Club Soccer Crossroads: Creating Structure

Article From: Top Drawer Soccer
Article Found at http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/component/option,com_topdrawer/Itemid,251/nid,7509/ 

Written by Robert Ziegler, ESNN January 03, 2009

Finding the right structure and business models for elite youth clubs

(4th in a series of articles about elite youth soccer in America being at a crossroads)

The question is this: In American club soccer, how can clubs set themselves up properly in order to make the trains run on time and collect enough revenue to make it all worthwhile?

Grasping the correct answers is a work in progress, and I certainly don't mean to pretend to know them all. I do know that the answer isn't the same for everybody in every part of the country. 

It's also true that someone could do "all the right things" and find it hard to stay afloat. There's little question that many of our soccer markets are currently oversaturated with clubs trying to serve the same set of customers. The default mode for teams and clubs in this country is that if you don't like things, start your own. While it may be true that there is a void for proper, effective clubs in a given area, it's also true that about half of the clubs in this country should be named "Somebody Got Mad FC" and that they were not formed with an eye toward supply, demand and needs for more quality.

Providing quality coaching and devlopment is key to players, but are all clubs structured to accomplish this? One very common error on the club scene is for staff to be spread too thin. This stems in part from the legitimate need, as we've already discussed, for the people providing player development services to make a living. We do want that to happen, as we've also said, we want it to happen through the legitimate provision of quality player development in a way that sustains long-term health at the club.

What we instead see in many instances is a coach or director setting a financial target and then trying to set staffing and workflow levels in such a way as to reach them, even if those schedules are completely unrealistic. How often do we see coaches who, while meaning well, are just unable to keep up with their own schedule for properly training and match-coaching teams? How much is too much is certainly open to debate, but you don't need special expertise to tell when your team isn't getting the proper amount of attention or effort from its coach.

Another thing you want to look for is that clubs are actually clubs. It's often true that a "club" is really a collection of teams under the same name with little or no interaction with one another. The benefits of a real club should include greater coaching coverage, not just in terms of not being thin with the coverage, but also drawing from a greater pool of excellence in coaching and evaluation. There is also the potential for mixed training, players playing up who should be, and the very tangible benefits of camaraderie. We seem to be comfortable in large part with our island unto ourselves approach, but the rest of the world has got this one right, and so do some more enlightened clubs in this country.

Other items often present in a good developmental club include tiers of teams (to better accommodate a greater range of player level), some kind of additional or open training to provide ambitious players who really love the game the chance to spend more time playing, and cost-sharing efforts on the travel front to show a real sensitivity to keeping family costs down. How best to do that may be different for every club or area, but in truth, many don't pay any attention to this at all. It's fair for the paying customer to expect this.

I know this just scratches the surface but these are some key things. We can get more specific in the future. From here I want to move on to the actual on-field work of coaches who are charged with developing our young players. 

Tomorrow: The ins and outs of successful product delivery by elite youth soccer clubs.

Part 1: Intro

Part 2: Clubs Must Make Money

Part 3: Realistic Consumer Goals