It's a common place for big teams to have academies all over the world for example in the US Solar Chelsea, and PSG Chicago just off of the top of my head. So should mls teams place academies in other countries? For example hunduras and costa rica. My thinking is yes, first off you can have a better pipeline for players to the mls and be able to get better talent from the leagues, but second good placers that are coming to the league from these countries in their early 20s will be better players all around if they have mls structure to help improve their development
I think that would be a great idea. Put the academies in south and central america and their will be a good amount of young talent going into the league. The only bad thing i can think of is the cost. Its going to cost a good amount of money to set up the academy.
I don't know the official relationship details but my thinking is that they are not owned nor run in any way by Chelsea nor PSG. There may be a relationship in terms of shared information but no player that I know from those clubs are formally owned or under contract of the big clubs. Its really just a name for promotional services that cost them a few grand. I also don't believe they fund them in any significant manner. What would be the advantage of a player going to a MLS academy in Honduras rather than a Honduran professional academy particularly since the player will essentially have to start his career in Honduras due to nationality. It just doesn't seem cost effective. Let the player develop to the point that scouting takes over so the few or so can then be signed or transferred when the time is right. There's a reason why French clubs don't have academies in Italy and Mexico don't have academies in the US. They scout players but don't need to fund full academies to do so.
FC Dallas has had an affiliation with an Academy in Monterrey, Mexico since 2013. http://www.fcdallas.com/post/2013/09/11/fc-dallas-welcomes-new-affiliate-monterrey-mexico Also has an affiliate in Costa Rica. List of FCD Academy affiliates: FC Dallas Alamo Area FC Dallas Costa Rica FC Dallas East Texas FC Dallas El Paso FC Dallas Emerald Coast FC Dallas Laredo FC Dallas Monterrey FC Dallas TRI FC Dallas West Texas