My View

By Mike Woitalla
Executive Editor, Soccer America Magazine

Strong arguments have long been made that professional clubs should take a lead role in developing young American players.

''If we ever aspire to be a soccer-playing country that can compete with Brazils, Argentinas, Italys, etc., on a consistent basis and eventually conquer them, we need youth development for our top players at the professional club level,'' said Bruce Arena a few years back.

ItÆs the model prevalent worldwide: Clubs with youth teams designed to feed their professional first team. And such a system could address some of the American youth gameÆs major problems.

In the current American youth soccer scene, the paid coaches of elite youth clubs need to rack up wins to legitimize their fees to the check-writing parents.

But coaching youth teams to win is not the same as coaching youngsters to become exceptional players as adults.

Learning to pass or dribble out of dangerous situations, for example, requires taking risks that coaches intent on winning are unlikely to encourage.

Or as U.S. U-17 coach John Hackworth puts it, the emphasis on winning ''is a detriment to young players because it prevents us from developing technically proficient players.''

Youth coaches at professional clubs are judged on how many players they graduate to the first team — not on how many games or titles the youth teams win.

Pro clubsÆ involvement in youth soccer would also take the pressure off young players to spend time and money traveling to the USYS ODP tryouts that the U.S. youth national team program largely depends on to identify players.

If the New York Red Bulls had a youngster worthy of youth national team consideration, a phone call from Arena would suffice to give him a shot.

And pro clubs looking for talent — if they did it in the USA as they do in the rest of the world — would turn every stone in hopes of finding the potential stars. The USA, with its ever-changing demographics, is too big and too diverse to believe the current system can uncover all the soccer talent.

We could be more assured than ever that weÆre not letting talent slip through the cracks.

So does MLSÆs Youth Development Initiative signal the great new era of American soccer?

Credit the league, which had already shown interest in youth development with Project-40, Generation adidas and the reserve league, for requiring each of its teams to establish a youth program next season.

But for now, most MLS clubs are planning on charging the young players — which could lead one to conclude theyÆre just aiming for a piece of the lucrative youth soccer pie.

For however much American soccer has progressed in the last two decades, the youth game has become obscenely expensive, straining even middle-class incomes.

In fact, it seems that every new youth soccer venture is another scheme to get playersÆ money. Once in a while thereÆs an exception. At the Premier Soccer Academy that Brad Friedel is creating in Ohio, the year-round residents wonÆt pay a cent. Imagine if MLS clubs took such an approach from the get-go. Surely it would help silence the expensive youth clubs that are outraged that a new entity is coming after ''their'' players.

Only when MLS clubs fully fund youth teams can we be sure that their ventures arenÆt simply replicating what we already have — a pay-to-play system offering virtually the same opportunities to the same players already served by the elite youth clubs.

(This article originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of Soccer America Magazine. Send comments to letters@socceramerica.com.)