In relation to the above, I am not intimately familiar with the Najar family, the academy, or the local soccer scene around DC, but I am assuming that the news of his transfer to Europe and the price tag that goes with it would have to be noteworthy and incredibly motivating to youth players and parents in the immediate metro area. That by itself has an intangible street value.
I was just putting it out there. DCU is definitely a long way from becoming a private school. True, But I also think DCU is a ways from being able to afford a $3mil bump into their youth system every couple years.
Cost are lower but with the weather there, the players trained would only be good for DC's away game at Houston.
Not if they sell a player every 2-3 years for that cost (basically a small scale version of what is being done in Germany).
That makes my point even more important. If the local talent is so untapped that you can literally stumble onto MLS ready talent then we need to focus on mining that vein.
I don't know the going salary for high-level youth coaches, but I gotta figure the extra Najar money could bring in one or two guys from South America or Europe who know what they're doing.
If American players went to school there, everyone would believe they were born there & are not American.
That may or may not be true -- I hope it is! -- but you can't draw that conclusion from one data point.
Agreed. When I was posting my reservations about how much the academy "developed" Andy Najar earlier, I thought about this point -- that as far as recruiting to the academy, it almost doesn't matter right now: the fact is, he went there, and now he's in Europe, and that's going to be persuasive to some people. Absolutely.
I wish Andy well and obviously hoped get one last year from him, but it was inevitable. On the flip side for United we shed Boskovic and Najar (Salihi is in limbo) and have added little, especially in attack. Right now this is a 4-7th in East side scrapping for a playoff spot. Shame as feeling of all that momentum of last year has stalled for me (as of now, still some time I guess).
I disagree...I think 5-10 years is the point at which DCU should be looking to build the team primarily through the Academy and the draft. I suppose I see the pace of soccer development at a different level than you.
To keep things in perspective, after the Ethan White graduation I remember an interview (KP I think) when he stated that their target is one graduation every two years. That to me seemed like a pretty low bar. Right now we're averaging around 1 per year. Maybe he meant 1 good graduate every two years. Anyways, I don't think we can get ahead of ourselves and pretend that DC can ever build the core of the team through the academy. We just don't have the money and the infrastructure to really do that. This is still a team operating in the red as long as it plays in RFK We really shouldn't overlook the draft at this point which has really been DC's strongest hand recently ... Pontius, Kitchen, DeLeon, Korb, Willis etc ... Also we seem to do a good job of finding useful role players in the lower leagues for rock bottom prices ... Neal, Woolard, Dykstra ... I think we need to continue both of these strategies by scouting the college game heavily and maximizing the new relationship with the Kickers
I will just point out that in the last 4 years the following players have come out of DCU's academy; Najar, Hamid, Badr (I remember when everybody was upset he got away and DCU was left with the Hamid kid), Ethan White, Conor Shanosky, Jalen Robinson, and Collin Martin. Compare that to how youth were brought in (and how prepared they were to play) from, say, 2004 to 2009. The names Adu, Convey, Mapp, and Quaranta come to mind. Now this is an academy that is only a few years old and into which much more planning and effort has gone in just the last year. Clearly some of these players are better than others (White, Shanosky) and the latter 2 have not signed with DCU (or anyone yet). But to think that with more professionalism and resources DCU can find 2 players per year in a metro area of 7 million...I don't think that's so crazy.
Agreed. We're not talking about finding players who are La Liga/Premiership/Bundesliga ready at age 16. We're talking about producing legitimate MLS players with the potential to sell them for a few million each. It's already been done fairly successfully with a much smaller academy focus. Being able to put all, or even some, of the $1.5 million into it from the Najar sale should improve the output in both the short and long term.
Plus, if DCU show they can take talented kids, get them better, get them experienced, then sell them off to Europe at 19 or 20 (while allowing them to avoid moving 6 time zones away from home) then maybe they can land some of the local players who get away (like Joe Gyau or Junior Flores).
The role of the academy isn't really to produce sellable players. That may happen once or twice in a generation and it's a nice cherry on top. It's good enough to produce a slow but steady stream of players that can contribute some minutes to the first team, with a few that eventually develop into starter quality. That's basically minutes you're getting that are salary cap exempt and that you didn't have to use a draft or a trade or allocation money to acquire. That in itself is already a victory