You know who's better than I thought he was? Jack McBean. He does a lot of really good work out there without ever really looking like he's gonna score! He's an MLS-caliber player, which I really wasn't sure he was.................... Also nice seeing former US U17 Nathan Smith get a start for the Galaxy. Had a tough game to make a debut in, especially after van Damme got sent off.
Congrats! RT @pkedit Former @FCDallas academy star @diego_tejera, 21, made his @LIGABancomerMX debut on Saturday with @clubleonfc pic.twitter.com/okC2NYrZx6— Dallas Cup ⚽️ (@dallascup) March 19, 2017
Cristian Roldan was incredible against Atlanta. It looked like there was 2 of him on the field. He deserves a chance with the USMNT team soon, and if Bruce was watching last night I think he'll have a hard time not calling Roldan in. http://www.sounderatheart.com/2017/3/24/15039232/cristian-roldan-versatile-player
I would have thought Pfeffer could have found a place in the league or a league in general. Honestly good on him though, he probably has more potential than the salary he would probably see.
I don't know he was making some pretty good coin. 2011 $55,000 $65,000 2012 $60,000 $70,000 2013 $65,000 $75,000 2014 $75,000 $85,000 2015 $60,000 $60,000 2016 $110,000 $110,000
Not particularly surprising...................... The huge shock for me right now is that Jack McInerney isn't on a club (I realize he's a '92).
Of course he made decent money but who knows what he would have been on this year after his option was dropped this year. Also his money making potential is neither steady or consistent as a pro soccer player. I think he could have a club if he wanted though. He's one of the best off the bench goal scorers in the league he probably is not going to settle unless he gets more money or a bigger role.
You're right he would probably be on a mimimum senior roster salary of $65K, which is pretty good for a recent college graduate but not good for a 6yr MLS veteran. I don't think his decision was totally based on salary but on uncertainty. He rarely played and even some pretty good ex-MLS players (IMO) are in the USL where $65K is probably more than he could expect. He made $465K in a 6 yr career. Pretty good. To each his own.
I feel like it may also come down to starting a career where he wont retire by 35 as well. I still don't know if I believe he's really retired yet I'm just acknowledging the sense it does make.
The reality is that many American players who aren't MLS level don't last much beyond their mid 20s anyway. They play a few years in NASL or USL, realize that they aren't going to take the next step to MLS, and decide to get moving on the rest of their life instead of playing for $30k or whatever until they hit their 31st birthday.
We really become a soccer power when we have a solid DII league in smallish SSS averging around 10K all paying around 75K-100K with fully developed academies.
i dunno, i think more and more almost-made-it-guys like pfeffer having soccer playing kids is when we really begin to see a great leap forward
And the problem with Pfeffer (as well as a bunch of kids like say, Bryan Leyva) is that he never really demonstrated on the field that he was MLS-quality. Clubs want to sign homegrown players and they want to make a big deal of their academies and academy products. So they've tended to overhype their early kids that really never have done anything to warrant that hype. Here's a kid that represented the US at the U14, U15, U17, U18, U20, and U23 levels................and I have zero outstanding memories of his play. Sometimes kids get famous just because we know their names, not because of their achievements.
I think in the past, there were quite a few HG signings made just so the organization and academy staff could say that they were doing something. Pfeffer isn't even close to the most egregious example of this, but it does feel like his signing was rushed. Did he really need to be signed at such a young age? Did Philly have a plan for him? No and no. Almosts any time there's the dreaded "developmental loan abroad" like his move to Hoffenheim, something has gone wrong. There are still some organizations where you wonder what the plan is for young players (Chicago comes to mind), but the proliferation of USL reserve teams has helped, that clubs are being a little more judicious has helped, and time + maturation of the academy system has helped.
Its just something MLS clubs have had to learn the hard way. The broader Philly community has done some soul-searching as the slate has been wiped clean on their initial homegrown classes (Jimmy McLaughlin, Zach Pfeffer, Cristhian Hernandez). Lest we forget, there were lawsuits and such regarding the way the Philly staff (Nowak and company) treated young players. Also, they were sanctioned in ~2012 as Hernandez wasn't really homegrown eligible but was signed anyway. http://www.brotherlygame.com/2016/2...ia-union-have-struck-out-on-homegrown-players Its also true that in every other major team sport in America (MLB, NBA, etc. etc.) kids that are deemed top prospects (drafted highly, etc.) don't advance. We simply have to expect a "failure rate" amongst these kids. I don't know what that should ideally be.
I think the batting average on HGP will continue to increase as the academies continue to mature. There were definitely some early missteps that teams wouldn't repeat now. But you are always going to have lots of swings and misses when dealing with youth prospects in any sport especially the younger the signing skew. We also look view sucess and failure primarily through the lenses of the USMNT. If you don't rise to that level that you are a bust, but MLS Teams don't view it that way. Players like Sacir Hot were total busts, but for the most part Red Bulls have made prude HGP signings recently that helped the team. None outside Adams likely have any USMNT aspirations, but they fill a role for the team in an appropriate salary band. Every other player RBNY have gotten value out of even if it is just a squad player making near the league minimum. We might consider them busts and perhaps some are relative to their potential, but if you sign a player to an MLS below-average salary and get MLS average results then that is a pretty good signing without even consider the other HPG benefits. Not every HPG is going to be Kellen Acosta, Matt Miazga type, but the goal is producing MLS players first and foremost and if you do that USMNT leaders is sure to follow.
You're definitely right. A player that fills any role on an MLS club, whether as an All-Star (with USMNT potential), first teamer, squad player, or bench option................is valuable. As you say, the Matt Miazga-types make the headlines. But do we know which NYRB homegrown has played the most games for the franchise? I bet its Connor Lade, who has played 100 games for the club. Kevin Ellis is a popular punching bag on these threads. He's now played ~75 games for the club across all competitions for SKC. There was a time, though, when clubs were signing homegrowns for the sake of signing homegrowns. And maybe a club like Dallas wanted to sign all of their initial flock of homegrowns in order to recruit and "set up" future homegrown successes. Once the pathway to the first team was paved, better and better players wanted to make the trip. It seems a lot of players in this particular age group were guinea pigs. I mean, FCD has signed 17 homegrowns since 2009/10. They basically have one homegrown starter right now, though. A lot of headlines...................
All the headlines are definitely creating a lot of misinformation about FC Dallas' sucess right now. ETR was even talking last week that RSL needs to copy the FC Dallas model and start churning out multiply starters from their academy in order to be successful. As you stated, FC Dallas' starts 1 academy player (Acosta) who is one of the best starters but the rest are bit players (Ulloa, Guillen, Gonzalez, Pomykol). Teams need bit players, but FC Dallas line-up actually gets more production from the draft (Hedges, Zimmerman, Hollinshead, Tesho, Hayes) than HGP and most of their production comes from savy signing from Latin America. Their academy is a part of the reason they are currently successful, but hardly a major reason at this point. I think that will change in 3-5 years, but their academy is still laying the groundwork for what will hopefully be future sucess more than their current sucess.
This is where the minimum mls salaries need to keep rising to keep kids in academies and out of college. It's less than ideal to wash out at 21-22 as a low-paid player, then have to start from scratch in college when you're too old to take part in the "traditional" college experience, and have high tuition bills. At least the guys who wash out in other sports do so in college (when it's free), or after they have at least a few years worth of college credit, so they have few barriers to starting new chapters in their lives.