Youngsters in MLS (1997 or later)

Davies isn't the best prospect. Carleton is. IMO

 

*stage opens*

The 2022 World Cup begins in three days, and America is brimming with excitement at the opportunity to watch their two upstart prodigal wingers. After discovering their joy at playing with each other at the 2017 homegrown game, the two joined up and took the u17 World Cup by storm. After rotating MVP campaigns for five years, the two are set to move on. Andrew Carleton has been linked to Man City to join up with veteran doppelgänger Kevin De Bruyne, while Jesus Ferreira has his sights set even higher.

FERREIRA (Enter stage left): Ha sido mi sueño jugar para Madrid desde cuando era un niño. He modelado mi estilo sobre Ronaldo, quien es el mejor jugador de todos los tiempos. Dallas es mi hogar, pero mi futuro está en Madrid. No puedo esperar jugar para Bob Bradley.

The two will link up with Christian Pulisic, reigning Ballon D'Or winer and the 46th President of the United States, along with DaMarcus Beasley.

 

Wtf lol

 

This kind of stuff can easily fall flat. Here's why you pulled it off. Well done.

 

And that's with only one coffee!

Bravo!

 

That's not just coffee. Whatever he is smoking I want it.

 

Anthony Fontana signed an MLS deal today.

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I feel like only Americans would think a 20 year old is "so young." I mean Germany is already capping guys like Heinrichs, Sule, Tah etc at 20-21.

France has Varane, Zouma already getting caps.

Maybe I'm off but just seems like Americans are using NFL/MLB/NBA age brackets when they think like this. Soccer players tend to mature a bit faster.

 

It is derived from the college system where a "rookie" to the pro game is 22, 23, 24, and has to be treated with kid gloves. Imagine if Dempsey, Holden, Besler, Cameron, Gonzalez, etc had been playing football full time from 18-22, and weren't subjected to part time football, and then got a late start to their pro careers. How good would they be?

Until all the best players are picking the pro game over college, we won't be maximizing our ability to develop players. You simply can't have 75% of your best players out of high school stagnating in college soccer and starting their pro careers in their mid/late 20's, and think we are on a level playing field. Its not.

Sure, a lot of the best footballers are the ones who are obvious pros at 16, 17, 18 like Pulisic, Palmer-Brown, etc, but the percentages will eventually work against you to say that the 25 or so (and thats probably a high estimate anyway) who are enticed enough to turn pro out of high school (usually the 25 best players at that point) are going to be the 25 best players from that birth year in their careers. You can take any four year period of development up until like 25, and you will get drastically different results of who the best players are. You probably won't get more than a handful or two who stay in that top group. This is why we need a system where every player with some high level pro potential is turning pro at 16, 17, 18, and then at that point everyone just lets the best players emerge, instead of only the top 25 or so at a certain age getting that chance to do so.

 

I think it's too easy to project what's essentially the "stupid Americans label" onto others.

It's a quote thay we don't even know the context of, and there are truths to the underlying substance of the quote. EPB's ceiling is high and it is unknown.

Observations regarding age are always relative, and honestly it's foolish to think no French coach or publication ever referred to Varane or Zouma as young at 20 years old, even with a wealth of experience.

That's not to say there aren't facts and truths regarding how our societies sports culture shapes our perspective of the game and particularly development, but I think the "other people (but of course not me), don't get it," perspective is misguided.

 

Erik Palmer-Brown just played in the Under 20 World Cup. FIFA used to call that even the World YOUTH Championship.

Hence, I don't think calling EPB "young" is dramatically out of touch with world soccer.

 

Agreed. 20 is young all over the world. Especially for a CB.

 

Yes but many of the elite of this age group aren't even going to that tournament.

I just think Americans have a different age range. Playing MLB NBA at 20 is absurd. In the NFL it's impossible. Only hockey has teenagers already as meaningful contributors. Elite soccer players are often already making big contributions at a high level by 20.

 

Just because they have senior experience doesn't mean they're not young. Particularly for CB's. Pulisic is still very young, he's just very talented.

I believe the first 11 picks in the recent NBA Draft were all 19 years old and/or just played one year of college.

 

Yep NBA players are on the younger side, but rarely do they make an impact at that age. None of the 19 and 20 year olds from 2016 only Marquese Chriss and Thon Maker managed to be average level players. Myles Turner is the only 20 year old who was a net positive player.

Meanwhile I can name a host of 18-20 year olds being positive contributors to Champions league teams. Ousmane Dembele, Christian Pulisic, Leroy Sane, Kylian Mbappe, Marco Asenio, Jonathan Tah, Julian Brandt, Benjamin Heinrichs, Alex Iwobi.

 

I think we are in the early stages of joining the rest of the world on this point. Americans have always been considered to be "late bloomers" compared to the rest of the world (if I'm not mistaken). The advent of academies is beginning to change this but my guess is that within the next 5-10 yrs we will catch up a bit more in this regard.

 

My first question is how many different countries are those 18-20 year olds from? In the NBA, we are mainly drawing from the USA which, while a large country, is still only one country. The point is that although there are a larger number of young playres making an impact world wide, it is still rare. I wonder what the percentage of positive contributors is relative to the number of teams is world wide compared to the NBA?

By the way, I think that the NBA is the league most like soccer in that regard.

 

The NHL is probably a more international league than the NBA, and probably more similar to soccer in that teenagers often are positive contributors, versus the NBA where most young players are just stashed on the roster for the future. It didn't used to be that way but players started focusing on getting better training at 15/16 so that they were ready to play and be good players by 19.

The NBA is getting pretty international. 2017 had 2 international top 10 picks. 2016 had 6. 2015 had 2 (I'm not counting Towns as Dominican sorry), 2014 had 4.

The biggest problem for International basketball is that the elite international talent is just too diverse. Giannis is not going to help Greece beat the US team by himself. Porzingis can't carry Latvia with 4 semi pros to a medal. But if you fielded an international team vs USA the game would be pretty good.

 

There are also a lot fewer opportunities for young players in the NBA as opposed to soccer.

There are 30 NBA teams and only 5 play per side at a time and most teams use an 8-9 man rotation. So, there are about 270 slots for decent PT.

In world soccer, there are oodles of leagues and most of them have 18-20 teams and, as we all know, field 11 players at a time and have about a 16-man rotation. So, the EPL has about as much regular PT for players as the NBA.

But that doesn't include La Liga, Ligue 1, Seria A, Bundesliga, etc... Way more chances for players, young or otherwise, in world soccer than in the NBA.

Same thing with baseball.

 

Yep the NBA has an issue with developing players. No good to have a 19 year old ride the bench. The D league probably needs an upgrade. Baseball has like 8 leagues, hockey has a host of lower leagues.

 

Still, I don't see how someone like Mbappe isn't that young anymore. Yeah, he's phenomenal already, but suggesting he's not so young anymore is basically saying he's already at his ceiling.

EPB might have another 15 years of playing ahead of him. It might be 8 more years until he's in the complete prime of his career. So, he's still young.

 

Iwobe is 21! An old bastard.

If I remember correctly, Arsenal gave few minutes in league play to U21s this year.
[For Europeans, of course, they go by U21s and not U20s.]

The playing time provided to U21s in the premier league was really minimal this past season. It was only aided by ManU providing playing time to a bunch of kids at the end of the season as they focused on the Europa League. I think Everton actually was the tops in this regard, but much of the league hovered around little to no playing time for any U21s regardless of nationality.

Very different than the Bundesliga..............................

 

Iwobi turned 21 at the end of the season though. Pretty sure he had like 6-7 appearances for Arsenal in the cup but I admit I didn't follow them that closely.

Germany in general seems to be far ahead of the curve in starting younger and younger players. I mean just looking at Borussia and Leverkusen you could conceivably field a u23 team that would make the knockout rounds.

Dembele, Werner*
Pulisic, Dahoud, Weigl, Brandt
Jedvaj, Tah, Sule* Heinrichs

* throw in a couple ringers from Bayern and Leipzig and a goalkeeper and that's a stacked team.

 

I was going by this youth academies twitter feed. This is a good one to follow with regards to youth information in England.

This particularly tweet is from near the end of the premier league season, but I don't know how reliable it is. As you can see, I got my statistic wrong. The statistic was for teenagers in the premier league. So what it says is that with the premier league season almost done, half of the teams had given less than 90 minutes to teenagers. And all but Everton and ManU had provided marginal minutes. 3rd place was ManCity was basically 5 games' worth. (That must have been Gabriel Jesus at the end of the season. I think he was 19.)

When you read comments on the problem in England, its amazing that many say things like "pro/rel isn't good for player development." Meanwhile pro/rel is fine in Germany. The problem in England is that there's so much money on the line that teams can't take any chances in any games. So there's the U21 league for these players, but those players rarely seem to be promoted to the first teams anyway.

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I think culture also plays a factor. Hockey players in the NHL are often given a chance as 18-19 year olds to make the team. If you're a stud you will play as minimum minutes as you deserve. Whereas in the Russian KHL, young players are often left on the forth line and given minimal playing time no matter how good they are until they have played in the league a few years.

I've noticed German coaches and teams just aren't afraid to give young guys a chance. I think the money is still there, but English coaches seem to just not trust or think the teenagers have earned their spot.