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Strategies & Market Trends : Zeev's Turnips - No Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SeachRE who wrote (81421)	6/19/2002 12:53:29 PM
From: finntroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99280

There must to put postings containing "soccer" or "World Cup" on ignore. I just haven't figured it out yet.

To: SeachRE who wrote (81421)	6/19/2002 1:15:50 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99280

"Basketball and football players would be lousy soccer players." Not really. There are thousands of extremely coordinated basketball and football players in the 13-18 year old group, 5'9" to 5'11", who would make great soccer players. Just look at point guards and defensive backs. The fact that many of them cannot play later in Div 1 hoops or the pros doesn't mean they are not a fertile set for soccer. Recall Hakeem Olujuwon who was a goalkeeper in Nigeria until he just got too big. See my later remarks about American baseball, not quite a dying sport but not a healthy one, either. What takes kids out of soccer is not a drain, but the cost and the elitism of the US sport, which I could wax on about ad nauseum but I won't, simply suffice it to say that most local soccer programs beginning with U-12 are much more concerned with eliminating players who don't measure up and creating elite local teams than furthering the sport. Take a town of 150,000. In the 1st to 6th grade programs you will have perhaps 1500 participants per grade, by 7th or 8th grade that number may be down to 200, by 11th grade there may be only 40 players by grade participating on the elite school or club team, no longer playing anyone in town (there's no one left) but rather travelling 2-6 hours to play in a "travelling league" reserved to those families with sufficient coin. At high school graduation you may have produced 2 or 3 division 1 players and discouraged thousands. No mindshare there, and taken as a whole, a pretty sorry recreational and development sport. Kb