YNT-eligible NASL/USL players: 2017/18 offseason thread

Is there a franchise in the history of US Soccer with more of a history of hanging in there? Kudos to them for making it happen for another season. I expected this franchise to be gone a long time ago, but they somehow find away to keep existing - one year at a time. Go Penn FC! Here's to the coming season, and maybe even another season after that somehow!

 

The Wilmington Hammerheads stuck around in the pro ranks for an impressively long time given the size of Wilmington, NC (half the size of Harrisburg!).

 

And it looks like the Rochester owners are looking for 1.3 million from the community so the team can play during 2018. It doesn't look very promising there.

 

Should be pretty interesting.....................

Root to fruit: Rush Soccer flipping the script in partnership with USL's Penn FC
Read more at https://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/feat...ium=social&utm_m_medium=t#HqVKipXOcVvlAkpD.99

Rush Soccer is now one of the biggest youth soccer organizations in the country. It has 48 partner clubs nationwide and another 36 abroad. And as Colorado Rush marks its 20th anniversary, it will become the first youth club to essentially reverse-engineer a soccer path from the youth fields to the professional leagues.


Rush has partnered with George Altirs and the ownership group in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to make its USL club the official professional team at the top of the Rush Soccer pyramid. The Harrisburg City Islanders, who have played in various versions of USL since 2004, will be rebranded as Penn FC beginning in the 2018 USL season, and the goal is for that club to serve as the first stop for players across the Rush soccer family.​

 

I'm not sure it will work given how tenuous that club's existence has been over the years, but this is exactly the type of thing that youth clubs need to do if they truly want to receive compensation. If Harrisburg...I mean Penn FC...actually produces a player via the Rush partnership that they can sell, that represents windfall for Rush. Regardless of how the law is interpreted, Penn FC absolutely can receive a transfer fee, and there would certainly be language in the contract between the two entities for how that money would be split. It's just one step that needs to be made for development to improve in this country, but it is one that needs to be made.

 

I've thought about this before, and I have to be missing something, but is there any downside for either side of the agreement? It's so much better for Rush since they can actually recuperate money outside of pay to play, and it's definitely better to say they have a path to pro. For Harrisburg, they essentially get free first dibs at a very talented group of players.

Am I missing something? Is it just that there usually is a geographical problem, or what?

 

The toughest thing Penn FC will face in trying develop & sell talent is that MLS as of yet rarely pays transfer fees for minor league players.

Of course they can try to sell abroad, but MLS would be the primary natural destination for these players.

 

I wouldn’t say there is any real downside, but barring a change in the dynamics of the compensation in the US where the pro club receives money for an amateur player signed out of the academy or the strong tendency of players to prefer college soccer to minor league soccer that it won’t amount to anything.

Let’s be honest how many players are going to turn down a college scholarship move across the country to Harrisburg to play USL soccer for $15-$20K? You could also just sign with local USL club and not more across the country.

 

I don't see a downside. I mean ideally Penn FC would have it's own program and Rush would have their own professional side, but we're still a ways off from that in this country.

It is going to be hard to create a player worthy of a transfer fee, especially since, as Balerion pointed out, MLS does not often pay transfer fees to lower divisions clubs (nor have there been many instances when there was a player worth doing so for). Similarly, I am not aware of any instances where a foreign club has paid a transfer fee for a young, lower divisions player.

Gotta start somewhere, though.

 

I was assuming this was more a situation where top youth players would play for Penn FC over the summer. If they then showed enough talent to start, they could then sign. That isn't too much different than how MLS clubs do it.

 

And on the other side of the fence, this just released from NASL -

http://www.nasl.com/news/2017/11/16/nasl-issues-statement-following-north-carolina-fc-announcement

The NASL confirms that North Carolina FC has withdrawn from the league. The NASL is proud to have supported professional soccer in North Carolina for five years prior to Steve Malik’s acquisition of the club at the end of the 2015 season. North Carolina FC’s departure from NASL represents the damage caused by the U.S. Soccer Federation’s decision to revoke NASL’s Division II sanctioning for the 2018 Season. The NASL remains committed to pursuing its legal claims to ensure that the future of its players, fans, and clubs remains bright.

 

https://t.co/T0rBI7AI6V

New USL team in North Chicago in 20,000 seat stadium with retractable roof in 2020? Sounds a bit like Cosmos type hype to me. I guess that somebody needed to fill the hype void now that NASL have lost division II status.

 

OOOF..................

CLUB STATEMENT | Tom and Dave Fath, owners of FC Edmonton, announced today that #FCEd is leaving the @naslofficial and discontinuing professional franchise operations effective immediately. #NASL

Read: https://t.co/FPnLlo8FR0 pic.twitter.com/981Vv6zuRb

— FC Edmonton (@FCEdmontonNow) November 24, 2017

 

They’re likely taking a year off before moving to CanPL.

 

Andrew Lombard is still under contract with NYRB II. Noah Powder's option was picked up (though he's not really eligible for this thread, as he has played in youth competitions for T&T).

http://www.uslsoccer.com/news_article/show/862326?referrer_id=2333971

 

The Monarchs look like they're continuing last year's strategy of just signing mid-20s USL vets. Brody is a 95 and is the youngest player on the roster.

 

If you want to anchor your team with strong USL vets, you have to move quickly because the stronger guys will get snapped up quickly. There's more time later to sign academy guys who MLS and USL deals or just plan to use U19s in games as amateurs.

I do hope that Real Monarchs gets a little younger this year. RSL U19 seems like a strong squad with some players who are ready to be challenged at the next level.