It's a fair point about American kids, but a decent percentage of RGV and even the kids promoted up from there, are American. I do think in some cases like Escalante, it's a place to hide away marginal foreign players who can't be on the first team roster because of international slots. For an American they might get signed here but farmed down. For a foreigner, you literally run out of room, and if they seem like they could be useful but don't earn a slot, off to RGV you go. Only way it can work. I think that's one explicit use for RGV I see. When you're doing something weird like taking on a loan direct to a development team, that's odd. You're up to something. I would say the opportunity to do that would be limited practically. How many foreign players would sign up for RGV on purpose if they thought they could play first division ball at our level? Regarding the rest, I just thought HGP vs. college pick vs. free agent breakdown was telling. Epiphany of sorts. Why aren't we signing 5 HGP a season, to RGV at least? Doesn't hurt the first team, reward if they turn out, eyewash like you care about the Academy.....unless we internally understand already the system doesn't work. Even if it's not that concrete it would still seem to be an indirect comment on our academicians. I'm playing GM. I can sign the crème of the crop from my academicians who want to skip college, or leave early. Or draft picks. Or free agents. Whether conscious or not, the GM is voting with his feet, signing other people's soccer players and not ours. When he should have a whole class of kids to choose from every season. FWIW you can say the same thing about draft picks. I get Year 1 we had to stock a team somehow. But if you're doing your job at the academy your own kids should start to accumulate, as at FCD at the first team. I can create enough decent players where I can use them on the team, for reals. Ditto the draft. Over time if we're doing a job, even if they don't make it here, we should accumulate some draft picks at RGV. It might reflect on the draft or our powers as to same if we can't get people on the first team from the draft, but if you can't accumulate a bunch of draft picks on the farm, either, what exactly are you doing? I would be curious what the breakdown on HGP/draft/FA is at other II teams. Maybe there is a systemic element. Or maybe we have an unusual level of development/draft suckage or poor retention in our system. I keep going back to, you only have so many personnel tools, and a team in our tax bracket can't afford to be so flip about them all. I don't usually buy into "Dallas is better" arguments on anything, it's just an obvious, easy model for a team in our place. Heck, the Astros are built around draft picks and signees, who win MVPs and such while amusingly earning less than the free agents that fill in the edges and the bench. Beltran's salary dwarfed Correa and Mighty Mite. That blows my mind. What rational GM wouldn't want the core of their team built on those principles.
None of Rey's ideas are the least bit original. Rey simply stole, rehashed, and re-branded perennial knowledge as its own in an attempt to convince the public that the peak of fashion is to threaten the common good. Granted, there may be some originality in being so puzzleheaded, but the point remains that I'm sure Rey wouldn't want me to eavesdrop on its meetings. So why does it want to glorify the things that everyone else execrates? The answer is too well-known to bear repeating, but I should comment that it is immature and stupid of Rey to confuse, befuddle, and neutralize public opposition. It would be mature and intelligent, however, to build a working consensus to tackle big problems, and that's why I say that we must remove our chains and move towards the light. (In case you didn't understand that analogy, the chains symbolize Rey's crabby pleas, and the light represents the goal of resolving a number of lingering problems.) I must part company with many of my peers when it comes to understanding why Rey makes free and liberal use of chicanery, deceit, intolerance, lust, persecution, and oppression. My peers insist that there is no limit to Rey's impudence. While this is certainly true, I profess we must add that there has been little scientific or scholarly analysis of Rey's wanton, slatternly squibs. This is a glaring omission in strategic discourse, one that can be rectified only by examining how a surprisingly large number of immoral, atrabilious scapegraces consider Rey to be their savior. This overwhelmingly positive view of Rey is obviously not shared by those who have been victims of Rey's overgeneralizations or by those who believe that most people would agree that Rey knows perfectly well that seeing it incite racial hatred is a nauseating and disgusting spectacle. But once you've admitted that, you've admitted that Rey's cranky advocates have been hunting the blogosphere in packs, swarming, intimidating, and spreading outright lies and propaganda while enforcing pressure on blog owners and administrators to pit people against each other. And it follows inexorably that, except in special cases, it has repeatedly indicated a desire to subject human beings to indignities. Is that the sound of rarefied respectability that Rey's admirers so frequently attribute to Rey? The unconscionable blathering of a fastidious, unforgiving malcontent is more like it. In fact, if the past is any indication of the future, Rey will once again attempt to justify, palliate, or excuse the evils of its heart. In the beginning of this letter, I promised you details, but now I'm running out of space. So here's one detail to end with: Rey's attitudes, opinions, and aspirations are forged by a desire to use lethal violence as a source of humor. With grateful appreciation to Mr. Scott Patkin https://www.pakin.org/complaint
Yuck it up at my expense all you want. Here are the facts: U-23 PDL BVC -- 3rd in division, .500 record, behind the U-23 team for OKC and independent Christian outfit MS Brilla. U-19 Academy -- 5th and 6th of 11, both teams right around .500 and the worst academy team in the division. U-15 Academy -- 7th and 8th of 11, behind not just MLS academies but Lonestar, Solar, and Dallas Texans. The only team kind of breaking this pattern is U-17 Academy, which are 3rd and 4th in their division; however, in the current GA Cup (and even playing at home this weekend), the U-17s are dead last, 0 wins, 2 ties, 3 losses, 2 GF, 9 GA. You can't handle bulletin board length? Has to be spoon fed comments section for you? Those are the facts right there, that plus the only HGP in camp are Memo and Coach's Kid. Is that pithy enough for you?
It's not an on-off switch that requires complete XI man success. Far be it from us to suggest it might be worthwhile to field a Zardes, Morris, Acosta, Jesse Gonzalez, Trapp, Fagundez, Adams, Glad, Delgado, etc. The great Beckham years Man U teams had a blip of home growns. Barca and others make many of their own. Many great teams are a mix of a golden generation of academicians finished off with market players. People on here, when we succeed some, justify whatever we do. Last I checked there wasn't a new trophy in the case so can we quit pretending it's all sorted?
Youth results don't matter. What matters is how many professionals does a youth team create, how many do they create for the senior team, and how much ROI do those kids give the senior team? This thread has the right name for the latter reasons, not the former. I remember some sage advice Leo gave me some time ago: cheer on the kids and encourage them whole heartedly. As soon as they sign a pro deal, they're fair game like the rest. I know positive reinforcement is completely alien to you but try it for once. Might just change your whole life
Still trying find out who that person is.... Just because we celebrate our successes doesn't mean we don't know there is still a problem. Everyone one here has pointed out that and the fact that we all still talk about it means just that. We just refuse to sit and be miserable all the time.... that is for Browns fans to do.
Malarkey. The Texans SC teams all those years they were producing pros.....were winning national titles, state titles, etc. My team was both competitive and produced pro picks and players. The idea that our academicians are "learning to play right" and that makes the not winning ok, is backed up by nothing whatsoever. The only new academician "in camp" is Coach's Kid, by definition a "special case." Memo is the other one. He is trending, yet again, towards someplace on a spectrum between first team bench and RGV loan. Don't get me wrong, I have said I'd rather have RGV producing great players than winning per se. Ditto the academy. I wouldn't mind if they were developed to be better technical and tactical players. BUT In reality. They. Are. Neither. Winning. Nor. Producing. First. Team. Dynamo. It's like the Dynamo two years ago when we were in the offseason and people would say, oh, draft picks and reentry drafts and such don't matter, don't have good players.......and then the free agent and trade people sucked too. It's all well and good to say, we are too busy shaping players of the future to try and win. But then where is the list of HGP in spite of team performance. if the focus is on producing prepared players over winning......ok, where are the players? Cuz the response I have to neither winning nor producing players is more like, we suck. Not, we must be trying hard at some metric invisible to me. If we are engaged in some sort of alternative minded enterprise it still needs to output the players at the other end, otherwise what is it accomplishing? And how is it objectively separable from flat out crap? Personally I think it's malarkey, you gather a critical mass of talent in one team and they will win and be near or at the table top whether you let them play free wheeling or drill good ideas or tell them to play cynical negative soccer. People need to face facts. The initial burst of Deric/Dixon/etc. was "dibs" players we did not train very long. Basically Texans we slapped a label on before the rules changed. The rules changed, they had to really be your academy trained players with some tenure, and we have fallen behind in academy players ever since. Personally I wonder where the height, speed, and other non-technical attributes are, because the people we see HGP lately are all a sort of "Alex Lopez" type. Pure technicians with average footspeed barely capable of playing team two way soccer. There is a reason they can't crack a first team that starts to have more athletes, play faster, demand team defense. At which point I'm like, you're messing up, go back to U-10, and start identifying players with the attributes you want at U-20, not teaching them to be calm but unathletic machines who can't make an MLS impact. You want credit? We have improved at free agency the past two years and seem to be spending a little more money these days, although often in acquisition fees and not salary. But giving a crap academy credit for like zero 2017 HGP and zero or one 2018 HGP is kissing up without reason. At the point it is unproductive outside of securing players for NCAA ball**, I don't care if they are supposedly "learning to play right." It is not showing up in output at the end of the process. I think you're kidding yourself. **Traditional club teams produce NCAA players, too. The Texans still do (even if where have the pros gone).
People confuse hard to please with impossible to please. I like Steeves. The young keepers in camp seem decent. Show me something. The academy ain't showin' me sh*t, that simple. They're not competitive in US Soccer Development Academy league, not competitive in GA Cup, don't win the big tournaments, and don't produce many professionals now that the responsibility is squarely in their hands. It's not just random chance, either. Look at USSDA and every single age group, in our geographical division, it's FCD and Colorado trading places atop the division in the top two spots. Is it then any surprise to know Dallas signed 6 HGP the last two seasons, and Colorado 2? How about us? Oh. But we are hard at work making good human beings or teaching them to play right, or whatever it is people are claiming. At U-19 we are behind the Texans SC which means why am I even playing for the academy?
Proof that this isn't just a Houston issue. http://www.espn.com/soccer/united-s...17becomes-latest-american-to-sign-for-schalke Schalke is basically raiding almost every MLS team's youth squads for talent...... how in the flying ******** is this German team 5,000+ miles away seeing these talents that the MLS teams are not seeing in their own backyard? Signing these kids to contracts and trying to grow them.... this is one of the biggest problem with MLS teams. Rarely do you see clubs just letting prized talents just walk to other teams and tryout. Pulisc should have been tied to some MLS team... he literally got on a plane flew to Germany and now touted as the next big thing.... not by just Americans, but MAJOR CLUBS AROUND THE WORLD!!!! MLS and US Soccer needs to wake the ******** up. We will never be a attractive league to the best players IN THEIR PRIME around the world if we continue to let this happen. I am far more concerned about this than Houston not producing HG players because they will be over looked by out blind staff and walk there happy ass across the border to play for a Mexican team or fly over to Europe never to return.
People wonder why I can be slightly cranky and untrusting about how this site works, and yet lo and behold I went from having polite discussions about the state of the academy, where my views were respected (and implicitly can't be that nuts) to one of a particular set of critics saying why does anyone listen, to "open season." The length and content of my posts is fine until someone decides they're not. It's politics, it's not me.
Implicit in your argument, is an argument I saw Rey making a while back, which I considered to be subtle organizational propaganda, or at least "pro-Academy." The idea seems to be that the Academies are doing their work and the teams just don't get it. While I might occasionally buy the notion a particular young player is hard done by, are you telling me that we are quietly creating Schalke and Necaxa players in MLS academies in droves, acquirable (or acquired) at minimal salaries, and the coach and GM can't even see it? I am more inclined to buy that our academy system in particular has only produced 1 can't miss HGP kid similar to what Holden was from Sunderland. Deric. Those players that do tend to be signed are bench level players with patent flaws in their games. In the case of Lucatero, I was unimpressed, looked very average, but I assume Necaxa is willing to pay more money for a second chance than we are in a RGV deal. That is about the gap between MLS and USL money, and his inability to make a first team impression to earn the MLS deal. I am not sure the economics exist to raise USL salaries just to retain mediocre players who already have had a chance. It's kind of like there was a period circa 2005-2010 when the reserve league was started but reserves were paid peanuts, like $10-20k. The USL stepped in and offered $30k (or maybe more) deals. Simple math. The players were not going to be MLS starters, they were marginal bench or even roster filler, if we kept them. It was simply that under present valuations, USL would pay more than we would, and play them. MLS upped its reserve salaries, and magically PR Islanders and Montreal were no longer CCL juggernauts as they were for a period. So now what I see is improving league quality, but we still have roster limits, and we're offering decent players RGV and $30k I assume. The general level is decent enough Necaxa is like, ok, I'll roll the dice, $50k. They are paying more to take the performance risk than we should. The flaw in your analysis here, far as I am concerned, is we are barely producing players worth fighting about. This is a shaggy dog story, Lucatero. FWIW, even if I accepted your premise, one basic way of warding off competition -- and we will sometimes have it internationally for HGP (that's the way the rules are structured, is we get dibs in MLS so domestic disappears) -- is throughput. But I see half the problem as we aren't producing 5 signees a season where so what if one guy decides he'd rather do Europe or Mexico. It's more like 3 guys in 4 years and if one of those guys heads off you want to act like we are overlooking something, when in reality the tap is barely dripping and it just looks awkward because we won't or can't even keep them, which to me could be as much of an "underperformance" story where they aren't earning first team deals, and are effectively free agents again, as your tale of magically missed prospects. I see flashes from Memo and Navas Cobo but generally speaking it's more of a "is this really all you have" response to pretty much everyone we've developed for years. All due respect but that goes to academy quality and not spending or inability to talent evaluate. The rest of the team got better last season, and yet there was no HGP influx under the new coach. Or the one before that. Or the one before that. Or the first coach.
I also think it is very naïve to compare, say, McKennie from FCD academy, to Lucatero to Necaxa. One is an academy producing several good players with a slight problem keeping them in house, because they are in demand by big clubs. That is a luxury of riches. The other is an academy dribbling out mediocrities, that couldn't break in our lineup, and wind up either RGV, another USL side, or abroad as a project. Do you really believe we have a productive academy problem? We have the opposite problem, that if I could care less, and offer them RGV, they are effectively free agents. This is like when NASL talks like they have no salary cap. A team with McKennie in their system has a different issue, which is am I willing to bid with international clubs, to compete for their services, and will the player consider me when I do. That is a mature academy problem, what they have in Europe. That when a player graduates to pro you don't always keep him. But we don't even have that problem so why are we being compared? Didn't you read my posts, that we can't even create HGP good enough to compete with a late round college draft pick or USL level free agents or international players not good enough for the Dynamo yet.
Last thought, when Dallas is producing a McKennie, who was in their system 7 years, this is no longer the "dibs" era, what are we not doing scouting or coaching wise where they produce higher level players (Acosta, Gonzalez, etc.). At a certain point there needs to be internal accountability because this is now a U-10 to college age progression we completely control. if your hand selected players don't compete, that speaks to quality of the mousetrap you've put together. Ajax is too busy producing tons of players off an assembly line to complain too much about any player that leaves (and don't we get a cut?). More punchy? After what we've produced, how is Clarkson still in a job? This is no longer a rights competition for high schoolers, this is, you are the only pro team in town, that should be a magnet, and if it's not working for whatever reason (coaching, locations, etc.), be real about it.
Memo has been the only one out of our program that looks even close to the part to me. We see more and more players leaving the US to go to Europe, most we never hear of again. A lott have been have have been tied to actual MLS Clubs, 2 in that article (Atlanta and NYRB). What are other clubs in Europe seeing in these players that the clubs that is training them here not seeing? MLS is a lesser league than the Bundasliga and if that's the case we offer a better chance of them playing with or for the first teamto. That doesn't equate to success or a World Class players. Lucatero was shit and if he becomes some good to great player I'll eat those words. Saying they will walk across the border wasn't a shot at him, just saying it because it's the closes league and most of the kids coming out of Texas will likely be of Mexican Decent. We live in a hot bed (Texas) of kids that grew up playing futbol in the streets , some even on the street of Mexico or fields in the concrete grass of Tejas. We will probably miss out one them because we aren't doing enough.
No faith that MLS coaches will give them PT to develop? There are very few whom you could legit point to that give kids a chance. The comfort that German teams at least know how to develop kids, which gives you an even chance (in theory).
LOL, this isnt the BSMX threads good sir. Yes we get it you support MEXICO we get it. I wonder what the type of mentality is that helps Mexico make the 2014 WC in the last minute of the qualifier? That one probably is much better!
I think they are the best "recent" examples yes, all the stars aligned for that era which is actually gone now as they have been buying players like crazy and not promoting as much. Ajax historically has brought up plenty of players and is a good example. Every big Euro club has a massive youth team system and we see the results: one or two players come out (if that) per year and most of the time they don't even last on the 1st team roster or if lucky get loaned out or sold into obscurity. Bilbao is good at bringing players up - probably would be the best example but they aren't a TOP European team. Most top teams create their rosters with a few fillers from the academies.
Um, the Argentina Primera. Specifically Boca, River n their top tier clubs. For generations they have fielded sides made up of Academy grown talent. Said talent stays with the club they adored as a kid and plays pro in their home stadium or if really good like Tevez, Riquelme and the like they get sold to Europe for huge profits for the club. I would like our Houston Dynamo, with our incredibly talented youth scene to be a club that works like this.
When I was the Assistant GM for our USL team HHFC I specifically focused on Lee High School and the program there to train and build up inner city teenagers that were already very good players. 18 seasons later and HHFC has turned into our Houston Dynamo in MLS and I am still here at Lee, training up talented inner city teenagers. Impressing on them the work ethic and skill level needed to make the jump to any sort of professional roster. Fall short and they easily are ready for American college ball.
That is actually a great example. Argie teams in all levels bring up most of their players, heck most SA teams to be honest.
If Davis and Zusi just goof around with the ball, Mexico stays home and their system I assume would be a “failed one”. Too many folks exacerbate specific outcomes into extreme views - likely US failed in some areas but were OK in others