Nice to see Ellis off to the fast start in the 1st game, and seemed active in the second game as well. 3 of the boys are from my area. Zimmerman is the brother of Preston on the 17's McLoughlin and Zimmerman are teammates, Daniel Wenzel a rival club 20mins down the road. It's funny because the other forward that plays with McLoughlin is as good or better. Anyways, I'm always happy to see some local kids do well.
Yah, we say that at times here about national level players in Illinois, too. The gap between player #25 in the country at a given age group (i.e., national level) and #50 (i.e., regional but not national level) is small indeed.
I would be interested to hear from those of you involved in the select club team circuit (JohnR, NextLevel?, Gersman?) if CoachingtheGame's points have been addressed at all by the emergence of US Club Soccer and their player id system. Did*all* the players at the U-15 Camp come via the traditional ODP filter? Or did some get identified in other ways? Given the potential for politics, institutional inertia, in ODP (or indeed any similar organization), a diverse player identification process is in the National Team's interests. How are we doing in that diversity???
Norberto Ochoa isn't even listed in the 50 player state pool much less the Regional pool, so I guess he found him through some other avenue.
I think that some are beginning to come up through U.S. Club's ID process. Can you define diversity? 1) Racial - Great (unless you're a white kid ) 2) Rich vs. poor - OK 3) Suburban vs. city - Rotten 4) Famous club vs. small club - Mostly rotten 5) Other measures?
[QUOTE/]Can you define diversity? 1) Racial - Great (unless you're a white kid ) 2) Rich vs. poor - OK 3) Suburban vs. city - Rotten 4) Famous club vs. small club - Mostly rotten 5) Other measures?[/QUOTE] What I meant here was diversity in identification process -- not necessarily the measures you list above. The presumption was that different types of kids would be identified by different types of processes. Or perhaps that some kids might get a second chance via a different filter. I don't know enough to provide examples of this, but I recall seeing on these boards some discussion of Kenny Cooper's lack of U-something national team experience. I could imagine that he or any player really might be labelled as "not quite good enough" by an influential gatekeeper and never have a shot. If we had more avenues to get to Bradenton, the team might benefit.
Fair enough. Unfortunately, I am not close enough to the situation to be able to answer this version of the question.
The U-15 camp has ended. Brandon Tarr now in state playoffs in TN. http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/preps_boys_soccer/article/0,1406,KNS_16976_3786300,00.html Anyone else have updates on the U-15 player pools away from Bradenton? Which players are expected to be in full time residence in the fall?