FCD's next-man-up philosophy on display. FCD asst. Josema Bazan pulling Thomas Roberts from Academy training to pro training mid-session pic.twitter.com/DYMiOIGCD2— Carter Baum (@CarterBaum) August 29, 2017
DA matches begin this weekend. I'll be @ Rio Tinto to watch RSL v. Portland Timbers tomorrow. Should watch both the 16's and the 18's, and will post my impressions.
I'm considering doing the same. You happen to know if rosters are posted anywhere? I can find last year's on the DA website, but can't find this year.
I just checked, both Portland & RSL have their rosters posted. http://port.ussoccerda.com/home.php http://rsla.ussoccerda.com/home.php
Looks like Peretz48 posted them...we just got the link from RSL last night...I'll be curious to see which team some of the RSL boys play with tomorrow (i.e. Booth who just returned a few days ago).
I was going to say, I checked a couple days ago, so they must have JUST posted. I'm also curious where some kids play. Booth is the obvious one, but aside from him, Arriaga, Ochoa, and Ortiz have some YNT experience, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them playing up. Personally I'd love to see Booth held out of both games, and saved for the Monarchs game tomorrow night. That may go for Soto too. As usual, both teams should be among the best in the country. And now that the academy isn't 700 miles away, I'd like to catch a handful of games this year.
According to my sources (son @ RSL), Arriaga, Ochoa, and Ortiz are set to play with the 16s tomorrow (not sure on Booth).
Some movement amongst top players in the DA as outlined in this twitter feed: https://twitter.com/USAprospects Recruiting has become such a critical part of academy success. One the recruits that probably fell under the radar was Jack Panayotou moving to the Revs. He's been on the radar here in Mass for a while. One will also note that Cappis, the reigning Central Conference Player of the Year, moved to FC Dallas from the Houston Texans. Not to the Dynamo..................ouch. Taylor Davila to Los Angeles Galaxy (from Real So Cal) Jesus Sahagun (back) to Weston FC (from Malaga CF) Nico Garcia-Morillo (back) to Weston FC (from Atletico Madrid) Adrian Wibowo to LAFC (from Total Futbol Academy) Cade Hagen to Sockers FC (from Chicago Fire) Tristan Viviani to Silicon Valley SC (from Juventus Sports Club) Luke Hansen to Colorado Rapids (from Colorado Rush) Justin Garces to Atlanta United (from Kendall SC) John Murphy to New York Red Bulls (from PDA) Bryang Kayo to DC United (from Bethesda SC) Jacob Thomas to NYCFC (from Met Oval) Tayvon Gray to NYCFC (from Cedar Stars Academy) Joseph Koroma to NYCFC (from BW Gottschee) Tyler Shaver to NYCFC (from Beachside CT) Jack Panayotou to New England Revolution (from Global Premier Soccer) Samuel Sarver to Columbus Crew (from Cleveland Internationals) Logan Kowalczyk to Columbus Crew (from CSA Wolves) Jose Rivas to Columbus Crew (from Weston FC) Sebastian Serpa to Portland Timbers (from AS Bari/Weston FC) Akil Watts to Portland Timbers (from IMG Academy) Edson Murguia to Real So Cal (from Chicago Fire) Cameron Dunbar to Los Angeles Galaxy (from Albion SC) Bogart Roca to Los Angeles Galaxy (from Real So Cal) Matthew Hundley to Colorado Rapids (from Real Colorado) Christian Cappis to FC Dallas (from Texans SC Houston)
FCD's U18 roster is up as well, although not with many players yet. http://fcdl.ussoccerda.com/sam/teams/index.php?team=3934760 Some new recruits other than the aforementioned Cappis, who we stole out of Houston. A player I don't recognize is Christopher Richards. A quick google search indicates a player of that name from Alabama that played for a team called the Hoover Phantoms. Seems right. He's already committed to play at UNC, so he must be pretty good. There's also Holland Rula, who appears to be a recruit from the IMG academy. He also appears to be from Alabama. A defender that's already committed to play at Wake Forest. The FCD U18s should be loaded again this year then. Bryan Reynolds and Brayan Padilla in the attack (at least for the first half of the season.) Former USYNTers Jalen James and Cole Guindon are back. Who's running the show in the midfield? A certain Diego Pareja.................. He had a serious injury last season (ruptured his spleen after a collision with a goalkeeper) and we haven't really seen him step into the limelight yet. Could be this season. I really haven't seen a lot of him at all, but have heard good things. In case you're interested, he was in fact born in Dallas.
FCD's U18 roster might look small because they plan to use some guys from the U16s? The Revs usually have a tiny looking U18 roster because they play so many players up.
Yeah, who thinks Efrain Alvarez will spend most of the year with the U17s after scoring 12 goals in 14 games at a higher level last season? Another factor is that a good chunk of the 99s are off to college at this point anyway. LAG and NE each only have two 99s left in their academy. Special case because they are still growing into their older teams, but NYCFC only has one 99 and six 00s, so their U19 team is going to be super young unless they add more players. Richards is another Texans SC Houston guy, though he was still in Alabama as late as the end of 2015. He got some good reviews in the U18 DA playoffs from @ielag and @ussoccer97531 here.
He completely nullified Ethan Zubak in the U18 championship. I don't think Zubak is some good MLS prospect but he has some U.S. U19 caps, in his 2nd season as a pro with lots of USL minutes, and is 2 years older than Richards. But, Richards completely shut him down. Physically, Richards has good size and moves well too.
Has there been any thought to making super divisions? I don't think it helps these players to play in games where their teams wins by 5 or more goals. Some of these teams that these LA, Dallas, Atlanta academy teams play against might not have a player as good as the worst player on those teams.
No way they could pull that off because of geographic restraints. One of the problems with US development.
Yep. I think the best you can do is establish USL teams, push your best U19s to the pros and push your best U17s to the U19s. Keep challenging everyone. If non-MLS clubs do a really good job developing talent, it might raise the level of the local DA clubs in absolute terms, but in relative terms the gap will remain because MLS clubs will continue to hoover up the best talent. FC Dallas gets the most stick for not having a USL team, and they deserve it. But if/when they finally launch, Atlanta is a good candidate to be next up on the no-USL shit list.
Another important step is to formally connect all non-MLS DA organizations to other NASL and USL professional teams. All Development should ultimately be connected to first team professional playing time. That will create sellable 'assets' of all players. DA teams that just 'develop' to 'develop' are basically masturbatory in nature.
Geography definitely puts a limit on what you can do as does the inability for kids to miss a lot of school, but the MLS clubs should try to schedule an addition interleague weekend in each half of the season. Atlanta, Crew, Red Bulls play each other over a weekend. Dallas, Orlando, Union, etc. They could break the season up into halves and then have a mini pro/rel with-in division, so the best 6 or 8 teams play the best 6 or 8 teams more frequently in the 2nd Half. Really doesn't do any good for great teams to win by 5 goals every week nor for poor teams to get beat week in and week out. I can't see much they can do beyond little schedule tweaks here and there to try to match-up MLS Academies and other perennial top teams. Taxans, PDA, FC NC, etc.
It took a long time for MLS to reach a level of maturity where it could get serious about laying down roots in youth development. It's going to take a while for NASL and USL clubs, too. Currently we have the following clubs who have taken over or at least partnered with+rebranded a local DA team: New York Cosmos (U12-U14 only) North Carolina FC [CASL] Sacramento Republic San Antonio FC (U12-U14 only) St. Louis FC [Scott Gallagher] One problem for NASL and USL teams is that there is no market for their players. Even MLS teams know they can just pay nominal fees or wait for players to be out of contract in the winter.
Travel is always going to be the issue preventing a more nationwide "super league" for the elite DA teams. These are still high school students after all. And the overwhelming, overwhelming majority of them will never play professional soccer. For the overwhelming majority of DA players, NCAA soccer is the ceiling. We do have to keep that in mind. What's really important is the promotion of the elite youngsters that prove themselves in the DA up the ladder to USLPro and then MLS. And of course the elite MLS DA squads like FCD, LAG, etc. play a lot of international tournaments (for instance the one that was just held in Mexico) as well as tournaments against international competition within the US (for instance the Dallas Cup, GenAd Cup, etc.). Those are the real opportunities those DAs need to seek. More international competition!!!! I would love to see a more formalized tournament at the youth level between the US and Mexico. You know, there's a U19 UEFA Champions League. How about a CONCACAF U19 Champions League? Maybe due to financial constraints, a lot of nations/clubs couldn't take part. Maybe at first it would just be a US/Mexico competition with a few Central American clubs thrown in to start. That way our elite of elite youth clubs (those with a majority of youngsters who want to pursue soccer as a profession) can test themselves at that level. And there are certainly MLS clubs at least that would be willing and able to pay for the travel required.
The problem is not geography per se. the problem is one of talent density. Even in the top regions, we only have so many top players per square mile. An area the size of Los Angeles can support a few top teams drawing from the greater los angeles area but if anyone is familiar with LA that is a huge area and it wouldn't be enough teams to have a league. There is a lot of talent in Southern (or Northern) California but, again, that is a huge area and even then it probably wouldn't have enough talent to make a league of the quality some are asking for in a "super league". Southern California has a larger population than many other countries but lacks the talent density.
Oh..............I just posted this in another thread There's no doubt that MLS clubs are finding the DA and homegrown initiative as a way to get a leg up on the competition. So clubs like SKC and RSL that don't have the talent density within a 75 mile radius are really upping their investment. The expansion of the SKC scouting department is really interesting. An obvious development, but I'm not sure how many clubs are doing that...................