Fascnating how the search-and-match hypothesis plays out. The kids doing best at 14 often lack the adaptability that comes from sampling different movement patterns and cognitive demands. I coached youth soccer for awhile and the single-sport kids hit a wall around 16 when tehcnical drills stopped translating to game intelligence. The ones who played basketball or did gymnastics had spatial awareness that no amount of cone drills could teach.
Yes, and yet football academies stop trials at under-13 level! I.e. if you're not 'good' at 12, they don't want to know.
We had four boys taken out of our gymnastics club when one of their dads set up an under-6 football team. I kept my son in, and only let him start to play 'organised' football when he was under-10s.
Fast forward to today: only one of those four boys is still playing football, and he's on the bench for a third-division team. My son? Loving football and playing in a good under-16 team, and up in the under-18s. I can't say where he'll be in 2 years time' but at 16, he's ahead of the early-specialisers.
Fascnating how the search-and-match hypothesis plays out. The kids doing best at 14 often lack the adaptability that comes from sampling different movement patterns and cognitive demands. I coached youth soccer for awhile and the single-sport kids hit a wall around 16 when tehcnical drills stopped translating to game intelligence. The ones who played basketball or did gymnastics had spatial awareness that no amount of cone drills could teach.
Yes, and yet football academies stop trials at under-13 level! I.e. if you're not 'good' at 12, they don't want to know.
We had four boys taken out of our gymnastics club when one of their dads set up an under-6 football team. I kept my son in, and only let him start to play 'organised' football when he was under-10s.
Fast forward to today: only one of those four boys is still playing football, and he's on the bench for a third-division team. My son? Loving football and playing in a good under-16 team, and up in the under-18s. I can't say where he'll be in 2 years time' but at 16, he's ahead of the early-specialisers.