The idea that the Revs don't already do this is just shocking to me. What are they? 10 years behind some of their rivals? I will agree with @ussoccer97531 on this. From a results perspective, their performance has been bad. But don't we always say that results aren't the most important thing at the youth levels? I've seen them a couple of times this DA season, and the games were close against good opposition. THey didn't seem to have that difference-making kind of impact player on their team. You can watch a DA game, and see how much of a difference one star kid like a Gio Reyna can make. They don't have that. So their teams seem to have a lot of 1-1, 1-0, 0-1 kind of games. At least that's what I've seen at the U17 level with them.
A lot of things that the Revs do are "shocking", but not actually shocking, if you know what I mean. The "results don't matter" mantra was a reaction to US youth coaches trying too hard to win for the wrong reasons - development-free kick-and-chase to early maturing forwards. I think the pendulum may have swung too far, though. If a team is getting destroyed every week, it's not unreasonable to conclude that it is not filled with prospects. Maybe a close observation might reveal that there's one quality player surrounded by a sea of dreck, but that's probably the best-case scenario. In any case, the Revs are rarely outstanding, but usually do reasonably well in their DA division. Their current U17 team gets very poor results, but their U15 team leads the Northeast and their U19 team has a middling record but is in 3rd place behind Montreal and NYCFC. The only other MLS clubs with U17 teams that have records even close to as bad as the Revs' U17 team are Chicago and San Jose. Not surprisingly, all three sucked at the GA Cup. The Revs academy isn't good, but the U17s probably aren't reflective of the overall quality.
What's disappointing to me is that the Revs are just the type of team that should be on the leading edge of the homegrown initiative/development academy. Their management is clearly not going to spend the big money to sign a Zlatan or Giovinco. Like FCD and RSL, they should be looking for an edge by developing their own homegrown players. And they've done it to some degree with players like Fagundez and Caldwell. It just seems like they haven't invested enough in order to expect waves of talent coming thru like that at NYRB. And if they think the talent pool in New England isn't good enough to support this strategy, then invest specifically and heavily at the U12/U14 levels now so that 5 years from now the U17/U19 levels do have that talent.. So their current model is building by the draft and looking for bargains in the foreign market and MLS scrapheap. That's not going to cut it in the East short-term or long-term.
This has always been the model. The Revs usually have halfway decent talent, at least, but when was the last time they had a fully balanced and coherent roster? They do things like pick Kei Kamara off the scrapheap even though he obviously doesn't fit into the team. All Kamara does is head home crosses, and then he's on a team filled with not-particularly-fast, tricky attackers who like to play a short-passing game. The Revs' best run of years was backed up by some epic drafting: 2002: Twellman, Joseph 2003: Noonan 2004: Dempsey, Dorman 2005: Parkhurst, Riley, Larentowicz* *2005 had a four-round SuperDraft and a four-round Supplemental Draft. In the last round of the latter (effectively the 8th round of the draft), Larentowicz AND Wondolowski were drafted, along with Dan Kennedy and Dan Gargan. Crazy stuff for that low in the draft.) That's an insanely good haul, even for an era in which the league was smaller (hence second round picks were the equivalent of today's late first round picks) and more American talent came through the draft. Today, getting one MLS Best XI-caliber player in the draft would be a miracle. Four in four years? That ain't happening ever again, so the Revs have to get better at something else.
Yup. We're on the same page. And lets be honest they did get guys off of the MLS scrapheap that have contributed mightily. They got Lee Nguyen from Vancouver for squadoosh. Its just you get the sense that with clubs like Atlanta, Toronto, NYCFC, etc. really thriving now in the East.....................that strategy isn't going to cut it. The Revs really should move in the NYRB direction in terms of their business model, but it just doesn't seem like its happening. They need to double down on their academy, and maybe like FCD they're going to go thru a lot of tough times before the good times come. FCD went thru years and years of woeful mediocrity before their homegrown initiative paid off under Pareja with trophies. Last year in MLS there was actually an inverse relationship between homegrown minutes and playoffs. The top six in homegrown minutes last season all missed the playoffs or barely snuck in. The Revs are in there because of Caldwell and Fagundez. We don't want this to be a trend at all year after year.
When counting clubs homegrown minutes there should be two numbers. One for ones still playing at home and another that counts those playing for other teams. No way to count those in other countries but FCD has a lot of ex-players playing for other teams in MLS. Those like Richard Sanchez they sold for $1 million. They developed him and got value back and he's still playing and now in the league.
There should also be an age cut-off for these minutes charts as well like U22 or U23. The Revs play Scott Caldwell. The fact that Caldwell was a HGP is really irrelevant in this discussion at this point. Same basically goes for Deigo Fagundez at this point. He is just 23, but has been a pro since 2010. The interesting data is teams that play young players and/or produce younger players that may play for other teams not really teams that play 27 year olds or teams that play players that turned pro 8 years ago.
Weakest part of his game, but thats now goals in back to back matches. The guy who usually films the DC United U-17 games didn't put last week's match on youtube. Hopefully this week's match is there. Booooom! What a goal from @MNyeman 2-0 DCU— D.C. United Academy (@DCUyouth) April 22, 2018
https://www.si.com/soccer/2018/04/23/mls-ambition-rankings-numbers-details-western-conference Take it for what it's worth, but according to this, the Galaxy spend $6.5m per year between the academy and the USL team. I'm sure that's not much compared with the big teams in Europe, but for MLS teams, it's a big chunk of change.
Thanks for posting that. Houston should just change their slogan to: “we can’t disclose that information”
That’s a great snapshot into the Western Conference teams, provides a real comparison from youth development through first team spending / philosophy towards ccl...very informative...btw, the complex in Herriman (RSL) is simply incredible...amazing to see what youth investment can really look like with that kind of investment
The Galaxy management is full of insiders who hadn’t demonstrated anything before they were hired for their position. Brian Kleiban was the exception. Too early to see how it will turn out. The problem is that we don’t have a long enough record of development in this country to clearly establish who is good and who is bad.
Kleiban is another recruiter, nothing will change. So Cal has better weather and more soccer crazy families than any other area. It used to contribute a lot to NT. The current model siphoning most of the talent to Galaxy and getting kids stagnated there. Hopefully LAFC will be run differently.
All coaches recruit. There is nobody who just tries to develop kids who simply show up for tryouts. There is always a sorting process. Kleiban was at FC Barcelona (now called Total Futbol Academy) where he coached a U11 team that had Uly Llanez, among others. He brought them to Chivas USA and then to the Galaxy when Chivas folded. So we should have a better idea of how he, and the Galaxy DA, are developing players in the next year or two, as Llanez, Efrain Alvarez, and a few others progress. Kleiban should not be held accountable for how the '99s and older turn out, all players who he did not recruit and who had a limited time frame being coached by him.
Is he eligible for USYNTs? Has he ever been called up? I feel like I should know this but I have no clue.
Not yet. He's Liberian, and we all know the story there. The two best Liberian players already play for our NT, so unless he really wants to play for Liberia instead of the USA in a way that Nagbe and Weah didn't, he'll be playing for the the USA as soon as he's eligible. He's going through the process right now of becoming eligible, and DC's helping him out with that. He's been in the country a few years already (maybe more), if you go by his DA listing.
In case this link stopped working..................... 🎧 📺 Take an inside 👀 at the @NERevsAcademy, from the club's front office, to @MLS Homegrown Players, and current #NERevs Academy players ⬇️https://t.co/xhLm50CqpS pic.twitter.com/dliLRyN8WO— New England Revolution (@NERevolution) May 1, 2018
Kind of a pretty big coincidence that Kenny Cushing stopped streaming the DCU 16/17 games right after the GA Cup finished. It’s not really a secret that there are scouts all over Dallas for that in addition to the teams that play in it. I have to imagine every single one of them would love to pluck Nyeman away for free. There was a lot of talk on Twitter about him as that tournament ended. Obviously, that’s all just speculation, but I’d feel better about the situation if he was eligible and had been in the YNT setup.
I posted this in the MLS-in season thread. Write up of FCD versus Solar U19 game from this weekend for your enjoyment. They demolished Solar without Richards and Roberts (both in Germany), as well as Padilla (injured at the Dallas Cup). Catching up with the FC Dallas U19s against Solar SC https://t.co/1WdRw8OOTZ notes and pics from the DA game.— 3rd Degree (@3rdDegreeNet) May 7, 2018 Also, here are the boys with Bayern. enjoying the time here in munich with my boy tommy , amazing experience 🤞🏽 pic.twitter.com/ZYqfWIZhq9— chris richards (@eastmamba) May 6, 2018
Interesting conclusion in the article. I'm not sure any player played worse than Ferri at that tournament. I can't even begin to imagine how someone would conclude he was the best. "For Solar, the biggest missing piece is Blaine Ferri, who's with the US U19 team in Slovakia. Ferri was arguably the best US player in the last US U17 World Championships and missing him is a massive blow for Solar I would think." The article notes that Reynolds was playing RB, reason unknown. Servania dominated and scored two goals, Ferreira had a goal.
One can argue he was the best player at the last U17 World cup, but they'd lose that argument fairly easily. As far as Reynolds playing RB, he seems to have been training there quite a bit recently. I had noticed he was training there the previous week with the first team. He's still really young. A 2001. Still eligible for the FCD U17s. It could be that they're training him to be more of a RB/RW as opposed to a RW/target forward. Still a developing youngster. We'll see............................