YNT-eligible MLS players: 2019/2020 Offseason thread

I’d agree with that. He’s the type of player that makes plays in the final third. He has a lot of skill on the ball and dribbling ability. I don’t know if there’s much end product to his game. I would say he’s more of a 10 than 8, but if he could play as an 8 defensively, that might suit his offensive game better. I think his offensive contributions are more about advancing the ball into dangerous areas than scoring or creating goal scoring chances.

 

I used to confuse him with Haak for some reason, then figured out who is who, but still think that they are of a similar potential level (MLS+), and have similar game, though Duke played more advancing position.

 

LAFC defeated Peñarol 2-0 last night

Goals:

• LAFC - Carlos Vela - 10'
• LAFC - Adrien Perez - 40'

Lineups:
LAFC 1st Half (4-3-3, left to right): Kenneth Vermeer -- Diego Palacios, Tristan Blackmon, Dejan Jakovic, Latif Blessing -- Joshua Perez, Kevon Lambert, Alejandro Guido (32' Erik Duenas) -- Brian Rodriguez (32' Christian Torres), Adrien Perez, Carlos Vela

LAFC 2nd Half (4-3-3, left to right): Pablo Sisniega -- Mohamed El-Munir, Jordan Harvey, Tony Leone (68' Diego Rosales), Erik Duenas (62' Younes Boudadi) -- Jordan Schweitzer, Bryce Duke, Jorge Gonzalez -- Christian Torres (62' Junior Flemmings, 83' Armando Avila), Adama Diomande, Jack Hallahan

 

Atlanta has a couple academy products playing with the first team in preseason:

#ATLUTD academy players Will Reilly and Tyler Wolff are with the first team at IMG Academy this week and played in Friday's scrimmage against the Red Bulls. Reilly got 10 apps with #ATLUTD 2 in 2019 in midfield, Wolff leads the U17 side in goals this season with 14 in 11 games

— ATLUTD Prospects (@ATLUTDprospects) January 27, 2020

Will Reilly who played with AUFC2 last year and Wolff.

They haven't released a full list of players with the team though.

 

Tyler Wolff is the son of former USMNT player Josh Wolff. He is born in 2003 and was with the Crew for a while. Even if he has a lot of natural talent Atlanta's inability to move players from the academy to the first team does not give me confidence in him meeting his potential.

 

FCD intrasquad scrimmage:

Preseason preparation ramps up with intrasquad scrimmage https://t.co/Ub8uRvblk1 #fcdallas #dtid

— 3rd Degree (@3rdDegreeNet) January 27, 2020

[Ferreira, Cannon, and Servania with the USMNT. Pomykal, Picault, and Cobra out with minor injuries. A lot of NTSC guys also came in as subs. David Rodriguez, Philip Ponder, and Imanol Almaguer for instance. Drafted guys also came in as subs. No sign of Sealy.

Folks will remember that in the past FCD used a lot of academy kids in preseason preparations. Those days are past. Its NTSC players that get these opportunities to impress the first team staff now.

Grey Team:


Orange Team

 

I don’t think he has the natural talent part either. Hopefully the younger crop at Atlanta are thinking of leaving the club. The team has had success on the field, but with that has come with a reputation of not developing academy players well once they are ready to play in the first team. That’s one of the byproducts of their strategy of building a club. It’s hard to feel bad for them, but I view their club as almost entirely a write off when it comes to integrating young Americans. The track record they are developing is an abysmal one.

 

What will Atlanta’s rep be once Bello plays a lot of minutes this season? Like he would’ve last season if he didn’t get injured.

 

Looking at Atlanta's track record, you have Miles Robinson on the GOOD JOB, NICE EFFORT column and George Bello in the as-yet-unknown column. Brandon Vazquez got more time than I expected -- though hardly an unmitigated success -- so I'll say neither good nor bad.

Then Carleton, Goslin, and Kunga look to be demerits.

This doesn't look like a bad track record at all, especially if you think the Carleton situation is self-inflicted. I'm not sure why this meme has taken hold so strongly.

 

Looking at Atlanta's track record, you have Miles Robinson on the GOOD JOB, NICE EFFORT column and George Bello in the as-yet-unknown column. Brandon Vazquez got more time than I expected -- though hardly an unmitigated success -- so I'll say neither good nor bad.

Then Carleton, Goslin, and Kunga look to be demerits.

This doesn't look like a bad track record at all, especially if you think the Carleton situation is self-inflicted. I'm not sure why this meme has taken hold so strongly.

 

Jesus Ferreira has apparently formalized his decision to play for the US and has filed paperwork to play in Saturday’s friendly.

He has been playing as a 9 in camp.

 

I think part of the reputation relates to Bello.

He suffered an injury in the first game of the season, re-aggravated it playing for the reserves, missed some time, then sustained a different injury while rehabbing the first injury and that new injury required surgery. He was supposed to return quickly from the initial injury, and ended up not playing for them the rest of the season. I don't think it was entirely convincing how they dealt with the injury.

He was also back playing in games in August, so part of their decision was not to use him from August until the rest of the season when they had an obvious need at LB. I think another part of the reputation is that there's been a lack of development in his game, aside from the injury. A large part of that may be that he missed time due to injury, but I can't remember anyone defending Bello's game over the latter half of 2019. Most seemed to sour on his game, and this was while he was on the field.

 

Speaking of ATL Youth prospects.

I wonder what is up with Chris Goslin? Played 78 minutes in USL last year. I think that was mainly due to injury(s).

Got cut. Doesn't look like he has resurfaced anywhere yet.

 

Burger king happened

 

Robinson was a draft pick. If Atlanta has done anything better than most is drafting players.

Robinson was over 20 when he got to Atlanta. We are talking about developing kids. Robinson was developed by a DA club in Boston and played at Syracuse.

Atlanta signed some of the most promising young American 17 year olds and destroyed them. Bello might come good, but he was benched for the second half of the season and looked lost at the U17WC.

It is not only Atlanta, very few MLS teams have developed anyone. Some are good to age 16, some are good till 19. Very few truly try and develop players for anything but MLS bench fodder.

 

Bello did get a pretty bad injury and Atlanta has had a presentation on how they try to prevent this by limiting the games/practices of players who have multiple commitments for various teams. But the problem is when he was healthy he really has not shown much progress since he really signed for Atlanta.

There is still a lot of potential in him from his pure athleticism but his ball skills, soccer IQ, crossing, and decision making has not really improved from when he was a u15 prospect. If anything most of them have actually regressed. He went from being THE american left back prospect to being 4th or 5th in the u20 depth chart behind KHF, Travian Sousa, Jonathan Gomes, and Leon Flach. For an area as talented and soccer crazy as Atlanta is for the club to only have truly produced one young american talent (who is actually from Boston) is completely unacceptable. They have screwed up Andrew Carleton, Chris Goslin, Lagos Kunga, and Patrick Okonkwo and they lost Zyen Jones. George Campbell and George Bello both have potential to be the first true breakout HG player but Campbell really lacks ball skills and Bello's progress has been ideal.

Personally if I'm Bello I take the first offer from a German club in July (he's 18 so he can be sold to Europe now).

 

RSL, Dallas, Galaxy (with the ones Gary doesn't rob them of), Union, NYRB, NYCFC, Seattle, SKC (they're trying their hardest with Busio), Revs, Rapids, DC, and Columbus all have developed contributing players for their first team. Houston with Tab will likely become a factory as well. Other clubs like Minnesota, LAFC, and the other new ones all are heavily investing in their academies but have not had enough time to reap the rewards of it.

 

I think your list is very generous to some of those clubs. Even so, that is less than half the league. Only two of those teams can be said to try and develop players for beyond MLS (NYRB, NYCFC). FCD has done it by accident mostly, but their owner is on record as saying their purpose is to develop players to stay in MLS and win MLS Cup.

I'd put the list of teams that really try and develop players at: NYRB, NYCFC, Seatlle, Philly, Colorado, FCD. LAG and DCU I'd say are teams that have not tried at all but sit on top of talent gold mines. That they haven't produced one Tyler Adams each is an indictment. Losing players to Germany is losing a player, not having them stolen. It is part of the challenge that everyone has to deal with (NYRB has lost as good players to Europe and still developed players).

 

Dallas definitely tries to develop players but they have not had a Euro ready prospect that they signed to a HG deal yet. They have shown with Chris Richards that if they get the offer they're willing. Putting Luchi as coach showed that they're fully invested in their academy and seeing guys like Pomykal, Fererria, Servenia, Cerillo, Cannon, and Pepi all get minutes shows that they're willing to develop players. If Paxton stays healthy and continues to perform as an 8 then I think he will get sold to Europe pretty quickly and they will plug and play Thomas Roberts in the gap he left. Unless Pepi completely flops he will also be a Europe bound player.

 

We will see. I'm just going with what Hunt has said. The goal is to load the first team with HG players and win the cup. He has never said the goal is to sell players and use the funds to invest in the team and more players. That Cannon will have to leave on a Bosman and Pomykal was given a new contract, kind of tells me that FCD is doing what Hunt says they are going to do.

Atlanta not even releasing players for NT camp is another ding on them. No team serious about trying to develop players would keep players out of NT camp.

 

Sure. But half the league is less than 10 years old.
A lot of the clubs that are now developing assembly lines to first team soccer (and abroad) are the early investors. Even a club like FCD only started in ~2007, so they've been at it for only 13 years.

Also worth noting that in every league on Earth there are clubs that use youth/player development as a primary component of their business model...............and there are others that don't. So it should be no surprise that in MLS there are clubs like Portland that just don't seem to care. Atlanta seems to be a club that'll promote 1 or 2 kids at a time.

FC Dallas has signed 11 former academy players to first team contracts in the last 3 years. If we start with Pomykal in late 2016, but wasn't able to play until 2017. [Pomykal, Ferreira, Reynolds, Cannon, Servania, Roberts, Richards, Cerrillo, Sealy, Pepi, and now Munjoma ] Out of 5 oldest of those contracts, 4 may have USMNT caps in the next few weeks. That doesn't count McKennie, who was at the academy for 7 years. He left for Germany in 2016. They're doing fine. I find criticism of the team that's doing the absolute best in the league, a little silly. But whatever.

Do people realize how many homegrown signings MLS teams have made since the start of 2019? According to wikipedia the answer is 65 (they say 66, but I don't count Zico Bailey). 11 of those, by the way, are from the 3 Canadian teams.

So we averaged 3 homegrown academy products per team since the start of calendar year 2019. [There were 24 teams last year, but we couldn't have expected anything from LAFC or Cincinnati.] That's nothing to sneeze at.

 

Signing the player to a HG contract is the easiest part.

Many clubs that are new were USL clubs or bought existing DA clubs. I don't buy the excuse of "newness". MLS teams have a monopoly in their given territories and should be able to get up and running in a short period.

Most MLS teams don't try. They only even have academies because they are forced to. Quite a few would love to get out of it entirely.

 

Just wanna say that it's January 28th and this is still the case:

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People said that Cannon would definitely be transferred this winter. Pomykal had a good chance too. MLS is refusing to transfer these players unless they get an insane amount of money for them and it's hurting their ceilings and our national team pool as a whole.

There's no way these players can compete in the future with those players who go straight to Europe a la Pulisic, Reyna, Llanez, McKennie, etc. It's possible that it's easier to become bad in Europe, but it's undoubtedly more possible to become a top player.

And don't bring up Adams. Red Bull transferred him out of MLS because it was still an internal transfer. That doesn't happen if he's on any other team in MLS.

 

That is the question if you think MLS’ main job is to strengthen the national

 

Has MLS gotten better? Can someone who supports the league explain to me where the league ranked compared to other leagues in the world five years ago and where it ranks now?

If it hasn't, what's the job of MLS then? Is it to be a semi-mediocre league? As @TarHeels17 pointed out, it's certainly not helping the National Team.