YNT-eligible lower-division pro players: 2018/19 Offseason thread

If you’re the kind of person who regrets not seeing Pearl Jam when they were a garage band, here’s your second chance to see the start of something special: Check out Ricardo Pepi.@NorthTexasSC’s season begins on March 30 at @ToyotaStadiumTX. pic.twitter.com/S1rAtmegIS

— Dan Hunt (@DanHuntFCD) March 6, 2019

 

Danny Leyva played a great game.

 

I have watched every minute the Crew have played for the play 4-5 season. Our current CB options are the deepest and best part of the teams as a whole. Keita was never going to get minutes when the team has literally 4 proven MLS starting CB on the roster. They had one of the best defenses in the league last year. Not sure why you would think it’s average. Their play as a group was the strength of the team last season.

Truth is everything the team did for the last 5 years has a streak of being half assed. Look at the decision they made with their academy team. The owner didn’t care or give the resources needed to make it work. We will see what happens now that we have different people in those chairs.

 

I think you misinterpreted what I said. Its a deep group, but its a group without any players who are that great. The strength of it might be that there's not much drop-off from 1-4. For a lot of teams, once their starters are out of the lineup, their defense falls apart. I think you would agree with me that none of the Columbus CB's are in the top 5 players on the team. Keita has potential to be the type of player who is sold to Europe and becomes a NT player at the position.

 

Diaz can't stop scoring. How do these USL deals work? Is it only up to the club whether the options are picked up (if every academy deal has an option in it)? A player like Diaz is probably attracting a lot of interest abroad. Why should he sign with a team that has not yet shown that they'd integrate any of these players? If Bassett is an MLS starter, Diaz is capable of playing in MLS this season.

Ocampo-Chavez is back from injury. He made a late appearance in this game. I don't know how Seattle is going to deal with getting those two minutes in the same team. It would make a lot more sense to rotate them between MLS/USL, but Seattle has Kane and Mbappe as their first team strikers.

 

I haven't heard of any player options in MLS or USL.

He probably signed with Seattle because he's been with with them for years, they have a nice USL stepping stone that they are using to give him and all his U17 champion teammates a platform, and because they've likely articulated a vision and pathway to all their youngsters. The Sounders are doing a lot of good things with this group, but haven't integrated them in MLS because they are still 16-17 years old. I don't see reason to be needlessly negative about it.

 

If I were an agent of one of these young players, I'd try to negotiate a release clause that was acceptable to both sides. If I represented the team, I'd be looking for a shorter USL deal at a lower salary with the option to convert it to a longer MLS deal at a mutually agreeable higher salary.

And for top prospects that choose to start their careers domestically, I'm a huge fan of the Tyler Adams and Alphonso Davies path. Sign and start playing in USL at 15/16 (preferably for a team that's good at development), move to MLS as soon as you're ready and position yourself for a sale to Europe in the 17-20 range. The opportunity for these kids is unprecedented in our soccer history and I think it will greatly impact our national team as the system continues to improve and mature.

 

@ielag mentioned that MLS teams have options to turn these deals into first team contracts.

16-17 is not that young for highly rated prospects. There are a number of 01's and 02's in MLS who are on first team contracts and first team contributors. USL is a good platform to develop players who can't yet play in MLS. When you use it as a holding ground for players instead of integrating them into the first team, you get outcomes like Ledezma deciding not to sign with RSL. What if RSL had offered him a HG deal and offered to integrate him into the first team? For a top level prospect (and some of these Seattle players are), a USL contract is not an attractive offer. It might be for marginal prospects or the incredibly young prospects who aren't yet anywhere near the first team.

 

I would have totally agreed with you two seasons ago but not last year. Mensah was as good as any center back in the league. He was dominate but for a variety of reasons he didn't get a lot of credit for what was a very good season. Now I agree with your larger point which is none on the roster have the upside that Keita has but with the type of offeseason this team went through this was a very logical plan for him. New head coach, all new assistant coaches, new technical director (was with the club in a different role), new team president and most importantly new owners. All of that happened 8 weeks before the season started. Didn't really give them the time to do a lot which why I was VERY impressed they were able to get him signed in the first place.

For fun the here is my top 5 Crew players last season.
1. Steffen
2. Mensah
3. Zardes
4. Valenzula
5. Artur

 

I think a fair agreement for the option years would be that the player and team both have to agree to pick it up. If a player is a viable prospect, and it should be mentioned that this discussion isn't about all academy players who sign USL deals, it makes no sense for the team to not pick up the option. They are cheap roster depth, regardless of how much the club is integrating them into first team minutes.

This doesn't make sense for the players though. I don't think any very good prospect should be signing a USL contract past age 15, but if they do, they should have some control over the options. We also do see with the Pepi/Sealy contracts that players do have some leverage. I don't know how Sealy did so, but Sealy leveraged his situation into a first team contract, while Pepi didn't.

 

I think what players want is to know that there is a plan. RSL didn't really have a plan for Ledezma, they belatedly offered him a deal when it was clear that he had strong interest elsewhere.

Apparently, each and every one of the 10,000 Sounders academy players who signed USL deals disagree with you. Seattle has a plan and is doing a good job of using USL as a platform for players to experience pro minutes and develop. They must be doing a really good job of articulating their plan and the pathway to MLS because all of these kids signed on.

The Sounders MO of offering USL deals to academy kids is so off-putting that they haven't lost a single prospect to foreign clubs.

I really don't see a problem here. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of these kids get bumped to MLS deals before the end of the season. All of them, including guys with ~400 career pro minutes like Alec Diaz, can still benefit from playing for Tacoma right now.

 

The MLS contract conversion option and extension is obviously in the team's interest, but I think it's fine from a player's perspective if the salary bump is sufficiently high and if the release clause is low enough to enable the player to explore "reasonable" transfer options. We're in the really early days of these contracts and I expect both sides to get more savvy about securing their own particular interests while striking the right balance as time goes on.

 

Every team offers a plan to the academy products they sign. They'll stick to the plan, if it makes sense for their larger squad plan, and only for that reason. In some cases, they don't.

This discussion isn't about every one of the Seattle academy players. Leyva is 15. 15 year olds don't play in MLS. Players like Vargas, Robles, Malone probably don't have much professional interest from Europe. For players like Atencio, Ocampo-Chavez, Diaz, I don't think it makes sense to sign away their careers to Seattle on a USL contract. In Diaz case, he's broken out a little more recently, so its hard to blame him for doing so last season. Also, we don't know the considerations that each of these players have. I'm merely coming from the perspective of what I think makes the most sense for these players to develop into good players.

Does Seattle have to become as bad as Atlanta or LAG for them to start being discussed as a team that is not integrating their best 17 and 18 year olds? In fact, those two teams are starting to integrate players of that age, Seattle isn't. When you start developing a lot of academy talent, there's an expectation that you will use them in your first team. Having a USL pathway should not be something we applaud. It should be mandatory for a team not to receive criticism. I don't applaud a team for signing players like Atencio, Ocampo-Chavez, Diaz to USL deals. They'll get a chance somewhere, regardless. A team should be applauded for developing the middle-tier, who ten years ago had no pathway to professional football before age 22, into first team players.

 

Why are you so sure that Diaz, AOC, and Atencio are ready for MLS minutes?

Why are you so sure that these players cannot learn and develop a considerable amount playing for Tacoma?

Why do you post in other threads that 01s and 02s like Diaz and AOC aren't top-line talent like Alvarez and Bello, then ask in this thread why they aren't on the same club trajectory as those two?

Why do you have no patience to allow the development of 17 year old players to occur at a normal pace?

Why, given the that we used to complain endlessly that non-MLS-ready teens had nowhere to develop, are we now complaining about a situation in which a whole team's worth of teens is getting USL playing time?

 

Connor Presley '98 signed with Loudoun United a few days ago.

https://www.loudoununitedfc.com/news_article/show/1001771

They also signed a former academy guy, Sandor Bustamante '99. I don't think he's related to Antonio.

https://www.loudoununitedfc.com/news_article/show/1002507

 

Where did I say this?

You are essentially asking for no analysis or questions about what Seattle is doing because they are using a reserve team for its basic function.

 

I wonder when DC plans to start playing academy players with this squad. Nelson Martinez, Alexis Cerritos, Yow, Nyeman, and Jacob Greene all seem like deserving players. Maybe they're waiting for the team to actually get a little bit of chemistry before pulling the kids in, but who knows. I guess it's up to ABMOD.

 

I'm all for analysis and questions, it's just that I think analysis and questions of Seattle's use of their USL team should result in "so far, so good" conclusion.

They certainly run the risk of joining the ranks of MLS clubs that have struggled to integrate young talent. However, my perspective is that they have not yet reached a point where we can render judgment one way or the other. All of these 01s and 02s belong in USL anyway and none of them have done enough in USL to make a strong case for MLS yet (I expect that to change for a few by the end of the year).

If we are sitting here next year and nobody is even getting sub minutes for the Sounders, I'll have questions.

 

NYRBII starts Nealis, with Mines, Zajec, Elney, and academy GK Francesco Montali on the bench

SPR starts Freeman, Lindsey, Kuzain, Harris, Hernandez, with Thompson and academy MF Jake Davis on the bench.