United the Game Foundation

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SOCCER & SOCIAL IMPACT

Programs are designed for social impact in numerous areas. Mixes of programs can be used to address common social issues.

PARTICIPATION PATHWAYS

Two pathways of participation allow for enrollment to have fun and develop as a player or leader.

Chart TEAM OPEN ACADEMY OPEN PLAY OPEN OUT POOLS LEAGUES SCHOOLS SOUNDS CARD

THE CITY SOCCER MODEL

The City Soccer model is a comprehensive collection of local programs which improve common issues in sport an society, designed by Unite The Game Foundation.  Through City Soccer, organizations or operators who want to make use of the the model are able to receive training and support.

By helping local organizations that use programs in the model, City Soccer helps ensure solutions are well delivered and outcomes are better achieved. Pilot locations in New Orleans are operated by City Soccer for the purpose of training operators and for continued research and development. Local operators in New Orleans also work closely with Unite The Game Foundation for additional understanding and development of programs.

Programs in the City Soccer model offer a lifetime of participation which has been well carefully designed and tested to achieve key benefits and impacts. Each program has been shaped over time from the perspective of every stakeholder in local programming — participants, families, coaches, teams, organizations, communities, associations, and governing bodies. Many common problems are solved, and the adaptable framework makes the model transferable and impactful in any set of local circumstances and needs. After the foundation’s Planning process ensures the right mix and model for a community or city, a local operator is able to receive training and support from City Soccer.

In the years since hurricane Katrina, this work has considered the problems and perspectives of all possible interests. The design of each City Soccer program, as well as how each can fit and flex together the full model, began in a unique environment and requirement to consider total need while understanding and developing a model of community programs for all people in a city. Unite The Game has produced this formula for an athletic community to serve and align people in critical ways. Local play-spaces maximized from all points of view; broad benefits and impacts naturally follow from the programs.

City Soccer Team

City Soccer Team is a program focused on elite-level play against local and non-local opposition. 

The TEAM program is a great way to bolster the traditional club or academy model. While, it is also a fantastic approach to operating a high-amateur or semi-pro side—elite levels that cannot pay a livable wage to personnel.

Outreach is seldom considered for elite players, but elite grassroots teams often operate under tight constraints of funding, space, and time. Hurdles of cost, commitment, consistent attendance and quality facilities, can often make the process difficult—to build or sustain a low-budget elite local team. The design of the TEAM program brings several solutions. Whereas elite youth may need an open pathway, or at the level where seasoned adults and promising young talent line up together for very different reasons, a well designed program can go a long way. 

The Gulf Coast Premier League is an example of groups ideal to benefit from the TEAM program. By using the TEAM format, or by operating their own City Soccer model locally, stability and sustainability is found for the club. More can be grown at home.

Program Details

Open Academy

Open Academy is a program designed for the needs of individuals—players, parents, coaches, and volunteers—with a focus on development for all levels of participant. 

While needs for services change over a lifetime, the need for individual development never ends. A quality environment and proper instruction are made available, affordable, and convenient through the program. Simply show up and get moving for natural graduation to be guided by staff on hand. Individual development in groups addresses introductory-to-professional concepts. The format is original, rigorously founded and highly effective. For individual training and education, Open Academy resolves several epidemic issues—to do with under-service, attrition, education, and expense—commonly found in the United States, particularly in urban areas. Development and graduation is unbounded, but also connected to a pathway of other programs and opportunities.

Through Open Academy, the future of any participant is always in the right hands—their own.

Program Details

Open Play

Open Play is a program designed to provide a few simple touches on an old favorite: pick-up soccer.

Without compromising the reason people love to get together and play—easily and informally enjoy the game, create, and socialize—Open Play is an ideal supplement alongside other programs. The playing experience keeps moving in a quality environment. Guidance from trainers is always on hand, if desired, as is an extra ball! The connection of Open Play to other programs makes opportunities available for any player. Days and times allow families, organizations, and associations to realize some major benefits from an old classic. 

A few small additions make a massive win-win-win…for everyone involved.

Program Details

Open Out

Open Out is outreach programming designed to offer benefit to participants OR to raise awareness and funds for a cause.

City Soccer has identified three approaches to outreach. One of the three approaches will apply to any existing outreach programming taking place in a community. This way, adding the City Soccer model can work well (or be built around) programs that are already successful in the community.

To ensure the City Soccer model works well with any existing successful outreach effort or program, design has taken place alongside many great initiatives—including US Soccer Foundation’s Soccer for Success, America Scores, Special Olympics, and Autism All-Stars—around New Orleans, New York, California, Washington DC as well as cities in Europe.

The City Soccer model is guaranteed to enhance any good and existing effort!

Program Details

City Soccer Pools

Pools is a program designed for advanced player development.

Mastering a craft means doing it often, but also having the ability to do it often in a suitable environment. The more a player or group improve, the fewer environments are available to push their ability. Traditional local and state formats are just not enough, and maintaining an environment and lifestyle for elite development and play can become expensive. Outreach programming for advanced players often goes unconsidered, particularly for latter-teens and adults. For elite talent at the high-amateur or semi-pro level, teams on a budget without livable wages, the design of the Pools program solves many notable dilemmas. Pools makes way for the top Team to shape itself in a stable and sustainable format, designed expressly for options and an uninhibited local developmental path for advanced players and coaches.

Pools fills in where low-cost, quality programs are needed for elite players, because improvment should never be expensive, let alone cost-prohibitive. 

Program Details

City Soccer Leagues

City Soccer Leagues is a program designed for amateur players and teams to get what they really want.

Consumer preferences and lifestyles are always changing, as technology plays an increasing role. Products, services, and experiences, and behaviors reshape across all industries. Customization brings an increasing desire for flexible alternatives and immediate results, sometimes on an individual level. As things change, consumers are often less willing or able to commit. Leagues are no different. Enrollments shift—more individuals needs to make a team—and often fall. It is a trend clearly observable in traditional approaches to league-style play. 

Players and teams no longer attend in the same way. New behaviors— “Game tonight at 7:30…Who’s in?…IN…IN…OUT…IN…OUT” — bring new considerations for league and teams management. Unite The Game Research shows how consumers are changing and participants are falling off—at what points and why. However, many also enjoy a format of League which better suits what the adult amateur player wants in a program. 

League management becomes far easier. Trends of attrition and poor attendance are reversed. Along side more suitable formats for some purposes for playing, the traditional formats clean up and improve!

Program Details

City Soccer Schools

City Soccer Schools is a program adapted from careful studies of school soccer program at all ages and over a long period of time, both at and away from City Soccer facilities. The program is designed to address many major barriers. 

Schools aids in several ways schools tend to find difficulty in providing soccer and sport activities to students. It is designed to address many major problems, faced not only by the school itself, but for families to establish connection to soccer and to continue growing the game. The problems commonly faced by teams, coaches, players, refs, and organizers are removed. The result is a simple means for schools to offer the game and for players and families to establish connection with the local pathway, in order to continue enjoying and growing the game. Any school near a City Soccer Schools program now has an easy way to offer a quality soccer experience to students and families.

Program Details

City Soccer Sounds

Sounds is a program designed for demonstration, generating interest in the game and improving technique in a fun way through music, rhythm, and skill with a ball.

Moving with rhythm means total control of the body and ball. Coordinating an orchestra of players in thought and action is not only great fun and exercise, but lays the groundwork for properly playing the game. Inclusive sessions and impressive demonstrations anyone can enjoy. Impromptu or planned, at school or in the street…anywhere in the city…

Catch eyes, ears and the spirit of the game by soundly moving the body, mind, and ball.

Program Details

City Soccer Card

Connecting the Field to Residents & Resident-businesses

City Soccer pulls together a community around the game; incorporating community organizations and businesses, as well as residents who may not have an interest to play.

Program Details

City Soccer Social

The backbone of all long-standing sport clubs is a critical social pillar.

At the center of any sport club over 100 years old is a social venue and gathering place. Visiting countless clubs, as well as operating such spaces over an 18-month period, the social backbone of the City Soccer model has been formed.

Program Details

SOCCER & SOCIAL IMPACT

Designed over fifteen years and in circumstances of total need; developed with understanding by taking the view over years in many key roles; arriving at the shape of programs to solve major problems and align interests; connecting a model for service can be adaptively and practically applied for impact in five major areas: HEALTHCARE, ECONOMIC, COMMUNITY, ORGANIZATIONAL, & PLAYER DEVELOPMENT

Research at Unite The Game Foundation — through studies and projects around the United States and internationally — has aligned the City Soccer model with the UN framework for social service and Sustainable Development Goals; with the WHO/UEFA joint study of Social Return On Investment in community football programming; with numerous national and municipal frameworks for social service and community well-being.

“The (City Soccer) model is an ideal approach to social determinants of health in communities…planning, delivering, and measuring interventions through sport…”

PLAYER & LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

The model solves many soccer and social problems, particularly in ways which traditional models of clubs tend to struggle. But don’t let all the do-gooding fool you—the model is also highly effective for competitive player and team development.

Open Academy, alone, is a force fo learning and development that moves players smoothly through intro-to-high level concepts. Everything needed is available in the same place. Graduation is fluid; feedback is built-in; no one can hide. To show up is to be seen and developed in the ways which are needed by the individual playing in a group.

To combine the program with other playing opportunities, in the City Soccer model or elsewhere, an incredible model for developing players becomes available to any player or club across an area. When all have access and none are held back, the difference is powerful…and obvious on the field.

 

 


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