Cristiano Ronaldo wins the Ballon d’Or trophy
Cristiano Ronaldo has won the Ballon d’Or trophy awarded by the French magazine, France Football. 77 of the 96 journalist polled voted for the Portuguese international and Manchester United player. Ronaldo already has 8 goals in 11 games for his club this season and helped to guide Man U to a EUFA Champions League trophy in 2008. Man U also won the league in the 07/08 season where he scored 31 goals. Ronaldo is already FIFPro World Player of the Year and also took the top domestic prizes from the Professional Footballers’ Association and the Football Writers last season.
Speaking to the France Football website, Ronaldo said: “It is one of the most beautiful days of my life. To gain this trophy is something I dreamed of as a child.”
So as I read this article, I thought to myself, do children in the U.S. dream of winning a similar trophy here in our country?
So as I read this article, I thought to myself, do children in the U.S. dream of winning a similar trophy in our country? In MLS? The USL? For USSF? I very much doubt it. How many of you can name the awards that are out there for a player to win and do they have anywhere near the prestige that some of these European trophies have?
I could list some of them, like the college soccer award has the Hermann trophy, but that’s college and not pro. MLS and USL each have a has a league MVP. Maybe the most honored of all these US awards is the Honda Player of the Year, given to the best player with the U.S. National Team as voted upon by the national media. It’s sort of sad, but also typical of the U.S., to have their top award embedded with a sponsors name. The MLS MVP also has a car sponsorship name, neither of them being American companies.
My point is, we still have a very long way to go before developing soccer talent like a Cristiano Ronaldo. Part of the process to developing these young players will be exposing them to these awards and trophies, making sure that they receive lots of national media attention and of course publicity for the players that win them as well. With media and consumerism as it is today, a youth player will never feel an award is worth their time unless it’s promoted in our media and revered by the players themselves. We still have a lot of work in front of us before we have an American player win the MLS MVP and say, “To gain this trophy is something I dreamed of as a child.”
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We need to teach our kids that playing beautiful, technical, and skillful soccer is *always* more important than winning. I rarely see any kid that can pull off a Ronaldo-quality trick. Even more rare is one that will endure the criticism to do it in a game.
“Even more rare is one that will endure the criticism to do it in a game.”
I take it your mean that we coaches often stifle the creativity for the possession and passing game. If I had to guess, I would think that Ronaldo was most likely a somewhat selfish player growing up. Hell, he is even today. but that’s a quality all good strikers have. The question is do we create an environment where that sort of player can flourish or do we push the team game, which if there was an “American” style of play, it would most likely be a physical, athletic and team oriented player. Is that because that is our US mentality (id) or is that just the way that we US coaches have learned to teach?
I don’t want to paint all coaches with the same brush but yeah that’s what I mean. There ARE coaches that encourage creativity but even then the player will catch it from teammates, opposing players and coaches, and parents for sure. At some point the kid just gives up.
Yes the American game is big, physical players who are certainly skilled but not *too* much. You got me on how to create an environment that combines the American love of the big, physically dominating player with creativity. If we want soccer to be considered a major sport in America though it’s absolutely required.
The average fan outside the American soccer subculture thinks soccer is as exciting as watching paint dry. I know that’s what I felt when my kids started playing it. I’ve learned to appreciate a crisp, two-touch possession game but that is still wet paint to your average American sports fan. Throw in some crazy, entertaining Ronaldo-style tricks and people will start to pay attention and more kids will want to be like Ronaldo and all the other exciting players.