Three w/ Academy ties called into the U-20 camp: Taylor Booth (listed as unattached) Sebastian Soto Richie Ledezma https://www.rsl.com/post/2018/07/13/us-u20-national-team-soto-ledezma-called-camp
Too bad they are all likely leaving to Europe soon. Maybe we will be able to buy them back like we did with Lennon eventually.
RSL Academy v Bayern Munich at 5PM today and it is being streamed at https://www.rsl.com/post/2018/07/17/rsl-academy-takes-bayern-munich
The RSL U14s looked a lot like the senior team, losing 2-0. One assumes there was a rant by the coach after, but it was not caught on the stream.
The USA U20s played North Carolina FC, a USL team, this morning. They won 2-1. No video but Ledezma started. Apparently Sebastian Soto came off the bench and scored both goals. SOTO. Just drops in from who-knows-where, comes off the bench and bags a brace against a USL side. https://t.co/lLGnWR3pda— scuffed (@scuffedpod) July 18, 2018
I'd seen this rumor but there wasn't anything solid to it, so I didn't post it. Keith Costigan is a bit more reliable so it's probably worthy of posting. Hearing that US U-18 GK David Ochoa has been training with Manchester United since early last week. I’ve been told he has trials planned with a few Spanish and German giants following the upcoming U-18 tournament in Czech Republic.— keith costigan (@KeithCostigan) August 8, 2018 Ochoa is an 01 goalkeeper who is generally considered the best American GK of that age, and the presumptive starter at the 2021 U20 WC. He'd even gotten some time with the Monarchs. Losing him to Man U is a tough pill on first glance. But there may be more to this one than that. Apparently there's a rumor that Ochoa had been kicked out of the academy altogether for a (presumably serious) rules violation. I have no idea what he may have done to warrant that. So he may not have been in the first teams plans no matter what. Either way, it seems another talent from the academy isn't going to be signing with us.
Looks like Soto has signed with Hannover. Sebastian Soto to Hannover is official, via the former RSL academy striker's Instagram. pic.twitter.com/C2tdlEr0nT— scuffed (@scuffedpod) August 15, 2018 Edit: @irondeepbicycle beat me too it on the RSL News thread.
we call this too little too late Soto should have been on contract with the Monarchs for at least a year if not two. In fact, I'm starting to really wonder if the age setup in the academy is right. Having a U16 and U18 team is great, but that puts the identification timeline a bit later than it really should be. Ideally you keep the U16 and U18 teams, introduce a U14 and maybe even U12 group. Then you make the Monarchs a club that has a mandate to ALWAYS be filled with, at least, 50% Monarchs players (while pushing to make the number as close to 100% as possible). This response that was floated around yesterday is extremely tone deaf to what the real problem is. I don't care if RSL made him a good offer this summer, that is WAYYYYYY to late in the game. If I'm Soto, I'm probably saying ******** you, too, because RSL has had ample time to make an offer yet don't seem interested in it until someone else comes calling.
Aren't the Monarchs a club with 100% Monarchs players currently? But I do agree that the team should be at least half academy players while ideally having more.
That's a good use of the team tbh. Let RSL guys get healthy and match fit and not risk the senior team.
Something that's been missed in this whole conversation is the fact that Soto doesn't have an EU passport, so he couldn't move abroad until he turned 18. Same is true for Ledezma (though not Booth). Nobody could have signed him at 16 except us... but apparently we waited til he was 18. Some kids probably won't take a Monarchs contract at 16, which would kill their NCAA eligibility. But honestly... if they won't, why not offer a first-team contract? We get 30 roster spots and we're not going to use all of them in a given year. We can invest 2-4 of them at a time in signing young kids that won't play for a while. Dallas' U19 team was about as good as ours this year. In the 99-01 age group, they had 5 guys on first-team contracts. We had 0. So guess which team loses a player to Bayern for free, and which team loans a player to Bayern with a likely sell-on clause to come?
say we do sign them to first team contracts, could we not then loan them to Monarchs to free the spot?
My understanding of MLS rules is that we can only do this for one player a year. Like we can loan whoever we want to to the Monarchs, but we can only clear an actual roster spot for one player at a time with a season-long loan. Still worth doing.
To harp on this again, one last point to make... Not trying to toot my own horn, but I think I've been on this beat longer than most. I know I've been complaining about the Monarch's roster for over a year, and I think I first noticed the number of UW grads they signed. The point is, right now is the point where our top players are leaving, and it's tempting to say that we made a mistake right now... but as you point out, the mistake was actually made 1+ years ago. This was predictable. The key is to identify the top players at 15-17 and integrate them into our setup so they're ready to contribute at 18. Soto and Ledezma should have each signed over a year ago, and right now we should be talking about the top 01-03s in our academy. Now the FO is getting killed for not signing Soto-Ledezma, but we should be signing guys like Julian Vasquez, or Ben Ortiz, or Zack Farnsworth (the top 01-02s in the academy). Soto should be leading the Monarchs in goals right now, not debating signing a contract. I predict that the FO will say they tried their best to sign these two, we'll make a couple more signings from the NCAA this offseason... then we'll have this exact conversation all over again next summer when Julian Vasquez leaves for free.
The nice thing is you can get some or many of the early signings wrong and you're out relatively little money compared to what you stand to net if you end up selling a few to high bidders. Imagine how many failed early signings from their academy Vancouver can cover from Alphonso Davies' transfer fee - but he had to be on a first team contract for this to work.