I just don't get this. I've never understood Columbus fans who crowed about all the success they had exporting players to other leagues when they only ever won one trophy. Whoop Dee Damn Doo. And I really can't be bothered to care about the finances of the people who run the team, as long as they can afford to put a decent team on the field. And if they can't, why do they own a team in the first place? Yet DC fans mostly seem excited to see their most dynamic player go? The goal should be to never have to sell a player that you need. I know that won't always be true, but if DCU sells Hamid and Kitchen and finishes in last place in 2014, I'm just going to throw myself off the upper deck. Selling good players is what you do when you have no other choice; it shouldn't be a goal in and of itself. I understand that my view of DCU's place in the soccer universe is somewhat unrealistic. But I'm still despondent.
It seems to me that 30 is the marker for where "youth" ends if a player is not exceptionally skilled. Therefore, the mere fact that this person is 20 or so and has no resume at all to speak of isn't some great virtue. I don't yet understand why people feel it is either. If you could assemble a team of 31 year-old players who win an MLS Cup, would you do it or would you pursue this mythical youth? I realize people naturally point to failures like Marquez or what not as evidence that youth is important and experience can be a liability, but then look at clubs like Portland who absolutely shit the bed over their desire to acquire and develop youth. In the end, youth for youth's sake means jack shit-all. edit- To be more thought-provoking, how about assembling a team where everyone is 28 years old, or 29. They still have at the very least 2-3 years each before they begin to shows signs of slowing down. edit 2 - I can accept that a move toward youth is potentially a good sign. However, a movement toward inexperience and youth can also be a sign of incompetence or being lost in the woods.
I agree that ticket sales should not be a factor in roster decisions, I agree with the outspending comment (although some could argue the success of LA taking this approach), and I wholeheartedly agree with the aging stars comment. My post was more about winning and winning selling tickets. I agree and I hope this works. This is the post I agree the most with. I understand soccer is a business and DC United will sell players, but they should always be building a winning team. Management has not shown me that they can do this, at least in the last decade. I hope with Ben in charge of the team on the field things will change.
Revelations about how much KP was involved in picking players also make me re-evaluate the tenures of every DC United coach not named Arena or Novak. At the very least now we can clearly know who the buck stops with when it comes to how the team performs. Now Toronto FC slips further into murky territory when it comes to this.
I used to play a soccer management game called Ultimate Soccer Manager I bought and had shipped over from the UK, before games were on the internet and the emergence of the global marketplace. It was before you could get a good copy of Champ Man. I forget the details, but you could essentially "draft" or "promote" or "create out of thin air" or sign for free from the market, 17 year old players with limited abilities. It was always a crapshoot and you never knew what you were going to get, except that you knew they were going to suck. So after playing the game normally for a while I decided to start with Morecambe in the bottom division, sell off all the players at the start of the season, and sign/recruit nothing but 17 year olds and spend all my resources on training. The nice thing about the kids was that they got better at a pretty goood clip. By the end of the first season I had sold off almost every player who wasn't 17 or 18 and we were like mid-table. The next season, we were promoted. And again the next year. And again the next year, and all the way up to the EPL where we avoided relegation. At that point, most of them were never going to be good enough to compete in the EPL, so I started playing normally again and within 5 years I had won the EPL. Morecambe was a perrenial CL power within a couple years. At one point, one of the first 17 year olds I started with was like 30 or so and he got called into the national team. Proud papa. Anyway. That was fun. In real life? Yeah.... about that.
I'm trying to tell you guys. Forget the big name buys. Our future is in developing players. This is an established team in the middle of a huge soccer crazy metro with kids from all over the world. We literally have the area for ourselves. Najar is just the tip of the iceberg.
and I think his point is that we seem to have (or are going to soon have) a very good academy system that can either poach from local youth club teams or develop local kids into MLS talent who can then play for us be sold to finance the academy... its a nice cycle. i hear some little team in spain called barcelona also has a good academy and thy seem to be doing well for themselves.
We're miles and miles and miles from relying on youth development for winning anything relevant. To suggest that we can abandon big name buys in favor of that within the next 5, 10 or 15 years is ludicrous, let alone this or next season.
That's true. However: 1. In terms of structure, our academy cannot be compared to theirs, and almost certainly never will be. La Masia is essentially a boarding school. 2. To accomplish what folks here seem to have in mind, the level of instruction would have to get a lot better. 3. Barcelona draws talented children from the entire planet. We draw from the Greater Washington metropolitan area.
Yet with our still nascent youth academy, we can say that arguably our two best players were developed in house. If an academy that was barely there can already identify, train, and produce players of the caliber of Hamid and Najar, then why would anyone think that a better funded academy would suddenly not be able to do at least that much?
I like your thinking. We'll always need big name players, though. It may well be that they come through our academy in the year 2025, and we (and the league) will have the cash and cache to hold on to them. But for now, I'm all for lavishing huge...tracts of land... on talent, foreign and domestic, for whom the grass in DC can be made to appear a less sickly shade of green than they're used to.
No, our best two players are not Andy Najar and Bill Hamid. DeRo is miles better than them, Pontius is miles better than them. Jakovic is better than both in my opinion. We developed 2 guys. That's not close to a full squad. Yea, we'll develop a few more guys of their caliber over time, but right now those guys are rumors in the wind.
We don't need to rely on youth development winning anything. We can use the money from youth development and sales to buy some washed up 35 year old EuroStar
I don't think we are ANYWHERE near La Masia. What I am saying is that with enough investment, time, and serious commitment, an academy can be the best way to "acquire" players. We have Sonny Sooloy(sp?) in charge now and he knows a thing or two. I don't know what the plans are for the academy... but I really think that if we were to pump $2M into it, we will see returns in a few years. The greater washington metro area is still huge. Lots of immigrants, lots of relocated americans, huge population. Not as good as the whole world, but the best you can hope for in MLS.
In the discussion of the role the academy will play, one thing that's being forgotten is that some significant insiders question the degree to which the academy "developed" Andy Najar. A pretty fair number of people who pay attention to both the academy and the local youth scene have said that what DC United fans saw when Andy first stepped onto the pitch in a DCU match was not very much further along from what he showed when he first arrived at the academy. That doesn't in any way suggest the academy *can't* hold the role some people are suggesting; but it's another piece of information that makes me think it's got a long way to go before it'll be effective in that role.
I didn't think you do; and I don't think anyone here does. I was simply saying that I doubt we can set up something that's structured the same way, and plays the same role for our team. It would require a complete re-think of what the academy is, as well as an enormous annual investment.
And a complete change of culture here in the States with regards to parents and their kids and soccer.
Even so, having the academy and U18/U23 teams be an attractive alternative to college soccer for players in local highschools and youth teams (Najar, Hamid) is a good strategy. We don't have to do the hard work of training them from 4-5 years old, but we get all the advantages that come with producing a player from the academy.
IMHO, there are tons of impoverished families who would jump at the chance of their kids going to a good school and and possibly becoming a pro athlete. Even if that meant them being in boarding school. Thats how it works in lots of places where football is the sport of the slums. So i guess more poor kids getting into soccer would be required too. In america's case, it's often wealthy kids who are playing competitive soccer and getting exposure to scouts.