Just read the list for the latest USMNT U18 roster: two or three FCD players and one player from Houston - a Texans SC midfielder we have had one or two HD academy players in and out of USMNT youth radar the last several years at various levels
http://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2...club-space-city-fc-join-forces-form-new-youth interesting developments
Seems better late than never. Probably 6-7 years late. My kids decided on non-soccer sports so I have no idea how quality those clubs are. I did find the line about putting together a full link from youth to college to pro funny when we have to send them to College Station for PDL instead of having it in Houston Metro
From a local youth soccer expert: Unbelievable opportunity to not just move @HoustonDynamo/@HoustonDash forward...but will move soccer in Houston forward. #ForeverOrange https://t.co/0owaKB4VIt— Brett Zalaski (@bzalaski) February 8, 2017
The press release is an obscurantist bit of buzzwords that hides more than what it says. I read it a couple times and am still not sure what the upshot is, how this will be structured. What I gather is this will give us pipelines into geographically dispersed clubs in town that will feed back into the main club. They will call themselves Dynamo for at least some of their teams, from rec on up to select. Rush out in the Woodlands is Dynamo North and Space City is Dynamo South. If they like you, you get funneled into the main academy teams, I assume. If not, you still play for the "Dynamo" for marketing purposes. This would somewhat address my recently voiced geography concerns, that I now get that we may be asking kids from all over town to drive to 288 to be academicians, and that this might hurt our chances at getting kids from further removed suburbs. So you can play for a north or south team for a while. I'd be curious how far integrated the players would have to be into the Dynamo to constitute HGP. If someone didn't want to drive but played extremely well for the north team, can they be designated? Or will the 288 thing remain a stumbling block at the end because they have to be on some official academy team. That being said, I've never heard of Space City. And Rush, while a name brand of sorts, is behind us in both upper age group development leagues. [http://www.ussoccerda.com/sam/standings/league/standings.php?leagueId=MTAwMg==] You might be able to get some of these clubs' kids and to spread ourselves for geographic purposes. That might increase the pool and help the end product. But it's not the Texans. The one thing bringing in Rush would do is give you a foothold in the north suburbs to compete for people who pick between Rush and Texans. Assuming it's what I think, it's a step in the right direction. This is not London with great, cheap mass transit kids can take to get to practice, or full blooded academies they can attend all day. Nor is there a new pro team every half mile. So having some different teams around town that feed up into something for the most ambitious might be a way of claiming more kids and working around the big size of the city. You'd still need to coach them well, and neither of these clubs are that great, nor do we seem to be. But it's a decent structure if you built up the coaching wings.
With how big the city is you might as well add West (Katy/Bear Creek) and East (North Shore) teams as well. Everyone is really like 45 mins - 1 hr apart.
All inevitable negative factors considered, nothing wrong with extending the Dynamo Academy net (God knows we needed to do this years ago as aforementioned). What still worries me is what structure will be in place to retain these players and to make sure they are able to make the Trek down to 288 area to be with the actual academy team? Can't wait until one day we actually have a live in academy for the players.
My understanding is that Dynamo will have two academy clubs. The existing Houston Dynamo DA teams, as well as the rebranded Texas Rush academy teams. From what I've heard, they will not be taking the best players from both pools and combining them into a single all star DA squad. Players from both teams will be considered homegrown players for Dynamo. This is all positive news for Houston's youth development.
Do we pick the players and coach them? Or is this just a "branding" way of claiming "dibs" on northern suburb kids who otherwise wouldn't bother. That pipeline would have some value but depending whether we pick them and coach them -- at least some of the time -- perhaps not much. Rush is behind us in the standings at U-16 and U-18 superleague. Rush has some awful teams in EDDOA boys right now. Either we take over Rush or Rush's best funnel here. This could be useful or it could be just the right to wear our orange jerseys and have dibs on a weak club team's (that we won't coach) players. Some ways of dealing with it: inter-team scrimmages, camps with all the teams together in the summer, common coaching, common coaching guidelines, common system. A satellite team we don't control would just be about "dibs." It might improve the pool to have more people coming through from broader geographic areas, but you're losing some of the value of that if you're not training them up into something better. That's what we really need, is better players.
I haven't heard, but I'd bet my 401K that Dynamo will control the coaching and development of the kids. I would not expect that this will be a branding exercise, and would anticipate some changes to the coaching and technical staff to fit the Dynamo mold. FWIW - Rush has traditionally had some mediocre DA teams, but that is the design of their club's philosophy. They focus on player development over team development, which is exactly what I'd want as a TD of a professional club. Even at the youth levels, they prefer to win only 60% of their games. W's and L's don't matter as much as developing 1-2 really good kids every year or two. If Dynamo continues that philosophy, or not, is up to Dynamo.
Meh. If they are focused on player development where is their list of pro alumni that we winning obsessed teams (Texans, etc.) have? I also feel like this myopically repeats Heft's theory that the focus of soccer is skill. Part of the game is getting athletes. Part of the game can simply be height and speed. Part of the game is soccer IQ and an understanding how you fit in a team. Understanding how to win games is itself a skill. Not just the "how do I get this ball down the field and in the net" bit. I'm talking, we're overmatched, how do we keep them out and sneak something. They are bunkered, how do I get the ball through the pile to the scorers. They are fouling the crap out of us, how do we balance standing for ourselves with not racking up our own cards. etc. etc. How do I play my position? Not just self expression, but in a team sense. And part of the game is skill. But IMO what creates a college or pro player is exceptional attributes, athleticism, skill, build, soccer IQ, knowing how to win. The non-athlete semi-technician like Adu is usually the one weeded out over time because they become unable to keep up with the pace of play. If you're going to be just a skill guy you better be darned good.
Don't believe the hype. Unless you change the coaching at the Dynamo Academy, Rush and Space City all you are ever going to get is the same results----poor performance relative to our brethren in North Texas and elsewhere. These coaches are all retreads and have found a niche preying on the un-educated soccer parent. This whole deal smells of a "easy fix"for the Dynamo in order to capture more HGP. They can't admit failure of the academy system by blowing it up and starting over so the next fix is to create an alliance. This new arrangement still has not addressed the need for a pipeline into the diverse Spanish speaking community which most youth players either can not afford to pay the Rush/Space City fee structure or have limited transportation to get to the practice facilities. There is more freaking talent that has rolled through Bear Creek Park than ever has graced the fields over in the Woodlands or down in Clear Lake. At the end of the day, I feel sorry for the guys/gals in the Dynamo ticket sales office who focus on selling the youth clubs. Don't expect to see Dynamo Diesel or the Dynamo grass roots marketing team anytime soon over at Rise, Albion, Challenge, Texans SC or Texas United. They just blew that wad.
Good info @Fly on the Wall On a side note, take a look at this website: http://www.collegesoccernews.com/ Now go look at each of 2017, 2018, and 2019 recruiting classes. Now I know this is subjective but....look at how many FCD players are on each list and look at how many HOU players are on that list. Unbelievable.
The simple question is provide the list of Texas Rush players that have made it to MLS that the Dynamo missed out on that will now be captured by this change?
Is the U17 / U16 Dynamo really that bad? lost again this weekend and I noticed they are last in their division and lost to FCD 0-7 a couple of months ago. ooof
I see the two issues facing us as coaching and the drive to 288 for the full academy. This addresses the latter, to some extent, with satellite teams, but not the former. More pointedly, we aren't good in the development league at U18 and U16, and Rush is still behind us. Space City is more local. So they increased the pool and expanded regionally but beyond more dice rolls did we help ourselves much. Coaching to me is key and the way the post-cherry picking era players cope (or lack of same) suggests we can't coach. You go back and look at Deric (and even Dixon and others that saw minutes) and they are Texans players we cherrypicked. I don't see any easy local answer because Texans SC seems to have weakened also. I think that would have been the more productive linkup to well coached players on stronger teams in the same leagues but they are unlikely to voluntarily play along. They are the competition. This will help a little but they need to reboot the whole thing, different coaches, more money, rewired differently. This is not working. They literally had no HGP this season, not even some guy to loan downward. The trialists are now coming from RGV.
What stands out to me is the U16 teams always seem better than the U18. Also, the U18 team is dead last among the academy teams in the division, and the U16s are next to last. The teams beneath them are generally traditional clubs. Keep that in mind, despite the strong U16 standing, because we are really competing with the MLS teams to develop, and less so Texas Rush or Solar Chelsea, who aren't trying to bolster some senior pro side. It's somewhat distorted because the development league is going to be the best youth teams and the MLS academies in the region, and it's not like it's EDDOA. So this is not how it stacks up locally or in South Texas. But it is also truthful because it's the pecking order in terms of elite teams and players in the region, a pipeline to one chunk of the sort of players who might help a pro team. Your average EDDOA kid is not being groomed for MLS/USL/NCAA D1. How our academy is doing relative to that competition does speak to the effectiveness of the development process. I think someone tried to suggest the results for Rush reflected an indifference to winning, but there was no concomitant pool of alumni scattered across elite pro and college teams. Ditto Dynamo increasingly. If the idea is we don't care about winning so much as development, well, we aren't managing either. Or you'd see bunches of HGP entering the team despite the poor results. Otherwise I think that's self-serving buzzword CYA. With the poor league finishes and the lack of HGP percolating up I can't believe we've done nothing coaching wise.
I care zero about any result. They can lose every game 20-0 if they produce a player every two years on par with anyone in the FC Dallas system.
Rubbish. Holland is known for its youth development. Current eredivisie standings: Feyenoord; PSV; Ajax; Utrecht. Current U19 standings: PSV; Feyenoord; Oss; Ajax. Coincidence? MLS, two conference champions last year were NYRB (currently 8 HGP on first team roster) and FCD (9). Currently NYRB are second in their development league division, and FCD third, at the U-18 age group. Maybe it's frustration talking, "I'd just as soon have people make our team as the academy win," but in my experience that's not usually the way it works. Youth teams win because they either have more talent or a better systemic mousetrap that they execute well. Better players or better coaching. The idea of a well coached team of players who yet do not manifest it in standings does not compute to me. My experience the teams with talent but poor coaching and the pure workhorses but not enough talent settle midtable. Yes you could have talent or coaching on a midtable side but if the team really has a nose for talent and/or good coaches, they tend to stand out. I remember our first game one club season, right after HS, the opposing team had 2 guys who went on to MLS. We were not in great club game shape, game was like 6-4 with their 2 stars scoring many goals. We won, we were the deeper, better organized team, but talent tends to manifest somehow even when a team is weaker and less well coached. Even if overmatched at the team level, highly talented players make their mark somehow. I never lost a game worse than 4-0 in a serious league and even that was to an international pro team's youth side in Dallas Cup. A bad loss was 2-0 usually. You lose 7-0 and either the coaching is massively substandard or you can't even somewhat compete on talent. And at some point, those two become related because beyond scouting the right technicians and athletes, you make your own players in club. Dallas does not magically get better soccer players who should beat our kids 7-0 or finish ahead of us in every league. If that is happening, it reflects some failure of scouting/ talent/ coaching that needs to be addressed. The utter absence of HGP this season or of quality contributions from the ones signed in recent years ought to cut against some notion that in spite of the standings we are making quality. The reality is that the team with more HGP is also no coincidence ahead of us in league. There are sometimes overlooked players but in terms of high quality team vs high quality team, it is what it is, and tends to reflect some strength or weakness of the program.
http://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2017/02/18/recap-generation-adidas-cup-day-two-results I mean, these are home games this week and we are not even competitive.
Not sure I understand why the Dynamo posted this, not like they have anyone to spend it on http://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2...-create-additional-opportunities-young-talent
You know, the reason we are so far behind is that FC Dallas had a 10 year head start as a club and in 2008 we weren't even around . . . Oh, wait http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...ls-heartland-its-like-its-europe-or-something