Nothing new, really, but a pretty powerful closing quote from Ramos and a summary of what we've all seen if we've been to a college soccer match recently. http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/...with-professional-soccer-leagues-grows-102413
Yes high-level professional soccer and college soccer are not that compatible and will probably never be. But this is not a serious article IMO. Kind of ridiculous that his starting point is a poorly attended Division 2 soccer game. How about going to a U of Maryland game at Ludwig Field where they regularly exceed 5,000 fans and also have produced a number of professional and USMNT players (Edu, Gonzalez, Zusi, a few others). There is a pretty good level of college soccer in our area of the U.S. - going down from Maryland through the Carolinas.
Kind of bums me out to see how far down the pecking order that high school and college soccer fall. Take college and I would honestly put soccer sixth on the list of team sports in public interest. After football and basketball, I would put baseball, ice hockey, and lacrosse in no particular order. With lacrosse it is partly the lack of any other venue - the NCAA Lacrosse Championship is basically the premier lacrosse event. Over the years professional baseball and ice hockey have come around to accommodating the college versions of their sport. That has been dictated by a North American culture which seems to see college as a near universal rite of passage. College World Series and Frozen Four have become reasonably big sporting events. The high level U.S. Soccer community seems to diss / dismiss high school / college soccer and they provide their reasons. But I wonder if it contributes to holding down the interest level in high school / college soccer and perhaps consequently in the sport in general.
That's a pretty bad article. Embarassing, actually. Does anyone seriously think that the presence or absence of the NCAA is the biggest difference - or even a particularly notable difference - between soccer development in the USA on the verge of having their future international stardom cut short by playing college soccer? And if we're going tout the fact that more and more players on US Youth national teams are signing as pros during their teenage years, maybe we should take a moment to consider the recent results of those youth national teams? I'm thinking that the upcoming "future of college soccer" series that they mention isn't going to be terribly insightful.
Its really just a simple concept, not anti college soccer. Its anti any soccer for ages 18-22 that restricts development for elite International level players. Anything that restricts season to 4 months, restricts training to 20 hours or 8 hours. College soccer just can't or won't do what's needed to advance and enhance training standards. Unfortunately soccer is being played the world round and lacrosse, football, isn't. Everything is summed up here by Eddie Pope: "The NCAA’s goal is: a little bit of sports and we’ll make sure we balance that with a little bit of education and we expect you to come out well-balanced so that you can come out and get a job in the real world," he says. "And that’s fine. That works well. But it doesn’t work well in regard to having a group of players who are prepared to play against [foreign opponents] who are professionals for the last five years straight. It’s really, really tough."
This article is about low-hanging fruit. Kids going overseas is more visible now, and getting U20s who are outside of the US is much easier than it was years ago. As for college soccer, I've seen D1 games that are painful to watch, and others where there were at least three players on each team who could go pro. TR sometimes shows his previous head injury with the way he talks; for example, he wants kids to stay with the same youth club throughout their youth career, yet he expects them to get recruited internationally that way?
Let me help you guys understand something: 18-22 age soccer is absolutely brutal. EVERYwhere in the world. Every country loses talents, promotes weaklings, creates all-around crap - all things we do as well. The one thing other countries can do that we haven't is promote true star players. The guys in these interviews don't realize how they totally violate the rules of common sense. These players are playing about 35-40 games per year all told, but they would be better not playing any minutes on a professional team. Huh?