On Brazilian Soccer

My daughter uncovered the photos and journal I wrote on my first trip to Brazil in 1989.   The trip was a life changer for me. I did not know how much it had changed my path until I reread the journal. As I read I understood how the ideas for Joy of the People were shaped.

Saturday Feb 17, 1989, Jundiai, Brazil

ON BRAZILIAN SOCCER
The Brazilian's are very touchy about their soccer. They very deeply want to hold on to the claim as world's best. But can such a claim be made?  Brazil has not won the world cup since '70. Since Pele.

Let's start on ground level. here, on the streets, on the campinho's, everyone is good, many are great.  They play more than we do and they enjoy playing more than we do, perhaps more than anyone. They laugh, they tease, joke, play hard. They play for fun. They play to look good more than win. I remember the score--they remember who they dribbled. Ze, the calmest, nicest guy off the field is a trash talking loudmouth on it. Afterwards it's always the same is his limited English he recaps all his best moves, forgetting anything bu that, "did you like my show?"

We played everyday in Brazil in every imaginable setting.  The weekly game in the construction Campinho was my favorite--not at first, I was like: "where's the grass?"

They taught me a different side to the game.  Though I played at the highest levels, they understood a better way of playing.  As the weeks and games went by, on the futsal courts, the beach, the sitiou, the campinho, I began to let go of the score, of the win. 

I grew up playing hockey on the ponds of Golden Valley.  This was like that.  I started to recall the great winter pick up soccer games at USC (where I went my freshman year), and later,  the spring games at Trinity, or the practice games with the Interanationals in Richfield. They were always fun. Really? Was this the key? Had I let my desire to rank, compete, work and win get in the way of my growth? Were these seemingly meaningless games Brazil's secret?   Their key to growth?  Could an environment like this be cultivated in the US?  Maybe. I took notes, asked questions.  I was determined to bring this back home.    (to be continued).

A new Vision for Girls Soccer

"Train us like Men, Treat us like Women," 
--Mia Hamm, in describing their request to their coaches as they prepared for the 1999 World Cup

"In your culture  you tend to describe soccer in military terms: attack, flank, destroy, defend, fight... we use language associated with beauty: art, creativity, build, create, imagine."

                              --Tele Santana, Brazilian National Team Coach 1982-1986

When girls walk into our center during free play there tends to be more boys then girls.  This is the case everywhere, in every sport in all pick up environments--boys tend to outnumber girls  "You don't see many girls do you?" I ask, "But there are no boys either...all I see is soccer players."

Women's soccer in the US is due for a sweeping change. In his book "Warrior Girls," Michael Sokolove talks about a lost generation of women athletes pushed to physical and mental limits all in search for victories.  His point is that the endless season's and early specialization in sports like soccer lead to burnout, injury, total disenchantment with sports.

If you go to any high level youth girls game you will see kids trained and readied for spartan-like battle  to encourage a warrior mentality. Kids flying into tackles, brute force over skill.  The girls game is not in a great place right now.

Where did this come from? From North Carolina.

It all started with Anson Dorrance, the seminal girls soccer coach created a groundbreaking methodology of building competitiveness in girls through a intense feedback system he called the "Competitive Caldron."

Anson's ideas are not ideas are not striking or deep. He saw the game simply as a series of 1 v 1 battles to be won.  The team that won the most battles won the game.

By keeping and posting scores everyday he asked the girls to be accountable for evrything from 1 v 1 to 880's to 40 yard dash to push ups in a minute he believed he could build competitiveness in girls by holding them accountable. The Mia Hamm's, Tisha Ventorini's, and  Kristine Lilly's responded with many Division 1 championships and 2 world cups in 1991 and 1999.

Girls are asked to become competitors, to contest, battle, be aggressive, they are asked to play like men.  The result has been a morphing into an almost an unrecognizable form of soccer.

But those ideas are  30 years old now and alot has changed but  the ideas have not,  like Billy Beane and Moneyball, every college coach in the country has copied him with the premise win the one v one battle through bigger stronger faster more competitive. Soon youth coaches, playing for regional and national recognition, adopted those same principles, others were forced to beat 'em of join 'em, (and if you have ever faced a team of these brutish warriors, you didn't stand much of a chance) so there isn't much of a choice.

But there is an answer to brute force. The great Johan Cruyff, advising Pep Guardiola who was facing off in the center midfield against the dominating Miguel Ángel Nadal (Rafael Nadal's uncle), famously told Guardiola not to battle. "Don't fight with him. Don't contest headers, you can't win, instead think, anticipate, be where the ball will be." And the rest is history.

Maybe girls can do that too. Maybe girls don't have to play like men.  They can simply play like girls.  They can communicate, connect, cooperate.  They can set new standards and pave new pathways that "Men" never dreamed of. In the last World Cup Japan and France showed us a little of what that might look like--let's hope for more. On the verge of the Olympics I will be cheering for the US, but the game will not be played by them--they are playing like men, but France and Japan are not playing like men, not even playing like girls, but playing like soccer players. 

Guardiola and Barcelona used skill and smarts over force. Let's do the same with girls.  Let them dribble, score, test out their skills in unstructured play.  Let them play with boys, with girls, with adults and kids.  Let's not see the game in wins and losses, or girls and boys, but simply as a game that can truly be played, like Santana said, with imagination, art, and beauty and win the world cup (with style this time) in 2023!

The hierarchy of free play

What creates a great free play environment?

A friend with a ton of soccer experience cornered me at a conference, "I hate to break it to you but what you are doing can be done by anyone...I could go to the local park and have free play."

And I told him he certainly could and we would love that because we want to see it spread.  But he wasn't doing it right now, why?  He was simply threatening to do it, like I threaten to clean the garage...I know it's a good thing and needs to be done, but I have so many other important things to do.

But it did get me thinking.  Really, what are the elements that have made JOTP work?  Why was it so uniformly ignored?  

One of the reasons that I think free play is acknowledged but ignored lies in it's very very basic elements.  It takes forever in free play for one kid to learn one thing.  Why do it when in 20 minutes I can give 16 kids the basics of shooting?  Or dribbling?  How can we plan if we don't know where we are going? Teams have competitions, kids need to work together, get to know each other...etc.

My point here is that we are skipping steps of development.  Where there is no model in sports per se that show proper steps, there is in the world of psychology.  By studying these examples and also looking at examples of free play success stories perhaps we can unlock some learning cues that make certain places work so well and allow other coaches (like my friend) replicate it.

Maslow's Hiearchy of Needs

From Wikipedia:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation."[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow use the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization needs to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.

Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."[3] Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population.[4]

The model is usually shown in the form of a Pyramid:

 

So Maslow's theory postulates that one foundation is fulfilled before moving up to the next. Get your needs met, take a step up.

How do you replicate a great free play environment?  This is how we qualify a great free play environment:

•               a) Soccer

•               b) Everyday

•               c) Everyone is welcome

The games in the favelas of Rio, the sun baked futsal courts of Sao Paulo, the school yards of Brooklyn (basketball) the frozen ponds of the Phalen area of St. Paul...what is it about those special environments that attracts and then produces players? Using Maslow we can identify five key elements of a great free play environment:

  Basics.  Kids need to know where their next meal is coming from. So if the place is not walking distance from home simple plans to reboot kids will go a long way.

The environment needs to be safe, not just for the parents peace of mind, but also for the kids who need to risk take within security. A physical shelter is key as well.

 Cooperation comes first.  Kids don't just want friendship, they need it.  Free play environments create a breeding ground to test and build friendships for life. 

This is where most clubs begin (and end), insinuating that all the other needs have been taken care of.  Because of this clubs have a lot of back filling to do.  Ask a club coach how much time he spends on managing kids issues, focus, motivation, attitude.  If done right, however, competition is key to the next step in motivation.  Here it is where skills training, skill games/contests and high tempo scrimmages against each where striving to achieve becomes a skill practiced and built over time.  This is all the kids need as far as competition, competing on travel club teams is indifferent to real learning and is not a real priority until the next step is achieved consistently.

 Have you ever been at that place where the world slows down?  This is where your highest abilities meet the highest challenges.  (Find the semi final of Euro 2000, France  v Spain and watch Zidane). It is not about success, but it is about the moment of success or failure.  It is autonomous, it is not thinking, it is being.   When you are here you know it and so do others. And you want to get back.  This is beyond competition, this is creativity, imagination, joy.  And getting their takes practice.  

Put all these 5 elements together IN ORDER, and no matter what the spot you have a powerful cocktail of creating self actualizers.  This is what we "reach" for.  And once there we want to go back.  But we don't jump, or skip steps, we step up and reach.  And like anything we practice,  we get good at it.  

Ted Kroeten

Joy of the People