A sign that Americans still have a ways to go
in [World Football]
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From: ken.overton on 13 Jun 2010 11:09 On Jun 13, 10:34 am, b...(a)ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce D. Scott) wrote: > > Ken's points are well taken but the altar of injury at youth level for > too much emphasis on power and speed and early results is a problem in > Germany as well. I wasn't just speaking to the *type* of game we play, but the fact that kids are playing that way for too many hours at a time, which is where injuries really come in. From the article, the reporter was surprised at how little time Ajax academy kids spent in organized, competitive matches. The answer was that the club regards them as a long-term investment so naturally they want to protect and maximize that investment. Their time spent at the club is first and foremost acquiring skills and secondarily playing matches. Instead of 'match experience' the clubs prefer for the kids to play informal, pickup games in their neighborhoods for the bulk of the time.
From: Jack Hollis on 13 Jun 2010 11:23 On Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:48:27 +0000 (UTC), Jesper Lauridsen <rorschak(a)sorrystofanet.dk> wrote: >If Messi had been born in the US, what sport would he have played? XBox 360 and PS3.
From: Jack Hollis on 13 Jun 2010 11:27 On Sun, 13 Jun 2010 05:07:30 -0700 (PDT), "ken.overton(a)gmail.com" <ken.overton(a)gmail.com> wrote: >Seriously though, I don't know where to start with this whole line of >reasoning. I see no reason to think that Lebron would inevitably >amount to anything with his feet. But it does seem pretty clear that >there are *major* sports that attract the major talents, whether the >money drives that or is merely effect. I don't know about Labron (he's a bit tall to be a soccer player) but I had a friend who was a Youth Soccer official in San Francisco and he said that Jason Kidd was the best youth soccer player he ever saw.
From: William Clark on 13 Jun 2010 12:40 In article <MPG.267e9148dbbf9c6798d410(a)news-europe.giganews.com>, Manx Gunner <goal(a)4thegunners!com> wrote: > On Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:48:27 +0000 (UTC), Jesper Lauridsen wrote... > > > On 2010-06-10, Manx Gunner <goal(a)4thegunners!com> wrote: > > > > > > I've explained this before but I shall be happy to do so again. > > > > > > Let's consider a 10-year-old athlete, gifted with the talent to become > > > world class at whatever sport he chooses to pursue. That athlete has > > > grown up watching LeBron James (NBA, $100M+ by 21), Steven Strasburg > > > (MLB, $20M+ by 21), Matthew Stafford (NFL, $50M+ by 21), and Freddy Adu > > > (MLS, $3M+ by 21). Gee, which do you think he's going to pick? > > > > If Messi had been born in the US, what sport would he have played? > > Probably baseball, if anything at all. He could not have played any American sport because he is simply too small. Perhaps an undersized point guard, maybe, but that is about it.
From: William Clark on 13 Jun 2010 12:41
In article <nec816l504v0t8789jlju4032jv449aei1(a)4ax.com>, Jack Hollis <xsleeper(a)aol.com> wrote: > On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:48:04 -0700, Dwight Beers <hdbeers(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > >On 06/10/2010 08:37 AM, Jack Hollis wrote: > >> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:45:17 -0700, Dwight Beers<hdbeers(a)gmail.com> > >> wrote: > >> > >>>> 2. In 1875, Ivy League schools, much like their upper crust > >>>> counterparts in England, chose to play with Rugby rules in favor of > >>>> soccer. Thus evolved American Football. Had the Ivy League choose to > >>>> keep playing soccer, American Football never would have existed and > >>>> soccer would have been a major sport in the US long ago. > >>>> > >>> > >>> Fact #2: The first Harvard-Yale football game was in 1820. > >> > >> I think you might want to check on that. The first Harvard - Yale > >> game in 1875 was what led to the Ivy League to adopt Rugby Football > >> Union rules. > >> > > <snip> > > > >And, you might want to check the newspaper accounts from Boston, > >Portland, New Haven, etc. from around the period 1820-1823 (I'm not 100 > >per cent certain of the date). > > I'm not sure how I would do that, but there are a number of reliable > sources like Ivy League Sports and both the Harvard and Yale sites > that say the first Harvard vs Yale football game was played in 1875. > Obviously, both schools had been around for many years prior to 1875 > so there may have been previous competitions. Both Harvard and Yale were playing intramural football as early as 1820, based on the Rugby of the time. > > In any case, the actual year of the first game is irrelevant to the > point that after that 1875 game the Ivy League adopted rugby rules > rather than soccer rules. I would imagine that if the Ivy League had > adopted association football rules that American Football wouldn't > exist and soccer would be a major sport in the US. > > Of course, all this is conjecture. Right, and a waste of time at that. |