The Promising, Surprising Secret to Soccer Success

As a retired youth coach and US soccer fan, I feel compelled to share the secret. Who’ll care? Only those few who dream their son or daughter could one day be a true soccer great. Let me whet your appettite: it is very possible, but not how you think.

Ten Thousand (10,000) Hours or OMG!
I had a discussion with my sons’ about the 10,000 hours concept; that whatever one hopes to excel in, it takes about 10,000 of focused practice to realize one’s full potential. There are a number of studies on this. True for skills, like the violin, even true for intellectual endeavors like math. I am convinced this concept is absolutely true for a sport played with the feet. People who don’t play soccer essentially have no dexterity with their feet, so the training all comes from the sport.

When one starts to translate the 10,000 hours into soccer practice hours, it is a little daunting. A player training year round, averaging 4 hours of on the pitch a week is only getting about 200 hours of training a year. If a young boy or girls start on such a program at age 5, they will be near 55 before they get their 10,000 hours of practice.

Naturally one needs to get that amount of practice at a much younger age if one hopes to reach their potential; the player needs to have that much development achieved while they are at their physical peak, presumably in their twenties.

If a player begins with soccer at age 5 and practices one hour a day on average until they are 20, they will have a little more than 5,000 hours of practice. If its the right kind of practice, I suspect that’s enough to get most US kids onto the national team, forget any concept of “natural talent”.

Yet even at 5,000 hours focused training, the player’s glass of talent is half full, they are nowhere near their potential. The US cannot seriously expect to contend for the World Cup with players at half their potential. There is simply not enough luck in the world to get the US Mens team into a World Cup final unless they are much more fully developed.

Ten Thousand Hours is an Empowering Concept
10,000 hours is daunting, but on the other hand it is an immensely promising concept. For a player who may be discouraged by better players around him or her, the situation becomes clear: the more skilled player has simply put in a larger number of the required hours. I would guess most youth soccer players in the US never get 1,000 hours of quality training, so the race for one’s ability is hardly even begun. Kids, never be discouraged, just train – you’re at the beginning of the race!

Sure, but Realistically How Will Anyone Get Ten Thousand Hours?
One hesitates to mention the 10,000 hours as one imagines zealot coaches calling crazy practice schedules, and soccer parents having heart attacks over the demands on their kids (and the logistics!) But wait! How do more successful soccer nations accomplish higher levels of development?

We probably know the answer.

To get 10 or 20 hours of quality training a week, week in and week out, year around is generally not feasible through a club. The training simply must be closer to home. Some clubs understand this and encourage their players to juggle the ball for an hour a day. Some young players are actually obsessed enough with soccer, or that bored, that they will do a fraction of that juggling, but I’m not sure that’s a recipe for happiness in soccer or in life, or that is it even good training at some point. And I suspect we’ll never see a Ronaldinho or Kaka emerge from endless robotic juggling hours.

Not “Play” I Mean Really Play
The missing secret, the X factor, is how engaged the player is during his training. Is he or she excited, having fun, striving with an open mind and sense of possibility? It is like a multiplier of the hours, a multiplier that may be greater than or less than 1. If bored, the factor is less than one, and the hour spent may be worth less than an hour towards the 10,000. However, if the player’s mind is at play, and fully engaged, the hour is probably worth more than an hour.

The easiest way for this to occur is without the direct involvement of adults or structure. You can see it in your mind, a few neighborhood kids who go down to the playground everyday, whenever they can sneak out, and try to one-up each other with moves, with juggling, perhaps an impromptu short sided game on the basketball court or lawn. Laughing, having fun with it, getting better without trying so hard. Watch this!

Impossible! We Need MORE Organization and Maybe Foreign Feet
Can kids from the USA develop great skill with their feet? Sure, we’re tops! Look away from the pitch, across the parking lot to the scruffy kids doing something they shouldn’t be doing. On skateboards. They’re out there everyday, closer to social menace than organized sport. They are passionate about it in a personal way, doing it incessantly, with friends but without organization, the world against them sometimes, and they develop incredible skill, creativity, and daring.

When the kids of the USA learn to play soccer like they skateboard, we’ll be preparing to win the World Cup.

P.S. Did You Forget the US Women’s Great Success?

What about the US Women’s success? I suspect they’ve simply been ahead of a world that still discourages girls from sport. The girls in other parts of the world are getting nowhere near their 10,000 hours of quality training; the race for those hours of potential development will be pivotal to the continuing US Women’s success at the ultimate level.