College soccer and the YNTs - the writing is on the wall and it says "go pro ASAP."

Of course you could also argue Jorge Salcedo didn't think he was particularly college ready when he got there either. Ramos started Torre as outside back while Salcedo preferred fellow freshman "Midfielder/defender" Grady Howe over "Defender" Javon Torre.

 

I also understand from a coach that it is easier for them to scout the USSDA squads as the concentration of better players is higher. I.e it significantly reduces the effort, cost and time required to watch players and find the sought profiles. Also it means that when they watch the players, they see them in action during higher level matches, meaning it is easier to assess the potential player, than watching him during a low quality game.
I imagine that it naturally increases the number of USSSDA players in the roster of the best D1 college teams.

 

Are guys like Jordan Morris who played one year of academy soccer or Ema Boateng who played about 8 games really Academy products? Two of Washington's better recruits Mason Robertson and Christian Roldan are non-academy kids. Another Danny Gavin played are year for RSL and went back to HS. At UCLA non-academy kids like Reed Williams, Evan Rayner and Max Estrada all got more minutes than celebrated National team academy kids Torre and Victor Chavez. Good players tend to play for good teams but there is a difference between causation and correlation.

 

Absolutely agree with this. i find it very easy to rank order academy kids playing against other academy kids but I am challenged to compare rank order non-academy kids against academy kids. It is like trying to figure how which group of 100 meter sprinters is faster without a stop watch. To give an example my 8 year olds could pretty much rank order kids on their U10 team as could novice parent coaches. But as soon as they tried to rank order kids on one team against the population of the league their rankings were all over the place.

 

Your point about the dominance of DA recruiting is important, but I think the statement above goes too far. For example, Indiana won the national title last fall with some of their best performers being non-DA players, or effectively so*. And the most recent Hermann winner (Mullins), MLS #1 draft pick (Farrell), and MLS Rookie of the Year (Berry) are all non-DA players.

So while it's harder for the non-DA kids to get noticed, the ones who get to big programs can still do very well there.

* Eriq Zavaleta only ever appeared in 3 DA games.

 

In addition to the scouting advantages it offers, the DA tends to cater to affluent areas, where a lot of the kids have received good academic prep and are able to pay what partial scholarships don't cover (which tends to be a lot). These are also big considerations for college coaches.

 

Didn't work on me. I got to "Leander" and knew the rest wasn't worth reading. My few remaining hairs were spared.

 

Well, I don't know why Wade Hamilton doesn't seem to be on current US roster but I think he would qualify for U20 and after seeing him this past year at Cal Poly and seeing Cropper in the WC, I would totally take Hamilton first.

Of course, I would change the COACH of the U20 team first...

 

So can I get my per diem now for the rec?

 

My son just finished up a college camp, with about 15 D1 coaches and 10 D2 and D3 coaches. The D1 coaches running the camp said:
- ODP is useless, we don't look at it, even at the regional or national level
- DA program is not our only source of players, but it is by far the easiest way to see many players at one time

Yet, when my son goes to scouting events in the US, with first and second division European and South American scouts attending, the quality is worse than at the college camps he'd gone to. That's even counting some of the college recruits playing kick and run smashmouth soccer. There are many kids who are Hispanic and African first-generation American (or foreign living in the US) who think that soccer is their ticket to big money (overseas) and not having played on a top club team let alone DA team, have absolutely no idea about their skill level.

We need to get *every* kid interested in playing overseas or in the MLS. We need to get every kid looking at their options. I can see how foreign scouts would be depressed about US soccer based on what kids show up at recruiting camps for foreign clubs.

 

RH,

Although the quality of the players were sub par, how were the European camps? I have always looked at them with distrust. Not sure why but always thought they over promised and under performed.

 

It was a good experience for him. Make sure it is not just a "camp", they should actually have scouts there. Afterwards, we felt the marketing was deceptive (only three 30-minute games guaranteed, yet implied 3 games each day) and the environment was very unprofessional compared to a college camp or DA program tryout.

We are looking into UK football trials, which are mostly for players in the UK and Europe, but they accept internationals as well. Perhaps see if he can attend a few over the course of a few days, and have a bit of a vacation there as well (spouse has family in various parts of Great Britain).

Also just heard a tough story in NY about signing a contract and being stuck with a third division team overseas and feeling that was a mistake. The whole world of who owns your rights, and FIFA being able to prevent you from playing if you reneg on a contract is very tough. I do not think most US folks understand that idea, and it should be appreciated - if grades are good, it might be better to stay here and play D1 instead of cross your fingers that D3 in Denmark will get you on Barcelona in a few years. Colleges have been putting together international tours for their soccer teams, or inviting teams to their field.

 

Thanks for your response.

 

In the past, one-and-dones like Martin and Danny Garcia were pretty rare. Now, though, we've entered into a two-track world, where homegrown-eligible players seem like they could jump at any time, while the rest of the players appear increasingly likely to stay four years.

Wonder if we'll see some coaches recruit more from outside of the MLS academies for this reason.

 

From a Danish point of view, we have some great youth development going on here, also at the lower levels, but if you are a young talented foreign player who want to move abroad, you obviously need to know where to go, because some clubs are quite horrible at youth development, while other clubs are excellent. If you are a U19 or U17 player, you also need to figure out if you want to go to a top-flight club or perhaps find it better to find a D2 club, where there is a much better chance of playing first team soccer... now in Denmark you can learn much by looking at Superliga, 1st Division and 2nd Division tables and compare them with the U19 league tables, because then you get a picture of clubs that are good at youth development.

If you look at the Danish U19 League table from the past season :
http://us.soccerway.com/national/denmark/u19-ligaen/20122013/regular-season/r19443/
You will notice that there are a few Danish 2nd level clubs, like Lyngby BK, Vejle BK (Silkeborg U19 got relegated and was replaced by Køge U19 )... and Lyngby, Køge and Vejle are the usual suspects, that has great youth development, but quickly lose their best young players to the Superliga and foreign clubs, so they are a good place to start, if you want to play as much as possible, but also want to move on to something bigger and better rather quickly.

The club I support (AGF Aarhus) obviously is a bigger step and also has a written deal with Manchester City, sending young City talents to the AGF U19 league and reserve team on 1½-year "loan deals" , but as soon as you move to England, you can easily get stuck, because the smaller clubs are often not all that good at developing young talents (just look at their rather poor depth at youth NT level), while big clubs just seem to pick up lots of young talents at random from all over the world, because they have the money to do so, but with no real intention of developing them all. In reality, it seems like they are mainly hoping to develop their own home grown players and then often use young foreigners they pick up as useful depth...

But to return to the youth development in a Danish Superliga club like AGF Aarhus, then it has a reserve league team, which is much like a reinforced U21 team, then a A+ Danish FA project with specialized training for Danish players between the age of 15 to 21, who are all of youth NT quality... a U19 League team, a U17 League team (these are nationwide leagues ) and then other teams like this (but not nationwide) from U15 and all the way down to the U10 team. The club has written agreements with 58 other smaller clubs in the Aarhus area, regarding youth development, and then also the agreement with Manchester City, that at the moment have sent two players on loan Dominic Oduro and newly arrived Frank Osei Kwame, who have also both been playing for an AGF U18 team in a tournament this summer against Valencia U18, Galatasaray U18, Dinamo Zagreb U18 and Porto U18 .. you can see the results here :
http://www.footballgoalvideo.com/teams/view/21520/Aarhus-AGF-U18
and
http://www.nowgoal.com/analysis/850357.html
.

 

I see the trend continuing as good young forwards will get offers that are good enough to get them to leave. MLS will spend money to bring in some good foreign forwards. Finally guys like Rolfe, Pontius, Findley are not having good seasons.

 

For the lack of a better place to put this, New Zealand has called up three former NCAA players for its upcoming series with Mexico.

Aaron Clapham - two years at St Francis PA, two years at Louisville
Craig Henderson - four years at Dartmouth
Tony Lochhead - four years at UCSB

Other than the US, I don't believe that any teams that have already qualified for the World Cup will use any four-year college players, although Bosnia and Honduras are likely to use players who left early.

 

The Link above goes well here too.