I'm going to separate this into two parts because I agree with what some of what you are saying and disagree with what some of you are saying. I think the problem is exactly what you say. The farther up the system you go, the worse coaching you get. The older our players get, the less they improve in relation to their peers in other countries. I think we are probably as good as anyone at U-13, U-14, U-15, U-16, U-17 level, but once we get towards the professional level (and even the upper levels of youth football), we completely fall behind because of the coaching and the lack of a good system in place for all these kids to improve. How can we compete with these top countries when like 90% of the footballers from any given birth year decide they are not going to maximize their footballing development and instead attend college? We just can't. Thats a crucial area where we fall behind. Not everyone in France is Mbappe or Varane, stars the second they begin their pro careers. There are just as many Kante's or Sidibe's. Our system does not allow for this. The 50 or so (if its a good year) who will get their pro development maximized (maybe not even quality maximization, but still some type of it) are hand-picked. Its the 50 or so who are the best from 16-18. This does not allow for basic changes you see in ability from kids 18-22 or even 23-25. And the changes we see end up the Dempsey's or Besler's or Cameron's who have had good careers, but their careers weren't maximized. What if they were pros at 17 years old? How could could they have been? They lost five years off their careers. At the same time, I do disagree with you about Bradenton. I think it was good for the results of our U-17 team, and I think it helped get our best U-17 players European interest. Some will still get it, but its less exposure to European scouts. I don't know how thats a good thing, considering how hit or miss (depending on the club) MLS youth development is. Why is it a bad thing if the 25 best U-17 players are developing with their peers around the country playing against their peers around the world? The solution here is that there needs to be more roster turnover, but I actually thought last cycle was better with that than the previous cycle.
I was responding to your attempts to shit on Reyna and to question his efforts to develop US youth players. Claudio was the US' first Youth Technical Director in 2010. He left that post in 2013 to take the NYCFC job. Whatever progress that youth development made before Klinsmann came on board was spearheaded by Claudio who took a ton of heat, venom, and backlash from the entrenched GOB youth entities including Bruce Arena. Claudio headed the delivery of the development approach and curriculum which attempted to move US youth development to adopt the best practices used in global soccer. When Reyna says that there is an arrogance in the US youth development system he is speaking from experience. http://resources.ussoccer.com/n7v8b8j3/cds/downloads/Part 1 - Style and Principles of Play U.S. Soccer Coaching Curriculum.pdf Reyna (NYCFC), Boca (ATL), Friedel(NE), Sigi(Seattle, LA), and Vermes(SKC) are all former USMNT players who are running MLS clubs. I trust that they will look out for the interest of American players. If American players are not getting time, I believe they are just not good enough and that deficit started when they were early youth players. The chickens have come home to roost!
A. They aren't the best. They were the best at age of 15 according to Williams,Hack, and the rest of experts. B. If you are out you never get in, if you are in you stay there forever. That's how we created a generation of conceited divas. The kids that didn't get in were branded as second rate players and started to see soccer as a hobby (unless they were Dempsey or Feilhaber). C. Some club coaches developed those kids. Those were really good coaches. Coaches from Bradenton were just a part of welfare system. D. Kids were coerced to go to Bradenton and stay there, they were explicitly told that nobody plays on U-17 NT unless they stay there. Lletget was kicked of the team for going to England, the same with Gyaw (sorry for spelling) and Germany. E. The famous 1999 U-17 team wasn't Bradenton product. They lived there for 5 months at most.That team produced more top level NT players than the rest of U-17 teams combined. Other than that Bradenton was great. I always thought that closing it would be the best thing that could happen to American soccer. So now I'm extremely optimistic about the whole program.
In other leagues in the World there are clubs that win and don't use youth development. I know we don't want that in MLS, but that's the case. How many homegrown players did Man City give significant playing time to this season? They have one of the best young English talents, Phil Foden, and they could barely get him on the field. So its the West Ham, Everton, Southampton type of clubs that try to develop their own talent. They can't afford the foreign players that the big teams can get. As time goes by there are just going to be MLS clubs like this. It could be that a big club in a big market is just going to try to win trophies by signing the best and most foreign players available to them. Inevitable. I think in the case of a Portland we do have to remind ourselves that the MLS version of the club was only founded in 2009. And when they started their local talent base wasn't already firing on cyclinders like it was in places like Dallas. FCD just had to tap into an existing pipeline of talent. So its going to perhaps take years and years and years of investment from the youngest of ages before they're developing USMNT-caliber players in waves. RSL decided to build an academy outside of their territory in Arizona. While that had merit, it also had big problems. So they've just moved it back to Utah. And much credit to RSL for that investment, because they saw early on that they were going to have a competitive disadvantage without RSL Arizona. In other countries there are clubs that develop youngsters and there are others that don't. Part of it is simply where the talent is. There are parts of France where Rugby is king and football players aren't produced in the same numbers. That's just real life. Houston has never been a hotbed of soccer talent. Never. You'd think it would be. The demographics are right. Its a huge market that's sports obsessed. But when I tell people to start listing USMNT-calibers from Houston, they don't get very far. American football and baseball are king. DFW, meanwhile, has a looooooooooooong history of producing USMNT-caliber players. Its 4 deep of pro players at every position. You want young central midfielders? I give you McKennie, Parks, Hyndman, and Acosta. All now USMNTers. I could go around the field like that. What some MLS clubs are really starting to do well is expand their youth affiliate and scouting networks. I don't think some people give MLS clubs credit for this. The USSF only has so many scouts. Its MLS clubs that are searching for the needles in the huge haystack. SKC is the king of this right now in my opinion. They don't have the local talent base that a Galaxy has, so they have to really work hard to search midwest regions that aren't aligned with other MLS clubs. These kids that SKC has been giving time to lately? They're not from Missouri. So they've really worked hard to scout and recruit. And of course in order to continue recruiting youngsters of high quality you need to continue demonstrating that the pipeline to the first team exists. No reason to have a good academy if you don't take advantage of it.
Fair point about the numbers of dual heritage kids in those areas. That's not a new thing though, so what type of organizations are present in those areas? Are they in a pay to play system currently or are they playing more sandlot soccer and getting completely ignored by "the system"?
It's a combo of both, I'm sure. Some can afford the expense, some cannot. Pay-to-play systems have such wide-ranging quality, and we know that our top-level coaching is extremely poor. With that in mind, it's a wonder we ever produce anyone good. I was talking with a friend of mine who did D3 (out of 4 "divisions", the lowest being "rec" soccer) travel soccer for our local team. It was at least $250 per tournament per kid, tournaments every single week, plus equipment and whatever the registration fee was, and this was in 1990's money. The reason that they were doing D3? They never had to drive more than ~3 hours each way to get to tournaments, because everything was "local". So, his parents are paying thousands to play 1 level above rec soccer... and presumably the coaching's pretty poor? Sounds like a raw deal to me. I know this has been brought up before, but perhaps the USSF could help development by lowering the cost of licenses and mandating that coaches obtain them at various levels.
I've heard this suggested many times, and it sounds reasonable to me, but how much do coaching courses cost now?
D courses- 325 C courses-1775 B-1500 A(youth)-2000 A(senior)-2000 Then you have grassroots stuff where you can learn 5v5 to 11v11 for like 90 bucks in person or through vides online with a membership(they may have moved them to free I haven't logged in there in forever). https://dcc.ussoccer.com Then of course retest fees, and travel fees and hotel fees for the courses that last multiple days. It gets pretty pricey for average Joe coaching rec league to get licensed. In some places the states will pay for them, but not everywhere. I have always thought tying these into volunteer hours within USSF would get a much better outcome, whether it be coaching, reffing, painting fields, working concession stands etc. Then if the hours aren't met, coach is on the hook for the bill.
I appreciate this response, but the main point I’d want to point out is the national footprint and geographic size of the country; therefore, why it’s important that all MLS clubs invest in youth development if they want to take their game to the next level. Otherwise, we are going to leave huge gaping holes that the talents there are wasted. If we had all of our clubs doing what SKC and the others like FC Dallas and New York Red Bulls are doing then there wouldn’t be as much of an issue. However, we need to collectively come together and see what markets are doing the best at what, and hopefully replicate that at every level. This requires us to point out what we want to see but also what we don’t want to see. Collectively, we shouldn’t see any MLS club not putting the utmost priority on youth development. Note, I have not forgotten this all long term goals. I am not expecting perfection in a short period of time... I just want to see the effort and desire from the league and it’s clubs that this is collectively valued and set forth the mission statement this is how MLS will move into the next phase.
On the Open Cup - Tourney League... First off, MLS should respect FIFA international dates. Teams shouldn’t be without their best players in league play because they’re playing for country and we should want these players playing for country because it increases the overall reputation of the league. In that case, I would fill the openings left with the US Open Cup League games. That’d leave if two games were played, similar to international fashion, 8-10 games per season. That’s a perfect use for that time. Plus, I’d take a two week break in the summer anyways, and fill that time with the knockout tournament portion of the competition. This allows an opportunity to rest some players or not be without critical players for long stretches of the season when they’re with their nation at international competition. Kill two birds with one stone. Moreover, let’s look at Brandon Vasquez (picking on someone different than Carleton for a change)... his minutes from the US Open Cup are now over. That’s a damn shame because he’s on that line of playing few USL games because he’s needed on the bench for MLS games that he rarely plays in. Now, this is a very promising 19 year old American forward who could very well be (or not at all) a senior team prospect in a few years. What he’s lost is his ability to shake off the rust and stay match fit, learn from his mistakes, and get a chance to run out with a good bit of the senior team to make his case why he should or should not receive more league minutes. This US Open League would greatly benefit not only Vasquez and Carleton, but add in: Bradford Jamieson Mason Toye Gianluca Busio Jeremy Ebobisse Eryk Williamson Anthony Fontana Paxton Pomykal Luis Argudo Jonathan Lewis Memo Rodriguez Sebastian Saucedo Cameron Lindley Wan Kuzain Jackson Yeuill Derrick Jones Marco Farfan Tommy Redding Joseph Scally James Sands Jaylin Lindsey Sam Rogers Matt Real Sam Vines Chris Gloster JT Marcinkowski And others... We need to be saying to ourselves how do we get these players more meaningful minutes and competition. These players could definitely benefit from the guaranteed 8-10 competitive games a year... and these are all players who have shown they have the talent to be considered good MLS prospects. I believe this may be a solution to that; and theoretically, an easy solution to implement. Structurally, I would propose a regional model, with a similar format to the UEFA League of Nations, consisting of all the teams from MLS, NASL, USL, and D3. I would offer opportunity for PDL and NPSL teams to compete. Personally, I would even ask the Canadian federation to participate; however, that’s open to debate.
Really good post, I just used SKC's dev academy in another thread, I'm really impressed at their footprint. I didn't know RSL AZ was in dire straights, IIRC Glad was from that system. My question would be, do you think it would be impossible to incentivize these big-market, big-money clubs to utilize their youth talent effectively? And I mean "incentivize" as anything short of a rule that "X" number of players must be HGP's.
Go back to the old salary cap rules. American players and particularly youth are relatively cheap, so the less that teams can spend, the more they would have to rely on Americans. I think things like training fees, solidarity payments and the like are too unreliable and too small to matter much.
Really tough question that I don't see a good answer for. Teams winning with youth will incentivize others to follow suit. What types of roster rules would MLS have to craft to make Dallas or NYRB perennial contenders/league champs ? A HG DP slot would encourage keeping Miazga/Adams/Acosta which isn't really what we're looking for. Exempting HGP from cap rules would give the teams more money to concentrate on starters/foreigners, possibly widening the playing time talent gap we currently find to be a problem. Shrink the overall roster back to 24 (or smaller) but allow 25-30 to be HG filled ? Extra MLS marketing dollars/focus for any HGP? Would be nice to find a way to reward coaches who use their youth; filling open positions will USL2 coaches or assistants from coaches who favor young players.
Another point I’ve mentioned briefly yet believe it could have the largest impact on the collective of US soccer is pushing middle and high school soccer to be played in both spring and fall. In theory, this would kill the pay to play problem since school soccer is free. It would also increase the overall popularity of the sport because school soccer will always be more attractive and popular for school aged kids. Moreover, players wanting to play club soccer, would have more exposure. Note that this would not take away from club soccer as you’re still going to have your best players playing for club teams. The hurdle however will be overcoming the bureaucratic hurdles to make this a reality. Yet, if it could be done would probably have the greatest overall impact.
Opportunity is a function of ability. In any profession, a candidate with more ability has more and better opportunities. Do you disagree? When most of our current all-time top players were kids (Donovan, Dempsey, Howard, Friedel, Bradley, Jozy, let's say) there wasn't even a domestic league paying athletes a wage to play soccer professionally, let alone access to academies. They couldn't watch top level football on TV or YouTube. Those men all graduated from a, frankly, much poorer version of MLS to better leagues abroad (well, except Donovan). Availability of opportunity has only increased since then; the difference is quality of individuals pursuing those opportunities. Ability is always the largest determinant of opportunity -- a statement so obvious it shouldn't need to be said. The assumption is that we have high-ability players going that aren't getting opportunities, but I haven't seen much evidence that this is true, given that even low-ability players have more options today vis a vis MLS, USL etc.
Not being a smartass (I enjoy the debate and a lot can be missed via internet), but are you making these definitions up or are you pulling this from something concrete? Nonetheless, I’m going to proceed as if you defined these definitions for the purposes of this discussion. If it is said that opportunity is a function of ability, then I would state that it is not talent + will = ability; however, that talent + will + opportunity = ability. Either way, an individual needs to be born with the skill set (talent), the heart and desire to pursue those talents (will), and have some luck and support along the way (opportunity), otherwise, the individual’s path may be insurmountable. Talent and will are the individual’s responsibility, but the leadership’s responsility is to provide opportunity. So, even in any profession, which is apples and oranges to sports, which is much more competitive to become a professional than most any other profession... there has to be opportunity. If say, in my profession, as a Readjustment Counseling Therapist for combat veterans, I may have the talents to provide Readjustment Counseling services, given that I have all the credentials and qualifications, the will because working with Veterans is my passion, yet, if somehow there was a hiring freeze if I was looking for work, would not have the opportunity to exercise my ability to do the job. No matter how much talent and will I may have, if there is a hiring freeze, that is the thing that’s outside my control. In this case going back to youth soccer, I would argue, there are many roadblocks preventing the development of our youths. This is what I would argue are the lack of opportunities. Now, could an argument be made that efforts have been made that the leadership has tried to improve opportunity? Yes! I don’t think there has been NOTHING done, however, I do think not enough has been done which is evident from the fact of us crashing out of the 2018 World Cup and about a complete lack of American talent in the age group from 22-30. So, the leadership does not deserve praise for putting forth minimal effort which the results of their efforts has seen the regression of US soccer... instead, we need to be asking ourselves, what needs to be done to fix this problem? More to the point, if one player doesn’t succeed then it’s the player’s fault... but that is not the same as the collective failing. This generation, the collective failed. That does not signal a problem with a group of individuals, that signals a much greater problem with the collective and how leadership is targeting the collective. More kids are playing soccer today than ever before... yet, the best American forward we can produce is Gyasi Zardes? We have all the resources in the world to be the best, and yet, talent is squandered because of other agendas. Talented and skilled players with the ability to succeed don’t have the same opportunities as they did even 10 years ago when even though MLS was a lot weaker and smaller back then; it was a lot easier for US youths to get on the field because MLS wanted to help USSF. More, there was the residency program, and other creative ideas on how to get the most out of players. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was competitive in its age. There was a coherent goal to see US soccer improve and the US team in the early 2000s progressed very rapidly; however, leadership got complacent and neglected its youth development. As a result, what we have now is about every MLS team investing in young foreign talents instead of developing their own and a US team that looked like it was back in its early 90s. That’s the leadership’s fault, not simply bad luck of lack of talented individuals. Anyone defending the status quo at this point is insanity, in my opinion. Discussion on improving youth development should be at the forefront of all of our minds... not trying to put down any new ideas to see that 2018 never happens again.
I don't think we need to. TO some degree I think folks are so outraged by the current situation that they're not seeing the good we're doing. I just watched an MLS game featuring nine homegrown players. NINE. That was FCD versus NYRB. Pomykal, Cannon, Gonzalez, Acosta, Adams, Muyl, Davis, Etienne, Lade. All US-eligible. Etienne is Haitian-American, but is now playing for Haiti. In the other game tonight, Philly used three (Trusty, McKennzie and Jones) against Vancouver and their homegrown star Alphonso Davies. j think the incentives for developing your own homegrown players should be self-evident from a sporting and business perspective. I don't think we need to set up quotas in terms of homegrown or US-eligible players used in games. THey don't need that in Holland or Portugal or Belgium or any of these other "selling leagues." Now...…………….we should require all MLS clubs to have their own reserve teams. I'd have a USL D3 league for that. And we should require a minimum amount of investment in all academy levels from U12 to U19. I wouldn't even have a problem if the USSF put quotas on the number of US_eligible players in the development academy. Its the USSF development academy after all. They did that in the Bundesliga at one point I believe. There are teams that started really investing when the initiative started in 2007. NYRB and FCD are two of them. Afterr 10 years, those clubs are starting to churn out players. SOme sign for MLS. Some don't. See Emerson Hyndman and Weston McKennie for Dallas...………..and Matt Olosunde and Tim Weah for NYRB...………….as examples of those that don't. The rest of the league are followers and they're behind. Many are investing and working to catch up. Can't happen overnight.
The fact that our country is so big, means that there are always going to be talented kids that fall through the cracks. Hell, there are examples of talented players that fell through the cracks in England (Jack Harrison, Dom Dwyer). There is definitely a shortage of quality coaches in our nation as a whole. For every good pay to p[lay club, there are likely multiple clubs that are simply run to make money. Most of us don't like the pay to play system, but it has been entrenched for decades now. It's not going away, at least not in markets that don't have an MLS team. MLS Academies are forcing pay to play clubs to combine, which is reducing their numbers and influence, yet they will be there for the foreseeable future. How does the USSF work on educating and developing better coaches, and more of them? Let's face it, MLS teams are investing in youth development but even the best programs are still in their early stages. It took Barcelona's La Masia decades before it was churning out world class talents. Most MLS teams don't have full scouting networks (this fact alone gives the the two NY teams a MAJOR edge). This things take time and money to set up, and much of the time and money is a sunk cost with no immediate ROI. As much as fans like to bemoan hearing about how much things cost, well scouts don't work for free. At least the good ones don't anyways. These programs are going to either need to be self funding, or the USSF is going to have to make some tough budget decisions. Oh and let's not forget about the rapidly diminishing state of the Women's team either. Growing the pro women's game, and development academies is going to take considerable money as well. How all of this is funded, I don't know. They are required to have at least a USL affiliate, though some teams eschew using them (hello revolution!). MLS should require its teams to have USL or USL D3 teams going forward. One more observation. I'm not sure how many of the regular posters here have actually seen any of the young players play in person. I was able to see Alphonso Davies play today against the Union. He's only 17, but physically he is mature. He looks like he's 22-23 years old. There's a reason he's getting significant minutes and playing very well now. He is a rare talent for sure. I'm sure if you had him stand next to Carleton, there would be a stark difference. I would also say that there is a lot of positives for development to coaches putting young players in a position to succeed. That confidence is huge for their development. Our National Team had a lost generation. A generation that had a lot of talent and promise at the youth levels. For a variety of reasons that generation didn't pan out. This is normal, believe it or not. This happens in all of the big soccer nations. Look at the last generation that would be in its prime right now: Freddy Adu (mishandled, handed too much too soon), Tim Ream (never given a real run with the senior nat team), Juan Agudelo (hasn't taken that next step), Brek Shea (injuries and lack of positional focus), Nagbe (does he have the drive?), Teal Bunbury (injuries, possibly played out of position at SKC), Bill Hamid (Injuries have hurt his development), Jack McInnerny (attitude issues at his pro clubs), Andrew Wenger (what position is his best?), Birnbaum (injuries), Josh Gatt (Injuries),. That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I've missed some.
I hope you missed some. If those are actually the top names, this is a pitiful generation to start with.
As far as keeping kids on the pro path instead of NCAA, I think one of the biggest things that can help is getting the minimum salary up to the point where every kid who sticks on an MLS roster for an entire season is making $100K. Not only is that a significant psychological milestone for players and parents trying to decide between the pro and college routes, it's also probably about the point where going pro is actually the smart financial decision even for a kid who has little chance at a long MLS career, as long as he can stick for a season or two (assuming his college opportunities don't include someplace like Harvard or Stanford).
We also have to get the minimum salary for USL up. A limited amount of players are going to get MLS contracts right away. We need to keep as many talented players playing year-round professional football. Some of the best will come from the lower leagues. That happens for just about every country.
Not really, given that they'd Agree. And then, once we get our professional youth development fixed, NCAA soccer turns from a liability (pulling many of our most promising young players into a poor training environment) into an asset (a safety net for late bloomers).
One idea that MLS could try is a summertime NCSAA All-Star League. It's common knowledge that because of college athletic scholarship equality legislation, soccer will always get short changed at the collegiate level. Women get the funding to offset the massive scholarship totals needed to offset NCAA football rosters. I don't know the exact numbers but men's collegiate teams usually have to divide up fractional scholarships across their rosters. MLS and NCSAA could work together to make up for this short fall. The All-Star Teams could be regionally based. Each MLS team could be assigned the players from a certain conference division. There would be a rule in place that you have to select at least two players from each school. Possible example...Atlanta could select players from the ACC Atlantic schools etc. It could break down like this... Atlanta hosts ACC Atlantic All Stars DC hosts ACC Coastal New England hosts Big East Columbus hosts Big 10 East Chicago hosts Big 10 West etc. The Collegiate Olympic Soccer League would play in the summer time. Selected players would have their college expenses paid for the year. The college players could train with the MLS players on occasion. I would love to see this happen... It never will... Expensive...
This actually made me laugh. RSL is ahead of FC Dallas in the youth development game. They led the league in HGP minutes last year, in spite of drawing from a much smaller population than Dallas. Unlike Dallas, they have a USL Team. They pioneered the Residence Academy in AZ, and are now upping that investment in the Zion Bank Academy in UT. FC Dallas started with the second-biggest youth soccer pool in the nation, behind only Southern California. The local youth soccer system was already in-place. FC Dallas's youth development strategy was to simply tap into the existing youth structure. They have done little to make it better. The biggest issue in Dallas - and this is known throughout the youth soccer landscape - is that the organization tends to invest as little as possible. They drug their feet on creating a USL franchise, not wanting to incur the costs. So Dallas became known as the "sign and sit" franchise. They have had no coherent plan to develop prospects into professionals, and too many of their HGP signings have stagnated waiting for their opportunity. Hell, Weston McKennie, the franchise's poster child for development, is actively telling other players not to sign with Dallas. It is all well and good to pump the positivity, but do it with a dose of reality, please. Meanwhile, organizations like RSL, NYRB, and more recently Philly and SKC are getting ahead. They not only have USL teams, those USL teams are becoming productive pipelines to MLS. We can all be glad that FC Dallas is finally creating a USL franchise, but history suggests they are 2+ years away from that being productive. But hey, if FC Dallas and one of the LA teams could actually get good at development, those two markets alone alone draw from a population capable of fielding a Top 20 senior national team.