Camp thoughts from Atlanta youth soccer coaches

Summer soccer camps are in full swing around the metro Atlanta area, and two youth instructors offer two very distinct approaches to teaching, playing and approaching the game.

The first is Filiberto Tavani, a native of Italy who has run his own Gwinnett-based camps for the last seven years. Another camp session gets underway next week. In this Q and A with the Gwinnett Daily Post conducted before the Confederations Cup, Tavani talked lovingly of his home country, his adopted land and how he’s torn between them when they play each other:

“I’m an Italian fan. That’s an easy one. I root for the U.S., but I’m an Italian fan. It hurts watching Italy play because every second of the way I’m watching. I know all the players. I watch all the games all year long.”

So Tavani won one, and lost one in South Africa according to that logic.

His camps are segmented for easy absorption by youngsters:

“We do a different topic every day. It’s passing one day, dribbling another. We have a tournament and work on shooting. It’s all organized and safe for the kids.”

Another youth coach with a deep background in the sport is Anton Sieber, president of the Dawson County United Club, who was a fan of the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League as a youngster.

He believes kids do best when they’re taught to play with “joy and creativity:”

Get out there and experiment, create, flow, breathe in the game. Express yourself and live in the moment. Out on the pitch are the memories you will hold on to forever. Do what you can to make them magical.

Sieber believes that’s becoming more difficult for so many more children to do because of the soaring costs of joining a club:

“Some of the fees at these monster clubs are through the roof. It really does harm to the sport as a whole and only further feeds the image that elite soccer in this country is a sport for the upper middle class only.”

Which only ratchets up the pressure to play soccer to win and succeed, rather than enjoy the game:

“I think we should strongly encourage the young players to be creative and express themselves out on the field. Challenge players to find new ways to solve problems out on the field. They have their whole life to play cynical soccer where winning is everything. While they are young they need to learn to love the game.”