldn’t be a footnote in the deconstruction of US soccer development.

I realize that I’m basing my opinion on seeing just five games, four of them played against demonstrably inferior regional opponents, and one do-or-die game played against a team that hadn’t actually played that well against those same opponents. But saying the 2010 US U-17s deserved to lose on that day is one thing; to see it as part of the same trend that resulted in the current mess at the senior level is another.

If you’re a fan of the women’s game, and you’re concerned about where the US is going, maybe you should take a look at the 2010 US U-17 women’s national team. All the CONCACAF qualifying matches are archived at Concacaf.com – full games, not just highlights. You don’t even need to register to watch them. I can’t say they’re all entertaining – a blow-out rarely is – but they do show how the team played, particularly in contrast to the older teams. Even if you disagree and think these games show that US players can’t play their way out of a paper bag, at least you’d know what you talking about.

I’ll follow this up with more about the actual qualifying games themselves, and what made the team so notable.