Clubs Spending More Time Playing Games Than Training

By Jason De Vos CBC Sports

Offside: Fixing Canadian Soccer – Training and competition
It is widely believed that reaching the elite level in sport requires somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000 hours of training. If an athlete trained for an hour a day, every day, it would take over 27 years to reach that milestone.

While an hour a day might seem like a big commitment, in reality it is nowhere near enough. If you consider that most kids don’t begin to take their sport seriously until age of 12, an hour a day isn’t going to get those athletes to the elite level by the time they are 20 or 21.

Our current system of player development falls well short when it comes to reaching this training milestone. Club soccer in Canada is predominantly focused on results; playing and winning games, leagues and tournaments. While winning these competitions might seem like an achievement, it fails to fully develop the potential of the athletes.

I was always told that in a 90-minute game, the best player on the field would only have the ball in his/her possession for between two to three minutes. If our focus is primarily on playing games, it is no wonder that we are failing to develop players who are comfortable with a ball at their feet.

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