Tony DiCicco guided the USA to the 1999 World Cup Championship and the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal, accumulating a record of 103-8-8, making him the all-time wins leader in U.S. National Soccer Team history. DiCicco served as the WUSA Commissioner in 2002 and 2003, as head coach led the USA to the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup championship in Chile, coached the Boston Breakers for the past two seasons, provides commentary for ESPN and is affiliated with the Soccerplus club program. Early in his career, DiCicco was a goalkeeper in LASA and American Soccer Leagues and coached the U.S. Men's National U-20 program in 1993.
LE: So, what's holding back soccer development in the United States?
DiCicco: Youth soccer is big business. For them it’s about winning the next match and if you win, more of the better players come to my club and I make more money. The coaches should be mandating, absolutely mandating, that their players come and watch the professional game. Not just because it’s supporting professional soccer, but because their players will learn from watching this level. They will learn more from doing an hour and a half training session if they come and watch a game.
I coached the U-20 men back in 93, I was the assistant coach and we were preparing for a World Championship in Australia. We were in England. We were a good team, the U-20 Men’s National team, all the best 18, 19, and 20 year-olds in America. We went to see Manchester United play Queens Park Rangers in London and it was a great game. Tremendous intensity, speed of play, tackling, runs off the ball. The next day in training, the players were better players just from watching that game. That’s what we’re missing in this country.
On the girls’ side our players are not smart players, they lack sophistication, they’re not technical enough. If I get a stud athlete and I get her to out-run everybody and I put the ball over the top 15 times, she might score two or three goals and we win the game. But eventually that stud athlete comes up against a stud defender and it doesn’t work anymore and she doesn’t know how else to play because she’s never been coached properly. We have a lot of that. I don’t blame the players, I don’t blame the parents, I blame programs and I blame the coaches.
I know the U.S. game, I coached the U-20s in 2008. There’s no other player in America who can hold the ball like Kelly Smith. How can this be? But if you don’t come and see how Marta or Kelly Smith or Bompastor or Abby Wambach plays, how are you going to get better? Is our average player getting better? Yes, our average player is getting better, but where’s the next Mia Hamm? Where’s the next Kristine Lilly, the next Michelle Akers? They’re not there.
The reason they’re not there is because our system is not developing players. In the women’s game, we have the most players playing in the world at youth levels, but last year nine of the top ten strikers in WPS were international players. This year it’s better, Wambach and Arod are up there, but everyone else at the top are international players. Why is that?
LE : How do you turn the pyramid around?
DiCicco: Our players are not getting the foundations of the game. Our players are not technical. Right now in the U-17 World Cup, the semifinalists are South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and Spain. Three Indonesian teams - they’re all about technique. Their coaches emphasize it. Our coaches at U-10 emphasize winning. You can win games and sacrifice player development and that’s what’s happening in our system. Why is that happening? Like I said, youth soccer is big business. If I don’t win, it doesn’t matter if I’m developing players, my business is going to hell.
If I win, I attract other good players and by doing that I win more games.There are some very good programs out there, some coaches that are doing a really good job. But for the most part we have almost a generation of young kids that have not been developed properly.
My U-20 team, I had to cut Casey Nogueira. Casey is so talented, but she had never been cut from anything. She had a free pass from one age group National Team to the next age group National Team to the next. When I cut her, it was the best thing that ever happened to her. That year she played lights out, led the team, scored around 24 goals because she was finally told it wasn’t good enough.
Our players are not coached enough. What scares me is our U-20s this past July at the U-20 World Cup. They lost in the quarterfinals and came in somewhere between 5th-8th. That’s the lowest finish of any U.S. team ever in a World Cup. Our U-17s didn’t get out of CONCACAF. We’re losing ground now and it’s really serious.
I don’t know of any federation that’s spending more money on their women’s program than the United States. Maybe Germany, maybe a couple others, but the U.S. is certainly in the top three as far as funding for their youth-and-full Women's National Team programs.
Overseas, kids grow up in a soccer culture. The German player sees the game eons above the American player the same age. When I was coaching U-20 women, I turned to my assistant coach and said, “Why is it that we’re playing the same age group, but we’re like, playing up? Because these players see the game so much better than we do. The U.S. has won because they’ve had adequate technique, had some pretty sophisticated players, but we’ve been dominant athletically and with mentality. And now I hear that mentality is not so good. If we lose mentality, we will not be winning too many World Cups in the future. We’ve got to work to get our game back. Pia Sundhage has an excellent team and she’s going to make a run at the World Cup Championship, but our U-17s didn’t even get into a World Cup, our U-20’s were locked out of the quarterfinals.
The 1970 Brazilian National Team won the World Cup in Mexico, but the next time Brazil won a World Cup was 1994 – 24 years later. It happens in our League. The last time we won a World Cup was my team in 1999. It’s going to be 11-12 years from now before we have a chance to win another one. We won some Olympics and that’s really important to American teams, but to the rest of the world the World Cup is the World Cup. That’s the real test, that’s where you have 16-24 teams competing. In the Olympics you’ve got 10-12 teams now.
LE: What about the U.S. Men’s National Team?
DiCicco: We’re just not good enough yet. What happened is we lost Gooch in center defense, he wasn’t in form and we had to put Bocanegra is center defense. We don’t have the depth yet to lose a dangerous attacking player [Davies] and a staple in the center of defense. Other countries can absorb that. I personally think Ching should have been on the roster. But I was very proud of our players. We played like Americans. We had adversity, we had some terrible calls, we got behind and came back – I thought out men played the way American love athletes to play. But we just don’t have the horses yet.
LE: Walter Silva, who played against you when you were a goalkeeper in the Lasa League and is now a Portuguese reporter, said you became successful because you were always very smart. What has made you so successful?
DiCicco: I don’t know how smart I am, but I was a student of the game and I still watch games and still pick up things. If you watch individual players you will see genius. No one has taught them this stuff, but they just learn it from playing on playgrounds and streets. And when you see this you can coach it into your team.
I put myself around good people, including my assistant coaches. A lot of head coaches are intimidated by their assistant coaches, they’d rather get people that are far less talented than them because it’s not threatening. I’ve always been just the opposite. Literally, the first thing I tell them is, ”You can’t be head coach” - because you can’t have assistant coaches who aren’t loyal - but you can learn a lot from your assistant coaches.
If you put good people around you, I guess you’re smart. You learn from them and that makes you a better coach. Coaching soccer, like disciplines including journalism, you’ll always learn if you’re open to it, you’ll learn from your players. If that’s being smart, fair enough. The smartest thing though, is knowing that I don’t know it all and that there’s more to learn.
Read also:
A chat with Real Salt Lake's academy director Greg Vanney on changes in U.S. soccer development
Restructuring soccer development: on the front lines with Massachusetts Director Mike Singleton
Interview with USWNT coach Pia Sundhage on soccer development, World Cup 2011
Tony DiCicco on MLS clubs and the local factor
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Comments
Excellent points by Tony. I think, because he probably doesn't see this aspect and that's part of the problem, is that a lot of these good players who DO watch games and then go outside and emulate what they see don't necessarily have the money to play for good club teams. I grew up in an area where there were nationally recognized clubs, but my family didn't have the money to pay for uniforms, team fees, tournaments, travel, etc... What we did have the money for was a basic league fee, a t-shirt, and a subscription to Gol TV.
Making youth soccer a business is part of what is killing the development.
The point about the stud athletes not noing what to do because they have not been coached properly is a problem throughout boys and girls at all levels. The "Win first" mentality is what propagates this issue.
http://vasoccernews.blogspot.com/2010/06/beautiful-game-not-always-so-be...
I agree with part of Tony's analysis but there are some contradictions in the article. For instance, he talks about the "stud athlete" not being able to run by the "stud defender" at some point but then he cuts Casey Nogueira who is the most skillful young player in the USWNT program since Jen Lalor. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have cut her (he must have had his reasons) but this seems paradoxical to the causal reader. In addition, the top strikers in the WPS are all foreign? There's Marta and Kelly Smith and then who? Christine Sinclair is from Canada but she is a definite product of the American system at the University of Portland and the W League. Is he talking about Cristiane, Bachmann or Panico who were all total flops in WPS? What about A-rod, Wambach, Cheney, O'Hara, Masar, etc.?
I agree about the youth program (we pump WAY too much money into our programs and have WAY too deep of a player pool to not qualify out of CONCACAF for a U17 WWC) but a lot of that is down to the use of part time and collegiate coaches at that level. The whole program needs to be better coordinated from the ground up and Pia should have major input at all levels. I was in Germany for the U20 WWC and saw the US games and the player selection was questionable. For example, why not take Ohai from UNC and pair her up top with Leroux? And Leroux was outstanding in that tournament and along with Morgan and Ohai can be the next generation of great US strikers.
The NCAA rules should be mentioned because these detract HUGELY from our women's soccer development. In college soccer there are so many substitution allowances that it turns into a run and gun track meet with a soccer ball. In every other country young players are not playing with different rules when they are U23. Why doesn't the NCAA change its rules to go along with FIFA rules? I don't think the participation argument flies here because in every other sport the NCAA is a breeding ground for the professional ranks. It would also increase parity to play with 3 subs per match (and once you are out you are out) because players wouldn't go to programs were they wouldn't play.
And I grew up in the 1990's and was part of the USWNT youth and adult program and I watched soccer 24/7. There was one EPL highlight show on Sundays and I watched it with my mom and then went out into the yard and tried to emulate the moves. I would think now that there are so many resources (Fox Soccer, Gol TV, RAI, internet streaming) that kids could watch an array of games if they wanted to. But maybe the problem there is cultural as soccer is still a minor sport in the US, but that doesn't mean we can't be good.
My suggestions would be to change the NCAA rules first and foremost and teach our kids a myriad of skills so they will be more comfortable on the ball. Our athleticism is a strength and we should detract from that. If we could only combine it with more technical sophistication we would be unstoppable at all levels.
Sorry I meant in the last paragraph that our athleticism is a strength and we shouldn't detract from that.
These are all excellent comments. Glad you enjoyed the interview.
Good article.
Yankabroad, thanks for bringing in a different perspective. One point I'd like to comment on and that is the issue of unlimited substitution. Whose says that a coach has to coach that way? Many top level club programs coach their teams as if there is a limited substitution rule in place and in this case they use the FIFA Schoolboy rule and still remain successful.
The problem with US soccer is the fact that it's based on income of the family then the players ability. the second part of the problem is there isn't enough professional backing at the club level. Go to England and see how they bring players in for their abilities not their parents income. Go to any other sport in the US and you'll see professional backing in one way or another. The player pyramid in the USs is to small for these reason. We have top quality players that can't play because income status. I think it sad that we continue on this road and no turns in sight.
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