Really? I was thinking the opposite... Cher Landon Altidore Adu Kirovski Some dudes at 1860 München And some other dudes that I can't think of in England. All of them were signed in their teens. Can't really think of any quality teens that have been signed from the USA in the past two three years. I am obvi not talking max cream quality. Apart from that, the almost exclusive main euro growth, at least from a usmnt denominator are German Americans... And the junior Flores story.... Oh and mr. Freeze
Wow, he's 16. He seems to have the physicality to play at the professional level right now too. If I were SKC I would try to get him as much USL/reserve minutes as possible, and maybe try to get him sparse minutes in home games this season. I think it's better for young player to get professional minutes before going to big clubs over seas.
uhhhhh... Josh Perez...Fiorentina Danny Barbir...Manchester City Kainoa Bailey...Bayer Leverkusen Russell Canouse...Hoffenheim Rubio Rubin...FC Utrecht Emerson Hyndman...Fulham Luca de la Torre...Fulham Ben Lederman...Barcelona Josh Pynadath...Real Madrid That's just off the top of my head
Curious if you've even seen what a youth team schedule looks like from, say, Germany. Now compare that to a USL Pro schedule, or KC U18s schedule and do a little counting.
Lederman at Barca, Palbaulm, and Sonaro at Bocca, Barmir by Man City may sign soon, Lennon and Pelosi at Liverpool, Nicholas Taitague, is being heavly scouted by Man U, Flores at BD all immediately come to mind as US youth being looked at by big clubs. I think the number would be bigger but having to leave the country is no easy thing for kids. It just seemed like recently a lot of our youth players were being noticed by big clubs in huge numbers, almost " over night"
I put their ages (i think) in your quotes. To my knowledge, not one of them has started a minute of any first team game. Whereas "my" teenagers at least got a couple of starts before being benched.... Karbasyaboom (arsenal) Spector Those dudes that were at Liverpool Subotic Ibisevic Connor Casey Several others that were violently taken from my memory by disappointment. Lol, hell, yank at Turino? All of these guys were "homegrown" teens getting minutes on their respective first teams. I can not really think of one home grown teen that has started in the past three to four years in a serious league... Only teens to start play in a serious league are non USA born(ish) prospects. As far as euro teams recruiting "more" USA players more than before... I don't see it. In fact, given mls expansion of potential soccer growth as a profession, one would expect a lot more players in Europe which probably indicates how well mls has done at retaining USA talent.
If you go over to the Youth YA forum, we track all the attention youngsters receive and our youth NT's are being raided by pretty decent to top clubs at a rate never seen before. Confidence in the American youth player is skyrocketing. We're constantly seeing players trialing and/or signing with clubs, good sized clubs, abroad. It'll only continue. A difference here is Brown signed a HG contract before many of our youth NTers do. Property of SKC although I think staying at SKC makes sense now. When he's 18/19 if he not getting good mins, then we might have an issue. A bigger issue for me here is we don't hear about bids like this because most youth NTers getting interest/offers aren't signed to HG deals so they're free. Brown is more an exception after signing the HG deal so Juventus has to offer good money for him. It begs the question with many other prospects going overseas, how much money is MLS potentially losing out on by not having most of these prospects signed to youth contracts? Brown isn't the top young talent getting interest. If he's getting a 1M bid, I wonder what the bids of a few others would have looked like had they been signed to contracts earlier on. Sign these prospects to youth contracts and sell some of them and suddenly MLS has more funds to actually get a decent reserve league up and running which helps develop more prospects. I'd think that 1M bid if accepted can fund an SKC reserve squad for at least a season. But youth prospects are leaving in numbers never seen before and MLS doesn't have a system in place to at least get compensated for most of them as Liga MX and Euro clubs are in fact raiding our youth NT's and more often than not are getting some very good prospects for free. I posted an article last year somewhere around here with an interview with a Liga MX scout who basically said our system was not one he understood and made little sense as he can go to academies, combines and various youth matches, scout, then approach players and offer to sign them and basically our youth structure has no system in place to prevent them from scalping young talent and at the least get compensated for it. I think Tijuana alone has something like 7 or 8 Americans in their reserves.
I said 50 games in a highly competitive environment. USL Pro rosters are filled with 30 year olds collecting a paycheck.
Oops, meant youth NT forum. https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/forums/youth-national-teams.255/ If you go through posts over the last year alone, there's dozens of prospects who are either trialing at a number of clubs abroad or have already signed.
Ahh thanks, but dmn and us others over here at the ya forum have been doing a pretty good job over the past 14(ish) years. I guess my point is, after a long life of tracking LOTS OF EXCITING prospects, don't get your hopes up too much, least of which before they even play a minute of first team games.... I guess that is why I am not really interested in any of the potential players.... I guess my generational terminology would be I/we all suffer from Freddy Adu Trauma Syndrome or (FATS)
Statistically, the vast majority of the top (for example) few hundred American-based youth players in any birth year never leave the country. Are we approaching the point where the number that do is more than anecdotally significant? To be honest, I doubt it. That doesn't mean it's not exciting when this or that player shows up here or there, but I'm not convinced that we have enough data to draw useful conclusions.
No one said they're getting their hopes up. There's a difference between following a player's progress and hyping a player as a result of their progress. If you don't frequent the YNT forum that's your loss because it's the best forum on BigSoccer.
Appreciate it, however, tracking teenage boys on the Internet with other older men just isn't my thing. I KID I KID! I will check it out, thanks.
I'm not getting my hopes up. Some will succeed, more will fail as is usual with sports. My point is our youth NTers are rated higher now than ever before and are getting more opportunities abroad than ever before. How it pans out we'll have to wait and see. This generation is still too young to tell and needs time to break through. Just playing the law of averages though a few will break through at these clubs in 3-4 years and it will be quite interesting if a player moves to 1st team action after being in a Liverpool, Fulham, Fiorentina, Dortmund academy, among others.
I'm guessing Juventus would put him with their Primavera team, which would still be a very high level of competition for a 16 year old, considering the average age in it is around 18-19. Here you can get a look at all the other teams in the league this season: http://www.legaseriea.it/it/campionato-primavera-tim-trofeo-g.-facchetti/squadre
(ITA) This says a deal is in place for Palmer-Brown to stay with #SportignKC until he turns 18, then join Juventus. http://t.co/UfeiAVZ6zJ— Andy (@AndyEdMLS) January 24, 2014 So I was right?
About what? I don't buy the article, because part of it claims that the agreement is for $250,000, which can escalate a bit based on some other factors. Why would they turn down a guaranteed cool mil, only to BIND yourself now into accepting a quarter of that guaranteed 2 years down the line? Doesn't make sense, so I have a hard time taking this seriously.
About the "buy & loan to MLS" option. There's no guarantee any of these rumors or any of these dollar figures are accurate. But Erik is 16 (turning 17 in April) and he isn't eligible for an international transfer right now. So it's hard to take the original $1M offer seriously either. We will just have to see what shakes out.
It'd be pretty cool to see a young American at Juve. They have a solid track record of developing young CBs.