No, there's nothing to report at this time. But given the comments about the 2018 rankings by Top Drawer, I thought I'd post an expected time line. For what it's worth, for the past 3 or 4 years, most of the commitments of the top blue-chip players have take place in the spring 2.5 years prior to their assumed matriculation. For the 2017 class we have seen the gun jumped by the unprecedented commitment of top player Haley Berg in September of her freshman year...4 years before her assumed college matriculation. At this time there are also an additional 6 commits known for 2017, but these are all not top-ranked players and it is not uncommon for a few local kids to commit to local colleges whose coaches they know through their local clubs. (OK and OK State have often seen such commits, and this year Ohio State already has two.) The real recruiting season for the 2017s will start late in the fall (the players sophomore year in high school) with the majority of "game changer" players signing in the spring. The "fill-in" of other solid players (ODP, ECNL, and top US clubs, etc.) will pretty steadily continue from this fall until signing day in 2017.
Just an update to the above... ...the trend continues. Now in the first week of their high school sophomore year, 19 2017 players have committed. This compares at the same time (1st week in September) to 10 commits for the 2016 class, 7 commits for the 2015 class, 5 commits for the 2014 class, and 3 for the 2013 class. Statistically this is probably not that significant (in a pool of almost several thousand D-I recruits each year) but it is a clear trend. Most of the top ranked recruits will not commit until next spring (Although a handful will announce starting in November or December) Of the 19 early commits, most do not have any national team experience (the 4 exceptions are committed to UCLA, Texas (2), and Ohio State.)
No definitive trends to report yet for the 2017 recruits, but several of the top players have already committed and there are 33 known commitments at this time. Most notably, the consensus #1 2017 recruit, Brazilian scoring phenom Catrina Macario, apparently will follow her former SanDiego Surf coach, Chris Lenny, up to Berkeley.
Holy bleep, Bat Man. Cal has taken a page from the Stanford recruiting play book and is jumping to a very early lead for the best 2017s out there. For the last three years is has been the Cardinal that has gone on the trail early and corralled much of their three-years-out class before most of the other top schools had saddled up and headed out. But this year it has been the Golden Bears who have already got commitments from the consensus #1 player and two others that arguably are top ten. Gonna get interesting.
Whoa, ...little did I expect... Cal just added the Top Drawer #7 and #41 players to their 2017 haul. For what it's worth, (and many (including myself) have already expressed their opinions about Top Drawer's player rankings) Cal now has committed the TDS #1, #6, #7, #10, and #41 2017 recruits. (This is beginning to look like the UCLA 2011 class who are now seniors.)
Now they have 2 full years to study for the SAT and hope they still fit into the Cal stuff they buy as 10th graders at the bookstore
Year-end look a 2017s. As I like to say at this time of the year, the numbers are pretty small so there is a lot of talent to still come into play, but there are some clear early leaders in the recruitment of high school sophomores. Of the 87 commitments coming into the Christmas holidays, a pretty high percentage are USYNT participants (32) and there are some others with good credentials at the ODP or ECNL level. As usual the arms race is on to capture the top recruits early and we have two early leaders in CAL and Stanford. As mentioned above, California is off to an astounding start. The Golden Bears now have commitments from 6 highly ranked players led by Catarina Macario who has already obtained NSCAA All American status. The recruiting pattern is not hard to spot as 4 of the 6 play with the San Diego Surf whose coach was recently hired by CAL. Besides Macario, the other five all finished up their U15 stints and are each involved with the U17 or U18 national teams. Stanford, however is pursuing their usual pattern of getting out early and gobbling up national team talent. The Cardinal has 5 commitments of equal stature as their Bay Area rival to the north led by Civana Kuhlmann, who has already been playing with the U-17s for over a year including playing on the US CONCACAF team. There is no doubt that recruiting juggernaut Stanford will be in the running for the #1 recruiting class for three years in a row. No other team has more than three 2017 recruits lined up, and this group is headed by Penn state, Followed by Ohio State, UNC, Colorado and Arkansas. But numbers at this stage don't mean that much as UCLA and Rutgers, based on the quality of the several recruits already committed, are examples of schools that are in a position to pick up a couple or three of the highly rated prospects yet remaining and jump right to the top of the pack. To put it differently, CAL and Stanford based on their present commitments will be at or near the top no matter what happens, while other schools are still in a position leap frog into the top echelon if they can capture some of the superb yet uncommitted talent. When the 2017s have got over 200 players committed, I will get out an initial ordered list. Cheers!
I was' sure where to put this note, but with all of the grousing in various threads about recruiting big athletic players (both by colleges and by the USYNTs and the USWNT)..... The Girls USYNT U17 tournament US starters I (most of which are in the class of 2017) average 5'3" for the 10 field players. The tallest field player starting is 5'7", but she is offset by starters who are 4'11", 5'2", and 4 players at 5'3". The USA won the tournament against Canada, Mexico, and Japan with these small girls. Is this a trend?
I doubt it. For the most part, the US doesn't pick tiny. Here are the heights for the LaManga rosters that were released today: U23 WNT: defenders: 5-7, 5-7, 5-7, 5-6, 5-4, 5-3 mids: 6-0, 5-10, 5-8, 5-6, 5-4, 5-3, 5-3, 5-2, 5-1 forwards: 5-9, 5-8, 5-7, 5-6, 5-6 U20 WNT: defenders: 5-9, 5-8, 5-8, 5-7, 5-3, 5-3 mids: 5-5, 5-5, 5-5, 5-4, 5-4, 5-4, 5-3, 5-1 forwards: 5-7, 5-7, 5-5, 5-5, 5-4
Add in the U17s and, if I were going to create one of my fancy charts (create a chart or say you have an algorithm and your credibility goes way up) it's looking like it would indicate a downward trend in size. Of course, it's a very small data set.
Those who continue to grouse about big athletic soccer players are in an increasingly difficult spot. Soccer is athletics. Modern science says that bigger is better, and smaller is worse, in athletics. The attached recent scientific study out of Duke is one of many that have proven the positive correlation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090717090829.htm Instead of continuing to hijack threads, why don't we start a new thread on: "Should soccer create separate size classes?"
This is citing the article for far more than what it says. It says that for "sprint" swimmers and runners (100 meters, in each case) at a world class level, bigger is better. It says nothing about athletes in other sports or even about longer distance swimmers and runners.
No, but this study and others do: http://www.pratt.duke.edu/news/in-baseball-bigger-still-better Again, to avoid hijacking this thread I posted it to the new string over at the Beautiful Game thread.
Watch this TED talk from David Epstein. https://www.ted.com/talks/david_eps...ly_getting_faster_better_stronger?language=en He argues that technology and body type specialization have as much to do with increased performance as size in many sports. He says Jesse Owens would have come in second in the last Olympics if he used modern technology, that long distance runners have longer, thinner legs than normal, that an NBA player is longer and has even longer arms, and that in some sports, athletes are actually getting smaller ( women's gymnastics) My favorite stat is that 17% of the people in this country over 7' and between the ages of 20 and 40 are in the NBA right now. To illustrate his point, he has a picture of the best swimmer and the best miler in the world (who is only 5'9" tall). They have the same length legs, though one is 7" taller. I'm not sure where soccer fits in. The beauty of the sport is that a Messi, Maradona, and Romario can succeed as well as Ronaldo and Ibrahimoviç
I agree with you. However, there is a very large group of people, including many high level coaches internationally, whose philosophy is: short = possession = beautiful and tall = longball = ugly I disagree with them..
I'm not sure those people have been watching recent World Cups. Two cups ago Spain was the possesion king and had short players except maybe the Central defenders, but I'd call this Cup's German team pretty good at possession. These were some tall dudes. A quick check shows all but Three field players were 6' or over. Özil just misses the cut at 5'11". Two of the three keepers were over 6'2". Lamm and Götze were the short guys. They out-possessed basically the same (aging) Spanish team. The average German male is 5'9". Are the Germans doing what USA coaches are accused of doing at the Youth level? The dutch were nearly as tall and were also pretty good at possession.
I think it's relevant to this thread, in relation to what coaches are looking for in players they're recruiting. This article too is limited. At this point, the Duke studies appear to have been limited to "sports where speed is needed for throwing a mass, ball or fist," in addition to the studies related to swimming and running sprinters (the mentioned sports are baseball, golf, and hockey). The studies probably suggest that bigger GKs can throw the ball farther with greater ball speed (makes sense to me) and might suggest that bigger players can do farther throw ins with greater ball speed although I'm not sure about that because of the throw in technique rules. So far, I haven't seen anything about soccer or football kickers. The closest they've come to soccer is hockey. On the other hand, I agree with you that "long ball" isn't ugly, it's one way to play and also can be one of many tactics used by a team in a game.
Yes the article is limited, but the study upon which the article is based has broad application to many sports, including soccer. The sports you mention reading about in the article are all what the researchers call "falling forward" sports. "Falling forward" is the movement of an athlete's body mass. Basically, the larger and taller athletes are, the more force they can bring to bear as their mass falls forward. And, there are many "falling forward" movements in soccer. I no longer have access to the full study.
One other note: I can't tell if the Duke studies included female athletes. If they didn't, there could be considerations that would make the results different, although they also might not.
I think you are stretching beyond what your link says. First off a word search doesn't bring up soccer. Second, there are at least as many movements in soccer that don't involve falling forward. Leo Messi is hardly ever the fastest guy on the pitch. He makes his living moving sideways and changing speeds. Third, thought Epstein mentioned that Owens would have come in second in the last Olympics due to better technology, what wasn't mentioned is that he was 5'10 3/4" - only slightly taller than the average American male today. The Bronze and Silver medalists in the 100m last time were almost exactly Jesse's height. Bob Hays was also. (The average American male is 5-10) And the fastest miler is 5-9. They presumably fall forward also. What the Duke study doesn't say is that the force you can exert on the ground ( and thus stay in the air longer with no energy consumption) can be taught. If height were the determinant, there would be a lot of Dutch sprinters. They are the tallest folks on average. I did a little work in robotics and running, and variations of McNeil Alexander's formula, which says speed is a function of leg length over other factors determines top speed whether you are a chicken a human, or a T-Rex. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/alexander.htm That picture I posted of Guerrouj supports that idea. Long legs also take longer to accelerate demonstrated by the fact that Usain Bolt is almost never first in the first ten meters, which may be a detriment in soccer dribbling.
I'll do better than that. Juan Roman Riquelme is 6'1". Tell me how many seconds of this video it made any diference at all or he was even moving near maximum speed.