If one picture could capture what is wrong with youth development in the United States, this is it. Ultimagoal! Your one stop shop for replacing people, the one thing necessary to develop a competent soccer player. There are several obvious problems with this thing.
First, soccer is a game you play with people, not mesh panels.
Second, I’m not really sure what this thing can do that a wall can’t.
Third, the Ultimagoal as far as I can tell can’t react like a human being. It can’t communicate and tell you the right place to play a ball . It can’t adjust for a pass. It’s plastic and mesh. I don’t want to be hard on plastic and mesh since I don’t know them, but these are just hard truths.
Fourth, children across the world who don’t have access to these types of absurd contraptions develop into fantastic players with vision, technical ability and communication by simply playing a lot with whoever or whatever is around. I used to play against a wall or just juggle and dribble if no one was around. The Ultimagoal is sooo artificial that it could never replicate game-like situations better than you could do on your own.
In conclusion young-American-kids-who-want-to-become-competent-soccer-players, an Ultimagoal will not make you the player you want to be. A ball and friends will. Now get off the computer and go find yourself a ball and some friends, work hard, and be creative.
I wonder who designed this Ultimagoal? Probably hiding somewhere. As mentioned by you, football is very simple, get a ball and some mates and everything will fall into place…. Actually the friends part might be the difficult part for some….