Is this a fair critique of the MLS academy system?

[jomario]

From the Kartik Report:
http://thekartikreport.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/friday-links

I missed this earlier in the week, but Phil Schoen who has covered and broadcast MLS longer than anyone (he was the play by play announcer for the first ever MLS match) has some very valid criticisms of MLS Youth Development. (http://www.goltv.tv/wordpress/?p=478) In fact they mirror my concerns.

Money Quote from Phil Schoen:

Instead of getting into fights with the New York Yankees, it would be nice if MLS would join the fray for a few of the young talents on display in Iquique and Tijuana. In reality, MLS needs to increase its commitment to youth in general.


Chile is hosting the South American under-17 championships while the CONCACAF version currently underway in Mexico and having had the chance to watch many of the games so far I think these are two more boats that the league is missing. It would be rather easy to put together a dream team of these pre-shaving starlets that would embarrass many MLS sides.

[ElRoss425]

I generally agree with the critique, but there are younger players playing in MLS. Ibrahim gets time, Mayen gets time, the Nyassi's and Mansally get time, Flores has gotten playing time.

Most of our younger players break in after the U-20 tournaments. Right now we have 5 seeing consistent playing time(maybe more) and a few others get a little time here and there. Of course I'd like to see them in more games before then, but what is a good balance?

[Stan Collins]

I'll post here what I posted on Schoen's column (which seems to be down at the moment), which is that MLS used to sign players younger than they do now, but got burned on it, because many of these players who had the talent weren't emotionally ready for pro careers. Even this year Felix Garcia was signed and then panicked at not being ready.

[USvsIRELAND]

It would be rather easy to put together a dream team of these pre-shaving starlets that would embarrass many MLS sides.

This part isn't true.

[Stan Collins]

This part isn't true. I am guessing that refers not to the best US young talents, but some all-star team of the best U18 players in the entire hemisphere. At that point, it might have some chance of being true (though good luck finding a defense or a credible goalkeeper) but the assumption is so "if my aunt had nads she'd be my uncle" preposterous that it's worthless in any discussion.

[Tmagic77]

I am guessing that refers not to the best US young talents, but some all-star team of the best U18 players in the entire hemisphere. At that point, it might have some chance of being true (though good luck finding a defense or a credible goalkeeper) but the assumption is so "if my aunt had nads she'd be my uncle" preposterous that it's worthless in any discussion.

Even then it isn't true. Every single MLS time would win the u-17 worlds without breaking a sweat. You might have some u-17 all star team squeak out a result here or there in MLS, but they'd be the worst team in the league.

[Stan Collins]

I shouldn't make it sound like I disagree with you. Although I suspect that there are some guys who could rip stuff up at 17 offensively, I don't think you could put together a defense that could hold up to this league's physicality. And the tactics are pretty weak at that age level, too.

[QuakeAttack]

I'm severaly disappointed at the current effort of MLS developing youth. Some teams don't even have youth acadamies yet (see Quakes). It's going to take time for the acadamies to get the right forumual for operating. The longer the wait, the longer its going to take to develop our youth to play professionaly...

[monster]

I replied (http://www.goltv.tv/wordpress/?p=478&cpage=1#comment-11882)

Yet another douchey criticism without looking at the situation fairly. It's all MLS' fault that the U-17's haven't signed and doesn't mean their agents are waiting to see if they can score a big Euro deal. Bryan Arguez is an example of how MLS failed even though DC United drafted him and got a transfer fee.

Phil just needed to write something and pimp his employer's broadcast so he did so without a lick of research and showed that regardless of who you work for, you can be as big of a hack as Kartik.

[Chowda]

One of the striking differences between American society and South American society is that in the US, there is always another way to prevent a life in poverty than the ability to kick a ball at age 14. The same can't always be said about South Americans. That is why MLS teams don't sweep down and buy 15-year olds on a regular basis and try to develop them. Even if they did have the talent, how many parents would let them? A free ride to college is worth a heck of a lot more over a lifetime, and would be worth more in real dollars if the player is a wash out.

Some MLS teams started competitive youth sides kicking and scraming all the way. It'll take years before many of the teams will truly be part of a top down club environment. But a lot of the youth players are going on to top quality schools with an MLS team claim on them. It'll only be a few years until some of them come back to their parent clubs and the academy system begins to "work".

I think that blog post is two years too late.

[Dirt McGirt]

I replied (http://www.goltv.tv/wordpress/?p=478&cpage=1#comment-11882)

Yet another douchey criticism without looking at the situation fairly. You're such an MLS homer that I doubt you could even begin to look at the topic objectively.

In all fairness the league does need to do a better job developing youth players but the league is still trying to establish a firm commercial footing for many of it's senior sides. And until that happens and every team is in a SSS with strong attendence I don't think we'll see the league pushing teams into setting up stronger youth programs.

[RsaSlvSweeper]

The Vancouver Whitecaps residency seems to work.

www.whitecapsfc.com/pdl/about/ (http://www.whitecapsfc.com/pdl/about/)

Highlights (from the website):

• Players finish high school.
• Players receive proper preparation for Europe (integration with Men's team).
• Players placed according to abilities at appropriate club in Germany to secure playing time.
• Players receive first-class conditioning training while in Germany throughout playing season.
• Players are developed during two year transition period toward U20 National programs.

This includes education through high school, and training facilities at Simon Fraser University for graduates (which would probably include college/university studies if a player wishes to go that route). Why can't MLS teams do something like this?

Edit: This seems to be the biggest sticking point between the new Vancouver MLS team and MLS itself. It seems to work for Vancouver, though. Maybe an overhaul for the MLS system is due?

[monster]

You're such an MLS homer that I doubt you could even begin to look at the topic objectively.

In all fairness the league does need to do a better job developing youth players but the league is still trying to establish a firm commercial footing for many of it's senior sides. And until that happens and every team is in a SSS with strong attendence I don't think we'll see the league pushing teams into setting up stronger youth programs.

Yes, I'm a homer to say that they need to make a lot of strides. It's a horribly biased point of view to equally point out the successes and failings of the system. I'm not objective because I think change takes time and needs to be viewed through the lens of the existing culture.

Just because you haven't been able to sustain a competent argument, don't try and paint me in a negative light. The MLS system has flaws, but an article pointing out a kid they drafted and got a transfer fee for as one of the things they have done wrong is patently idiotic.

[monster]

The Vancouver Whitecaps residency seems to work.

www.whitecapsfc.com/pdl/about/ (http://www.whitecapsfc.com/pdl/about/)

Highlights (from the website):

• Players finish high school.
• Players receive proper preparation for Europe (integration with Men's team).
• Players placed according to abilities at appropriate club in Germany to secure playing time.
• Players receive first-class conditioning training while in Germany throughout playing season.
• Players are developed during two year transition period toward U20 National programs.

This includes education through high school, and training facilities at Simon Fraser University for graduates (which would probably include college/university studies if a player wishes to go that route). Why can't MLS teams do something like this?

Edit: This seems to be the biggest sticking point between the new Vancouver MLS team and MLS itself. It seems to work for Vancouver, though. Maybe an overhaul for the MLS system is due?
The main reason is because they probably will have a lot fewer players and won't get the best ones because parents in the US still see club soccer as a path to a college career, not a direct path to the pros. It took hockey a while to get where they are, but now the junior system for US kids is much more structured.

The Academy League is only in its second year. MLS has only graduated two players to senior rosters, and one of them went to college for a year. The changes will take time. What Vancouver has is fantastic, and I hope they don't have to change it.

It really just underlines the difference in American and Canadian culture when it comes to thinigs like this. Neither side is right - that's just how it is, and we're not going to just convince parents to wipe out their kids' eligibility for college just so they might have a shot to play professional soccer down the road. There are too many elite clubs out there than offer high-level training for the parents who want their kid to go to college with soccer as an option.

[Dirt McGirt]

I'm not objective because I think change takes time and needs to be viewed through the lens of the existing culture.

Your post sounded like an apology. MLS has done a horrible job developing youth talent. I believe it will get better once the league is thriving financially but don't try and sugarcoat it. You're too busy pointing out everyone else flaws to see the massive holes in your own logic.

Your game is weak. Do yourself a favor and drop the insults. Play the ball not the man son.

[USvsIRELAND]

The Academy League is only in its second year. MLS has only graduated two players to senior rosters, and one of them went to college for a year. The changes will take time. What Vancouver has is fantastic, and I hope they don't have to change it.

I agree with this 100%. MLS Youth Development is going to take a while, thats just the way it is.

At some point however, MLS is going to have to sit down with the NCAA and straighten certain things out.

[monster]

I agree with this 100%. MLS Youth Development is going to take a while, thats just the way it is.

At some point however, MLS is going to have to sit down with the NCAA and straighten certain things out.
See, I disagree with that. The NCAA won't compromise. They just won't. It is perhaps the most obstinate organization outside of FIFA. only they know best. What MLS needs to keep doing is working with the USSF so the MLS youth teams and elite clubs provide a great preparation for a pro career. Then, there needs to be roster and/or reserve setups that let kids grow into the first team.

In my estimation, the most important things to making youth development successful are larger MLS rosters and a stable USL system that can provide young players with an opportunity to make a living playing soccer outside of MLS.

The NCAA granting some exemption to MLS won't happen. They haven't for hockey so I don't see why they would do it for soccer.

[Stan Collins]

The Vancouver Whitecaps residency seems to work. In Canada, they have no athletic scholarships. You try the same thing in the US, and nobody will attend your residency program because it violates NCAA amateurism standards.

Monster is bang-on about what the NCAA will give us (nothing). And battling the NCAA for prospects is a battle we'll lose until/unless we're prepared to give these youngsters an amount of money that currently, the league simply cannot afford.

So be prepared: MLS, even as the Youth Academy systems get geared up, will continue to use college for the one thing it can provide--a little free information about a player's quality.

Expect to see the Tyler Deric story repeated--hot Academy prospects spending a year or two in college proving themselves against older, stronger young men than themselves (something most of them didn't do the last few years as a youth), and then when passing that test getting signed.

The Youth Academy rules, it may reasonably be hoped, may get a lot of college sophomores to turn pro who otherwise would have gone to school another year or two even though they had surpassed that level as players.

It's not likely to generate 17 year old wunderkinds.

[Stan Collins]

Your post sounded like an apology. MLS has done a horrible job developing youth talent. I believe it will get better once the league is thriving financially but don't try and sugarcoat it. You're too busy pointing out everyone else flaws to see the massive holes in your own logic.

Your game is weak. Do yourself a favor and drop the insults. Play the ball not the man son. I didn't think his rebuttal was a masterpiece, but if one starts from the premise of 'I want it all and I want it yesterday' that the piece did, any sense of the feasible is going to sound like an apology.

As to legit league criticisms, they were about 2-3 years late to the youth development party. Around 2004 or 2005, when the league was successfully attracting lots of new investment and expanding successfully, the league could have said, "OK, concerns over our long-term future are now past. Now that we're past being uncertain we'd even be here to reap any rewards, we can start making investments into the future."

The reason they didn't one can almost understand--almost. Here goes:

College is free. Even if it did 30% of the development of a full system, it did so at zero percent of the cost, and that's some pretty good value engineering. So, the options were, spend no money and take what college gives you, or spend serious money to try to do better.

Problem: the better players weren't going to sell a lot more tickets, not unless they were so fabulously better that you couldn't even hope to keep them in the first place. So there was only ever going to be one way to recoup the serious money you were going to lay out--selling the players you've developed.

And the league didn't want to be one that intentionally develops players to lose them (but it also intentionally didn't want to pay them much, so what are ya gonna do?). They didn't want to advertise, "MLS--come see 'em before they're gone!" The Columbus Crew lost Brad Friedel, Stern John and Brian McBride in fairly rapid succession, and the league knew their franchise image took a hit.

What they didn't understand at the time was how inevitable this was (back then, it was still just a trickle of guys the league was losing, and it had not yet become apparent how much player salaries were going to go up in the post-Bosman world, because the Bosman ruling was still pretty new), and that the best--indeed only--choice was to take the pain, and try and make up for it by using the fees to being in other compensatory players.

Arguably, Brian McBride was only moderately more popular in Columbus in the late 90s than Schelotto is today, which is something else the young league could not have understood. They believed that the American-ness of players would make them more marketable, which it probably does (Schelotto is also a whole lot more influential than McBride ever was in a Crew uniform), but only to a point. So you can make up for a loss of a young "McBride-ish" player with a great vet from abroad, if you are really good at picking him out.

The league intellectually resisted these truths for some time, and this set back youth development about 2-3 years from where it could conceivably be. There could have been 10 callups, and at least a couple of home-grown guys making serious contributions to first teams by now, but there aren't.

--

So that's a criticism of the league that I think works. As to the particular critique, though, I don't find it valid, for the reasons I laid out in my prior post. Those guys we could have had if we'd started 2 or 3 years earlier, would still be 19 or 20, as a general rule, by the time they could make their presence felt.

It's cultural. Parents want their kids to go to college. College scholarships are worth a lot of money (if your soccer career crashes out, a scholarship is worth maybe $2M over the course of a working career), and are half the reason the parents put their kids into competitive programs in the first place. Major League Soccer doesn't have the money to compete with that, and especially not on a bunch of speculative prospects, half of whom they know will fail (they just don't know which half).

[JG]

In Canada, they have no athletic scholarships.

Not strictly true, but in any case NCAA soccer is certainly on the radar of Canadian players. I think the more important difference is that Canadian college tuition is cheap compared to the US, so losing out on a scholarship isn't such a big deal. I wouldn't be surprised if the average student at a Canadian school is paying less tuition than the average D1 soccer player.

While the Whitecaps setup looks impressive, it's way to early to draw any real conclusions.

Expect to see the Tyler Deric story repeated--hot Academy prospects spending a year or two in college proving themselves against older, stronger young men than themselves (something most of them didn't do the last few years as a youth), and then when passing that test getting signed.

They're essentially trying to use colleges as reserve teams, the bridge between the youth teams and the senior team. Which might be a better idea than the previous MLS reserve teams which didn't have enough players with real potential to make it worthwhile.

What will be interesting to watch is whether certain MLS academies develop relationships with specific college programs and start steering their players there. They have an opportunity to integrate college teams in their developmental structure that other North American sports don't have.