On this page there are several posts suggesting that money is the way to solve the "problem". That's not it. It's an attitude that has to become the leading item to get better players. Every parent (and than the rest will follow) has to embrace that his /her kid is going to have fun first and develop skills and tactics in the proces before physical emphasis and winning.
Ummmm...no. Money runmakes the world go around. You know why we have the best basketball players in the world? Because kids are saturated with advertising, tv broadcasts of every game, endorsements, etc., and the lure of a big payday if they practice hard each and every day. Basketball is constantly in front of their eyes and that's because someone is paying for that to happen. It's all directly related to revenue in the NBA. Revenue that dwarfs the MLS.
Easier said than done. It's trending that way slightly over time but not in a seachange kind of way. Here is the difference: In Europe and S. America, a kid can play for a club with a professional side. They can teach skills and tactics at the expense of winning, because parents and kids can point to youth players who rose through the ranks of the club and say to themselves, "They're a professional club. They know what they're doing. They're trying to make all of us good enough in the long term to get a shot at the more senior teams. I'm playing for free anyway." Exposure is easier to come by, so a player with good qualities playing on a team that isn't particularly competitive is much easier to find. In the US, a club has no connection to professional clubs, so they lack that built-in credibility of long term development. Many kids and parents with ambitions want to get noticed. Winning over tactics and skills can be a short cut. "If we win and get to the later rounds of the State Cup, maybe some D1 and D2 who can offer me a scholarship will be there. We're paying for this, so we want to see results on the field. The clubs that win tend to have political clout when it comes to ODP, and if my club wins and has clout, then I can pay more money for ODP for the chance to be noticed by other people. If we win and get accepted to tournaments, maybe I can get a look from college coaches. I don't want to play for a guy who wants me to look good losing 3-1 all the time. Etc. Etc. Etc." It's more difficult for people to "buy in" to the idea that winning will come eventually if tactics and skills are emphasized at the expense of winning early on. Ideally, yes. People should be more far sighted, but unfortunately things generally don't work that way w/ human nature being what it is.
not saying money wouldn't help. But it wouldn't make a significant difference if we continued to do the wrong things. Or let me put it this way. All the money in the world wouldn't increase the efficiency at which we develop players if the system we are using to develop them is inefficient. MLS is only 18 cities. Where does the kid in Florida go? or Georgia? etc. How difficult is it for him to go form A to B?
I think you are focusing on professional sides too much. In that case 18 clubs isnot much, but amateur sidess are all over the USA as in the Netherlands and it should be the distinction between a good and a bad amateur club by how they handle the youth players. If at that level fun and development are on the front burner than you get ahead. If on the other hand coaches want to brag about how good they are at winning, it is time to switch clubs.
Money pays for scouting, facilities, coaches, etc. If you have lots of money you can scout a greater area in more detail. If you have lots of money you have the facilities and means to train more players. If you have lots of money you can bring in the best youth coaches in the world. The nearest "higher level" training to Clint Dempsey was 2+ hours away and his family had to make a lot of sacrifices for his development. If it were another player and family maybe they don't make those sacrifices and Dempsey never becomes a pro player. In another country with greater economic incentive do you think Dempsey has to travel 2+ hours a day for training or that his family has to make those sacrifices? So yes, efficiency would be greatly increased. We would have a much higher probability of discovering and correctly developing more Donovan's, Dempsey's, Howard's, Bradley's, etc. Additionaly more money in MLS means more advertising which means you are reaching a larger audience of kids and marketing the sport to them. And increased salaries give the message to children and parents that you can have great success and celebrity playing the sport. This all helps to change a culture where soccer is largely in the background.
I think its pretty clear that MLS needs to set up MLS affiliated academies in those areas, even if they aren't connected to an individual team.
Agree but the difference between the two is that you also have a far ranging network of professionally-affiliated youth development in NED. The amateur sides have a blueprint that has already received "buy-in" from everyone. Here you have a sparse group of MLS-affiliated academies and that "buy-in" is harder to obtain. If every major market in the country had at least one MLS-affiliated training program, the trickle down in terms of approach and attitude would be a lot easier to obtain....but that takes money.
MLS as it is currently structured is the problem. It would do wonders for youth development and would help build up the lower divisions in our soccer pyramid if MLS would actually start acting like a proper D1 league. In every football league system on the planet(except for MLS) D1 clubs are buyers of talent from lower division clubs. MLS doesn't pay transfer fees. It's actually the business model of lower division clubs to develop talent and then sell the players on to higher leagues in the pyramid. This is actually the business model of NASL. No cooperation from MLS however. From NASL commissioner David Downs: "MLS doesn’t pay transfer fees to NASL clubs, so players on longer-term deals can’t move up, even if their Div.-2 team is fine with selling them." By MLS not paying transfer fees it means lower division players are less likely to get multi-year deals. Instead MLS waits until a player is out of contract and then if a team is interested in a player(this is really sinister) the team places a discovery claim on him. This discovery claim means the MLS team owns the rights to the player without the consent of the player. The MLS team then offers the player a take it or leave it non-negotiable contract. If the player says no he cannot sign with another MLS team. Now please tell me why any young prospect would want to go through this kind of system? http://the11.ca/2012/04/17/nasl-commissioner-speaks-about-ottawa-fc-edmonton-and-canadian-expansion/
Until the mls gets their academies up (if not to dutch at least to MFL standards) and working for about ten years the fed will have to continue to lead in development. From a purely logistical/numbers standpoint I always thought the best track for US Devleopment would be to heavily invest in LA, Chicago, and NYC area with a pro style/clairefontaine like program. Let the travel clubs et al. deal with the rest of the country. Those 3 areas have a pop of close to 42 mil. To put that in perspective Spains pop is 47mil* and Holland is 16 mil*. (*per google) Here we could concentrate our most talented development coaches with the kids at a really early age and start to impact things going forward. Now to many good coaches at high levels have to teach kids to trap. Because instead of teaching kids to trap the ball, their dad was trying to get the u-10s to play like ManU. In truth we prob would end up developing a few kids for Mex, Russia, Poland Etc, but the impact for our own team would be immense. i just dont feel like we have enough quality coaches to be spread around a nation as large as the US. Especially since our coaching focuses alot on tactics at even an early age, with little or no teaching of technical skills (sorry, running around cones doesnt count). Now even good prospects might not see a quality coach until they are 17-18. At that point its almost too late.