Yedlin's youth club complains to FIFA about MLS

This raises an interesting question, why shouldn't a college be eligible? Would such payments end up being very helpful to the contributions of college soccer to the ranks of emerging professionals?

 

First off, is the college registered with USSF as a club and do they hold the player's ITC? My guess is that most colleges don't want to bother with *another* governing body and more paperwork. Most of the rules would be benign, but imagine a club team challenging the eligibility of a college player to be on that team. Plus players move onto PDL teams for the summer, which adds to the paperwork. And how would that affect competitive rules at the NCAA level -- does becoming a registered member mean you need to listen to USSF/FIFA for your rules?

Most colleges would never receive much money from pro players, so it's probably not worth it. And we don't want to go into the possibility of colleges profiting from developing athletes. That wouldn't look good.

 

I saw that and read a couple of other summaries. FIFA doesn't seem to have jurisdiction to force the payments inside a fed, so they only get involved when it's between different feds.

 

You are correct, the simple answer to these questions is no.

I think the entire lack of a compensation system was probably at some level originally done for the benefit of the NCAA. (I think it predates MLS and I know it has applied to players who had never played in MLS.) I suspect USSF and maybe the clubs themselves, who were really after promising little Johnny's parents access to college scholarships, were worried that the NCAA would consider them professional enterprises if they accepted money for their players as if they had been under contract, and that they would then just blanket blackball all the kids who came through, sending all the kids back to the YMCAs, and killing the golden goose.

With the recent professional academy reforms, I'm much less certain the NCAA would really care that much. And MLS (at least now that they are largely paying their academy players' way) would seem to me to have more to gain than to lose by taking training compensation. RSL just apparently lost a player to Liverpool that I'm sure they'd love to be compensated for, and their organization seems to be full of those kinds of kids.

 

Tottenham payed Sounders FC... I mean MLS FC... And part of that, according to documents already posted in this thread, was to be passed on to Crossfire. Therefore, this is an inter-federation issue, with the England FA and USSF both involved here

 

Never said it wasn't. We were discussing FIFA's reach in these matters in general.

 

I would be curious if more ended being inbound or outbound with MLS. Training comp is up until age 23 (and seems to be based on the cost of training in that system). Solidarity payments sound like they can happen anytime a player is transferred between feds.

 

I'm not sure it's that clear-cut, since the solidarity payment is defined as a percentage of the transfer fee. As far as Spurs are concerned, they've paid the transfer fee and it's up to MLS to distribute any payments out of it.

 

A) It's about time the NCAA adopted FIFA rules. So, that's no objection in my book.

B) Was that last part sarcasm? If so, that was deadpan brilliance.

 

Maybe the college is, maybe the NCAA is. Maybe the USSF needs to become part of the international system for the benefit of soccer in the US.

 

So, if a player's contract has expired he would be eligible for a free transfer. If that is the case, then no one would receive anything. (MLS, clubs, etc.). Is this the correct understanding? Seems kind of an arbitrary cutoff point, though U23 is in line with the Olympic age requirement.

I imagine it is probably a cleaner interpretation when dealing with one professional outfit that has youth squads to U14, etc., and I imagine the article was targeted to that environment as well. Domestically, for example, DC United has U12 all the way up to a U23 PDL team.

 

@AndyMead
Here is a link to the guidelines @BostonRed quoted.
http://lrbears.athleticsite.net/NCAA/BylawArticle12-Amateurism.pdf

 

For a free transfer between federations under age 23, there would be training compensation due, but not a solidarity payment.

 

And that's ALL it is. Another money grab by football administrators. From top to bottom, from Sepp down to Crossfire, everybody has their hand out. There's precious little difference, and those who are arguing this point on the basis of what's good for the players or good for the game sound like Pollyanna at a Circus.

The solidarity payment system is intended to pass money back down the chain so that clubs who prove they can develop top talent can continue to invest in young players. Crossfire doesn't have a dime invested in Yedlin, they just want a payday.

The whole thing is a scam based on the pretext that US soccer clubs are doing what youth clubs in Africa are doing, and that's nonsense. Successful youth clubs in the US are big money makers, the owners and coaches well compensated. Giving them pass-on payments for work they were already compensated for is unjustifiable.

 

No sarcasm. Non-profits, especially the much maligned NCAA and its members, have to be careful about making profits in areas not related to their mission. I'm sure they could find a way to manage it, but, considering most male soccer players don't receive full rides to go to school, taking money for players they develop probably isn't a good idea.

 

According to Liviu, Crossfire is claiming that Yedlin was on a scholarship. Although, a local blogger is saying that Yedlin's family disagrees with that. *shrug* I haven't seen proof of either claim though.

 

Of course, that question really devolves to whether Yedlin paid to be there, or whether the other parents got suckered into doing it.

 

Thanks for clarifying... maybe colleges *are* the point where money should be passed because we know that their soccer programs do not come close to breaking even.

 

Exactly so. There are "scholarships" and then there are "scholarships"

You are aware, but a good many guys who bloviate on this subject are not, that sometimes, when a club coach runs across a player he desperately wants but whose parents can't pay the freight - or the whole freight - the coach gives them a discount or just brings them in on the cuff. Since even a mediocre level club team can easily generate $20,000 - or much more - a year (and that's per team) they can slip a kid in just fine without feeling any pain and if he helps make you a big winner then your club sees the benefits of that as well.

Alternatively, for a wildly talented kid who's choosing between a couple of clubs, aka being recruited, the coach will waive the fees in return for having little Johnny Rocket Leg carryhis team to State Cup.

It's strictly an economic consideration. Basically, the other parents are covering the costs; coaches don't go out of pocket. It's all private enterprise and more power to them but then don't come around with your hand out a few years later when you have your eye on a new bass boat.

 

Just approx how much starfire would get if they do end up being entitled to part of yedlin fee?

 

Little League is dirt-cheap. And you could argue it doesn't produce the best players any more. The last couple of international competitions were hardly dominated by the USA. (I wonder how many of the Neanderthals who scoffed at the old NASL for being "non-American" are still going to ballparks and covering the exploits of Miguel Cabrera, Yunel Escobar, David Ortiz and Yu Darvish.)

In basketball, it's shoe money. Tons of tons of shoe money funneled into "amateur" teams. You and I might pay for our kids to play rec league, but any hotshot in a neighborhood park can hop onto a Nike-funded team at next to no costs.

In football -- no one else plays it seriously.

Soccer and lacrosse parents are the ones being gouged, and lacrosse doesn't really care about broadening the talent pool. Soccer wants the working-class kids who are being priced out.

It's a noble goal. Practical? YMMV.

 

The claim is that setting this precedent will mean clubs will stop being P2P. Which is unlikely for two reasons 1) as somebody pointed out, far too many american kids are in the system and far too few go on to play at a high enough level to generate enough income to make it viable and 2) when is the last time you saw a for-profit organization give up a free-flowing profit stream just because a new one opened up?

I'm not looking up exact dates, but he played there 2008-1010 so figure age 15-17, they'd be entitled to 1.25% of the total compensation minus the compensation due to Sounders (which, using 2011, 2013-14 dates [I'll split the difference of 2011-12 being spent at both Seattle and Akron, and give each a year] is 1.5%).

The high figure for the transfer fee was $4m, or $3.94m after the training deduction. That'd give Crossfire $49,250 max. I think. Possibly even less if the transfer fee was less, if Seattle deserves more, or Crossfire wasn't his team for all of age 15-17

 

Little League Baseball isn't any less costly than rec league soccer. In any case, that's just for chumps anyway. After the "everybody plays" season in the Spring, youth baseball then goes into the "All Star" season which goes all summer long, is VERY expensive and is for the kids they actually care about and who have some possibility of a future.

The fact that only the US plays football is irrelevant: if you want to see superbly trained athletes, watch an NFL game. Those guys are stunning, and they're the products of a youth sports system which is largely parent funded. Well, and car washes. Lots and lots of car washes.

I think you have a skewed view of AAU basketball, but the key issue is that there's money to be made funneling kids to shoe companies and colleges. And while elite basketball gets covered by the shoe companies there are still a lot of parents paying for AAU.

As for soccer I hate to break it to you but while it can be expensive to play club - and I've written more checks to more clubs and paid for more travel than you can possibly imagine, year round for years and years and years, so there's really not a lot you can tell me about the costs.

Instead, please find me just one athletically talented kid - boy or girl - who is dying to play soccer but whose parents can't afford to pay and so isn't playing. I've been looking for years. In ten years of looking I found one, at an ODP tryout, a Guatemalan kid whose single mom with 4 kids was without a clue. (They were there because she thought ODP was free. HAHAHAHAHA.) I had him on a very good club side with two phone calls, both to coaches I barely knew. True story.

Point being that your concerns about all these suffering kids is largely theoretical. Find me a few and we'll talk. Otherwise, stop making shit up.

Sports is cruel. Unfortunately, nowadays it's cruel at younger ages than ever before. The best are moving up. The rest are getting jettisoned.

Did you know that youth sports registrations are way down in ALL sports across the board? I'll let you make up reasons in your head for a minute.

It's because kids are under pressure to specialize in a sport at younger and younger ages. Not that long ago, kids played 3 or 4 sports, changing with the seasons. Now they play one year round.

With the specialization comes the need to hook up with sponsored teams, like MLS academy sides, not so much because of the money but rather because that's where you need to be to get to the top.

 

1) The NCAA is shameless enough to try and get in on the action. They did "develop" the player if that is the argument the youth clubs are making.

2) If Yedlin/his family ever paid to play for the youth clubs, the clubs should not receive compensation. This is like the AAU teams asking NBA teams for compensation every time the player gets drafted/traded or little league franchises getting in on the action when their player is on an MLB roster.

3) The system is entirely different in the US from the rest of the world. The administrators at the youth clubs know this, while European club teams may not. To use the lack of knowledge from the European Club as the basis for the compensation claim is silly.