Host Segev Robinoviz gives one of the best and simplest descriptions of promotion/relegation I’ve heard in this Coaching Soccer Weekly podcast from about the 19 minute mark to 27 minutes.
During this segment, he discusses his thoughts on the how the Canadian Soccer Federation licenses. He says that clubs cannot play at the highest level in Ontario unless it has a National Club License.
To get to it, I have to give some of what he was discussing. Here’s my slighted edited transcription with emphasis added:
“So, you are not allowed to play with the best teams at the best league. It doesn’t matter how good your team is. …that’s why I’m not optimistic about the continuous development of Ontario soccer [which is the stated goal of the licensing].
To talk about the the National Youth Club licensing, one of the characteristics is that you need to have a facility strategy, access to advanced facilities, access to physical space as a headquarters for operations. There’s so much stuff that clubs and academies like mine that are so small just have no chance of achieving.
Meaning our players, no matter how good they are, unless they try out for these teams, cannot play at the highest level.
What upsets me the most about this, there’s a couple of things. The first thing is that Ontario Soccer talks a lot about inclusivity and how everyone should play and yet there’s a gap now that they are creating between clubs and academies to get players to play at a high level. Now they can’t do it, no matter how much a player wants to. Even if they’re good enough they may not be able to afford playing at the highest level because it’s going to cost you more if you have to rent a facility, have physios on your staff. There’s so much financial structure that’s passed down to the players because it is a pay-to-play model.
The best players that historically come from not necessarily the richest part of town, this is what we can see throughout history and all of the world, the best players didn’t start out at a fancy academy. Maybe they got to the academy by the time they were 15/16, but very rarely do they come in at U13.
The solution to this is super easy. Promotion/relegation and that’s it. It should just be about the soccer. I don’t know why it’s about the business. The business doesn’t matter.
The way that most clubs operate here is that teams are pretty much separate from each other. There aren’t a lot of clubs here where the U10’s know the U11’s.
So, to get away from the soccer part and really just talk about how you as a business must operate this way to have your players play at this level, it doesn’t make sense.
How is it at U9, U10, U11, U12 we’re not putting the emphasis on how good is your team? If your team is really good, let’s get them all together and play. If you’re at U15 and you have a fantastic team, because we’ve had teams here in Ontario who have won the Ontario Cup that were not OPDL [highest leagues] and that’s the proof. The best team for the age group didn’t play at the highest level [assuming the league and Ontario Cup are two separate competitions].
It just doesn’t make sense. If we had a promotion/relegation system, which we do at the district level and it works great, this is just a huge problem and this is what is going to continue to not allow our players to develop.”
-Segev
Yes. That’s how it is in the U.S., also. Certain elements of the business has been dictated by the Federation, rather than just letting the soccer on the field play out.
It’s a tough concept for bureaucrats to get their arms around. They have lots of reasons to justify their meddling, like ‘stability’ or ‘to make sure the athletes get the best experience’ and have no concept that their meddling works against the thing they want to achieve, because it limits, rather than encourages, competition.
Or, put another way, competition is what drives improvement and development, not advanced facilities or physios on staff.
It’s worth a listen, as is the segment on tactics on playing out of back. It takes more than just technical skill.
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