Interview by Mike Woitalla
Tab Ramos, considered one of the USA's
most skillful players ever, played for the USA at three
World Cups, two Copa Americas, and in the Olympic Games.
Two years after retiring in 2002 from a playing career
in Spain, Mexico and MLS, he founded the New Jersey
youth club NJSA 04. In 2008, he coached the NJSA 04
Gunners to the U-14 U.S. Youth Soccer national title,
marking the first national championship for a New Jersey
club in two decades.
SOCCER AMERICA: If
you had a magic wand, how would you use it to improve
youth soccer in America?
TAB RAMOS: Wow.
I’d have to think about that …
One of the things
that’s been most important for our club is, from the
first moment, eliminating parents’ opinions from what we
do.
The opinion of the parents of the players
here is completely irrelevant to us. And that’s been a
good formula for making this club a real soccer club.
SA: What would be an example of detrimental
parent interference?
TAB RAMOS: There
are a thousand things. But I’ll start with an example of
a parent who had the right attitude.
On our U-16
[U.S. Soccer Development] Academy team we have a great
player who starts all the games. He’s been at our club
for four or five years and just about every year
previously he’s been a substitute. He did not start. He
happened to be on the team that won the national
championship, but he didn’t start.
It’s the
perfect case of a parent who figured it out the right
way. This boy’s father is a soccer guy. He kept his son
at the club even though he wasn’t starting. He could
have moved him somewhere else and started for another
team. He stayed here while he was a substitute -- trying
hard all these years. Now he’s 16 -- in the year that it
really matters for him -- and starts every game.
I think that’s the right formula.
SA: And
the wrong parental approach …
TAB RAMOS:
For most other cases, parents will be looking only at
two things.
No. 1. Whether your team is winning
the games. So if they’re not winning the games, then
obviously it’s time for Johnny to move somewhere else --
to the team that just beat us.
No. 2. The huge
effect that the parents have on the kids when they drive
home. When the parents get in the two front seats of the
van and little Johnny’s is in the back. And he hears the
parents say, “Well, the coach this … the coach that … He
only gave him five minutes. … And I was timing the first
half, and he only put him in this position. …”
All that negative talk instead of saying, “You know,
that’s great, you only played five minutes but you tried
as hard as you can. Maybe if you keep trying hard, the
next time you’re going to play more and impress the
coach.”
I think parents are very protective of
their kids and obviously everyone should be, but when it
comes to sports, I have yet to meet a coach who doesn’t
want to play a good player a lot of the time. So chances
are if your son is not playing a lot, he doesn’t deserve
to play at this point.
SA: Since you
started the club eight years ago, what have you
discovered is a good strategy to providing the children
with optimal coaching?
TAB RAMOS: At our
club now, we believe the best thing is have people who
are experts at certain age groups.
We keep our
staff at the same age groups year-to-year, so the kids
go through coaches like they go to school. First grade
you have Mrs. Whatever, second grade you have Mr.
Something Else.
We’ve been able in less than
eight years to identify coaches that we have fit into
certain age groups better than others. They teach the
game better, and we’ve kept them in those age groups.
SOCCER AMERICA: You were perhaps the first
big teenage star in American soccer, playing in the U-20
World Cup in 1983 at age 15. Looking back, how different
is youth soccer now in the USA?
TAB RAMOS:
It’s so much different and so much better. It’s more
organized. There are more people involved in soccer who
know what they’re doing and leading the way in many good
clubs.
Before, you rarely had someone who knew
about soccer unless it was a parent of someone.
Not to say there aren’t a lot of things wrong with youth
soccer, but we’ve come a long way since when I grew up
playing.
Soccer has become a huge sport and kids
have great choices and opportunities to play for some
great clubs who are going to give them an opportunity to
advance.
SA: So you’ve seen significant
improvements in youth coaching?
TAB RAMOS:
I think it’s improved tremendously. There are
so many people who have played the game. So many people
who have taken their coaching licenses, learning the
game, studying the game.
There’s so much soccer
available on TV now, which is huge for the development
of the kids as well. Watching the Premier League or La
Liga, whatever, there’s always soccer on TV. There’s
exciting soccer with good players.
All those
things have had a huge effect.
SA: For
sure a very positive of recent years is that Barcelona,
which plays entertaining and successful soccer, is being
watched by American coaches …
TAB RAMOS:
The effect that Barcelona has had on world soccer and
will have over the next decade is huge. We were just
getting to the point of where it’s almost like to step
on the field you needed to be 6-foot-2, and that was all
that mattered.
SA: And Barcelona’s Lionel
Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi all stand barely 5-foot-7
tall and finished top three in the 2010 world player of
the year award …
TAB RAMOS: Being a
5-foot-7 guy, I can tell you that if I have a 5-foot-7
guy and a 6-foot-2 guy who play exactly the same, I’ll
take the 6-foot-2 guy. But now I know that it’s OK for
me to take the 5-foot-7 guy who can play better than the
6-foot-2 guy.
Not only do I know that, but
everybody knows that. That you’d rather have the guys
who can play first, and size is second. And I think
Barcelona has had that effect on world soccer.
SA: So do you think this has an effect on
American youth soccer where an emphasis on results so
often leads to a playing style based on a big, strong
kid in the back booting the ball up to the big, strong
kid upfront?
TAB RAMOS: At the youth
game it continues to happen. I can tell you at the
Development Academy level you rarely find teams who
don’t want to play. They all want to play. They want to
go forward. Some teams obviously have better players
than others, but for the most part it’s really been a
good experience.
We had a webinar the other day
that [U.S. Soccer Youth Technical Director]
Claudio Reyna ran and it was basically more
about playing offensive soccer and getting the outside
backs coming out of the back and becoming part of the
offense, and that kind of thing.
I think it’s
the beginning of a lot of changes and a lot of exciting
stuff that’s going to be happening down the road and I
think we’re going to be developing a lot better players.
SA: One of the side effects of youth
soccer’s incredible growth is the emergence of competing
organizations. What are the pros and cons of that?
TAB RAMOS: It’s difficult because now we’re
talking about business, companies trying to make money
from it.
I think personally there’s too many
competitions, but the fact that U.S. Soccer has its own
league [Development Academy] makes it simpler at least
at the older age groups.
Players are starting to
figure out the Academy is the place to be.
The
rest are always going to have as many leagues as
possible. Businesses are always going to be out there
trying to make money, create competition and trying to
sign up teams.
SA: It seems that the USA
is producing more “good” players than ever. That our
role players are better than a couple of decades ago,
but the country doesn’t produce truly exceptional
players at the increased rate we would expect …
TAV RAMOS: I think exceptional players are not
developed. I think they’re born.
An example: At
my club, players who’ve been training the same way for
six or seven years, who've been taught the same things
for six or seven years. Who have had every single aspect
of their game put in front of them the exact way -- and
they’re completely different players.
Some can
make perfect passes, an excellent through ball. Some
can’t complete three passes in a row to a teammate 10
yards away.
How do you explain that? I think some
people just have god-given talent and some don't.
(Tab Ramos, the President and
Executive Director of
New Jersey club NJSA 04, was inducted into the
National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2005.)
(Mike
Woitalla, the executive editor of Soccer
America, coaches youth soccer for East Bay United in
Oakland, Calif. His youth soccer articles are archived
at
YouthSoccerFun.com.)
