I assume the idea is to end run the international slot limits by sending the player to RGV instead. Kick tires for a season, see what happens, buy and promote, or return to sender, as appopriate. But haven't we already brought in a keeper and re-signed another this window? I could understand acquiring a player nominally direct to here and if he needs PT send him down. And maybe don't sign Willis. But 2 free agent signings and then go get a third on loan? Kind of lacking the courage of your convictions. In theory restocking the keeper spot, fair enough, but then why keep Willis, and are loans to the reserves the best way of stocking a position. We pay for that privilege for a player who won't even see the field here this season unless... Like I said, we act weird. Don't want to spend money but then focus on an approach where you not only pay veteran salaries but also routinely are confronted with loan fees first season plus purchase option second season. Last thought, is it even worth it to spend a loan fee to acquire a RGV player? It's kind of like what I say about big fees for players with moderate salaries, Landin, Torres. Positioning that at the minor league level, if he's any good, why's he there, and if not, why am I paying loan fees for minor league talent. Escalante is mentioned and he disappears on the field here. Player like that I'll take on a free and what happens, happens, but with a loan and then a purchase option, for someone who doesn't impress me enough to make the first team straight off? Reminds me of Poku and the other guy getting sold to the minors and it was like, huh? What are the economics on that. Poku is gone, disappeared, in terms of career advancement. How does this make sense for anyone.
Dynamo are the kind of organization that misses out on opportunities because of things like “the contract needs to be overnighted via FedEx 1st AM delivery” but they can only use UPS 2nd Day Ground or something cheap like that
The sequence of workarounds I sense is amusing. GM: "I'd like to sign Peruvian Keeper." CheapOwner: "I told you what the budget was and you burned it on Elis and Cabezas." GM: "what if I take Peruvian Keeper on loan and it's a small fee this season and it counts against my transfer budget next year?' CheapOwner: "Ok." MLSButtsIn: "But cap rules. But international slots." GM: "F*ck, it, we'll sign him on loan to our affiliate in Winnipeg......" So dysfunctional.
I’ve become convinced that the Dynamo FO is doing things in more complicated ways to try and show ownership how “hard” the job is.
My thoughts on this are at some point in the past few years something happened at Texans SC and they quit producing MLS talent like they used to (Deric, Holden, Pierce, Shea, etc. etc.). Our best efforts in terms of growing our own have been feeble in comparison. I do wonder if some of the players turn out better if used different, and we should fix that. But where is StudPlayer about whom there is no doubt? Closest thing to that was Deric and he wasn't very much ours. I mean, how many Houston products are being drafted in MLS right now, from any club/college? Something went off the rails this decade. We used to have a player every year or two into MLS. http://www.texanssoccer.com/alumni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rocha [never heard of] http://www.houstondynamoacademy.com/homegrownplayers And then on paper the academy is producing 6-10 or more players a school year, and yet.....
Houstons "top" homegrown talent just walked and trashed the system. Meanwhile FC Frisco just signed their 21st homegrown player.
FC Dallas had a 10-year head start according to Chris Canetti that accounts for all the differences!!! Ignoring the academy concept or program was around at the time the Dallas Burn started. With respect to the academy program, FC Dallas is playing chess and we aren’t even playing checkers, barely playing Connect Four
Dallas partnering with Bayern Munich, Dynamo throwing their logo on a Laredo Heat brochure http://mobile.twitter.com/byIanThomas/status/963058309204008960
I’m not sure how practical it is to partner with a team on another continent, but it sounds really cool.
We "partner" with Blackpool in the early years, but nothing ever came of it from what I saw. We never played them I don't think and players never came here to play for our team or vise versa. If there was some benefit like them sending over one or two youth players to build experience in a league setting or we go to their training facilities to train with the first team. Ultimately, it just looks good and nothing actually happens. The Man Citeh and NYC thing seems different than a partnership. They have taken a player they don't want off NYC's books and convinced *coughbulliedcough* them to sell them Harrison to them not Stoke, only to loan him out.
If you look at City there seems to be a growing, "Traffic-like" concept of scouting talent, acquiring rights, and then playing middle man loaning then selling them around Europe. A flashy story hits the presses that Diskerud, etc. are signed by City, but it's for asset value, they may practice with City to having tires kicked and audition for people, but they don't register there, they get farmed out. I trust that City will be somewhat more honest and effective in the concept than Traffic was, but it's still I give the player a decent contract, but then play games offering them around as an asset until a deal satisfies me. Doesn't matter if they love loan city A and the team wants them, if the financial deal can't be made. On to city B. Freddy Adu and others have done this rodeo before. I'm not sure how good that is for the player other than financially. Greg Garza is really the only player from that set who ever found his feet, and he didn't do it til his Traffic deal ran and he came back to Tijuana and Atlanta, controlling his own fate. I also don't see the sporting value much to FCD. You're risking diverting your own talent pool to Germany. But, again, I'd say the value to FCD would be, similarly, financial. Doesn't the youth club get a cut for a foreign signing? If you are a FCD academician, isn't FCD your youth club? I don't see the sporting value unless you had a longer term residential athlete, or coach, exchange. Literally send them the other place for a year. Then, yeah, the player or coach brings what they have, and learns about the other way. But maybe a game once in a while? They'd get that annually at Dallas Cup. And while I found my experience at Dallas Cup telling, all a one-off game tends to do is make clear what the relative quality levels are, and give some vague ideas how you could do something different. You want to actually tap into something that takes months or years of exchange, someone actually giving you the castle keys. A one off game I see what they did at a 10000 foot level but I don't necessarily know how.
As much as many of you spaz over what Dallas is doing in their academy, they didn't make the playoffs and overall suck as a team and organization. You can argue about the future but I rather have our current future and roster vs whatever they have going on over there. They had 2 decent MLS seasons in recent history which was 4-5 years ago already. Don't take this as an excuse that we shouldn't improve our academy but in reality what have they done? Produce a goalie that played for u-23 mexico and now wants to play for the US?
Anyways - I want to see who the first team will be to field a core of homegrown players who are actually successful or dominant. Until then....DP's it is.
Real Salt Lake this year or next IMHO. I'm glad you trust or front office and owners to compete with Toronto, Seattle, Portland, NYRB, NYCFC, Atlanta and LAFC on the designated player front.
A lot of Dynamo fans would have said the same thing at the end of 2013. And then 2014-2016 happened. It’s incredibly short-sighted to ignore the academy which is part of the reason the Dynamo bottomed out. And as MLS owners with bigger money keep coming in, those cheap Honduran deals will get harder to find. Hell, we’ve already moved on to Venezuela and backwards Eastern Europe countries because prices have gone up
FCD: HGP -- Jesse Gonzalez, Ulloa, Acosta, plus I believe a half dozen others. Plus 3 GA. Plus their draft picks usually make the first team. Walker Zimmermann, etc. (though now traded) The difference I see is that Dallas in a down year will never be as bad as we can get because there is a solid, first team ready local and college "core" around which the rest goes. If we f*ck up the FA market and draft -- as we did for two or three years running there -- there is literally "no there, there" underneath it all. Right now if we tried to field a team with Memo, etc., we'd get clobbered, it would be basically a RGV reunion game. That's what we do, is produce minor league players or subs. I also think it helps in terms of cap and roster management to be able to grow your own. The difference between the teams last year was they sold Castillo and we signed some good veterans for a change. But structurally they are set up to produce their own players and be marginal playoffs as default minimum. Whereas we have no "local core" really to speak of, little history of first team starter HGP except one guy, and so everything comes down to that year's FA market. We blow that and there is no bottom to the abyss. We are picking through MLS clearance or signing second division Spaniards, because we have no truly "Houston" team under it all. My thing is not we have to be FCD per se but that it's a pretty cheap way to bolster a team, and an obvious tactic to a moneyball team. Don't want to spend a lot on salary? Develop HGP you can sign for $100k salary or less. I don't even see how this is at odds with signing Elis, too. Over here, the GM signs veterans. Over there, the academy produces our own players. It's actually complementary.
I didn't state we were doing great on that front but we arent as bad as other teams. Also doing a hell a lot better than NYRB and NYCFC...on paper LAFC is doing "ok" but they haven't played yet and you could have the said same thing about both NY teams. Portland DP's if anything are closer to what we are doing and ATL is on another level but we'll see how their second year works out. Never said let's ignore the Academy, I would love to have a great academy but the base many of you guys use is Dallas which was either Ferreira FC or Castillo FC when they were succesful and Castillo didnt even want to be there. Their Homegrowns are fillers, many of them have not worked out and they use them in lieu of spending money. I think with RGV and the other affiliates we are definitely trying to go in the right direction as far as development. More importantly to me we also finally got the coach right whether it was by chance or planned we got it right, he seems to at least want to produce/develop players so I am guessing we will see a lot more kids be given opportunities. I feel many on the board act as if the Dynamo has been a dead organization in recent years when we have built a second team to actually aide in the development of our brand/1st team. Apologies if we didnt affiliate with Bayern or Barca so people are disappointed. Yes Juve, you nailed it here. A mixture of both is great. I want this as well. The years we did bad we got the coaching wrong - Left Kinnear to blow up the team and then brought in possibly one of the worst coaches in MLS history in coyle and filled in Wade to try and float that sinking ship. I like Cabrera and his tactics. Taking a team from wooden spoon to 1 game from a final in one season is no easy feat and I think people are not giving him enough credit for this. He is a players coach but also tactical.
Homegrown talent is a hit or miss by large margins regardless of the landscape of the transfer market. I hate to see it, but long gone are the days of teams truly competing with majority of kids that came through the academy... like the class of 1990 for Man United, or multiple teams that Ajax built. To see our team produce MLS Starting Quality players is a dream for me, more than winning another MLS Cup. Honest truth. To be fair every MLS teams has failed miserably with this model. Hearing the Union had opened up an actual academy with a education, training, and games all included made me excited because that's a model that produces the future of soccer in America. English, German, Italian and Spanish all have these with most of those clubs and have eventually produce legends of the sport. Dallas had an off year last year, so is the growing pains of any team. They do have a good group of players that have come out of their academy and draft.... I want to see this for every team.
RSL group is building the $60-Mil Herriman facility as well, which seems like it could be used as a European type of residency for some players. I guess we will see if they squander it or not.
RSL is one of the clubs in the MLS that seem (from the outside fan looking in) to have their heads on straight. Don't see a lot of wild transactions and a lot of their players stay awhile. Spending large sums on DP's who don't really pan out, is another thing I haven't seen from them either. Javier Morales was there a long while and scored tons of goals for them.
Some blunt questions having looked at the rosters. How many HGP at Dynamo? How many HGP at RGV? If the theoretical explanation for RGV is for the 18 year old HGP that needs seasoning, and is not first team ready, what are we seasoning? How many draft picks at Dynamo? How many picks at RGV? Do they outnumber HGP? Does that basically say the college draft is better than the academy? How many free agents on RGV? Relative to picks? Relative to HGP? Is that how other II teams look? Or is this pretty clear we can't develop players even as good as college teams, and that this is not the theoretical "development bridge" team like a German U-23 II team, but instead a place to sock away free agent player rights. A veteran minor league team. Look at the players who were promoted to senior contracts this season. English player signed to RGV from overseas academies. Philly draft pick rebound. Montreal draft pick rebound. Not even our own draft picks or HGP. We flushed one HGP on character grounds and the other, the lone guy I can seem to find on either team in our pipeline, doesn't start and may even get loaned down. If the idea is RGV is the pitstop for HGP who are just kids not ready for adult play, that's not how it's being used. HGP throughout the system seem to be treated like they have the plague. When is the last HGP got signed here? Or even RGV? Are we talking years? Like you can't even produce players for the minor league team better than a college draft pick will? Where's the accountability? Having pondered that, then ask yourself what purpose RGV is serving and evaluate its effectiveness accordingly. Bears noting that after last season's promotions (coach and players) the team struggled. Is any continuity built in or is it just we had a decent minor league coach and some players and then we cherry picked them to Houston, and what's left?
God damn you asked a lot of questions in a short frame.... let me answer the most important one...... 1. what are we seasoning? Bone in Ribeye for tonight, I have about 35 oz of it, so first come first served. In all seriousness, I think that's probably the issue almost every team is facing in this league. A ton of people who are just filling a roster with a couple kids who "need seasoning". The culture about soccer in this country will have to change first before that changes. American Kids with real talent still rather go play in Europe than play in the MLS for youth teams. The real athletic kids play baseball, football, and basketball... even hockey. Soccer is 4-5 on then totem pole when it comes to talent, US Soccer was smart they would really push harder to groom these Hispanic, black and others youth who's parents migrated to this country and soccer is there #1 sport.
I asked many questions because I was intending to provoke as much as get answers. Get down to it, what I was out to say was, well, if the idea or sales pitch ever was to bridge our HGP over to HD through the 18-23 years, that does not look like what we are actually doing. To me it looks like most of RGV, and even the people we have promoted up from there, are free agent journeymen with previous resume stops. To which I respond, while a particular player might find his niche in a system, or have been overlooked before, I think it's a loser's game to have a minor league team full of free agent debris. I thought we learned this lesson in 2016. To me if you're looking for prospects, the ceiling is not set on draft picks and HGP. In contrast, veteran free agents are low risk and low reward. You know they play ok and are professional. But you're kind of kidding yourself telling yourself that, say, Kevin Garcia is going to take off here in a way he didn't in Ireland or lower division Sweden. He may be American but you might as well be signing a slow second division Spaniard, then. Or a guy from the Icelandic beer league. Where's he play now? The grumbling is probably I thought this would start to fix the HGP problem by giving them a longer on-ramp to build up speed at a more appropriate level, and instead it's more like we bought someone else's minor league team, and act almost like we have a narrow set of affiliate slots for picks and such still. To me if it was supposed to be a development team it would be HGP and picks and select free agents with unusual qualities (height, speed, skill) that we wanted to groom, and not just a second team of lesser workmanlike players exhibiting professionalism. I'll be curious when Brazos Valley gets going what the makeup of that roster is. If it's just random college kids then I'm going to start to beef that the whole pyramid structure is a branding exercise and way to sock away rights, and not a real development system. This is like Exxon got into the pipeline business but has mostly its rivals' petroleum flowing through it. Odd.
No that's genius.... own the space and have people pay you to use it. lol I still couldn't tell you who Kevin Garcia is and what position he plays. I was only kidding about the questions and make valid points on our system. Like I said though we aren't the only one with this issue. Houston's FO as we all can usually agree on, are a bunch a elementary kids trying to solve arithmetic when they only know 1+1. Playing moneyball would explode their collective minds and would never work.