The Chicago Fire Soccer Club announced Wednesday that the club has expanded the Chicago Fire Academy program to include a fully-funded program for youth soccer players ranging from Under-10 to Under-18. The new Chicago Fire Academy is the only comprehensive, fully-funded player development program in Major League Soccer encompassing players from U-18 down to U-10.“We are extremely proud to be able to offer a fully funded program to youth soccer players in the Chicagoland area,” said Chicago Fire Vice President of Soccer Operations Guillermo Petrei. “The commitment and investment made by our owner Andrew Hauptman and the club is truly invaluable as we embark on the next phase of professional player development.”
Sadly it is a boys only program with the Fire Academy (at least to my knowledge). I know my daughter would love to play in a program like this. Awesome gesture by the Fire to raise the bar to this type of financial commitment on their end.
Well I am there with you - 2 daughters at the same club. But frankly I am happy with Sockers commitment to girls. We've got ECNL at least.
I think it's great, but any word on how they plan to pay for it? Where's the money coming from? Quaker? Hauptmann? The proverbial "Trust me, I know a guy" ?
Valid question, and I am sure someone tied more closely with the actual Fire, or someone with a kid in the program could answer that for you. But honestly, WHO CARES!!!! As long as they're willing to do something this cool, who cares where the money is coming from. The idea behind it is pretty neat (and this coming from someone with no interest other than liking the sport).
I can think of one reason why someone might care where the money is coming from. If the girls program isn't part of this (because naturally they can't graduate to the pro team and "pay the team back" in the form of filling stadiums or drawing a transfer fee), what's to say the girls won't be charged more for their youth training to subsidize the boys ?
Just want to make sure I am understanding, the age groups for all these teams is a January 1 cut off?
There is no girls programs there so doesn't matter. And as far as costs go, they have the coaches on staff already and don't pay for facilities. They have the Youth Academy which is a paid program, so as that grows, that will help pay for the expanded DA program scholarships. I'll be really interested to see how they select 9 year olds for this.
I heard only the top teams in each age group will be fully funded. The second and third teams will still be 3k a player.
Afetr talking to the Fire the program is fully funded by ownership, this is a standalone program and is not funded by the B or C teams at all, MLS are moving away from traditional youth soccer they are being incentivised to develop players by MLS and Adidas just like the rest of the world does so please stop comparing MLS programs and how they are funded to youth soccer its not apples to apples. You want apples to apples compare the Fire Junior Clubs to Magic and Sockers as they are funded and operated the same as other youth clubs the PROFESSIONAL MLS Academy is totally different and as MLS unveils new programs and competitions for MLS only Academies the gap will grow. Congrats to MLS and Fire for this investment
Within a couple of years every MLS club will have this kind of program. I know my son's MLS club definitely wants this and is working hard to achieve it. Unfortunately, they don't have such a generous owner.
I agree it will be interesting to see if any push back form other clubs. If you start at 10 and you have to travel to KC for you game on Saturday because the other clubs in the area will not play you how long will that last. I like the idea of the MLS only Academies but travel will be the issue for this going forward. You can only play the Columbus Crew so often. In England so many clubs in such a tiny area. It all comes down to cost, I have heard the budget for the fire DA is 500,000 seems high but that is what I have heard. Now we take that to the U-10 and you have at least a 1,000,000 to 1,250,000. But now the player decides to leave and you as the Fire do not make one cent off of them. Business model broken I don not imagine that many other owners will follow suit. But great for the kids of Chicago ,well maybe. Will probably see more outside players come to the area
My son's club is looking to include the money to finance the Academy in the first team's budget (or so we have been told).
This is absolutely funded by the other teams. Every kid that puts on a Fire jersey at the Youth Academy, West, South, North, NWI, Kentucky, Florida, Mississippi, Michigan and Louisiana locations are providing a portion of the money to fund these teams. That is the reality in the U.S. Until the fire can make their money back by selling the players, the other players will be funding the top teams.
How do you know? Do you know someone from the Fire or do you have some inside info? Or are you just guessing/speculating?
I think you are looking for something sinister in my post. The players at all of the fire outposts, as well as the season ticket holders, anyone that buys a Fire replica jersey, etc. is footing the bill for the free teams. Kudos to the Fire for making this possible. The Fire has expanded their brand to maximize revenue, to the point that they can offer this program. They could have just as easily charged $xxxx, and kept hte profit. Now wheather they actually have the coaching staff to make a difference in developing these players remains to be seen.
As I guessed, you are just speculating. If players pay at Fire North, South and West, that money is going to support these outposts. Yes, I'm sure the directors at those locations kick back some percentage to the Fire in Bridgeview, but that percentage is not high enough to sponsor kids playing for free. Plus there are kids playing for free or there will be in the North, South and West. All these locations have their own expenses for fields, coaches, etc.
A quick google seach shows about 160 Fire Jr teams outside of IL, I would guess about 50 teams in Il next year, not counting the free academy teams. 210 teams, with an average roster of 12 gives you 2520 players wearing the Fire jersey. I'll concede 520 scholarships. At $100 a head player fee, the last figure that I relibly heard, back to the Fire, that is $200,000, even if the Fire is giving $50 a player value back to the locations, they have still collected enough to pay for the u-10, u-12, and u-14 free teams. Plus they have expanded the Fire brand all around the country. What other MLS team can claim they have that many players wearing their jersey. Until the individual MLS teams can own players, and earn profits from selling them, this is about the best system a club can have. MLS has a long way to go to be profitable enough to have real academies , like the rest of the soccer world. This expansion of the Fire brand is good for the MLS, as it places a MLS name in areas of the country that do not have MLS teams.
When you do this math, do you account for expenses each Fire location has, such as for coaches and fields (outdoor/indoor)? It doesn't look like you do. How much do you think is the cost to offer free participation to players and teams at the Bridgeview Fire location? I don't think they can count field expenses, because the facilities they used are build and paid for by the MLS team. The youth teams there are and would be using the same ones. That leaves expenses for coaches' salaries and probably also equipment, unless they make the parents fork some money at least for the equipment. How many teams and kids do you think Fire would have at Bridgeview playing for free? I'd say for start, there would be only boys teams from U10s to U18s, probably one team per age group. How much money do you think is needed to invest in that project? As for the rest of your thoughts, I don't think anyone can tell if what the Fire is doing with the youth investment would be effective/productive because it hasn't been done before in the US. They've seem to have taken the initiative so far. It will be interesting to know what results this format produces in terms of developing players and incorporating them into the MLS team. I'm with on the clubs needing to own their youth players. However, that would be difficult and probably not accepted in US at this point.
So, I attended the u10/u11 fire academy tryouts last night. A friend's son was trying out, and I wanted to see if it looked like something my son could possibly do in a couple of years. I was surprised by what they did at the tryouts, but am not that knowledgable about such things and wanted to see what you guys thought. They spent the first 20 minutes doing drills. All were very similiar, kids in groups, four cones making a square, various passing drills. The next 20 minutes they had a smallish(maybe the size of half a u9 field) square, and they had teams of 6-8(s0 12-16 kids on the field) playing possession. This was 100% quick trap and pass. There was no room for dribbling, so any kid that tried would immediately either dribble out of bounds, or lose possession. Most of the kids did well with this, but from my uneducated view point, it was hard to learn much about the players, as it looked from where I was sitting, that aside from eliminating maybe the 25% that weren't up to speed with the rest, everyone was about equal. And again, I certainly couldn't tell anything about individual players dribbling, defending, speed, really anything other than who could trap, and pass. So this does show vision I suppose as well. But this was what they used to essentially decide who was really trying out. After this game they had all the kids sit down, called the numbers of about 16 kids(this was from the u10 group, the u11s were doing the same thing), and then sent all the rest of the kids to a field, where the coach seemed to randomly break them up. So then there were 4 fields, 2 of 10s, 2 of 11s, 1 field of each of kids whose #'s had been called. At this point there were 3-4 coached watching those fields, and 1 coach manning the other. They played 8 v 8 for 20 minutes, but it was obvious if you weren't on the right field, you were done. Even the coach running the extra field was watching the other. After that it was over. So, it looked to me, like the decison about who to consider was made almost entirely on the possession game, and then narrowed down during a full sided game. I was surprised that there were no small sided games. But again, my kids have only played with 1 club, so they are the only tryouts I have experience watching. Is this the norm? I mean, I have no idea how or what you are evaluating 9 yr olds on, but was still surprised by how it went.
The Chicago Fire Soccer Club announced the tryouts for its USSF Development Academy teams today. Both the U16 and U18 teams will participate in the USSF Development Academy League and MLS only competitions. Players are also eligible to participate in MLS Reserve and USL PDL games as part of a professional soccer program. Chicago Fire Soccer Club is the only Academy Club that can offer this extensive programming for its young professionals in the Chicago area. All players selected for this program will be eligible for inclusion on the MLS Homegrown Player List. Tryout Dates for the U16 and U18 teams is listed below: Chicago Fire Academy Open Tryouts – Tuesday, July 10 at Toyota Park Turf Field 4:30pm – U15/U16 (1996, 1997 birth year) 6:30pm – U17/U18 (1994, 1995 birth year) All of the information can be found at http://www.chicago-fire.com/news/2012/06/fire-announce-academy-tryouts
