Western United FC U11 White

The FC Barcelona youth team in 1999, including Cesc Fabregas (bottom left) and Gerard Pique (top second left).

Something else that’s prompted a lot of discussion in our household is this New York Times article on the youth training program of Amsterdam’s Ajax team. Amos was tempted for a couple hours to move to Amsterdam, but he remains true to La Masia. What’s wrong with us, he wants to know—why aren’t we moving to Barcelona?

Though now he thinks Coach Rob might just be giving him the training he needs in his Speed and Explosiveness workout.

That is, besides watch the World Cup.

This morning Amos and I found a cool feature on the FIFA website—they have a series of videos called Best Moves, in which they slow down and analyze some amazing foot skills by the world’s greatest players. They’re each only about a minute long, and it really is just mind-boggling and wonderful to be able to really see what their feet are up to.

Western Red and White at the NESC tournament, Cape Cod

Congratulations, everyone, on a great season!

FC Atlantis, May 1, 2010

A third of the team (Owen, Harry, Daniel, Tim and Amos) along with Harry’s brother Graham (and that’s Owen’s brother Quinn representing Tim in the picture) had a fun, hot romp at UMass’s Soccerfest last Saturday, scoring something like 50 goals all together and staying strong for a good hard game against Deerfield United (aka Connor, Zach, Junya, Alex, and Chad) in the final.

Monday morning in our house starts like this: ”If you can’t get out of bed to go to school, you’re not going to soccer practice tonight.”

He gets up. But not without proving that he’s too tired for anything (except kicking a ball in and out of the kitchen).

I did a calculation this week, because every once in a while it seems good to know how the time goes: 30 hours in school; 21 hours soccer practice or games; 10 hours driving to and from soccer.

Now, this article by Carl Zimmer in Discover that boosts the argument made by one member of our family (that soccer should take precedence over school)—the side that already appears from the statistics above to be narrowly winning.

As soon as someone starts to practice a new sport, his brain begins to change, and the changes continue for years. Scientists at the University of Regensburg in Germany documented the process by scanning people as they learned how to juggle. After a week, the jugglers were already developing extra gray matter in some brain areas. Their brains continued to change for months, the scientists found.

“Extra gray matter!”

Though I was not the one on vacation this week, I managed to see a number of extraordinary performers (the Korean poet Ko Un, musicians Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem, and freestyle soccer jugglers Frankie and Oscar), all of whom had me thinking about the high ranges of human expression.

First was Ko Un, whose long life in poetry and dissidence has earned him the name keobong (great mountain peak). His performance at Smith College last week, beginning with his athletic leap onto the stage, showed how much meaning can be wrung from single words, how much expression from a single human voice.

It may seem a leap to go from the world-renowned and lauded poet Ko Un to Frankie and Oscar, a couple of freestyle soccer dudes who were treating the crowd at MASS MoCA to an astonishing array of soccer-ball tricks, but I don’t think so. Or, at least—leap‘s the key word here. A leap: the absolute agreement of mind and body. These guys were showing the crowd—just as Ko Un and Rani Arbo and her fabulous band were—what it takes hours and days and years of practice and crazy love to make happen. And the kids ate it up. And after the performance, in the free-for-all Oscar and Frankie were kind enough to allow, when I watched the fierce concentration in Amos’s eyes, the attention of his every muscle as he battled Frankie for the ball, I thought: this is why.

Why so much soccer. Which you have to wonder sometimes. (I forget who was near to hear me mutter when Amos went down after a head collision in the game Sunday: Why couldn’t he have stuck with guitar?… A related remorse that I felt at the Rani Arbo concert the night before, thinking that Amos would have loved it, and mildly cursing the fact that we’d kept him home, again, as usual, so that he’d be rested for the game.)

Why?

Because doing what grabs your attention the most, compels you over all else as much as possible (and helping the ones around you do the same) is the most direct path to the kind of joy expressed in those poems and those songs, in that soccer ball coming back and back and back to those dancing feet.

Which is why we’ll be at the Oxbow on Monday and Tuesday and Thursday and Friday. Not to win next Sunday. But to “be ready,” as Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem sing it, “when joy comes back.”

“Tsetse Fly”

A nanosecond,

if that’s how long a quark lives,

think about the length of a day.

A day is so short, you say?

You greedy guy.

Ko Un, from The Three Way Tavern: Selected Poems

For a while on the sidelines last night, the rumor prevailed that the U12 team for next year will continue playing 8 v 8. Then Coach Rob said the last thing he heard was that this issue—11 v 11 or 8 v 8 in MAPLE next year—was still under discussion. Who knows?

In trying to find out what the discussion’s about, I found that the US Youth Soccer website has quite a bit of information backing up their official stance that small-sided soccer games make the most developmental sense for kids.

World Cup fever comes to the Berkshires!

Soccer Film Festival at  MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

April 23 – 24, 2010 (the end of vacation week!)

Kicking & Screening brings together soccer fans and cinephiles to celebrate the passion, athleticism, and wildly fervent nationalism of soccer as captured on film. As the biggest two weeks in world sport approach, join us for two days of screenings, panels, and performances celebrating the passion and pageantry of the beautiful game.

Friday, April 23

• 1:00 p.m. Sixty Six England is about to be consumed by World Cup fever, but for 12-year old Bernie, his Bar Mitzvah looms large
• 3:00 p.m. Soccer Juggling Demonstration with Freestyle Soccer, the premier freestyle juggling posse in North America
  
• 8:00 p.m. Feature film: Les Yeux Dans Les Bleus a penetrating documentary that follows the 1998 World Cup victorious French team.

Saturday, April 24

• 1:00 p.m. Soccer ShortsIn the Blood, Mauro Shampoo Soccer Player, Hairdresser and Macho, and Beyond Soccer (Loucos de Futebol)
• 3:00 p.m. Panel Discussion: We Call It Soccer: The USA’s Influence on the World’s Game
• 8:00 p.m. Feature film: 90 Minutes: The World Cup of New York CityA group of New Yorkers from 32 countries experience the 2006 World Cup in the city.

Tickets for these events are available on each event’s webpage, but don’t miss a moment by buying a Festival Pass.  We’re going for sure! Maybe we could organize a team picnic or something like that in between juggling and the film on Friday? 

Festival pass $25 adults/$15 students and kids. Individual events $8 adults/$5 kids. Members 10% discount
Member tickets are not available via the internet.

Learn more by reading the press release about this event.

While I was away,

Chris turned 11...

Nick turned 10...

and the team and had a fantastic series of three games, including an exciting victory against “the best team in Connecticut.” That’s what I heard. What a great way to start the spring!

They cancelled the tournament?!? And the weather turned sunny? At least Owen and Harry made it to Striker Park.