No; I'm simply pointing out that it wasn't a professional development academy in the traditional sense, because its goal was not to develop players for the first team, which was impossible under MLS rules. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on that. This is a good point. This is why I posted the age cohort information earlier in the thread. For example, here is a list of all of the 20-year-old field players in the league this year, according to MLSSoccer.com: Homegrowns Bryce Alderson Danny Garcia Doneil Henry Aaron Kovar Zakaria Messoudi Shane O'Neill Victor Pineda Carlos Salcedo Ethen Sampson DeAndre Yedlin SuperDraft Christian Dean Luis Gil Damion Lowe Omar Salgado Walker Zimmerman Loan/Transfer Benji Joya Jimmy Medranda Charles Renken Looking just at this age cohort, are the homegrowns underperforming?
Yep, let's move on. I don't think the question is really homegrown vs other MLS kids. If that were the case, we simply could re-brand all of our players as "homegrowns" and claim success (to some extent, this is happening). The bigger question is whether we're gaining ground on the rest of the world. If England is breaking teenagers like Sterling and Shaw into its national team, why can so few US-eligible teenagers even get first-team minutes?
Sterling has one cap, Shaw has two, all in friendlies. They're the only players under the age of 20 England has called in in the last twelve months (according to Wikipedia). They're not exactly capping them left and right over there. Juan Agudelo had more caps as a 19-year-old than both put together. Looking at Transfermarkt's numbers, it does look like MLS has fewer 17- and 18-year-olds than some leagues, but is it really such a great difference? Is there a league--other than the Premier League, which has access to the best teenagers from every country in the world--where it's normal for 17-year-olds to be starting for every team?
Sure, nobody caps a ton of teenagers, but for Agudelo to still be the only academy-developed teenager we've capped has to be regarded as disappointing. And Agudelo's time in MLS wasn't exactly sunshine and daffodils. 17-year-olds -- or even any teenagers -- starting for every team would be extreme, but when you have only one or two NT-eligible teenagers starting in the entire league, you're near the opposite extreme, and MLS has around that territory for several years now.
It's not news at all. You're manufacturing an issue. Oh, and DeAndre Yedlin is a homegrown guy who got capped at the age of 20. But I guess since he wasn't capped at age 19 that means the homegrown program "has to be regarded as a disappointment." Gimme a break.
Regardless of whether you put the age cutoff at 21 (when Dempsey debuted), or 20 (when Bocanegra and O'Brien debuted), or as teenagers (when Donovan, Beasley, Bradley, Cherundolo, and Altidore debuted), the fact of the matter is that young players breaking through at an early age is a hugely important sign of things to come. And regardless of whether you twist things to squeeze in a couple of 20-year-olds who got a brief cup of coffee in a recent January camp, you can't change the overall picture of recent years. It's not a manufactured issue, but you've got such a pollyanna-ish agenda that you're not being objective about it.
Should France be disappointed, too? They haven't capped a teenager in at least a year. Neither have Germany, Spain, Italy, Argentina, or Mexico. Brazil, the land of exciting young talent, has given out two teenage caps in the past year, both to 19-year-olds. Teenage caps are hard to come by anywhere in the world, especially in the run-up to a World Cup. Kids play for the youth teams--and the US U-20 team is stuffed with MLS academy products right now. Luis Gil had 50+ starts before his 20th birthday. Michael Seaton, Marco Delgado, Kellyn Acosta, Jack McBean, Zach Pfeffer, Jonathan Top, and Jose Villareal all had teenage starts in the last few years. And Doneil Henry, if we're including Canadians. Again, if you want to make this argument, you need to quantify it. How many teenage minutes would be "enough"? How many minutes are teenagers getting in the rest of the world?
Without doing much checking, your facts are way off. France - capped Pogba in 2013, seven days after his 20th birthday Germany - capped Draxler in 2013 as a teenager Mexico - capped a teenager just a few weeks ago. So they've capped more teenagers in the past year than we've capped in the past three years ... bully for us.
Wouldn't be the first time Wikipedia was wrong, certainly. But Pogba wasn't capped as a teenager--and a few posts ago you complained about people "twist[ing] things to squeeze in a couple of 20-year-olds." I don't know why you mean on Mexico. Draxler was capped as a teenager, though he's now 20, so that's one for Germany. You see, that's the problem. You can't say that unless you know how many teenagers the U.S. has capped in the past three years, since March 13, 2011. Did you check to see if your perception matches the reality? In other words, before making this claim, did you actually count how many teenage caps the U.S. has given in the last three years? I don't have an exact number myself, but I know it's more than two. Juan Agudelo alone had at least ten, and I believe Luis Gil had one as a nineteen-year-old, just over a year ago.
Your argument seems to be: The homegrown program is disappointing because we haven't produced enough young national team players. As evidence that we aren't producing young enough national team players, you cite England, who has teenagers Shaw and Sterling - who have all of 3 combined caps in friendlies. I then cite Yedlin, noting he is barely in his 20s, and you dismiss that because he "only had a cup of coffee" with the national teams. Well so have Shah and Sterling dammit! You're shifting the goalposts. Do I wish we were bursting with young Lionel Messis? Absolutely. Who wouldn't want the next generation of talent to be head and shoulders better than what we currently have? But I refuse to view the fact that we don't have teenagers in our national team as a metric of anything. Lots of national teams don't, and many that do only do so because they don't have depth and because they are rushing players that aren't ready. And I don't consider myself pollyannish. I'm bullishly optimistic about MLS's future, but if you're talking about a US men's national team perspective, yeah, I'm concerned that we haven't produced players to replace Donovan and Dempsey. That being said I don't lay that problem at the feet of the homegrown player program, which is still nascent. I think there are plenty of areas that the homegrown player program can be questioned and criticized. (Does it hire the best coaches? Are the training methods good enough? Do teams get enough training hours? Is the 10 month season the way to go? How young should it go? Can we cover more costs? Should more teams move to a residency model? How can we improve the USL Pro partnership?) But these criticisms are about the process, not about the results. Because I still think it's too early to whine - and yes, what you do incessantly is whine - about a lack of results.
Clearly, if we had a Pogba leaping into World Cup qualifying for our national team a few days after he turned 20, there wouldn't be a problem. Yes, only one teenager has been capped: Agudelo.
No, I'm not. Sterling is a 19-year-old who just started a friendly with England's first-choice players available. Shaw is an 18-year-old who just played 45 minutes in the same game. They're both further along at a younger age. If you're not judging a process by its results, then all you're doing is groping in the dark when you look for ways to improve. And criticism shouldn't be characterized as whining.
I'm going to jump in with some thoughts and stats: Last year: 1. Total HGP minutes played increased from 14,630 to 39,635 from 2012 to 2013, a 171% improvement. On a per-player basis, it increased from 305 to 558, an 83% improvement. 2. The median HGP minutes played moved from 12.5 to 27. Clearly, a smaller group of HGPs breaking into the starting lineup is driving the increase in average minutes; more than half earned zero or negligible minutes. 3. Only 40 of 71 active HGPs played in MLS at all in 2013. A few of these zero PT players were on loan and a bunch were still eligible for U18 and even U16 teams, but there's still quite a few who had nothing but the inadequate Reserve League. And standout U18 players should be challenged at a level higher than USSDA anyway. Reasons for hope: 4. I think some poor signing decisions were made in the early days of the HGP program. First, academies were newly established as serious regional entities and it took several years to scoop up a respectable chunk of the good players in each market. But clubs wanted something to show from their investment, so they signed Chirgadze, Zamora, Armstrong, et al. The players who were available weren't always the best players. I believe that's changing now, thanks to improvements in recruiting and the passage of time; good players have come to MLS academies and filtered through the NCAA for a year or two. I'm not sure if this assertion can be empirically proven yet, though -- but it's certainly my sense. 5. To compound the previous problem, the bridge from U18 to MLS was non-existent. Marginally talented HGPs never had a chance and even better prospects struggled to make the leap. The introduction of the USL Pro affiliation system, I think, is a huge improvement. The standard of play in USL Pro has issues, but it's a lot of competitive games for players who aren't MLS-ready. And in 2014 for the first time, a large number of HGPs have access to this resource. Reason for despair: 6. I think there are plenty of incentives in place for MLS teams to get good at building a pipeline that consists of (a)recruiting top local talents, (b)bringing them through a few years of NCAA and/or USL Pro, and (c)integrating them into the first team. That's good. I don't see many incentives for MLS teams to get better at coaching. So many good players come through the LA area, for example, that it should be relatively simple for LA to recruit well and declare victory without investing in coaching. Hopefully a smaller market with a weaker natural talent pool will be the innovator, but there's yet to be much of an investment in coaching anywhere.
If you're talking specifically about an affiliation-based bridge from U18 to MLS, then how many HGPs appear that they'll have access to this resource in 2014? The only ones I count are a few from LA, a couple from DC, and one from Houston. Who else? Bryan Gallego is already 21, so he's clearly in a separate category.
Depending on your impression of the college system, most potential HGPs go to college. There are also quite a few teams have U23 affiliates where those that do go to college and train in the team's system during their summer. MLS teams also need to loan out 4 players to a USL pro team they are affiliated with, or have their own USL Pro team. The Galaxy started one this year and I believe at least Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and RSL are considering starting up USL Pro teams in the next season or so.
I don't care whether HGPs came straight from the U18s or spent a few years in college and I think focusing on that detail entirely misses the point. Someone like Bryan Gallego absolutely counts. He's a player who Portland thinks has pro potential, but who is not ready to play in MLS in 2014. So instead, he'll spend the year playing a full USL season in Sacramento, where he'll be able to focus exclusively on soccer as a pro and be challenged in ways he wouldn't be playing Northern Illinois and Western Michigan. If it were 2013, he'd rot on the bench waiting for a once-per-month low-intensity reserve league game. Or he'd remain an amateur and play his senior year in college. I posted a list of HGPs who I could see benefiting from the USL Pro arrangement earlier; here it is again: CLB Friedman CLB Walker DC Robinson DC Shanosky DC Martin DC Seaton HOU Salazar LA Sorto LA Mendiola LA Jamieson LA McBean PHI Hernandez PHI McLaughlin PHI Pfeffer POR Gallego POR Evans SJ Thompson KC Kempin KC Palmer-Brown TOR Roberts TOR Aparicio TOR Hamilton VAN Carducci VAN Adekugbe VAN Sampson VAN Alderson VAN Clarke These are all HGPs who may not get on the field much in MLS this year, but whose clubs have the option to give them playing time in USL Pro. It's a substantial list.
A player's age isn't a minor detail. It says a lot about his potential and his stage of development. Speaking very broadly, you've got a lot of time to mold a 18-year-old into a better player, whereas a 21-year-old should be just about ready to sink or swim. England decided to invest in ages 18-21 by forming a U21 Premier League. Mexico decided to invest in ages 18-20 by forming a U20 reserve league. If MLS is bringing in players to be third-stringers at 21-22, it has missed this stage of development altogether. If you argue that it's important to focus exclusively on soccer and to face greater challenges than college ball provides, then what about those other three years that Gallego already spent playing college ball?
Sure, I completely agree that a player of Gallego's profile isn't a blue chipper by any stretch. I don't think that's relevant to my central point, though, which is that the USL Pro affiliation system provides a better opportunity for a player like Gallego to achieve whatever potential he has than the system that existed before. Just as it helps an older HGP like Gallego, it will help a younger but more talented HGP coming straight from the U18 team. I'd like to see more players like Najar, Fagundez, and Acosta in the league, but the lack of players who are developed enough to play in MLS at age 18 is a separate problem. Lastly, I would offer the thought that the existence of a more solid developmental plan will induce more players to go pro at age 17 or 18. Well, there was no USL Pro system and MLS clubs weren't in the habit of loaning out players independently (with a few exceptions), so staying at a national power like Akron was probably the best of the suboptimal options that Gallego had. Not to mention he was a NYRB player for two of those three, a godforsaken place for young players if there ever was one.
Without disagreeing with anything you've said, the discussion of Gallego raises another point about development. In spite of all of the disadvantages of college soccer, as well as Akron's particular disadvantages (bad weather, bad conference, unremarkable local talent pool), under Porter it was nevertheless something special. In fact, in terms of that post-U18 developmental bracket, it was arguably* the best thing we've ever had going. Good young players flocked there and grew into better ones. For the reasons you've discussed, USL Pro offers the potential to improve upon other environments, but empirically, coaching and more general team culture seem to trump most other things. *I'd say it was indisputable, except that people on BigSoccer will argue with anything.
I personally feel it is unreasonable to expect that MLS academies, via the DA, would produce much in the way of top players. I think that will happen, and perhaps soon, but there really hasn't been much development going on, really. First off, as has been pointed out, the caliber of coaching at many MLS academies, and elsewhere in the US, leaves something to be desired. Unless these teams start shelling out money for foreign coaches, I suspect it will be another half to full generation before enough American coaches that understand the game tactically come up through the ranks. Relative to much of the soccer-playing world, MLS spends a pittance on youth development. That's a lot better than a few years ago, but it still has a ways to go. That said, with the lack of youth contracts and youth development fees, and archaic NCAA amateurism rules, it's hard to see MLS clubs dumping a lot of money into their youth development since they can lose top prospects to foreign clubs without receiving a cent in return. Many MLS academies are relatively new, being but a few years old. That obviously limits the amount of impact that coaching of players coming through that academy can have, regardless of the level of coaching. Even then, at the beginning of the DA, it was just U17/18, which again really limits the effect that coaching can have. The DA now extends down to U13/14, which means kids coming through the DA now will have potentially 4-5 years of MLS academy coaching and, in most parts of the country, improved competition. I doubt that the DA will extend into younger age groups, but if it does, that is yet more time MLS academies have players in their system AND have them playing top competition. Even if the DA doesn't go to U11/U12 next, that wouldn't preclude clubs from extending their academies or leagues into younger age groups. That is happening, fortunately. As others have pointed out, the U18 - MLS first team gap was enormous before this season. While the USL-Pro/MLS relationship isn't going to make any homegrown into a world-class player, it will at least provide a better opportunity for development for players that may very well become future Nats. All in all, based on who is currently 18-20 years old in MLS, and the development route they took to get there, I don't know how any great players could have developed. I see no reason why the chances of developing a truly great player won't increase considerably in the coming years, although that is by no means certain that one will be developed.
Just to point out, this statement isn't accurate. The DA began in 2007 with both U15/16 and U17/18 in place. It's also worth being clear that the extension of the DA to U14 doesn't mean an expansion of youth soccer academies. The non-MLS DAs have long been integrated down to much younger age groups than that, and by 2010, most MLS clubs were already down to U14, as well. They already existed, they were just competing under a different structure.
Did anyone read Grant Wahl's take on the Academies during his review of various MLS clubs? He also lists by team how many HG each club had signed. http://soccer.si.com/2014/03/14/digging-deeper-inside-the-ambition-rankings-numbers/ Also, here is a review in Top Drawer Soccer, specifically looking at the admited cost some MLS clubs spend on their academies: http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/the9...rant-wahl-how-much-they-spend-on-development/
These numbers are always suspect, but even so, they're interesting to look at. RSL has a residency program that allows it to cherry-pick top talent from all over the country and from abroad. If it can do this while spending far less than other MLS teams, then that's clearly a hell of a win.