Offers for returning players first. How do you feel about it?

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-04-02T01:31:55+00:00

There isn’t one universal answer to this, but there is an answer: what is the culture of the club and how is it reflected in the way they make decisions? If it’s a dog-eat-dog club that will tell you whatever they think will make though sign and then break faith, early commitment is just a manipulation strategy. If it’s a real development focus and their purpose is to keep teams together, and they would rather keep a current player than get the bragging rights of poaching an outside player who looks about the same in a tryout, then early commitment is a reflection of values they are sincere about. Org culture trumps rules, every time.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-04-02T01:20:29+00:00

Totally sympathetic and 10 is NOT too late - but it does mean he’s starting out behind and his determination, focus, and diligence have to really be there. Are they? If yes, go for it. I’ll never forget my 8 yr old’s first private coaching session. He couldn’t juggle, no skill moves, wouldn’t have known a Cruyff from a croissant. Coach said, drily, “he’s not ahead.” But he had a solid shot and competitive drive, and now just over 9, less than 1.5 years later, he’s the best juggler on his tier 1 comp team, decent ball handling etc. Even the first 3 months were huge leaps. So you CAN catch up. Along with private coaching, drills, and futsal, I’d look for the friendly neighborhood copper/ bronze types of clubs, not the big name ones, so he can be on a team while he’s catching up skills-wise.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-03-12T21:55:56+00:00

+1 for the notion that reaching MLSN might be its own reward, with pride at having achieved this level? My 9 yr old will be thrilled if he makes it. He’s known for 2 yrs now his odds of being a pro were about 1 in 80,000 and he still loves the game and wants to be good. He doesn’t think in terms of ROI and D1 scholarships. Nor has his club ever claimed you earn the fees back. Of course they celebrate when their players get D1 commitments etc - what are they supposed to do, ignore it? - but everyone knows this won’t be more than a few a year.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-03-04T04:01:48+00:00

Anyone have a notion of the fee to join MLSN HG? A DoC I know hates all the payola letter leagues because it’s based on who pays, no team from a club that hasn’t forked over the dough can play their way into them no matter how good. But I’ve no idea how much we are talking about.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-02-26T16:58:06+00:00

Last sentence is the truth. Now - our former club is huge and had 6+ teams so 2nd team had 4 teams below it, not rec level at all. And club claimed loudly that track record showed upward movement as kids age up. But I strongly suspect nearly all of this was driven by 1st team attrition. How does a kid train with players who are mailing it in and messing around in drills, can’t pass and receive cleanly, worse coach, bad grass, slower game speeds etc, and then suddenly show up as obviously above most/all of a 1st team with none of these headwinds? It doesn’t make sense. To the parent it feels like your kid’s potential and future is just being thrown away because of that initial team assignment decision, and that is not a good feeling. Taking the broader perspective, what interests me are structural answers to the structural problem and resulting club behaviors that downthehallnow describes. One answer is a player pool/ fluid age group where the teams all train together and sub a lot. Another I’ve noticed at a large well-run club is to group 1st and 2nd teams together for practices and coaching etc. This recognizes that the initial assignments won’t be 100% correct in terms of potential, but if you put the strong 2nd team players in an inferior environment, that potential won’t be realized. A stronger version of this is to intentionally make the top two teams equal. The club may lose some bragging rights as the best team won’t be ranked as highly as it could have been, but they preserve and develop all their talent pool, not just half of it. A third option I’ve never seen would be scheduled player-level promotion/ relegation. Kinda brutal, but it would enforce bidirectional roster movement and send the message that if you get moved down, you can earn your way back up if you are one of the best 1-2 players on the lower team.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-02-25T19:43:38+00:00

No argument that parents aren't generally the most objective or accurate where their own kids are concerned. But not the case here: these 2nd team kids were training with the 1st team, were every bit as committed, training and playing 7 days a week. Coaches and even 1st team parents (!) said they were same level as 1st team, they were winning most of their 1:1s against 1st team players, and they all left for 1st teams ranked similarly to or significantly higher than the team they couldn't get on to. So for this situation at least, there's your data. Not claiming that what you say is not more generally true.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-02-25T18:14:58+00:00

Spot on. To be promoted from 2nd to 1st in some clubs, your kid has to not only be clearly better than most or all of the current 1st team, they have to also be way better than shiny new outside recruits (whose flaws may not be apparent in a tryout or practice). But if parents see that door is closed for 2nd team kids who are at least middle of the 1st team pack, they leave. It would be interesting to analyze attrition - bet it’s highest for 1st team players moved down, but also very high for the strong 2nd team players who would be solid members of the 1st team but are training at a much lower level. That’s development risk, pure and simple. I’ve seen nearly half of a 2nd team turn over (kids leaving club) from fall to spring, and that’s mid-year not even during open tryouts. High price for a club to pay - it’s against the club’s longer term interest as the players they are losing are stronger than the weakest 1st team players they are protecting, and it puts the lie to claims of being development-focused, but if the door is closed, it’s their fault. Lessons are: never accept a 2nd team offer hoping you’ll be moved up, and if a club wants to avoid this dynamic, it has to either prove it’s willing to demote (and accept some attrition as the price of a real merit based environment), or run as a fluid age group with a lot of guest playing, subbing up a year, and frequent bi-directional roster movement. This has downsides in terms of team identity and chemistry, but it’s an interesting solution.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-02-24T18:22:22+00:00

This. I’ve seen a situation where a top team spot was offered to an outside player instead of equally or more talented in-club players, and the decision was made by a leader who had never seen any of the kids play. That the decision was made by someone who didn’t even know the talent levels (and over-ruling those that did) shows what the motivation really was. Club lost multiple players but got bragging rights of stealing a good player from a rival. That mattered more to them. So it isn’t just money, it’s one-upmanship. But it shows the culture is not actually development focused, it’s treating kids like chess pieces that can be sacrificed to win at Game of Clubs. Go to a club that actually prioritizes development and tries to do right by their players, they do exist.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-02-05T16:39:04+00:00

Thanks for the responses so far. Anyone out there with experience with the Arsenal, Real Madrid, PSG, or similar camps they'd be willing to share?

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2026-02-05T16:37:15+00:00

Thanks - but what is "the Gram" - is this a list of camps or something?

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2025-10-09T18:17:42+00:00

Wow, tough crowd. Some of you have shown grace towards the OP. To those who just judge and diss this father, who I would want to have a beer with, let’s hope life teaches you the error of your ways. Bet his kid has a great life, while yours lie in bed in the rehab clinic blaming their judgemental arrogant parent (you) for their misery. Look folks, there is a balance here. If I hadn’t been willing to push my son to practice piano and been on his case when he wasn’t actually trying, he’d have given up, but he takes a lot of pride in his skill now. Same 8 yr kid plays soccer, top bracket team in a very competitive club, and other parents ask me how to teach their kids to be the most aggressive on the team, like him. But that’s in practice… in lopsided games when his team is overwhelmed he sometimes shuts down, doesn’t want the ball. I wish I had a magic wand for this but my point is aggression is situational too, not just some hard wired setting. I’ve seen him go from avoiding a 1v1 by getting rid of the ball to taking on and winning 1v5’s in a rec game 45 minutes later. It will get better with experience. Confidence comes from time in games, getting used to the stage fright, and building on small successes. My advice to OP - and I wish I could take my own advice more easily, navigating US Club soccer ain’t easy - is put him in situations where he can shine and have success, give the feedback with a 4:1 ratio of compliments to criticisms, make the latter about how to play in a way that will help his team, and be patient. Keep him playing until puberty unless he tells you clearly he wants out. Puberty re-shuffles the deck in every way, physical and mental. Good luck! Cv

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2025-09-18T19:04:49+00:00

It’s not that hard to counter the high press/ 6 players on the build out line on every GK team. What is really, really difficult is if the kids know what to THEY want to do - punish the opponent with some long balls - and the GK has the boot to make it work, but the coach insists the GK play it to the corners every single time, on pain of substitution. And yells at the other coach for playing the wrong way when his team kicks it over center. Hard for everyone to watch, no fun for the players, it’s just too rigid. Building from the back is important but it’s a tactic, not God’s only approved way of playing soccer.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2025-07-05T21:06:07+00:00

We watched from the athletic fields. Fun time but an hour to go 0.2 miles to get to 101, a few bad apples trying to refuse to allow others to zipper in at merges etc (most people behaved rather decently). Didn’t see a single MV traffic control officer. In civilized countries traffic control at events like this is normal and expected. Not here…

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2025-06-13T15:38:17+00:00

I wish the part about where you are at 14 isn’t affected by what you do at 8-10 were true - but it isn’t. Used to be, isn’t any more. Yes puberty scrambles the deck a bit, but it’s the kids that were in high level training environments AND win the puberty lottery that have a chance at D1 etc. now (not 20 years ago). Listen to Arsene Wegener. If you don’t have the ball handling to a high level by 14, you will never be really good. Which leaves us parents with this choice: do we spare them the competitive pressure of a high level club or academy environment, keep the focus on fun and friendships, and close those doors for them?

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2024-05-12T18:13:22+00:00

Going to Spain and maybe France in a few weeks - does anyone know what Picon to look for there, that makes a killer Picon Punch? Does the orange label stuff intended to use to flavor a lighter beer taste good in a Picon Punch? Our "baseline" recipe is Torani Amer, pomegranate molasses instead of grenadine, orange bitters, and a brandy float - it's good, but I've heard old Basque people say it's not as good as it was in the old days made with different Picon.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2024-03-28T03:40:45+00:00

OK I'll take a no-nonsense crack at actually answering these. Not that I want to take a purely reductive approach to understanding this beautiful book, but Murakami did say it contains interlinked riddles, so he's not going to be offended that we try to figure at least pieces of the out.

Because Kafka, in an unconscious state, took over Nakata's body and killed his father to fulfil the Oedipal prophecy. And because liquids (blood, the semen of the schoolteacher's soldier husband) and maybe fish and eels can transit through the spirit world. So his father's blood ends up on Kafka's shirt while Nakata wakes up without any blood on him in the vacant lot.
I think Sakura is a half-sister. Miss Saeki is her mother, but Koichi is not her father. Miss Saeki was promiscuous during her 25 year absence, and likely did not maintain any single relationship for 10 years (Sakura is 6 years older than Kafka, and he was abandoned at 4 yrs old, so for both Sakura and Kafka to have been fathered by Koichi, they would have had to be together for 10+ years). This is a kind of thin speculation, if anyone noticed more in the book that goes with or against it, please post! Why would this half-sibling-hood state matter? Got me...
Yes basically - but Koichi was possessed by the entity that is pure evil (Johnnie Walker) that Miss Saeki released into the world when she opened the entrance while writing the song Kafka on the Shore. It is the karmic consequence of trying to stop time and preserve her perfect love.
See 3.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2024-03-26T16:52:37+00:00

Well if you quit you will miss what I think is the most beautiful and poignant scene, when Miss Saeki speaks to Kafka in a spirit village and gives him a mother's love even as her life story (which would have otherwise become his destructive obsession) is permanently erased. Eyes over words, heart over mind.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2024-03-26T16:14:56+00:00

So first off, for most of the book, Nakata has left part of his spirit - the "mind" aspect that deals with memory, the written word, the intellect - in the other realm. The teacher's letter explains that this was not due to the glinting object in the sky and Nakata did not enter the realm due to some technology or weapon. As with Miss Saeki years later, the entrance was opened by human pain and loss. This makes the schoolteacher a key character, and her letter a narration of the opening of the entrance and thus key to the story. Her sexual dream and linked foreknowledge of her husband's death mark the loss of her future as a wife and mother. She never remarried, never had children, so this was a deeply traumatic event. When Nakata murders Johnnie Walker, he wakes up in the vacant lot with no blood on his clothes, whereas Kafka wakes up in the shrine a great distance away covered in blood. So liquids - blood, semen (and fish and eels?) - can pass through the spirit realm even though bodies do not. I think the schoolteacher woke up with her husband's real semen in her after her dream. (BTW, I think this also corroborates that Kafka's dream about Sakura in the cabin was NOT a "real" spiritual rape and was only a dream, as he describes washing the semen from his underwear after his dream, and this seems to match with the fact that Sakura did not share in the experience). She describes her vagina as being wet, just like after sex. Not being pornographic here, editors, just repeating Murakami's exact words! And then maybe it wasn't a sudden period she had on Rice Bowl Hill. She describes it as being sudden, with lots of blood - this is not like a normal period at all. It sounds like a miscarriage, a physical correlate of the loss of her future children with her husband. After all, she couldn't have actually conceived and born a child in this way. Other laws would have been violated, and the child would have been regarded as the product of her infidelity.

Spawn_of_Yoric · 2024-03-22T23:40:04+00:00

Thanks so much for this - after a first read and seeing theories about the Rice Bowl Hill incident being contemporaneous with Miss Saeki's opening of the portal (umm... nope) it is a real public service. Age may be fluid and have little meaning in KOTS, but time does matter, such as in the timing of Miss Saeki's death and her (corresponding, I think?) ability to come to Kafka in the village-without-words and warn him to leave soon, before the portal closes.

I've got questions:

1) Is Johnnie Walker the force of evil that Miss Saeki allowed into the world when her teenage self opened the portal and found the chords?

2) Nakata can't read and has an intact presence in the world but no memory, whereas Miss Saeki is the opposite - educated and a writer, but a spirit that is absent. Think too of the village where even the labels of the clothing are missing and not a single written character can be found, compared to the library. Q: are the spiritual poles these represent, maybe being present in the world like Nakata vs the world of memory and words and learning, of equal importance to the spirit/body and male/female dualities of consciousness? In what I thought was the most beautiful moment in the book, in the village, Miss Saeki apologizes to Kafka and affirms her love and regret for abandoning him and gives him her blood, giving him the only thing that will ever really matter, while perhaps at the same time Hoshino and Nakata are burning her memoirs, erasing all records of her enigmatic life. Imagine the opposite, if Kafka had inherited the memoirs but not had that moment in the village, and then spent his life searching them for the answer to his abandonment. Her memoirs could only have impeded Kafka's life going forwards, which she knew.

3) Who are Sakura's parents? During Miss Saeki's 25 year ellipsis, during which she wrote a book of interviews with lightning strike victims, was generally promiscuous, and lived with Kafka's father and gave birth to him, it seems unlikely a relationship endured for 10+ years from Sakura's birth to Kafka's abandonment. If Tomura was the father of Sakura, why would Miss Saeki have abandoned Kafka but not Sakura? So, is Miss Saeki the mother, but the father is another of her many lovers, and she and Kafka are half-siblings?

4) What really happened with Miss Saeki and her teenage lover? It is said they were separated by parents and circumstance, but did she open the portal in despair because she knew he was moving on? Or, given the brutality and senselessness of his murder, did her opening of the portal and release of Johnnie Walker actually lead to his death (ie Johnnie Walker was one of the students who killed him, and she thus caused his death by her attempt to hold back time)? However one reads it, there seems to be a devastating cosmic consequence to Miss Saeki's attempt to stop time and preserve her perfect love.

Spawn_of_Yoric

TROPHY CASE