"The Werder Report" - Some differences between U.S. and European sports....

[WerderBremen]

Wildcat Dad and SnowDen asked me a couple of questions in regard to differences between European and U.S. athletes in high school and/or college. I did not have the time to respond at the time. Plus there are so many differences I probably would have ended up spamming the shoutbox. I was not sure where to post it. So apologies if this is the wrong spot.

So here it goes.

While there are sports in high school and in college it is significantly less of the factor over here. You do have sports or physical education classes in high school. You do get graded on your performance and at times there might even be competitions with other high schools. But the role sports play in high school and college is minor at best. If you are young and interested in sports what usually happens is your parents sign you up to play for a club. Let's use soccer for example. Pretty much every small town in Germany has a soccer team. The bigger the town the more teams you have. So you play for that club and that club has different teams based on age. There are teams for under 19 year olds (A youth), U17 (B youth), U15 (C youth), down to U7 (G youth). If you are good enough you can compete with the older guys, but not the other way around. If you are competitive and in your late teens your goal is to make the adult team.

Now the adult league system might also be foreign to you guys. At the very top you have the Bundesliga, Premier League (in England), Serie A (in Italy), La Liga (in Spain),... Those leagues are "connected" to the league right below. Connected meaning that at the end of the season the 2-3 worst teams of the Bundesliga will be relegated and the 2-3 best teams of the second division will be promoted. This applies down to the very bottom of the leagues. I struggle a bit to paint the picture here but imagine a pyramid system. You have the first division with 18 teams at the top, followed by the 2nd div with 18, the 3rd with 20, the 4th division with 4 regions of 18 ish teams, way to the bottom with thousands of teams. According to Wikipedia Germany has about 32000 clubs, playing in 13 different levels / division. Rule of thumb the higher your division, the more fans you have, the more you have to travel, the more money is involved. So in theory you could be playing in a small town / for a small team outside of Tucson and if you are good enough your team could make it from the very bottom league to the MLS, NBA,.... Something similar happened in Germany. One of the founders of SAP played in his youth in a small town (3000ish people) for a club at the bottom or close to the bottom of the leagues. He took over the club in 1989 and his small-town club ended up in the Bundesliga in 2008. Needless to say, he invested a lot of money to get that done.

There are no drafts and salary caps are mostly not used as well.

SnowDen mentioned that in England pro soccer teams have a high-school type system for their minor players. To be precise all the major soccer teams invest a lot of money into their youth teams. These kids play for the club and the club makes sure that they go to school. They don't play for that school. Those kids usually live and practice on a club owned campus. Some players leave their countries at a young age to play for the major clubs. Messi for example left Argentina for Barcelona when he was 13.

Wildcat Dad suggested that they practice more which is one of the reasons why the national US teams have a hard time competing. Since I never practiced at a high-school level in the US I struggle to compare the two. All I can tell you is that the players in the youth system of the major teams practice a lot. What they neglect in my opinion is the strengths aspect though. While more practice might be one reason the US national team has a tough time competing in soccer I think the bigger reason is just the importance of soccer in Europe versus the U.S. In pretty much all European countries soccer is the number one sport. I think in Lithuania it might be basketball, but that is an exception. So, what happens is that the first sport pretty much everybody is exposed to growing up is soccer. And as a result, most of the good athletes end up being a soccer player. Not all of them, but still.

Now the picture I painted here using soccer as an example applies to most of the other sports just to a lesser degree.

I probably went overboard with the long-winded answer and hopefully did not bore too many of you.

[SnowDen]

You da man. Appreciate the time and explanation for my questions.

BearDown