Why Another Soccer Book?

"Why write another soccer book?", you ask, or maybe you didn't.

I grew up learning Soccer in the 1970's. Though of German ancestry, no one in my immediate family had ever played. I was absolutely terrible at first, and there might be coaches and teammates who might argue that the condition never abated. My first soccer experience was as goal keeper for the big kids who lived next door. At 8, I couldn't kick, dribble, pass, or shoot, catch or do anything else worth mentioning, except build Legos, play with Star Wars figures and watch TV. I didn't know what the rules to Soccer even were. One Saturday afternoon the neighbor kids asked me to play, told me nobody but me could use their hands and to stand in the "goal" (the space between two trees) and "block stuff". After a couple of weeks of enjoying this "blocking stuff", [it was apparently reasonable criteria for my parents to actually sign me up for a this new sport I had never heard of]. The newest member of Coach Rick Fumo's U-10 Desperado's took the field for the Brookfield, Wisconsin area Milwaukee Kickers. Our kits were Yellow with Black shorts, and to this day it's my favorite Jersey color. My first practice being in a gym, it was likely mid-winter in Wisconsin, which means it was mid-season. I still remember him asking me if I had ever played, if I liked offense or defense. I'm sure the answer was "I don't know", perhaps followed up by "I guess I could play defense because I was pretty good at blocking stuff" because I couldn't do much else, so ultimately where I ended up. I also remember feeling like I was behind in certain skills. Kids already knew things I didn't.

It was 1970's USA, we barely had 5 TV channels and seldom had a chance to actually see the sport growing up. In my awareness, "Soccer Made in Germany" was the lone Soccer avenue, a Public Broadcasting offering. We didn't have DVR's or even VCR's (Video Cassette Recorders) yet so you either saw it or you didn't. To make matters worse, I didn't have older siblings so this trail was mine to blaze alone. To be fair, I didn't know it at the time, but my family was reasonably athletic. I have a talented and athletic younger sister who herself did some great things as a tennis player, my father played a little bit of college hockey, played American Legion baseball, my Dad's brother was a Big Ten Cross Country champion, coached by my grandfather, so I had people surrounding me who knew about coaching and effort, if not specifically about Soccer. This same grandfather would take his nine-year-old grandson to the Soccer field near our house and let me kick balls at him in the goal, until one Sunday afternoon when I broke his glasses. I remember being scared of going back, scared of breaking his glasses again, then being scare to call him to resume what today we would call training. To this day I regret not making that call, and now I spend hours and hours acting as the backstop, training dummy, sounding board, and amateur film analyst for my own sons to make up my decision that day. In some sense, I feel coaching is my family legacy, from my grandfather, to his son, to me and to my children.

When the Desperados finally got outside, game day was on elementary school football fields Dad's first most basic lesson I can remember was to, literally, "take away this space, it's your responsibility to attack anything that comes into it. Don't go too far to the other side, stay in your lane". That is, literally, the lane created by the football field's hash marks.

Though he didn't define is as such, my father also taught me that running is ultimately a skill like any other, one which can be learned and improved with effort. I didn't really understand how running across the yard 10 or 15 times at a crack was helping, but after a short while I began to notice that it was definitely helping. We talked about other skills like field positioning and anticipation, more things you have to work at. He also taught me to slide-tackle, that you had to get the ball first, if the guy with it fell down, well, that's OK. Things progressed.

I had some great coaches, many of whom had played the game or were its ardent students. Later in my playing career, some were professional (Milwaukee Wave) players helping out our local coaches. Some of those were names on the international stage (Bob Gansler, who coached UW-Milwaukee Men's Soccer for a time, during which I attended two camps, he went on to coach the U.S. National Team at the 1990 World Cup). Another seminal moment occurred during the first few practices of Freshman year. During one early session our English-accented Coach Ian looked at me...

Coach Ian: "Scott, why are you backing off?" Me: "I don't want trip him, it's a foul." Coach: "Yeah, it's just a foul. Not the end of the world. Just don't do it in the box."

Lesson learned, I had received a license to be unapologetically ferocious on the field. From that day on I never made excuses for the roughness of my play, though I never once intentionally went out to hurt someone. Ball first, if you fell down, oh well. The Brookfield Central High School Freshman Soccer team of 1986, which I was a key component of, went 10-0-1 to the best of my recollection.

To their credit, each coach at each level gave us a piece of the puzzle. They could give you skills to work on, things the team or perhaps you personally were lacking. They would introduce new terms and give us simple tactical advice, like "beat that guy to the corner, cross it". You had that coach for a slice of time and one of you moved on, a new coach would arrive to present his slice. And each was presented for use where you were then, not too far ahead, and definitely not where you ultimately wanted to be. The better ones put together good practices, and what we did in practice showed up in games. Oftentimes, many the details were lost by the time my 9-year, 11-, 19-year-old brain left practice. In my probably-faulty recollection, not a single one ever fully articulated what the goal was, what the canvas should look like when were done painting.

They never answered the question "What does a good soccer player look like?"

As what people politely label a "Hard Worker" I was most decidedly not "God's Gift to Soccer". I likely still hold this title today after struggling for 38 year through rec, Select, High School, College, Adult & Men's leagues, coaching my own and other kids into Developmental and Select programs. Along the way, I often ran into the "God-given" talent, players that "had it". They knew what do, how to do it and when to do it. Many had skills that mystified me perfectly and completely. To this day, I still remember that awestruck feeling when a somewhat famous player from my hometown used his dribble to not just avoid players, but slice through them, dodging legs thrown everywhere in futility, to fire a shot that absolutely buried itself in side netting. (After wreaking havoc on our local fields for years, he actually went on to play in Germany for a bit, if I've heard correctly). Then there was the feeling of being wildly in over my head when a striker my age hit a shot from what might as well have been a mile out, zipping it across the field at knee height with the velocity I thought only a cannon could bring. I also distinctly remember arriving at tryouts one year thinking "Wait a minute, Doug has Muscles. Where did he get Muscles? Did I miss a note about showing up with muscles?"

At many points soccer throughout my life, Soccer skills, techniques and strategies have seemed more like a mystical art than a game I could master. What am I still missing, where did they come up with this stuff?

Well, as the hard worker, I've had to figure a lot of it out, and my aim with this book is to make it available so you don't have to.