After recently seeing first hand the tremendous strides made by the United States at youth level soccer, local coach Jon Beard fears Bermuda could fall further behind improving countries such as the US and those in the CONCACAF region unless steps are taken to upgrade the standard of coaching on the Island.

PE teacher Beard is well qualified to make that assessment, having spent the past 18 years involved in coaching at all levels in Bermuda, during which time the BFA staff coach has seen much change in the standard of local soccer.

The US have progressed from a country that Bermuda used to beat easily and regularly more than a decade ago to one that is determined to become a world force. At the recent Puma Cup in St. Louis where the four regional teams, East, West, Midwest and South, participated in a round robin tournament, Beard was impressed with what he saw. The competition involved high school seniors, many of whom will go to the top colleges in the US in the fall.

"Four games and probably some of the highest levels of football I've seen for a long time,'' explained Beard, who holds the English FA full licence.

"It was comparable to youth professionals in Britain and all of the kids are going to top colleges in the States. Through American coach Gerry Sharpe, who has brought a team to Bermuda, Beard was invited to be Sharpe's assistant coach and administrator of the East team which finished third in the tournament, won by the South.

"It's like an all-star tournament to showcase the best talent and everybody is in their final year of high school,'' explained Beard yesterday.

"In the group I had there were kids going to Harvard, Princeton and Brown and to get into these squads they had to have a good academic background as well.

All of them expect to be starting in their teams next year.

Beard said there was also a couple of players in his team that had been playing for the US national youth teams.

"For me it is vital that people attend our national licencing courses,'' stressed Beard who will be the instructor for the `C' Licence course starting next week and running for about eight days. The course is aimed at youth coaches or for those coaches just starting out. From there the coaches will advance to the `B' licence course at the end of August.

"We're going to be so far behind the States if we don't seek to improve things quickly,'' Beard fears. "They way that these guys were playing was just phenomenal.

"Without needing lots of coaching they could just be told and they were doing it.

We need to get as many people involved on the `C' licence course as we can.'' Added Beard, who is also a member of the Bermuda Football Association coaching committee: "Whether we're slipping behind or they (US) are accelerating, I don't know -- it just seems to be me that they have gone up another level at the moment.

"Their technique was sound but their tactical awareness was as comparable to anything I've seen in Britain. We have to get our coaches and our youth players organised and playing at a higher level as soon as we possibly can or else we're going to be out of it in the CONCACAF area.'' Beard is hoping another invitation will be extended to him to be involved in the Puma Cup next year. "I certainly hope so,'' he said.

"What I did also when I was there was give invites to every player to take back to their coaches to try to get some teams to come into Bermuda. All of the area coaches I spoke to were also very interested in bringing their area teams to Bermuda, so hopefully we can start to get teams to come in.

"If we can get our licensing courses going, and people will support those, and we can start to get some high level teams to come in, then we've got a chance to stay with it all.'' Bermuda is ranked 120th in the world according to the monthly world rankings issued by FIFA this week.