Youth soccer: a debate about coaching methods in Key Biscayne

Nuria de la Fuente and her husband, David Rodriguez, say they were heartbroken when, a year ago, they watched their 7-year-old son’s Key Biscayne soccer coach make him take off his jersey and hand it to another player, who was then sent into the game. 

Their son was left on the bench humiliated, they said. Soon, de la Fuente said she saw the toll on her son. “We saw that (he) was being more sensitive,” she said. “He would end up crying at the end of practice.”

The incident lies at the core of Rodriguez’s complaint against the management of the soccer program. The accusations have touched off a battle royale — with many parents defending the program, but other parents saying  changes need to take place.

And there’s disagreement about whether the shirt incident is even objectionable at all. 

Key Biscayne Soccer Club President Marcelo Radice says kids forget their gear all the time and that it’s not unusual to swap jerseys and shin guards. He says Rodriguez is on a campaign of defamation against the league.

“I think the jersey incident is completely overblown,” Radice said. “The father saw it across the field and freaked out.”

Rodriguez’s claims have reached the Florida Youth Soccer Association, which is investigating the coach, Hernan Acosta. Yet the question of when a coach’s disciplinary style crosses the line is often in the eye of the beholder — not only among parents but also among experts who have looked at the long-lasting effects of coaching in youth sports.

Tom Ferraro, a sports performance psychologist in Williston Park, N.Y., said being benched can wear down a young child’s psyche. “They feel they can’t do anything about it. They have to sit in shame, internalize the anger, and it’s not a good picture. It has a big impact on their sense of identity,” he said. 

Radice says the league is sensitive to that concern. “We understand we have to have age-specific coaching,” he said. “These kids in the early years, their brains are still in development, just like their bodies.”

The Village Green was once home to Benjamin Cremaschi, who, at the age of Rodriguez’s son, wasn’t known as the greatest player in the league but later would play alongside superstar Lionel Messi with Inter Miami and now Parma in Italy’s Premier League. Many – but not all — Key Biscayne parents hunger for that competition to see if their child stacks up to the best.

But can it be too much?

There have been accusations against the club before. In 2018, the Key Biscayne Soccer Club was sued after a player broke his arm during practice. 

According to the lawsuit, the coach at a practice in November 2015 told a 13-year-old boy to stand in the goal while he shot balls at him from a distance of 12 yards away. One shot from the coach broke the boy’s wrist when the teen tried to block it, the suit alleged. 

The coach, according to the lawsuit, failed to immediately call an ambulance or inform the player’s parents – or render first aid. He allegedly told other players on the team to say it was another child who kicked the ball at the goal. 

Key Biscayne Soccer and other defendants, in court documents, said that the parents assumed the liability of risk when they signed up their child for the sport and that the accident was unforeseen. They also said the parents were partially to blame for their child’s injury.

Radice said the league discovered the coach’s cover-up. “When we found out, we fired him immediately,” he said. “That is the only incident we had in 15 years.”

The lawsuit was settled in March 2020 for $25,000, Radice said.

Rodriguez maintains the ultra-competitive nature of his son’s team under Acosta violated the Club’s policy. The Club’s mission statement reads, in part, that it is committed to “providing a safe, well-organized environment to teach the values of discipline, teamwork, sportsmanship, and general wellness.”

Radice said Key Biscayne Soccer is a victim of its own success. Its players keep getting poached by academies affiliated with pro teams like Inter Miami.  As a result, the pressure is on to compete with the academies when it comes to its A-League teams. 

And that’s exactly what many parents want.

“I want my kid to be an athlete, and I want them to compete, and I want them to learn how to lose, how to win. You know, to be respectful, to be committed,”  said Karla Umpierre Cantalapiedra, a team parent for Acosta’s U11 team, at the athletic advisory board meeting Sept. 25 “What’s the problem?,” she asked. 

Board Member Kenneth Coto added, “I think what Marcelo and the club have done is to take every year another little step forward. Now the teams are at the academy level.”

When it comes to Acosta, Coto put it this way: “I see this coach as perhaps intense, perhaps, maybe, focuses on discipline, all these things, but these are all great qualities for our young men to have, young men and women.”

Richard Weissbourd is a child therapist who runs the Making Caring Common project at Harvard University. His research has found that children playing sports make discoveries about themselves and how to operate in the real world.

However, if a coach denigrates, leaves out players or makes competition too central, then those lessons are lost. “Sports can be harmful to kids in these conditions,” Weissbourd has said. 

Acosta declined to comment to the Independent but has retained a lawyer. 

Rodriguez said in November, after the shirt incident, his son went to Crandon Park to play flag football — and found Acosta in a private soccer training session with most of his teammates. “David was confused and visibly hurt,” he said.

The league, working with the Village, did institute new policies to address Rodriguez’s complaints. 

Part of the new policy, Radice said, includes no private coaching sessions within the team; coaches must agree to playing time rotations, and all players must play 50% of all games. The policy sets out evaluations mid-season and at the end of the season with player improvement plans; and a parent review committee will be established.

Radice noted the league embraces kids of all skill levels with three different teams – A, B and C.  “The C teams are typically a developmental team,” Radice said. “Those are the kids who just want to play and be active and play some competitive soccer. They are just doing it for the love of the sport.”

Key Biscayne soccer has built-in challenges. There is limited field space and a residency rule that mandates 70% of the players live on the island. 

Radice’s former colleague, Jackie Gross Kellogg, bid against him for the soccer contract last year. She says the Village would be better off having the league run by a not-for-profit whose board members would be chosen by parents. A director of coaching would report to the board, she suggested.

READ MORE: Key Biscayne soccer contract ensnared in bidding drama

“I believe this would make our community stakeholders and participants in a sport that I think at least 80% of kids here on the island play,” she said. “I think it would also be healthy for our community to do this exercise of transparency and consensus decision-making.”

Radice said the league has grown from 200 kids to 1,050 kids in 15 years and that he is open to exploring what Gross Kellogg suggests.

“We are part of the community.”