Saw this interview with a So Cal Blues TD and thought it was pretty interesting: http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/club-soccer-articles/tds-qa:-so-cal-blues-coach-randy-dodge_aid36151 This is the interesting bit: "Player development and recruiting go hand in hand. The players who have played for us always have the first crack at being part of the team; loyalty is a big thing for us. But at the end of the day, you always have to be looking at making your team better if you are going to stay competitive with the top ten teams in the country. We are very picky about adding players to existing teams, because they have to be a good fit and not disrupt team chemistry." There's got to be an issue with physical talent and technical potential, right?
Ok it can start with recruit ment you still have to develope those players. When I first started to coach we had forced loyalty to the club. A player could not just leave one club and join another. The club actually owned the rights to the player. Plus the longer he was with the club the more powerful those rights to the player were. He could not just leave the club on his own. For him to leave the club the club had to give the player a written release from the club. The club that wanted him had to also buy his release from the old club. They had to pay the old club a certain amount of money for every year he was with the club. Plus he had to wait for the new season before he could join the new club. How is that for player locality? If the club did not want to release the player too bad what the player wanted. It was play with us or play with no one. ---- On a player already on the team had first crack at being on the team. Frankly that is not good for the team if a new player was better then the old player. The fairest thing is the best should play in club. ODP has that problem get on it early you can stay on it because the coaching knows you know their system and don't want to make major changes every year. So unless your a superstar much better then everyone else you don't have a good chance of making ODP at an older age. But that does not make the team better. That is a weakness of ODP no one pushing each other to push themselves to stay on top.