Analysing the MLS SuperDraft: The GA debate

If a player can develop better by turning pro at 18 0r 19, this is fine with me. But my problem is that these guys get paid 100K and up, while the 23 year old college soccer senior gets paid peanuts.

 

Its the same reason Euro's in this league get paid so much more than Americans that are producing. Americans are stuck in a limited market and really have no bargaining power. Even if their were no GA deals, seniors would still be getting "peanuts". GA is more a way to lock up solid underclassmen that have more options....even then it doesn't always work, see Cobi Span and Wagner from last year that passed on GA deals and went to Sweden (though might be regretting that now).

 

Luis Silva is five years older than Luis Gil. Graham Zusi is over seven years older than Gil. It is simply asinine to compare the accomplishments of Silva and Zusi to those of Gil at this time considering the differences in age.

Also, paying all of these players more won't make any of them one whit better.

Also, saying "Bright Dike is the next George Weah" is an overreach; trolling has to be less hyperbolic to be effective.

 

This. Another example is Luis Silva versus Kelyn Rowe. These were two players drafted one after the other in the 2012 draft. Luis Silva had a slightly better season than Rowe, but Silva is exactly 2 years older than Rowe.

When you look at it that way, Rowe is way ahead of Silva. When Silva was turning 21 he was playing college ball. At the same age, Rowe is wrapping up his first MLS season after playing 30 pro games.

 

You really believe the Galaxy would be better off with Wilhelmsson than a GA like Omar Gonzales or Mike McGee? I appreciate that you present opinions based on analysis. However, the problem is that your analysis is pretty flawed. I started to look at the detail, but since it was in some type of PDF I didn't bother. For example in 2007 I noticed you left out Byran Arguez - I thought it might have been a mistake until I read a little further. You can't leave out the number of players paid, but only count the ones how actually played minutes. Whether they play minutes or not, it is still an investment. You also only look at the first 3 years rather than the life of the contract. As you point out yourself, younger players players are going to be less productive in their earlier years. You are comparing the numbers to the wrong pool which should be replacement players from outside the US which is where MLS would have to get players if they were not able to sign them through GA. Finally you also fail to factor in the marketing value. There is a reason it is called GA - that is that Adidas (and MLS) sees marketing value to promoting young players from the US as opposed to a young player from the other side of the world.

 

The 6 figures is what it takes to sign these guys. If MLS could get away with less, the absolutely would. Their business plan is built around paying US players as little as they can. If it was about paying for production guys like Wondowlowski or DeRosario who have been the leagues top performers for years in a row wouldn't be making a fraction of what guys like Boyd or Koevermans get paid. GA was set up to try to keep some of the younger potentially more marketable US based players in the league. Adidas figures they can move more product with a guy like Shea than some 30 year old guy from Argentina few people in this country have ever heard of.

 

You are more patient than I was. I noticed he ignored all the 4 year players that were paid this year but played limited minutes. I also looked at 2007 and noticed he was missing Arguez. Then I noticed he said he was looking at the top players in the draft so I just focused on the fact that he was looking at the wrong pool. I didn't even look at 2008 - 2011.

He also says MLS wasted money but the reality is that Edu's contract alone covered most of the "lost" money. Your example of 2008 shows how flawed his analysis is. However if he compared the output of GAs over the life of their contracts to the value of outside players over the life of their contracts, I am sure he'd fine GAs are actually a bargain. Not the bargain that 4 yr players are, but a bargain none the less.

 

Thanks for the links. Scouting soccer players is difficult and the scouting the MLS did in the early years was really poor but their finance guys are very sharp. Your point about the drop off from the first 10 picks highlights the point I making to the OP. Most of the GAs are early in the first round. If MLS loses these players outside leagues because they don't want to pay close to the market rate, that means they would be giving up a large portion of the "exceptional" players available in the draft. Furthermore the cost of overpaying by $50- $75K when they are young is small compared to overpaying a veteran dud like DeGuzman.

 

You don't need to include all seniors, just the ones that get paid. You are not using apples to apples but instead are cherry picking the most successful players to compare to a group of GAs that are for the most part largely successful.

Once again your arguments fail to compare GAs to the proper replacement pool. You have Wenger was the 5th highest player since we don't know what Nesta made (I'm betting it will be more the Wenger). Yet according to Castrol ratings Wenger outperformed Nesta as well as Bernardo Corridi who was paid $65,000 more than Wenger does. And Wenger spent much of the year shuttling from Montreal to Durham finishing his courses. I think the odds very high that Wenger will perform much better over the next 3 years of the contract. Valentin, another GA, performed even better than Wenger in Castrol ratings yet was paid almost $125,000 less than Corridi. Yet though your analysis you think the league should sign more guys like Corridi.

 

I'm not sure NCAA allows current athletes to play games with professional players. Not sure it is also good for players to get tied to a team that might not need someone in that position. I think a better alternative from a MLS perspective might be to allow players the option of making themselves eligible for draft whenever they want.

 

Agreed. I'm often a college advocate on the youth nats boards. However, I mostly advocate staying in college until a player is ready for significant first team minutes. Our top players don't benefit as soccer players through 4 years of college.

 

Exactly. However, I think the rest of the world will look more and more closely at 4 yr college prospects and MLS will have to adjust. If you notice, last draft some of the 4 yr guys got deals that were not that far off the GA deals.

 

I thought Ibahga (sp?) had been training with Houston during the summer?

Also, letting them stay in school is not a worry it actually helps players make a decision instead of going in blind. And if say a kid was the top striker in the country right now, but belong to NY. Maybe a team without a striker pays to get them, like in the NHL. It gives all parties involved more flexibility. Letting kids leave whenever you may get a bunch of NBA esq flops where to many kids really have no idea what it means to be ready, just some agent wanting to get paid.

 

interesting. I think there should be more than one way to skin a cat. If anything I think they should let any underclassman jump. I do like how Gen Ad does somewhat guarantee a lot good local talent play in this league rather than Scandinavia. I think people vastly overate how much money mls is losing by not selling. I get the feeling that a lot of Americans in Europe are in Europe because no transfer fee was needed to acquire them.

NCAA changed the rules so kids can play with pros as long as they are not getting paid. That is why you'll see some HGs still age eligible play in the DA.1

 

The bunch of stiffs that you mentioned would never even qualify us for WC.

 

"The reason clubs play young players is not to bring success on the pitch but to increase the exposure of players for the transfer market. So the fact the MLS is encouraging the signing and playing of young players but at the same time not actively trying to sell these players provides me just another example the league doesn't fully understand the global game."

MLS should be actively trying to sell players. Of course fans will reflexively oppose it but there is nothing wrong with being a league that sells players. And it is easy enough to replenish the ranks with a combination of homegrown players, draft picks out of college (whether seniors or GAs), good values from Latin America (who will only be more attracted to MLS if it is a successful feeder league), and prominent DPs from Europe. And unlike other leagues (eg Eridivisie), this doesn't have to happen in perpetuity given US/Canada's size+wealth, as the sport continues to grow here... but for where the league is now, it only makes sense.

 

What you said was that 22 was a normal time for players to go pro. So let's take a closer look at United.

Wikipedia lists 32 senior players, including 2 out on loan. Not the best source, but good enough for these purposes.

I looked at the earliest reference I could find to each of those players starting their professional career--meaning they had signed a pro contract and appeared in at least one regular-season league game. I found a significant number starting before age 18--Anderson and Rooney at 16, Evra, Giggs, Powell, and Macheda at 17, and possibly a few more. I found one player who may not have made his pro debut until he was 20...backup goalkeeper Lindgaard.

Every other player made their first-team debut at age 19 or younger, and the vast majority started at age 18. If there is "a normal time to start a pro career," at least for top prospects, the Manchester United data suggests it's 18, not 22. I suspect other teams' rosters would have similar results.

In other words, every single field player on Manchester United was playing first-team minutes well before age 22. No, not all of those players were regular starters at 18. But they were training every day, full time, with professional coaches and trainers, and teammates who were better, stronger, and faster than they were, nine months or more out of the year.

Compare this to a top prospect's college experience. He's limited in the amount of coaching he can get in a week. Nine months out of the year, he has to practice in "secret" or sign with a PDL team to get around NCAA practice rules. He will be the best player on his team; instead of learning from older pros, if not stars, he's playing with kids who are mostly below his level and mostly do not see soccer as a career. He's playing, best case scenario, two games a week for three months, and even those games aren't played by FIFA rules.

 

Which is exactly what Rapids President Tim Hinchey said in a recent interview, so we can assume that at least part of MLS is thinking that way.

 

Here's one more data point.

Juergen Klinsmann called in 18 players for the recent Russia friendly.

Of those 18, only Geoff Cameron (11 total caps) was a four-year college player.

Out of the current national-team pool as a whole, including everyone who's gotten a call-up in the 12 months before the Russia friendly (again, according to Wikipedia), the cap leaders are Cameron with 11, followed by Chris Wondolowski with 8, then Graham Zusi and Brad Evans with 6 apiece. In the current pool, there are fewer than 50 lifetime caps from eight four-year college players.

Let's compare.

On that 18-man Russia roster, there were nine GA/P40 players (Howard, Rimando, Bocanegra, Edu, Goodson, Bradley, Kljestan, Agudelo, Altidore).

Between them those nine players have a total of 449 caps.

From the same pool of recent callups, add in GA/P40 players Guzan, Beasley, Dempsey, Johnson, Clark, Beckerman, and Shea, for 324 additional caps.

The totals in the current national team pool?

Four years of college: 8 players, fewer than 50 caps.
GA/Project 40: 22 players, almost 800 caps.

That is why teams think GA contracts are good value--because not every player who plays X minutes in a given season is equal.

 

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. It's not 10% or 15%; 100% of Man U field players had at least one senior league start by the time they were 19, and most of them at 18 or earlier--some as early as 16. That includes Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, van Persie, Evra, etc., etc.

Every player, including the starters, was playing full-time league soccer while American four-year college players were taking nine months off a year. What are you laughing about exactly?

So your position is that three months of limited training and 20-odd college games, followed by a nine months with strictly limited training and almost no coaching, is just as good for player development as nine months of full-time training and ten or so reserve league games?

They have been choosing the best players in the league no matter of age or previous experience...and those best players have come from Generation Adidas. Which seems to me to indicate that GA is a pretty good way to identify and develop young players.

First of all, two of the players you list have zero U.S. caps (Besler and John). So that's 5 capped players for GA versus 4 for the much larger senior player pool. I'm not sure that supports your argument.

Second of all, the five GA players you list have 65 caps between them. The 6 seniors have 16. Again, not an indication that seniors are ready to play out of the gate.

So what this tells us is that GA/P40 players start their pro careers earlier and develop faster than college seniors. How does this support your thesis?

 

So, an average GA player plays 26% more games, gets 28% more minutes, scores 44% (!) more goals and gets 45% more assists.

Are you arguing that it's not enough given their pay? My guess is that, if they were age-adjusted, the data would show an even higher production rate for GAs.