So Cal

Just countering what I see as your rather formulaic and ridge approach/understanding of how kids can or should develop soccer-wise…your kid has, thus far, taken a certain path, and you seem to devalue or dismiss any other paths…watching a lot soccer on TV as an 8 year old is of questionable value in the long-term imo…and lots of future elite 5-9 year old soccer players aren’t playing year around yet…and that’s ok, most are playing basketball in the winter and baseball in the summer, or just being normal kids… plenty of time to specialize and focus on one sport later on…

I agree kids should develop a love of the game, and the elite ones will…but it doesn’t have to happen all at once, right out of the gate, or at the exclusion of everything else…

 

I think there are several things at play here.

1) We (Americans) are used to dictating how athletes are grown. We do it in essentially every sport...except soccer. In this sport, we are forced to follow the rest of the world's model if we want to compete. I've seen how it works in the UK first hand. They have no qualms with telling a 9 year old kid that they will replace him in their Academy if he doesn't continue to progress. We will all have our own thoughts as to the merit of this system, but that is the system against which we are competing, and it generally produces better players than we've been able to produce.

2) Our men's system has historically been deeply fractured. Why are our women the best national team in the world? Several reasons, but one of them is a consistent, roundly recognized path to success - rec > club (hopefully ecnl) > college. We will see what affect the new women's DA has on this. For the dudes? rec > club...then what? DA or stay in my club? College or stay in my MLS academy? Read 10 different articles, you'll get six different opinions. And only recently are we getting any sense of direction from U.S. Soccer...which most times seems to be in disagreement with our rapidly growing, finally successful professional league. The elite player almost never gets elite advice.

3) Fathers who did not grow up in soccer. I'm going to toot my own horn a little here. I grew up in basketball, baseball and golf. My oldest played basketball and baseball until he was about 9. That's when he began to turn down opportunities to play the other sports. "Buddy, it's time for basketball sign-ups." - "Dad, I think I'd rather do indoor soccer." Instead of trying to steer him to a "real sport" (yes, we still hear that term all the time here in the south), I let him do his own thing. How many dads don't let that happen? How many kids who truly love soccer are still splitting their time with a "real sport" at 14 and 15? Or forced to, as happened recently in my community, give up soccer because dad is the local high school football coach and won't stand for it?

Factors like these combine to create a consternation about soccer that simply doesn't exist in other American sports. Basketball? You play rec and then in school, and if you're good you start playing AAU ball at around 10. Everyone accepts this because we see the greatness this system produces. Baseball is the same with Legion ball and other travel teams.

If guys like Jordan Morris can become stars (and as long as there are more behind him who make similar choices), then we can break down problems like 1 and 2 above. 3 is going to take longer.

 

We do. Note that I said "if" Morris can become a star. But if he does, then you have a star who...

- Cut his teeth in an MLS Academy.
- Could have stayed in that Academy, but chose college.
- Could have gone to any number of European clubs, but chose MLS after college.

In other words, a soccer star who was born, bred, and brought to stardom entirely in the United States. And who chose education over instant $. That's a game changer, if and when it happens.

 

Agree totally. What we find is that, because it essentially doubles the time they spend on soccer over Rec, the first two years of Academy (8 and 9) produces three categories of kids...

Kid 1 - "Um, yeah, no thanks. I don't like this enough to put this much time into it." Okay, no sweat. Rec is probably a good choice for you right now. If you decide in the future you want to put more time into it, we will have options for you.

Kid 2 - "Yeah, this is about right. I like it just like this." Great. Sounds like you're a good candidate to graduate to our Classic program. Looking forward to having you for one more year of Academy.

Kid 3 - "Hey coach can we add another night of training? Do you think I could sub in for the other Academy team this weekend too? Hey check this out I saw Neymar do it so I started working on it in the backyard." Dude, you're clearly on fire for the game. Let's see if you still feel that way in August. If you do, we can take the other seven kids who feel the same way and maybe get you involved in some more challenging events.

So we usually start our Classic program with an Open division team comprised mostly of kids from category 3. We fill out the remaining roster spots from category 2 kids who saw what the category 3 kids were doing and realized they wanted in (there are usually 3 or 4 of these). We will generally have a Div II team as well (category 2 kids, with some category 1s who have decided to try again). In my oldest son's case, two kids have moved down to the Div II team from his Open team, one kid has moved up from Div II to Open, and we had one kid playing Rec who went straight to the Open team when we made his family aware that there was some scholarship money available. That's all over the course of just three seasons.

 

Dempsey was at Fulham before the soccer world began to recognize him. Perception - "he had to be tested in the EPL before he became truly great."

Donovan never went to college, started his career in Europe and eventually went back there on several loans. Perception - "If I want to make it big, I shouldn't waste time in college, and I should get to Europe as fast as I can."

I agree that we will truly be in a good place when our academies (MLS and other USDA) have a track record of producing world class players. But it only takes one to prove it can be done. It only takes one to legitimize the next kid's decision to stay home. It only takes one to change the perception from the things I said above to "hey, Jordan Morris did it that way, I can too."

 

How are MLS academies right now in terms of fees? Do you have to pay? How much?

I heard that you have to pay, but it's far less than independent travelling clubs. I wonder what the dollar numbers would be.

 

"star" = someone American kids look to and say 'I want to be like him/her.'

Why will he have to go to a better league? What if he can have an 11 year career with the Seattle Sounders and make $28 million over the course of that career? Plus another $6 million in endorsement deals? Scores a bunch of goals for the MNT, teams with Pulisic and maybe Miazga and some other guys and takes us to the quarters of a world cup.

The next step is not for us to have a Messi, which, and I'm sorry if this is presumptuous, seems to be where your head is at. Bottom line - we won't have a Messi until we have a world class domestic league. We won't have a world class domestic league until our domestic league is a viable alternative to European leagues. To make that happen, the first order of business is to create a handful of guys like Morris who have a career like I described above.

 

I'm not sure bostondiesel is aiming for a Messi? Merely for a clear development channel for boys in this country that can produce consistently and in numbers players that can make it in first divisions in Europe, and therefore allow for a truly competitive national team, perhaps? That's certainly what I spend my precious and limited soccer time worrying about.

When I forget just how broken the development pathway is on the boys' side, I look at the USMNT over the past few years and wonder how it could be that such a BIG fraction of the players are, as Abby would say, not real Americans (!) That is, why is it that the children of such a small sliver of the American population (GI's, crazy expats with dual citizenship who moved to Europe, etc...) are so over-represented on the skilled side of the national team?

Since our "real American" development system is so broken as to sometimes seem not to exist at all (ok I'm being super harsh!), and with the myriad chicken-and-egg factors we've all discussed holding us back, it seems to me statistically likely that some pockets of the country will move forward faster than others - and as I've said before anyone who wishes to move to those pockets has my full support (I'm sure bostondiesel will be able to finally sleep soundly at night knowing that HA!)

In terms of stratifying kids at certain ages, not an easy subject and lots of gray areas. There is no doubt in my mind however that the extra passionate, soccer-smarter, harder working kids (even U8s or below) should be allowed to practice together on more advanced group drills (larger and larger rondos, etc...), that the kids who still can't dribble and pass are just not able to participate in yet. Fluidity of movement between layers based on progress or lack thereof has to be in place of course, but at a certain point not stratifying will bore and turn off the advanced kids from the sport.

Great thread, fun conversation!

 

None. But you don't want me answering that question because there's not an MLS club within 6 hours of me. I'm not an accurate representation.

As to the other point, talented Americans will continue to go abroad in great numbers, for sure. But the MLS is quickly becoming a viable option for guys who just don't want to go to Europe.

Admission - this concept really hit home to me recently, on a personal level. My son's club partners with West Ham, and we were invited to train over there for a week. We just got back a couple weeks ago. He was with 10-11 other kids his age. By the end of the week, there were two distinct groups of kids - the "this is great" bunch and the "meh" bunch. Don't get me wrong, we all were treated very well. But some kids responded positively to the lifestyle, food, and general rhythms of the UK, while others did not. My son was firmly in the "meh" category.

Granted, these are 11-12 year old kids, and they might go back in two years and fall head over heels in love with the place. But they also might not. I know from conversations with several of these kids and their parents that the MLS is rapidly becoming a viable alternative in their eyes. To me, this is a huge step. Even five years ago, this wasn't true.

Please don't get me wrong - I'm not saying I was over there with ten future pros. Whether these individual kids will be pros would be pretty stupid of me to speculate. What I'm saying is that these are the types of kids (very talented, very driven), the types of families (positive, willing to commit resources), that will produce our great players. And the MLS isn't a joke to them anymore.

 

MLS academies are no charge. That's the European model. The club pays for your training in the hopes that you will develop into an asset for the senior squad (or an asset to be sold to finance further development).

Having said that, plenty of real Development Academy clubs (USSDA) not affiliated with professional clubs are full pay clubs. Some subsidize the DA teams with the non-DA fees, but most DA kids on these clubs pay quite a bit of money.

 

It varies depending on the academy. DC United was about $2500 last year. RSL is $56k if you board at their Grande sports facility.
Carolina Rapids (which is only an affiliate of Colorado) is about $4300.

 

No--as of right now there is no school associated with RSL. They live at Casa Grande and attend one of 2 public choices in the area. There will likely be a school option soon (possibly pushing price up? who knows) Scholarships are available to RSL (unlike IMG).

Philadelphia Union has a school and there is a weekday residency option with volunteer parents living in local homes. The school looks fabulous. All free.
DC United has a school with residency option but the school is another $20-some-oddK--the school is almost an hour away from training fields, too.
LA Galaxy has free school at StubHub.

 

I didn't investigate IMG closely because, well, our academy team is way better than IMG, so why even consider sending my kid away from home and possibly paying $65k/year. (Their website says no scholarships)
I've always assumed kids go to IMG because they don't have a viable academy near them and the family cannot move to get them closer to one.
My son is older than yours and this is a real concern for us--wanting him to have access to training in the mornings. So we only seriously looked at academies with a school.