Because in those 3 sports, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The 50th best player born in, for example, 1993, should be able to set himself up for life with the pay he'll get playing those 3 sports. The 50th best soccer player born in the US in 1993 is not in that situation. He's something like a 3rd round draft choice who is no sure bet to make the team, and an even longer shot to ever become a regular starter at the division 1 level.
Absolutely true, but I'm not sure we can say that parents are willing to invest lots of money so that their kids can play baseball or basketball because there's a big potential payoff in the distant future but unwilling toinvest in their kid's soccer careers because there's not. It may be so but we'd really need some evidence. I tend to think that parents will invest absurd sums in their kids regardless of what the endeavor is. There's not much money in cheerleading but you can get filthy rich running cheerleading schools and camps.
Something like $60k. But this isn't just about Yedlin. Prior to the creation of the Sounders academy, Crossfire was the premier team in Western Washington so most players that came from this area have spent at least some time in their system. If they are successful with Yedlin, I'm sure they'll be going after the training compensation for all the other players as well.
If those 'other players' are all under 23, and all have been transferred abroad, then sure they would be just as entitled to a claim on their behalf.
First of all, this thread has been really great and I've learned a bunch. Aside from the arguments for and against Crossfire receiving payment, can anyone explain to me why MLS feels entitled to swoop in and grab the TC money? Why not just stand by the police of no payments?
It's not really clear that they did. Tottenham's letter says that but OTOH, their earlier actions seem to show that MLS only got their share.
If a player PAYS to play with a club team, they are paying for the training etc. That club is compensated at the time of training.
You're kidding, right? Lacrosse is aggressively expanding at all levels. College lacrosse teams, in my lifetime, have gone from almost exclusively NY, MD, and Canadian kids to teams filled with players from Texas, California, Ohio, Colorado, and several other states. Lacrosse is growing steadily with no signs of slowing down and more and more money is finding its way into the sport. I coached a HS team in VA nearly a decade ago and there was support from equipment manufacturers, even then, in the way of free gear, practice jerseys, etc. Lacrosse had another 3.5% jump in participants at the HS level just last year. http://www.uslacrosse.org/multimedi...e-participation-grows-35-percent-in-2014.aspx
Its a fun sport to play, even if I only ever played it in PE class growing up. Never got into watching it. Lacrosse that is. Sure many could say the same about Soccer.
True, but at the same time, I don't think baseball is losing many players due to cost of entry. Oh yeah -- they're fantastic athletes. The equipment is costly, but travel is *mostly* limited. Not like U9 soccer teams going all over creation. I think a verb is missing here. I know plenty who are playing House instead of travel. Dude, so unnecessary. If you check out Project Play, and you should, you may come to the conclusion that these two paragraphs are related. We're marginalizing recreational play and letting the hotshot 10-year-olds have everything. Also an issue. Most current pros are aghast that players are specializing before high school. But I think we got away from the point, which is that we're trying to ease the cost of entry, and money from training compensation might help. Or it might go to feed the wallets and egos of the maniacal coaches who thrive amid the chaos of the U.S. soccer landscape and the lack of a federation that controls everything as it does in, say, Germany. So I'm not entirely sure what we're arguing about. But I did write a piece that should go up at SoccerWire tonight or tomorrow, so enjoy ...
Sure. But lacrosse doesn't have the pressure of building a team for the World Cup. I know international competition exists, but it's a little less well-known. They're happy to keep growing, but they aren't beating themselves up if potential U.S. stars are slipping past the talent identification system.
Verbs are for peasants. And I wasn't really addressing you with the put up or shut up line, but it did come off that way. I posted the whole thing from my phone and that's always dangerous. Soccerwire is a regular stop of mine. More bloggy goodness, without warmist hysteria. Just one other note on specialization: I'm as aghast as anyone but the truth is that in other countries they essentially specialize at birth, since it's soccer or nothing. But for US youth, one of our signal advantages is that our kids play- or used to play - a variety of sports which created well rounded athletes. Then everybody bitched because all we produced was athletes and not true soccer players, a meme you still hear. But as someone who coached at various levels for many years, there's nothing more galling than having a promising 10 or 11 year old come to you after practice and announce that he's quitting soccer because his baseball coach says he needs to decide to get serious about being a pitcher (or whatever) and quit fooling around with soccer. Makes you nuts.
I found they're in "urban" high schools. I'm unsure what inroads "Soccer in the Streets" type soccer outreach programs make in the big cities, but here in East Georgia, outreach doesn't exist. I've spent 26 years in high schools that are almost exclusively Black in their student populations with a sprinklins of Hispanic kids. I coached soccer for 15 of those. The kids I coached, to a player, would need scholarships to play club ball. And the clubs never came calling. I found many talented athletes who could hang and sometimes outplay long experienced club players (when those players played HS ball - which most do in my area) - in spite of their inexperience and naïveté. If I got them a "tryout", it almost always forced the boy or girls to play "pickup" with an established team. Unfamiliarity, discomfort (fear), the team playing around my kid, and rockier ball skills usually meant that the coaches would take a pass. I found little inclination from these decidedly suburban institutions to reach these kids. (Baseball has essentially dried up in this community too - for much the same reason.) Many Hispanic kids, while aware of the club setup, either dropped soccer to work or went on to play in the loose, ever-collapsing/reforming unsanctioned "Latino Leagues" that rise and fall under the drive of one or two dedicated fellows. While I had many small college coaches telling me they had positions and scholarship dollars going to waste, I found the club system benignly unconcerned with actively reaching more impoverished communities.
An analysis of the situation from our own @Beau Dure : http://www.soccerwire.com/blog-post...unity-in-yedlin-training-compensation-crisis/
Much reading of lawyers' words went into writing this piece. Among the tidbits: - Somewhere between 7 and 100 youth clubs may claim they're due money from foreign clubs. - Some FIFA regulations require meeting the "principle," not the letter of the law. It's unclear whether the regulations at issue here are included. - U.S. Soccer claims a "consent decree" stemming from Fraser v. MLS (the big MLS lawsuit of 1997-2002) prevents them from participating in training compensation and solidarity payments, but they won't show anyone what it says. - A German club is claiming it, too, doesn't have to make such payments. - A law journal article suggests the USA is hurting itself by avoiding such payments, and it says U.S. child labor laws shouldn't prevent them. This could add up to nothing, or it could be apocalypse.
The interesting elements of the situation: * Training compensation is paid at first contract and any time a player transfers until he turns 24. The amount to be paid is supposed to be determined by the USSF with several generalized "levels" the desired approach. It's possible that P2P could be factored into the formula, I suppose. The money comes from the signing club. This could be substantial for MLS, though they mostly sign players at that age from "cheaper" countries ... and the US and Canada (which could add up). * Solidarity payments are paid throughout a player's career whenever he transfers between federations. The money comes from the transfer payment (5%) and is paid to clubs the player was at between ages 12-23. It means MLS wouldn't be able to keep the money as they may have previously. When paying transfer fees, it doesn't matter. Here's an interesting article on the training comp issue and the European legal case: (free registration required) http://www.lawinsport.com/articles/...ircumvent-fifa-s-training-compensation-system Following these rules should be a net gain to "US Soccer" (primarily meaning the youth clubs) because foreign clubs were not paying training compensation (but neither was MLS). The shift of solidarity payments would be from MLS holding it (assuming that's what happens) to being distributed to the clubs. I could see why MLS would be resistant and it will drive a lot of administration, perhaps without really changing life at the youth club level. I would be interested to see someone run the numbers.
At what point does one not count as being a developmental club. If my nephew plays at the Y from ages 6-9, does the YMCA get a cut, despite his parents paying for him to play.
Good piece, man. I just wish I didn't have the growing suspicion that MLS' attitude is "we're keeping the money because you have no way to make us give it up, so go screw yourself" On the other hand, Crossfire's belief in FIFA standing up for justice and truth is quite touching, albeit quaint to the point of childlike. FIFA has proven over and over that they will ignore anything MLS does short of public execution of referees, which might draw a sternly worded note.
This was the one thing that really got my attention. I, and many others I think, have been assuming Crossfire's claim failed because MLS was saying Yedlin had to pay Crossfire, so that's their compensation. I never thought of Fraser. The article says Crossfire says Yedlin was on scholarship there.
With all the players the California and Texas MLS clubs lose to Mexico, couldn't they be getting some of that money as well?
But, surely you realize that one of the biggest reasons the NCAA is "maligned" is because it's becoming all the more apparent that they love making profits in areas not related to their mission. If they were really interested in their mission, they would give up the sham of the "student-athlete" in the big money sports, instead of looking the other way while athletes who are students in name only, with no intention of obtaining a college-level education, use the college as a stepping stone to the NFL or NBA. The recent UNC scandal is an especially egregious example, but "easy A" courses for athletes are par for the course in most major programs. These are mostly not authentic college students. This isn't the place to debate the point, but that's why I thought you were joking. It would have been very funny. Actually, it was anyway
That's in my story. In passing -- it's the Vanderbilt law journal talking about money U.S. clubs could be getting but aren't.
A bit of an update: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/highl...youth-club-to-halt-pursuit-of-solidarity-fees
While I don't disagree with the accuracy of the content of this post the reason the reason I'll disagree with the last line requires a much more nuanced look at the problem. First the concept of "athletically talented" when discussing children that mature at vastly different rates is often wildly misleading. Kids getting fees paid at U12-U14 because they can win games are typically those at the extremes of age (born near cut-off) and maturity (think of the kid who as a grown adult is about the same size he was in 6th grade). Obvious examples are the kid pitching each year for the televised little league games. Most of the "studs" that dominated my kids youth games ended up being on the smaller side once they reached post HS age and many ended up dropping out of the sport completely when other kids started literally started passing them. In some support of your position is a general belief among local SoCal youth coaches is that if you want to coach at a high level and make money you should coach girls (filled with the likes of Buffy and Muffy) because most of the boys teams need a lot of fee reductions to be competitive. The differences in the family names and home towns found in ODP pool lists was pretty stark. However if you look at the number of non-academy kids that end up being player of the year winners for college teams reveals the difference between youth players that are believed to be good and those that really have the potential to be so. What people discount is the number of parents that get wind of the $1k - $3K per year fees they start kids in a completely different direction. I know kids that were steered into baseball and basketball because it was a fraction of the cost. While I've seen some club baseball programs that are just as expensive as soccer, most were much cheaper. Many other kids simply drop out because rec soccer (non-latino) is terrible and often frustrating. I could write about 10 more pages but I'll stop here.