"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."
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.
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!
--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."
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!
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