Ian McMahon looked out over a convention room full of coaches last week and, with one pithy comment, showed why heading has become a major issue in US youth soccer.
“I’ve gotta be careful there are no lawyers in the room,” said the AYSO executive director, who learned the game in England and played professionally for Oldham and Rochdale.
The coaches and fellow panelists at the NSCAA (National Soccer Coaches Association of America) convention in Baltimore gave an empathetic laugh. But they followed with serious questions. Can we coaches teach kids a valuable soccer technique safely and legally?
As part of a legal settlement in November, US Soccer now recommends that players shouldn’t head the ball at age 10 and under. From 11 to 13, players may be allowed to head the ball during matches but have only limited exposure in training.
The heading policy isn’t the most contentious of the three top-down proclamations the usually laissez-faire federation has made in the past six months. A ham-fisted switch to birth-year age groups, which incurs all sorts of practical issues for which US Soccer had not accounted, drew plenty of angry questions in multiple sessions at the convention.
The panel that drew together McMahon, US Youth Soccer’s Sam Snow and three experienced youth coaches dealt with the birth-year issue as well as the heading initiative. But the questions were different. With the birth-year issue, the sentiment was a frustrated “Why is this happening, and why has it been so poorly communicated?” With heading, it’s simpler: “What do we do?”
Coaches at least understand why the heading protocols are coming down the pike. No one wants players to suffer the brain damage the medical community is finding in older athletes. And no one wants to be sued.
But the devil is in the details, and coaches have plenty of practical questions.
Erik Imler, a coach and former pro player, worries that coaches will lose “three valuable years” of instruction.
“It comes down to education,” Imler said at the convention. “We have to educate young players on the proper technique. I kind of cringe because we’re putting everything on hold.”
The rationale behind limiting headers for pre-teens is simple: coaches might be able to speed up soccer development, but they can’t speed up the development of kids’ brains and necks, likely leaving younger players more vulnerable to subconcussive blows that can accumulate.
The research on that topic is still young, but it has been enough to persuade former national team players like Brandi Chastain, Joy Fawcett and Cindy Parlow Cone – all prodigious aerial players in their day – to join a lobbying effort called Safer Soccer, aimed at taking headers out of youth soccer before age 14.
Still, the medical community isn’t unanimous. Chris Koutures, lead author of an American Academy of Pediatrics report on youth soccer injuries, sees reason in a ban on heading for 10-and-under players but questions the guidelines for the next three years.
And not all headers are the same. A hard-driven regulation-sized ball packs a wallop. An smaller, underinflated ball gently tossed by a coach does not. The coaches on the NSCAA panel wondered whether they could at least use soft, smaller balls to teach proper technique – a suggestion Robert Cantu, the neurosurgeon who works with Chastain and company to press for action on soccer safety, did not dismiss.
Brett Jacobs, a US coach who has also worked overseas, told the NSCAA panel he had recently traveled to the Netherlands and brought home a few regulation-sized but lighter balls that can be used in training.
“Teaching the skill shouldn’t take a back seat,” Jacobs said. “Once heading is allowed, how do you go from not working on it to suddenly being in a game where you can head the ball?”
So coaches may not oppose the new heading guidelines, but they have plenty of questions. Will referees be instructed to call “headball” as they now call “handball”? Should youth soccer postpone throw-ins, which put the ball in the air, until later ages?
McMahon is also skeptical that US Soccer’s Development Academy, which will soon expand down to the U-12 level, will put an anti-heading mandate in place. “I don’t see a player ducking out of the way and a coach being OK with that.”
Despite all the concerns and questions, coaches see an upside. US players are rarely renowned for their foot skills. Could a lack of aerial play encourage youth clubs to do more skill-building activities like futsal?
And coaches are happy to debate the details with each other. Beats debating with lawyers.
