I really don't think it's outlandish in the Crew's case there are only two reaches so far in my opinion Aaron Horton the Crew's first home grown signing and Walker this year. As it happens these two are on the offensive side where the Crew have mostly reaches at this point. The only other one to come out before this year has been Speas and he would have been a first round pick. Back to Back national champion Arkon, then North Carolina; scored the game winning goal the second year. Speas also pretty much lost his rookie season due to a sports hernia. You can question our decision not to sign Andy Lubahn, Forward Wake Forest and Eric Stevenson, Left Wing Akron; two players that will surely get drafted this year depending on how you rate them. Wil Trapp has been a solid U-X national team contributor, he's certainly the brightest prospect on the team and when he was signed his college coach (Porter) wanted to trade for him pretty aggressively. Lampson was just about the only good player on a poor Ohio State team. If you don't know anything about college soccer Ohio State has an awful coach that most youth coaches dislike and so try to dissuade their players from going there. That's the main reason why even with the proximity you see Crew homegrowns coming from pretty much anywhere else. The rest are where the Crew doesn't have to reach at all but where they actually excel, defenders. Barson was the pillar of the Akron backline during most of Porter's run, including that national championship, and you guessed it Porter wanted to trade for him as well. Wiet spent a season at Indian then finished his college career at UCLA, he was on quite a few U-X national teams at center back and right back. He was considered a first round quality player last year but chose to finish school. Friedman is a right back that gets forward well and puts in a great cross, Harvard didn't have anyone worth a damn in midfield this year so they stuck him up higher and he was their best midfielder. I think we have a left back at Ohio State (Sage Gardner) that could make the team as well; remember what I said about Ohio State? Gardner had to play out of position as a defensive midfielder all season because they didn't have anyone, he even had to take their PKs. I think choosing to play for Ohio State is hurting him more than it did Lampson. I don't really think it's excessive, just think if the academies had started up slightly earlier the Crew would probably have Kofi Sarkodie and Justin Morrow too. We've got another center back at Akron in Andrew Souders that has MLS ability. A freshman center back at each of the college cup finalists left footed Matt Habrowski at Notre Dame and 6-5 Alex Crognale at Maryland. Crognale had some growing pains and lost his starting spot halfway through the season this year. I expect him to bounce back next year, the kid hasn't come close to filling out yet, he was 6-1 two years ago. We have MLS quality outside backs in freshmen Rylee Woods, left back Michigan and Alex Bumpus, right back Kentucky. Our best attacking prospects are still pre-college but they're finally coming along.
Well I am glad that many of you are so high on the academies and MLS stocking these players, especially the Crew. Just seems that last year they were lacking the soccer IQ in many matches to win, it was all on Orduro or Higuain to win it all. I attributed the lack of cohesion more on the average age of the players than RW but perhaps you are right. RSL also has a great academy, but its been mostly misses so far (although graduates like Deleon and Cascio seem to be doing well for other clubs). Perhaps Salcedo and Allen will reverse this trend in Utah.
A bit of Matt Walker trivia: He had 9 goals and 7 assists in 17 games, good enough to rank #3 in points per game among players in major conferences. The two ahead of him were Patrick Mullins and Leo Stolz, both Hermann finalists. If you disregard goals scored on PKs, then Mullins and Stolz both fall behind Walker, who ends up #1. And he managed to do this with a weak offensive group around him. In Walker's junior year, he posted even better numbers (11 goals, 10 assists), partly because Xavier was in a weaker conference, and partly because he had better teammates. This kid impressed me when I saw him play, and his numbers show that it wasn't a fluke. Of course, outstanding performance in college doesn't guarantee that he makes it, but he's definitely someone that other MLS teams would've wanted to sign.
I didn't mean to imply that the Crew's academy is the best or anything like that just that they aren't signings detrimental to the team. The problem for the Crew last year wasn't really a reliance on homgrowns so much as the important signings not being good enough coupled with Gaven's injury. Glauber Berti and Matias Sanchez not really living up to expectations the staff put on them in addition to Arrietta's poor year was far too much to overcome. Now to this point if you'd say the Crew has gotten worse I'd have to agree with you far to much going out with not enough to replace it. If the Crew is terrible again this season I still wouldn't put it on the homegrowns at this point I'd say our higher end talent just doesn't look good when compared to the competition. I in no way meant to say Walker was terrible or that no one else would give him a shot if the Crew passed. I think he could be a Grabavoy type player, if he reaches that level I'd consider him a success. The Crew could certainly use a player like that I just don't see him as a sure success and I don't feel he is a game in game out starter even if he reaches his full potential. There's nothing wrong with that and I'm certainly rooting for the guy all the way.
Bruce Arena says the @LAGalaxy signed Raul Mendiola and Bradford Jamieson as Homegrown Players and could sign another in the "near future."— Adam Serrano (@AdamSerrano) January 16, 2014
How? Didn't he switch from Chivas in July. Does he even meet the requirements or MLS made another invisible rule.
Has happened plenty of times, even with the Gals. He just won't be eligible to play in a game for the Gals till that requirement is met. Which I doubt he would have anyway.
Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be Buckeyes. Well, soccer ones anyway. The late 2000's team with Eric Brunner, Roger Espinoza, Xavier Balc and Casey Latchem, (which came together by accident more or less) which went to the final, cemented OSU's coach into a seat that he's done nothing but disgrace. What should be the flagship team in a state which produces tons of strong prospects is instead a sinkhole. But it's been a boon for Akron, which routinely scoops up the cream of the Ohio crop, and other teams across the east who swoop in and pretty much sweep the cupboard clean. As for the Crew, their academy has had an excellent run and, coupled with the fact that the best kids go to Akron, Indiana or points east, has meant an unusual number have been more than happy to go HG. The pipeline isn't as backed up as it has been and, going forward I would look for the pace to slow down. But that's gonna be the thing I think - and the real point of this rambling post: Teams can't just say "We'll take one kid or two HG's every year." You have to sign them when you have them. If you've got a bunch of strong 18-20 year olds, then you've got to sign them now. If your best talent is in the 15-16's, then you're playing a waiting game. Everybody will go in spurts, depending on what they have. In the end one suspects it will more or less even itself out. At least until there's substantial roster relief, which will have to come as relationships with USL Pro teams expand and there are places to put these guys. When that happens, there'll be real competition not just for the very tip-top elite kids who were always going to get a pro shot, Dev Academies or no, but for a substantial portion of the next level down as well, the ones who could benefit most from a strong professional training environment but who now mostly end up selling insurance and taking over Dad's hardware business. Those are the ones who've been getting away for years, and finally there's a structure coming into being that will give those players a chance.
When it comes to signing homegrowns, I don't really understand if there's a difference between players from affiliate clubs and the actual academy. But it may be the case that the Crew Wolves (a Detroit area affiliate) end up contributing significantly to their next generation of homegrowns. Kids like the Selemanis and Kosti Moni seem to be well regarded. If the Crew had been able to claim Wolves players Soony Saad and Joshua Gatt as homegrowns, they'd be absolutely loaded with young talent right now.
Are MLS teams allowed to sign players to HGP contracts that play in non-MLS academies? For example, say 18 year old Player A is part of an academy in Minnesota, where there is no MLS team... could Team A sign Player A as a Homegrown Player, or would this player HAVE to go to college before he is eligible to play in MLS? Because if he has to go to college or move to another country, this seems like a problem to me....
Nope. If you aren't in an MLS academy or an official affiliate academy, you can't be signed to an HGP deal. (And how many HGPs have come directly from affiliate academies, anyway?) More young pro-ready players have a clear and coherent pathway to MLS than ever before, but there's still a long way to go. The academy mandate and the HGP rule was created in large part to incentivize MLS teams to innovate in player development. I think allowing teams to sign "HGPs" from anywhere in the country would undercut that incentive even more than it's already being undercut.
I agree. I just feel like something needs to be done so that players that aren't in MLS academies have a path to MLS straight away instead of college or going overseas. Technically, couldn't a young player just switch academies and sign with the MLS team, or sign with a USL/NASL team and then transfer to MLS? I guess if they did that, they'd have to go through a lottery. Kinda just thinking out loud, thanks for answering!
This already happens. DeAndre Yedlin only spent one season in the Seattle Sounders academy before going off to Akron. Jose Villarreal spent even less time in LA's academy before signing a pro deal. These are just a few examples. Players who don't live in MLS markets have fewer options, though. There have been very few young players who have gone the USL/NASL route, so that debate is fairly academic at this point. Korey Veeder is the only example I can think of; he wound up in a weighted lottery, but he was an active U-20 player at the time.
I'm not sure Yedlin is the best of examples because the 2010-2011 season was the first season of the Sounders academy...
There definitely are gaps, as there are plenty of markets without an MLS academy. For very talented players, like Luis Gil, MLS is willing to sign them to a contract and have a weighted lottery. But that's going to miss a lot of guys. The main things the league seems to be doing to solve this is by having more academies. Teams are affiliating or founding lots of out of market academies. Players like Josh Gatt and Soony Saad both had no homegrown path to MLS, and so they went overseas or to college. But both played for the Michigan Wolves, who are now a Columbus Crew affiliate. And of course as MLS expands, it is directly placing teams in more markets.
For a more recent example, Jordan Morris did the one-year-in-the-academy thing in 2012-13, and at some point, he'll sign as a Sounders HGP, too.
Kekuta Manneh is sort of an example................right? He went from the DA with Lonestar in Austin to signing with the Austin Aztex in the USL to signing a Gen Ad deal with MLS & being put in the draft. It is surely an under-exploited route. Perhaps with the development of USLPro as a real reserve league, we'll see more prospects going by this avenue.
Did Manneh sign with the Aztex while they were still a pro team? During the period where he played for them, they were in the PDL.
That's correct. There are a handful of examples of others who have left college early or skipped it entirely to sign in NASL/USL, but none have been high-profile and none have ever reached MLS except for Veeder (who didn't make much of an impression anyway).
Maybe. Oklahoma City is Kansas City's affiliate and OKC's manager is Jimmy Nielsen. It seems unlikely that KC wasn't involved with this move to some extent.
This. Academy players signing directly with USL Pro affiliates is something that I think we will see increasingly become standard. The new rules will allow MLS teams to keep the MLS rights to their academy players that they sign for USL Pro contracts. So unless they are ready to play at the MLS level, it makes a lot of sense to sign them to the USL level first and upgrade their contract if and when they prove ready. This way means that the back end of MLS rosters won't have to be cluttered with homegrown prospects that never play. It allows for MLS teams with tons of players in their academies to sign more prospects. Some have speculated that MLS will increase the size of their rosters in the new CBA, which I suppose is possible. But with the ability to sign players directly to USL Pro contracts, I don't see such a step as necessary.
Sacramento Republic has signed Mawolo Gissie, a Liberian-American '96 who has been with the Revs academy for the last 2.5 years. He's scored nine goals in nine games with the U18s this season. Unlike Leichty's situation, there's not much sign that the Revs have anything to do with this.