The increased quality is visible throughout the pyramid. I watched MLS in 1996. I have a season ticket for a USL club right now. In 1996, every team in MLS had serious weak links. There were players getting regular minutes in attacking roles who had questionable first touch. The average starting fullback in the USL today has better touch under pressure than the average MLS winger had under no pressure in 1996. I think, even with their stars, only three or four MLS teams from the 1996 season would make the USL playoffs today. I can think of MLS players who got into USMNT camps in the 1990s and would not stand out in the present-day USL.
Guys, I watched Andrew Shue play, up close and personal from my RB 4th row season tix. It has been downhill from there.
MLS is succeeding 100% for CONCACAF nations. So many Panamanians, Jamaicans and Hondurans who are using it to benefit themselves. So, we're def generous.
the dude from Melrose Place? I remember reading he was a soccer player, but thought it was an elaborate joke.
Played a half dozen games for the Gals. And in Africa a bit as well. He wasn't terrible, but he would not see the field in todays MLS.
Was he decent enough to actually start back then? Was he a legit full-timer for the squad or only played home games? I find that crazy that he was a tv actor playing pro soccer.
Yeah, I graduated from college in 2001, and it was understood at the time that if you were an average or better college player, you could walk into the roster of the local USL team, not necessarily start, but make the roster. So, it was basically like a slightly better version of college ball with the worst guys not making the cut and a bit more maturity and understanding of the game. A few guys I played with in college went on to play in USL for a bit, but not many, since the pay was crap, and you definitely had to have at least one other job to make it work. I didn't go to USL games for a while, because I thought it was stupid to pay to see guys play who basically my level. Now I've gone to a handful of USL games in Pittsburgh over the past 2-3 years, and while the level still isn't great, and I still have those moments where I'm thinking, "If I were 15 years younger, I'd get out there and show those guys what's up," these guys are mostly legitimate pros now. There are guys who bounced around MLS for several years, good MLS prospects on loan, guys who have played professionally abroad, etc.
PR stunt by the time he got into MLS, yes. Had MLS started five years earlier, he might have been good enough to get regular minutes, because he would have been a better player and the US player pool would have been weaker. He played semipro soccer in Scotland and Zimbabwe before he became an actor.
For those who derided my comparison of MLS to League One, Antonee Robinson played in League One last season.
No he didn't. He played for Bolton in the Championship, on loan from Everton. He was also born in Milton Keynes and has literally no connection to MLS.
Regarding he USL discussion, I took my kid to see OCSC play. The players looked a little more nervous on the ball than I would have expected. Like the defenders would have no one within 15/20 yards of them, and they'd have happy feet. They looked scared to death. But, it was fun. So, I pulled up the team's website. Turns out the best player on the field was a 35 year old Japanese guy. I thought, well, I'll look up one of the guys that scored: Jamaican. So, I looked at their roster: English Japanese American HG Defender American keeper Nigerian Young American MF Danish forward Dutch Jamaican forward American MF Dane American defender Trinidad American MF American Def American Keeper (15 y.o.) American forward Swede Ghanan American keeper American defender American mf 12 out of 22 U.S .eligible. Defenders: 4 Keepers: 3 MF's: 4 Forward: 1
Oops, you're right. He played for the worst team in the Championship that didn't get dropped. Bolton escaped with a win on the last day. They are a hairs breadth better than League One level. "He was also born in Milton Keynes and has literally no connection to MLS." That's my point. My point is that MLS is failing at producing young players that are NT level. I said that young MLS'ers are about League One (later amended to low Championship) level. Robinson is a young defender who played on the worst team in the Championship that didn't get dropped, and he appears to be head and shoulders above any MLS fullback, young or old. I'm not knocking Robinson - he looked good - I'm knocking MLS. There is not a young fullback in MLS that could touch Robinson. And, MLS way more Americans play defense in MLS than offense.
So the majority were American. Also, the Trinidadian is Noah Powder who was born in the US and the Jamaican is Michael Seaton who spent his entire youth career in the US and is a US citizen.
The best and most accomplished generation of Americans to-date came through NCAA and a, frankly, much poorer version of MLS: Donovan, Dempsey, Beasley, Bradley, Altidore, Howard, Guzan etc. These were mostly guys born in the late 70s and 80s. Are people really going to argue that "development" and scouting was better then? If anything, it was much more difficult to acquire the skills to make a living playing soccer during this time, which helped shape the character of these individuals. This is not to say we should be relying on NCAA and MLS, obviously, but more to point out that the biggest factor in development is still the player himself. Not only their raw talent and physical ability, but their drive and motivation to improve. As a country we focus too much on systems and things that are mostly inconsequential like if players are grouped by the proper birth year. Culture, not systems, is still the biggest challenge across the board; these other factors are marginal. For instance, I'm not sure of the point of bringing up the distribution of nationalities in the USL, except to highlight the point about culture. I pretty much have the same experience playing pick-up soccer or in amateur leagues -- about half of the players are immigrants or kids of immigrants. That's not the case when I play pick-up basketball in the same neighborhoods.
They did. But there are tons of guys that did both and haven't amounted to squat. In fact, just looking at pure athleticism, how many guys do we have coming up that are athletes on par with Donovan, Jozy, Gooch, Boca, Beasley, Howard?
"Majority" is a pretty low standard for the % of domestic players on a 2nd division domestic team. But, thank you for the info.
How long ago was this? Orlando hasn't played in USL since 2014........... MLS and USL have grown considerably since 2014.
Well no, he played in the Championship, which is possibly the strongest second division in the World. He was also playing there getting minutes on loan from his Premier League club, Everton. The same way David Beckham played for Preston North End at the same age. Saying MLS is "low Championship level", is not the slam you think it is. Again, MLS youth development is in its relative infancy. Do we need to do this again? The league started from scratch in a barren soccer landscape in the mid-nineties as a mandate from FIFA. In 2002 the league came as close as it possibly could to going away. The years immediately following 2002 were about achieving stability and building the league into something viable. There wasn't even a reserve league for MLS until 2005 and it went away again after three years. The reserve league returned in 2011 before being integrated into the USL partnership we see today. So we're really looking at less than a decade for the current approach to bed-in. Furthermore, the building process is ongoing and has very recently seen an upsurge in investment. RSL alone just put something lie $78m into its academy and facilities. All told, MLS has collectively just put 9 figure sums into development. So once again, more than ever, the answer to your OP remains the same: No MLS isn't a failure at developing players because it has only just started making a concerted effort at doing so. If the US has made no progress by 2026, then yes, we can say that MLS has categorically failed in its attempts to aid USMNT youth development. Not today.
My perception is that this MLS isn't the same as that MLS as far as giving young Americans a chance to grow. I've looked at the ages of some non-defender NT guys when they began starting in MLS. How many U.S eligible guys under 23 are starting in the league now? 23 Lewis 21 Wolff 23 Mathis 17-18 Beas 23 McBride 21 Dempsey 21-22 Holden Jozy was 18 when he was bought by Villareal from NYRB. "about half of the players are immigrants or kids of immigrants." What difference does it make that a bunch of the guys that you play pickup with are kids of immigrants? If they were in MLS, they would be US eligible. Absolutely, soccer is not super ingrained in U.S. culture. That doesn't really have anything to do with what I said. My point is that MLS is not developing young non-defense talent for the NT. It used to. Also, I complained about the composition of the local USL side. But, 2 additional US eligible players were pointed out to me, bringing the % of U.S. eligibles to almost 2/3's (I realize that is a fraction, but it seemed awkward to write "bringing the fraction .....")
He played on the 4th worst team in the Championship. He was also playing there getting minutes on loan from his Premier League club, Everton. The same way David Beckham played for Preston North End at the same age. It's not just me. Look at the outrage in this thread that I would say there are hardly any young MLS guys that could play for a low championship side. Again, MLS youth development is in its relative infancy. Being pedantic does not help your case. But, given all that, through the 90's and early 2000's, MLS did a good job of developing young U.S. players. See my post, above. The young U.S. player was *better off* when MLS didn't have the money to go out and buy waves of non U.S. eligible players. It is failing. It did better - much better, when it didn't throw all those resources at development. Because the key resource for development was the league itself. Would McBride, Wolff, Mathis, Lewis, Holden, Beasley have been better off going to practices, playing in reserve league games, or getting loaned out to USL?
Weston McKennie (FC Dallas), Erik Palmer-Brown (Sporting KC) & Tim Weah (Red Bull NY)............all grew up in MLS academies before choosing to take advantage of opportunities abroad. All three earned their first senior US Caps yesterday.
I wouldn't give MLS credit with "developing" any of those players. Not one. For a start, they barely had youth programs. What we're most likely seeing right now is the donut hole between the league growing enough in stature to attract foreign prospects and the bedding-in of an actual youth system. Another transition that might hurt in the short term is that because there was virtually nowhere for aspiring soccer players to play here, the few that had a real shout tended to head abroad and find themselves in fairly strong youth programs. That probably got the best out of what little the US had. That's no longer necessary but the upshot is that while kids don't need to move away to get a career, and there pool is wider, they are growing in a system that is itself under development. As @jaykoz3 pointed out, players are coming through, but in any case, you're mistaking correlation with causation on the players you listed. Like I said, MLS deserved no more credit for developing those players then, than they deserve today for the USMNT not making the World Cup.