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US youth soccer

Picking it Up

Americans fetishize the pickup game across all their sports in that irritating, kitchifying way we have with all things amateur. (Call it “love-of-love-of-the-game.”) But American soccer fans love pickup for more practical reasons: There isn’t enough of it, and that absence hurts our overall play. “Pickup is an incredibly useful teaching tool not just because of its numbers, but because of its informality which means coaches — those who might be the pickup advocates — couldn’t create the ideal pickup scenario even if they wanted to. It has to be organic.” (Eric Betts/The Other 87)

(Image credit: Monster Pete/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

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Give Us Klinsmann…But Not Yet

Jürgen Klinsmann will be a great USMNT coach — but U.S. soccer won’t be ready to take full advantage of him until after the next World Cup cycle. There aren’t yet enough technically adept players (or players in the MLS to Euro-second-tier-league pipeline) to take advantage of Klinsmann’s abilities to mold a “technically cunning squad” — four more years would improve both those situations, and put him in a better position to gut and remold the USSF. With an eye toward forming a title contender by 2022, hire Klinsmann…but not until 2014. (Jason Kuenle/Match Fit USA)

Adu Over?

Freddy Adu says he “finally, finally” has the path to his success figured out, reports Sports Illustrated‘s Grant Wahl — and yet he sits on Aris’ bench in Greece, the book on him that, while he has great technical skills, he stopped learning the game five years ago at age 15. Meanwhile, Ridge Mahoney at SoccerAmerica says MLS has learned from the Adu mistake and “is edging closer to a true commitment on developing players, in stark contrast to its absurd mega-hyping of Adu just six years ago.”