The schools are really supposed to be hands off. It's up to the players and the PDL teams to know the rules.
Not sure you've understood the rule correctly. A single PDL team can have up to five players from a college, but if three different PDL teams each have five players from the same college, then that program will have 15 kids in the PDL. One thing I hadn't realized was that the rule extends to practices as well as games. That one's annoying.
Yeah I totally misunderstood it at first. Still hope each MLS club establishes a PDL team that they oversee.
In Germany, the reserve leagues play mostly in the fourth division, but young players that are ready for more of a challenge get loaned to the 2nd Bundesliga. My guess is that it will work something like that.
And we have to remember this is a small first step to something that could look totally different in 3 years or so. For this season though, I hope the MLS Reserve League expands to at least 15-20 games realistically. Since the Conference teams play 3x a year, so should their reserve teams (although it'll be screwed up a little for teams with a USL affiliation and won't participate in the reserve league). Maybe make these reserve games double headers before the 1st team game, give it more of a game feel as opposed to playing on a practice field and I can watch the game in a lawn chair. They have bigger budgets, but I do like how Mexico has their setup on gameday with the 1st team, U20, and U17 all traveling together.
yes that is way to do it because for all the obvious reasons. The more games the more opportunities for youngsters to play. If MLS can duplicate this for every MLS game with a reserve game would be terrific
Daniel Stanese (formally of the Vancouver Whitecaps academy) signs with FC Nuremberg reserves after one year at Florida Gulf Coast university. The Caps had always wanted him, but I think he took a look at his other young academy graduates rotting on the bench and not progressing and said not thanks. If MLS had a real development system, would he have signed with this hometown team? Maybe, maybne not. I'll be interested to see his progress, vs the two academy grads from his year that had signed with the Caps.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...2/13/richmond-kickers-await-united-additions/ It will be interesting to see how old the players are that get loaned out. It may take some teams a while to develop discipline in this regard and loan out players in the 18 to 23 age range that have talent, yet need competitive professional experience. In my opinion, these spots should not be given out to 27 - 29 year olds. If you are that old and not a threat to even play with the first team, you shouldn't be on the roster in the first place.
So I guess that the focus of this discussion has changed now with the new MLS/USL Pro agreement, but I definitely see the NASL as becoming a bigger and bigger part of the process. As we develop more and more pro-ready players, we are going to need to have more than one level to loan them out to. There are going to be kids who can be "entry level" professionals (USL Pro), developing professionals (NASL), and solid professionals that teams don't have a spot on the game day roster for (loans to other MLS teams, loans to leagues in other countries). I see teams like the LA Galaxy and FC Dallas as having the opportunity to go to the latter kind of loan first because their academies are producing so many players. So a kid like Richard Sanchez maybe might end up playing for another MLS team or a Mexican league team on loan so that FC Dallas can look and see if he really is going to develop into the star that some people think that he will develop into without having to just sit him or banish him to USL Pro if he isn't ready to earn a starting spot in their lineup yet. It doesn't matter as much to me how many of these kids make it. It is more that they are being given the chance to get as good as they are capable of. When you eliminate huge, gaping holes from the system, then it allows you to focus on making all parts of the system better. Now, if the DA is clearly not getting players ready for the 18-23 year old stage of development, it will be more obvious because we won't be able to blame a player stagnating on having no plan for 18-23 year olds. Now the people responsible for player development can identify where in the process we are failing and work toward improving it. Our whole player development system was being held hostage by our lack of a cohesive plan for 18-23 year olds. I am sure that it will take a while to happen, but the next place that I see player development in the US going is people being held accountable for their stage of the player development process. If we can get to there, we will have taken another major step forward.
A thriving second and 3rd division minor leagues are more important to the growth of soccer and MLS than people want to admit. The hesitancy for players to initially bypass college to pursue professional soccer is not only the fear of not developing based on international standards but also the fear if they don't make it in 1st division MLS soccer that there is no league to support their passion and support them financially. I hope that MLS doesn't go around and just scoop into quality soccer communities for the sole purpose of making a short term money grab. Lower levels need their success stories too. Can you imagine a day that top prospects can train with USLPro teams who may not be good enough for MLS but still be able to make 75-100K in a second division environment for 8-10 yrs and what that would mean for more and better players to pursue professional soccer in this country. Then be able to retire into a host of 2nd division infrastructure jobs of coaching, administration, sales, marketing etc. .
One of the reasons that I am not as worried about a money grab by MLS is that our country is so darned big. There are so many markets that haven't been penetrated yet that can be at the NASL or USL Pro levels. I am more concerned with the lower leagues not losing the proper focus. I think that some people in traffic (though I don't have any idea of how many are under the understanding that the NASL can compete with MLS to become the primary pro league in the country. As long as they focus on becoming a really good second division, I think that they will be fine. Second division status is there for the taking, but MLS has already cornered first division status. Sometimes just understanding what is possible and what is not is half the battle. For some kids, "entry level pro" is their ceiling. Others may get to that developing level, etc., but the hope is that ALL of them are attempting to get to the highest possible level. One of the frustrations with England is that the country has 92 professional teams, plus countless teams playing at the regional level. They have amazing participation numbers, but I would submit that a large number of players in that system are not attempting to be the best players that they are capable of being. A large number of those players just want to win the game in front of them. England's highest two levels have improved thanks to the influx of foreign coaches and players, but a lot of the people in the system that are not in the top two leagues are doing pretty much the same things that they have always done. Once that mentality is established, it is almost impossible to undo. We will see what kind of mentality gets ingrained at the various professional levels.
All very true. My only contention is that a very important aspect of being a quality really good second division is having quality franchises in that 2nd division. While you're right about the size of our country I don't believe MLS flourishes with 26 or 32 franchises many that were once quality 2nd division clubs. I don't know what that magic number is for MLS but it shouldn't be any team that shows alot of quality support should now be MLS. I just hope they don't feel that they need to sit back and see who's good and chomp them up like some rich overlord selfishly stealing the hard work of others without some comprehensive business plan of quality and not quantity.
The DA club Scott Gallagher are behind the new St. Louis USLPro team. Hopeful to see an affiliation between them and Chicago Fire on the USL and youth level, allowing Scott Gallagher players to sign HG contracts with the Fire. http://www.stlouisuslpro.com/club.html
I agree with you about a quality second division. If you don't have a quality second division propping up the 1st division, large parts of the 1st division can get stale. I wouldn't mind, once the NASL expands and stabilizes (10-15 years from now?)if we started doing promotion/relegation between the two, but in the way that they do it in Mexico, where the top two teams from the second division play off for promotion and the bottom two teams from the first division play off for relegation. I think that this would be a great way to start, but NASL needs to spend a lot of time and effort developing as a league. They need to both expand and solidify. I hope that the levels under the top two divisions continue to mix a developmental element with the professional part. That is the big problem in England. The lower clubs and leagues see themselves as entities to themselves. This is a similar problem to what we have at the Youth levels of the game. Even though the players are getting paid, if you don't have a section of the pro level that is dedicated to a combination of getting better along with playing professionally then you tend to have a gap that a large percentage of the 18 - 23 year olds have a very difficult job bridging. You can have loans to all levels of the game, but you really need a level that is dedicated to helping young pros get better. I am also hoping the we solidify the PDL/NPSL level of the game as well. The college game is not going away any time soon. We need a way for players to stay in touch with professional development - something that we generally don't appear to be doing that consistently yet. It is not the responsibility of the NCAA to develop top players. We need a level to help players who choose the college path that helps them stay on track with their development. Right now it is too disorganized overall. We need more connections at this level to Development Academies as well as real (not superficial) connections to all levels of professional teams. We need to continue to fill in the holes, with a focus on the development process while we fill out the professional/adult amateur levels throughout this gigantic country. We have an opportunity, because it is so under developed, to do it right, but we also have the opportunity to do it wrong.