Yes ... but if that happens then he would not be signed to warm the bench, but to be a regular starter in the Bundesliga like Hrádecký and other Superliga keepers have been in the past..which is also why Hamid has signed up with FCM ... I know that you believe the Superliga has not done much good for the players moving here from MLS, but that is only because they wait too long for an offer from the big leagues and then arrive here in their mid-late 20's when it too late. The sad thing about MLS that it has not become better by developing more and better home-grown talent but by signing expensive past their prime foreigners and journeymen who are fairly cheap to sign for a good reason ... so it's not really a good environment for a young American talent and most of them wait too long before they leave for Europe, because they are waiting for an offer from the top-5 leagues, just to end up in the Netherlands or Denmark when it's too late ... Amon did the right thing ... he is the one from the Superliga who you should really pin your hopes on for the USMNT ... Hamid is 27 and need to become a regular starter in a hurry ... and even then it may be too late for him to move on ... but not to worry, the Swedish NT 1st keeper Robin Olsen is 28 and is also playing in the Superliga, though he will probably be leaving at the end of this season.
I can agree with your sentiment that more young players should be developed rather than signing older journeymen...but have to disagree with the idea that MLS has not become better at developing homegrown talent - either to play in MLS (Tyler Adams) or move abroad (McKennie)
This is a really outdated view. If you aren't following the league closely, I understand why you believe it, but it's not correct.
MLS is expanding and growing bigger for sure, but that considering, it still looks terrible at developing homegrown talent from where I'm sitting ... naming a few names won't change that .. you could easilly argue that they are the few exceptions that proves the rule ... you could also argue that McKennie managed to "escape" from MLS just in time ...
The average age of players is not only higher in compare with the Danish and Dutch league but on average there are 5 players above the age of 30 in each of the MLS squads ... and in MLS I'm pretty sure most of these players are suppose to be regular starters.
Yeah I'm gonna need sources on those claims. The average age of an MLS player is 25.8. The average age of a Superliga player is 25.4 years. Of players signed this winter into MLS, the average age is 24.7. The designated players signed average 22.6 years. 23 South American players were signed, with an average age of 21.5. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2018/02/05/mls-newcomers-debut-2018-average-under-25-years-age Again, if you don't follow the league closely, I understand your view, because you get the "Zlatan to the Galaxy!" rumors ad nauseam. But that view is outdated and incorrect, and the numbers back that up. Young players don't get enough playing time, I'll grant you that, but that's a situation that also continues to improve year-over-year.
Also please notice how many foreign journeymen there are in MLS in comparison : https://www.transfermarkt.com/major-league-soccer/startseite/wettbewerb/MLS1 https://www.transfermarkt.com/eredivisie/startseite/wettbewerb/NL1 https://www.transfermarkt.com/superligaen/startseite/wettbewerb/DK1
I think MLS's biggest problem right not is the inability to integrate (and improve) players aged 18-21. But the academies are also producing much more talented players in that age range - which makes the failure to integrate them all the more maddening to me. My DC United being a prime example.
Not if you keep bringing in this many foreign journeymen ... I mean ... here in Denmark the experts all agree that we have too many foreigners in the league that could just as easilly be replaced by young homegrown talent ... but most of the foreigners are in their early 20's or younger ... and the "old men" , like FCM's Rafael van der Vaart, are usually warming the bench and playing for the reserve team, but in that respect still adding some experience the young players are able to learn from and lean on. So not that many are really keeping the young talents from playing and if they do, it's often to add some experience to a very young starting 11 ... I still feel it's a bit the other way around in MLS , with the older more experienced "names" getting to play, while throwing in a few young rookies ...
But if these talents have been developed to a point where they are good enough, then why field all these foreign players MLS keep signing ? ... I still get the feeling that MLS could not care less about how the clubs develop their young players, or how many of them they field ...and so they do not invest time and money in this aspect ? ... is there some sort of plan or blueprint they follow, or any minimum requirements or demands the clubs need to follow regarding their academies and youth development ? Here in Denmark is was the FA and now former NT coach Morten Olsen who, many years ago, came up with a plan that now set the present standard of youth developmet in our top clubs and all the way down the league system, grading the clubs every year according to how many youth NT players they produce but then also helping the A license clubs financially by paying for a top coach for each of these clubs, to work with and make individual plans for each of their best young 15 to 21-yo players, so that they focus on where exactly they need to work harder to improve so that they also will fit the Danish NT style of play which is suppose to be the same from U-16 NT level and all the up, no matter the youth NT results in a given year... So they do not change the style of play according to the players they have in a given year, but make sure that all the best young players develop their skills so it will fit the NT style of play... The actual results of this is suppose to show in the U-21 NT results and in the longer run ... btw I found this article from last year : http://cphpost.dk/news/dbu-wants-more-talents-in-the-superliga.html
Which teams increasingly are not. Again, your views are wrong. This isn't an opinion. I'm done with this argument.
More than 53% of the MLS players are foreign players... I have looked 10 years back, and there has never been a larger % of foreigners ... I rest my case ...
From reading it appears that nobody is debating you on the number of foreign players but people are taking issue with the journeymen and past their prime talk.
Yes, there are minimum requirements for academies in MLS currently (I believe as of 2014 but DEFINITELY don't quote me on that). MLS has been putting many millions into the youth academies in recent years and requires all teams to have academies for players at least as young as 14 I believe. Surely, while I don't have the links available to prove this, there are others on this thread that can post this info. Since this is a relatively recent development in the league the next few years should start to really show the progress in this area. That said, I agree with a prior poster that it is maddening the lack of integration of young players for the most part. I can speak from a Timbers perspective how frustrating it's been to read of all the "up and coming" talent from T2 and the academy and seeing no consistency in bringing the young guys along--nearly all eventually disappearing altogether without ever getting into the first team. Marco Farfan is the first that's ever made the cut, and this season it appears he may get his breakout with the new coach.
Well, as earlier written I looked it up and on average there are around 5 players in each MLS team who are 30 or older (or 6 if you also add the 29-yo's)... obviously it would not matter that much, if it was the younger players actually playing while the older players were mainly there to add experience that the younger players can learn from at training and some older players they can lean on .. but I still get the feeling that this is not really the case ... but that the lack of integration of young players is still quite a problem ... But then you also have to remember that I'm comparing MLS to the Dutch and Danish leagues ... if I was to compare with lets say the Turkish league, then MLS have slightly fewer foreigners in their teams and the average age is around 26 in MLS while it's around 28 in the Turkish league ... but then the Turkish NT's also suffers greatly from this .. they finished 4th in their WC-18 qualifying group, behind Croatia, Iceland and Ukraine and at U-21 NT level they have only managed to qualify for a Euro group stage once in their past history, which was 18 years ago, so that is quite terrible for a country that big and that arguably has the most dedicated soccer fans in all of Europe.
As also written, here in Denmark the Danish FA took steps to make improvements all the way back in 2000, with the ITU (Integrated Talent development) program, a kind of ‘carrot or stick’ concept, trying to both help and force the clubs to do a much better job at producing new "Laudrups" and "Schmeichels" for the NT after some years of drought and a drop in NT quality, where they could see that the clubs were bringing in way too many foreign players and spending less time developing Danish talent after the Danish league clubs had become full-time professional in the mid-late 80's and early 90's. Before the mid 80's there were no full-time professional players or teams here in Denmark and so the league did not really attract all that many foreigners, just as young Danish players moved abroad to sign professional contracts at a fairly young age witch was good for the NT ... but this all more or less stopped in the early-mid 90's ... Looking at the success of the Danish ITU program that also itself has developed and been improved over the past 17 years, I would say that it's took at least 4 years before we saw any improvement and it has only been within the last 5 years or so we have really seen a vast improvement of U-21 NT results and the talent pool in general...
Btw .. you are in luck that Hamid picked Midtjylland and Amon picked Nordsjælland, if you really want to look deeper into the very best youth academies in Denmark and the integration of young players ... because they are by far the best at doing so right now, but with Amon's FCN now probably being the very best in all of Europe at this, almost only fielding youth internationals...
If that's true (and I'm sure it is), that's, well, normal. At Clarefontaine, they take in IIRC 25 boys in each class, of whom between three and four must be goalkeepers. On the first day, the head of the academy sits them all down and says: "Boys, I congratulate you. You are the very best young players in the Ille de France region [basically the Paris MSA]. No more than four of you will play in Ligue 2 or better."
That kind of statistics would simply never do in an academy on Iceland ... or in Denmark for that matter ... I do believe the smaller the country and population, the more effcient they are at not letting talent slip through the cracks ... and even if one club fails to see the potential, the next in line will give it a try perhaps trying to make him fit another position or a team with another style of play ..... I remember my own team AGF not being able to see any potential in a 21-yo Lasse Vibe, so they let him go to a 3rd tier team where he spend a year before going to a 2nd tier team where he spend a bit more than a year before being sold to a Superliga team, where he spend a bit more than a year before being sold to IFK Göteborg before being sold to Brentford and then even found himself nominated for the 'Danish player of the year' award, only 5 years after he got kicked by AGF ... had he been French, he would most likely never have made it even to Ligue 2 ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasse_Vibe
You think so? How many young, innovative managers do we have in the league? The dinosaurs who we have as managers are never going to change their stripes, why would they?
Why did Hamid reject a much better offer from MLS and Germany to sign with FCM ? ...Just look at your NT and NT results of lately and then tell me once more that I'm wrong .... I'm Danish and so I will be brutally honest .. the quality of youth development in a domestic league always reflect the NT results ... the fact that Ajax are now signing ever more young Danes at a higher price than usual is not a good sign for the Netherlands .. and the USMNT results of lately also should make you think twice about the youth developmen in MLS, if it does not and you think MLS is on the right path then it's fair enough ... but personally I think the USMNT will also crash and burn in the near future to come with the present youth development in MLS ...
I agree in some respects, but I think you're slightly off. USMNT results are a result of MLS development in the past, not the current status (which still isn't good enough, but has improved slightly). The USMNT will rely more on players that grew in the US system, and then go to Europe at an earlier age. Those players don't have to come from MLS academies, but hopefully some more do in the future.