Actually, I was. The league's logic is that Villarreal is a good enough player to decide where he plays. Why can't Schuler? Frankly, neither player qualifies as a HG signing.
No.. Schuler fails all of the HG requirements while Villarreal fails only one. Villarreal was at least in the Galaxy's system as a youth, Schuler never was in Philly's system until after he was in college.
Guess you didn't read the article very closely: "[T]wo fundamental problems emerged when the Galaxy made its move to sign Villarreal in December: (1) he earned his first international callup before he signed on to play in Los Angeles' academy and (2) he joined the Galaxy less than a year ago." I'm not sure why you're making such a big deal about this. Let me say again, I don't think the Union should be able to sign Schuler as a HG. The situations are not identical and I'm certainly not angry that the Galaxy signed Villarreal. I enjoy watching talent develop or I wouldn't be on this board.
I just see the whole thing as a clusterf**k..........and the clubs themselves must be wondering why in the world some claims are accepted and others aren't. It seems that clubs are just submitting requests for everybody, and seeing what sticks. If the Union's requests for CJ Sapong, Zarek Valentin, Corey Hertzog, and Andrew Wenger had been accepted........wouldn't that be sweet for them. Villarreal and Tony Cascio didn't qualify for the same reason. Neither had spent enough time at the academy in question. [When you do the math, it appears McBean wasn't either by the way.] But Tony Cascio had played at RSL's acadmy in Arizona, and had spent the summers of his sophomore and junior years training with RSL's first team. Yet his claim is rejected as being "straight-forward" by Durbin, while the acceptance of LA's Villarreal claim is treated as a "win-win" for everybody. Well, everybody except all the MLS clubs other than LAG......... It seems we all think we know the basic rules..............and then a few weeks later a signing comes along that blatantly breaks that rule. So it's back to the drawing board for us. I just wish MLS would make the rules public and well-defined, and that's-that. It should be straightforward. A player has to play for an academy team that's been recognized by the league as being a "tier 1" affiliate for one calendar year. End of discussion. Is that so difficult? No exceptions because you're worried the player will go to Belgium. No exceptions because the league liked you're "frankness." Please..........that's utter garbage. I mean, who on earth is gonna claim that the LAG "developed" Villarreal. Nobody.
This isn't a dynamic that will ever go away. Even teams that have money to compete for the caliber of DPs that LA or NY can sign won't always be able to get them bc they're not LA or NY. However I can see a situation where a player might want to spend his early years in his hometown be it KC or Columbus. But the league has already established a playbook that appeases to the whims of the talented players with options. It's the reason that only US Nationals are allocated these days yet the Henrys and Beckhams as well as any other foreign player have options. They have no ties here and don't have to come here. Most American youths don't have these type of options at the start of their careers until they prove themselves in MLS, that's the very purpose of having a domestic league. But some of these kids have the ability to flee the nest without the benefit of having been part of the USMNT system. But it's always going to be quite rare. But I agree that LA should have to reimburse the league by giving up a draft pick for recieving the benefits of this agreement. I just wonder that this might set a precedent for talented youngsters who haven't signed on to academies yet as a means to getting thier way. If MLS has shown that they will appease a player if he has talent, then the next kid who feels that they don't want to go through the draft and get uprooted will threaten the same thing.
Ding...ding...ding. We have a winner. And if they are wondering that, isn't this a sign of a problem? You mean if you are playing pointy ball, and it's 4th and 10, and you only get 9 yards - you can't be "frank" with the referee and admit that you didn't make it, but tell him that you really, really, really wanted a first down, and get it granted? That's not how the world works? SHOCKING!
Weird that people are freaking out about this, considering their is somewhat prescedent for this. Back in the old days (2 years ago) there was a limit to the number of HG's you could sign in a year. FC Dallas already at the max signed Ulloa/Hernandez (and maybe one more) with the understanding that they weren't actually roster players till the next season. Granted slightly different scenario, but if you assume Villareal can't "play" till lets say June (~ when he would hit 1yr), then the situation is almost identical. Then again one of this biggest complainers in this thread is a FCD fan, and its no fun to pretend that they were favored in that situation or that the situations could have relevance to each other.
The difference being that FCD actually developed Ulloa (had been in their program for years)..........while nobody in their right mind would say that the Galaxy developed Villarreal. Consider this, the Galaxy reportedly have also offered a homegrown contract to Mario Rodriguez. Somebody explain that one to me..........because he has even less of a connection to the Galaxy than Villarreal. He didn't play for a Galaxy affiliate before going to Bradenton, spends years at Bradenton, return to Cali to play a couple of months for the Gals.........and is then offered a homegrown contract. What? How does that work? How is he a homegrown player? The whole point of the homegrown initiative is that clubs are allowed to retain the rights to players that they actually have developed. The league set up a system to determine what constituted "developing a player" based on time spent in the program, number of training sessions, etc. Personally I don't care if MLS clubs sign 20 such players a year............as long as they're "home grown" players. Let's remember the first infamous homegrown player rejection. It was Dilly Duka and RBNY. Why was RBNY's claim denied? It was denied for two reasons. 1) The player hadn't trained at RBNY long enough, and 2) The league office said that since Duke committed to Rutgers prior to starting his training at RBNY..........that the club couldn't claim to have developed the player. How exactly is this different from Villarreal? He hasn't played at the Galaxy academy long enough, and he was a youth international prior to playing for the Galaxy (which is an issue as discussed in that goal.com article) But the league was worried that Villarreal might bolt to Europe, so they just gave him to the Galaxy. The fact that Dilly Duka reportedly had 4 contract offers from Europe after the U20WC didn't mean jack squat................ The homegrown initiative is supposed to be for players like Lalo Fernandez, Ruben Luna, Andy Najar, Jon Kempin etc. Players that were brought thru MLS youth teams, and you can actually say that those clubs had a hand in developing those players. It's NOT to get some already identified and developed youth talent like Mario Rodriguez into MLS, so that he won't bolt for Mexico. Am I the only one who thinks this? That's not to say I don't want Mario Rodriguez in the league. It's just that if he hasn't done enough to qualify as a homegrown, then he can enter the league like every other player does. Via the draft like.................Dilly Duka did. Or via a weighted lotterly like Luis Gil did. If a player doesn't qualify as a homegrown there are multiple ways of getting the player into the league.
I agree with much of this. It's similar to the point I was trying to make by using the Billy Schuler hypothetical. Of course no one can reasonably claim that the Union developed Schuler. But since Villarreal doesn't qualify either (as both the Galaxy and the league office admitted), why bring him into MLS through a player acquisition mechanism designed to reward teams for investing in youth development? It perverts the system (unless the HG rules are really about getting young players into the league, actual youth development be damned). If the player is good enough to warrant special treatment but has no legitimate youth club affiliation (Herber Mejia-Flores, for example), GA contracts and the SuperDraft or a lottery are the already existing mechanisms for bringing them into the league. Did that process really hurt Gil?
It's already happened with Luis Gil, who had enough pull to name his team, and that team was Real Salt Lake. Admittedly, he presented the league with a couple options, which helped a lot, but the environment at RSL with Kreis clearly impressed him. The 'other option' was to work a Gil-type deal for Villareal. I can see why the league didn't want to do that--first, it would have involved signing him to a much more expensive GenAd deal he wasn't even negotiating for (even at the same salary figure, a GenAd is multi-year guaranteed, doesn't count against the cap, meaning that money will get 'spent again', and includes the college fund), and since there was only one team on his list, it would have involved basically rigging a trade. Which the league has done in the past, but probably wants to get away from. Easier to create a standard 'we're making sure you're serious' cost. Oh yeah. At least if you make it cost something (like a first-rounder) it will be just the kids that teams really rate. That's not 'slightly different'--it's exactly the opposite. Where allowing teams extra youth signings increased the incentive to clubs for developing players, this type of move risks reducing it.
Or of course they could have waited for Villarreal to complete his year of service and/or number of training sessions requirement. My rantings make it sound like i'm vehemently opposed to the signing. I'm not. I like getting talented young kids in the league. It's just that if they allow the Villarreal signing, then they need to allow similar signings for other clubs. And if they allow the Mario Rodriguez signing.......then hell, they might as well get rid of all the rules. Because he's been "developed" by the Galaxy only slightly more than Zlatan Ibrahimovic was. For the league to reject Cascio (and others) because he didn't spend enough time at the RSL academy, and then to accept Villarreal despite the fact that he didn't spend enough time in the Galaxy academy system.............smells of a double standard. Does it not? What people are saying is that Villarreal is such a great talent that the league NEEDED to approve the signing, or they'd lose him. Fine. They could easily have set up the situation they set up for Gil. KC won the weighted lottery for him, and then traded his rights to RSL. They got quite a deal out of it. They got an international player slot........plus 25% of a future Gil transfer fee. (plus a 2nd round draft pick that they wasted on a useless player). That's the price RSL had to pay to engineer the move for Gil. THAT'S what I'm suggesting should have been done in the Villarreal case. Or better yet, LA could have waited until the kid qualified. It's not really that complicated.
Junior Flores is a near-perfect analogy. If the league did have a first rounder policy, DCU could negotiate directly with his family, and probably get a better deal than the league will, because playing close to home and personal recruitment can count for a lot. But DCU wasn't going to do that, because it's so blatantly against the currently-announced 'rules' that they never would have even had the 'frankness' (read: chutzpah) to try.
Although the mandatory 1st rounder would be an improvement on the current situation, it does raise a few potential issues. What if a team has already traded their 1st round pick (like NYRB this year)? Does the league just take one for the following year? Also, with all the teams in the league today, there is quite a difference between giving up a pick in the 1-5 range where most of the elite prospects and GA talent can be found (Mwanga/Tchani/Opara/Bunbury/Loyd in a recent draft) and a pick in the 15-19 range (Warner/Stephens/Stahl/Ream/Thomas). I'd almost rather see the required draft pick compensation be top-10 protected, especially if MLS wants to promote parity (something like #11 through #29). 2nd round picks seem to be traded more frequently though (DC United doesn't have one this year for the Junior Flores hypthetical) so maybe that would only make things needlessly complex. I also doubt that the league has any interest in formalizing this method of player acquisition. It seems they prefer to make a decision on every player individually, without worrying too much about whether it meets the letter of the law.
Official MLS announcement of the Lalo Fernandez signing: http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/01/09/rsl-re-ink-grabavoy-add-home-grown-gk-fernandez Fernandez, meanwhile, steps into the senior team after graduating from RSL’s Arizona academy. The El Paso, Texas, native most recent played for Peñarol in the Uruguayan Primera División and spent some time in the youth system of famed Mexican side CD Guadalajara. He has also seen some time with both US and Mexican youth national team squads. According to Lagerwey, Fernández will be RSL’s third-string goalkeeper behind Nick Rimando and Kyle Reynish If I'm not mistaken, Fernandez is RSL's 2nd homegrown player after Danny Toia.
I agree that the league probably isn't chomping at the bit to do it. Your thoughts had occurred to me, too, and what I'd figure is they give any team that wants to go that route the opportunity to trade into a later first round pick that they could then give up. So if DC wanted to badly enough they could give up their #7 (if we were talking this year), but they could also ship a player out, get a #17, and make the deal with that one.
He's their 3rd after Toia and Nico Muniz. I can see why you forgot about Muniz, though. RSL's HG signings are fairly stealthy. Toia and Muniz were not big names before signing and they haven't done anything to distinguish themselves yet either.
Thanks. I hadn't realized Nico Muniz had signed.........but you're right. http://www.realsaltlake.com/news/2011/09/rsl-signs-yordany-alvarez-and-nico-muñiz He's from New Mexico.............so RSL's 3 homegrown signings are from El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tuscon. Really good to see. Definitely under-exploited regions soccer-wise in the US. As far as I know Arizona has no major college or professional soccer teams at the moment. (could be wrong) But we're starting to see more and more players coming from there. I believe Nick DeLeon and Tony Cascio, who'll be top 20 (maybe 10) MLS draft pics are from Arizona. Nat Borchers, Robbie Findley, Brad Evans, Luis Robles, Pablo Mastroeni and others all hail from there. New Mexico is really underdeveloped soccer-wise. The only other current player I can think of from New Mexico is Edgar Castillo from Las Cruces. (well his brother too I guess, but I don't know what happened to him.) And we've talked about El Paso in this thread. MLS clubs are falling over themselves to get down there.
I think its both. Its important to recruit AND Develop. Yes it seems unfair, but we're in the middle of a huge transition, and that means rules. There are rules on the books that are presently being handled unfairly in part because they are unfair. There's so much overlap. HG, college, GA's, DA Academies, MLS academies. All being tracked 5 yrs back. And sometimes that in direct contradiction to wanting talent to smoothly get signed into MLS. I like the debate but don't think its as black and white. This will settle out with most coming from affiliated DA's and I think a lessening of the timeframes needed to play for a club. Big Cities will seemingly be at an advantage but that will wain when we have many talented teens wanting to sign.
The problem is that many youth players now jump around from club to club to college to PDL, etc..........making a determination of who's actually "developed" the player essentially meaningless. I mean Richard Sanchez played at both Atletico Madrid and Chivas. How much has FCD really "developed him." And the meandering affiliations of youth clubs make it even more complicated. I mean the whole South Bay Force, Pateadores, LA Galaxy affiliation history gives me a headache. Figuring out the Union's complicated system makes me want to blow my head off. When did Villarreal start playing for a youth club that could be considered as a tier one affiliate of the Galaxy? I have no idea!!!! I just wish MLS was more transparent with the signings. Here's what I wish the Villarreal press release would have said: The LA Galaxy announced today that the club has signed 18-year-old midfielder Jose Villarreal as a Homegrown Player. The Inglewood, Calif. native is the third player to be signed directly from the Galaxy Academy, joining Tristan Bowen, who, in 2008, was the first player in MLS history to be signed directly from a club’s academy, and Jack McBean, who signed with the Galaxy in January 2011. While Villarreal is still in his first year of training with the Galaxy, the club received permission to sign him at this time. The club and MLS struck a deal in which the homegrown contract could be offered at this time, however the player cannot play for the Galaxy first team until the requisite amount of training time in the academy is complete. Galaxy Academy Senior Director Chris Klein confirmed that this was done in order for the club to compete with contract offers received by the player in the past month from clubs in Europe and Mexico. This continues a recent trend of MLS headquarters using the pliable homegrown player rules to allow elite youth talent to stay in the United States. Would that have been so difficult? Instead..............all we get is "Hey, the Galaxy signed this guy. Why? Because we said so. Now scram."
It's certainly not black and white! I'm not arguing that Villarreal shouldn't be brought into the league. Even though I think forcing the Galaxy to give up something so other teams would be more inclined to look the other way makes a lot of sense, I have no problem with him joining the Galaxy and I look forward to watching him play when he finally gets on the field. I do worry that too many signings like this might create less incentive for teams to actually spend the money to improve their own youth academies. If you can wait until someone else has developed an elite player, then offer them a few months of training and threaten the league with Europe or Mexico, does that really improve youth development in this country? Have the Galaxy made Villarreal or Mario Rodriguez better players (I would make the same argument about the Union...not trying to pick on the Galaxy here)? Is the HG initiative merely a new way of allocating players? Either way, I think we both agree that getting younger talent affiliated with professional teams is basically a good thing, provided they do more than stagnate on the bench. On a broader level, I have no issue with affiliates and funneling players into MLS youth development systems through that mechanism.
Alright, there has been a lot of hemming and hawing over Jose Villarreal on this forum, and I wanted to clear up something I think is a misconception. That's from the MLS Homegrown Player Policy as posted by the Red Bulls. (Obviously it's an old link since it's still talks about the 2 homegrown per year limit) But regardless, it establishes the precedent that MLS restricted U17, U20 and U23 internationals from being added as homegrown players but says nothing about U15 or U18 internationals. I think this is because the U15s and U18s often cast a wide net since those cycles are in essence big tryouts for the subsequent U17 and U20 World Cup squads. Point is, Villarreal appeared as a U18 international before becoming a Galaxy academy player. I believe he only became a U20 international afterwards. So unless I'm wrong about that, the only reason this signing wouldn't qualify is the idea that Villarreal hasn't been there a full year. And if the league indeed has a waiver that allows players to sign - but not play - until the 1 year mark has passed, that's more than good enough for me.
If what you say is true about youth internationals, how could the Galaxy have offered a homegrown deal to Mario Rodriguez last month? [Granted we heard the Galaxy offered the contract, but nothing about it since. Perhaps the league nixed it.] Shrug...........the league office is making it up as they go along. That's a silly rule, of course. You actually do want the kids who were at Bradenton to go to the development academy (if they don't have pro offers abroad or MLS GenAd contracts). And if they go to an MLS DA & play in the number of requisite training sessions..........it's silly not to let them sign homegrown deals. Of course, I've wondered why Alfred Koroma didn't stay at the FCD academy. He played with them at the SUM Cup, and it would have made a ton of sense for him to play there. Perhaps FCD thought they couldn't sign him to a homegrown contract anyway, so they didn't retain him. Instead he plays for Solar down the street with inferior facilities, training staff, etc. when compared to what FCD can provide.
You nailed it. Sometimes players can often train, trial, and play for over 10 clubs. Rec, Multiple USYS teams, HS team, DA team, MLS team, European teams, US National Teams, Select teams, all-star teams. Trying to determine which team 'developed' him is foolish. Let's understand the spirit of the rule and apply loosely. At some point an elite player will have a relative close to an MLS team and want to play there. And MLS should make it easy for them to do it or lose the player to Europe.
The contract was actually offered to Torre. Many were speculating when the galaxy were talking about offering 2 hg contracts that the other player was Rodriguez. http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/soccer/post/_/id/13179/galaxy-sarvas-signing-is-official There should be no way that a hg contract was offered to Rodriguez because he was in residency before coming to the galaxy. For the other two, I guess the water is a little more murky. I hope that MLS will release some updated rules before the beginning of the year or at least update us on the situations better than the goal article did.