Youngsters in MLS (1997 or later)

Glad made the Team of the Week by the way.......................

Say hello to the MLS Team of the Week for Week 28: https://t.co/FZQOcgIxyp pic.twitter.com/pyVHsAwO5m

— Major League Soccer (@MLS) September 18, 2017

Kinda quietly (from a national press standpoint) having a really nice season.

 

24 under 24 finalists, by team:


Atlanta United (5):

Miguel Almiron

Yamil Asad

Andrew Carleton

Julian Gressel

Hector Villalba

Chicago Fire (1):

Brandon Vincent

Colorado Rapids (2):

Kortne Ford

Marlon Hairston

Columbus Crew SC (3):

Artur

Kekuta Manneh

Zack Steffen

D.C. United (3):

Luciano Acosta

Paul Arriola (was added afterwards)

Ian Harkes

FC Dallas (4):

Kellyn Acosta

Jesse Gonzalez

Carlos Gruezo

Paxton Pomykal

Houston Dynamo (2):

Alberth Elis

Mauro Manotas

LA Galaxy (1):

Emmanuel Boateng

Minnesota United (0)

Montreal Impact (1):

Ballou Jean-Yves Tabla

New England Revolution (1):

Diego Fagundez

New York City FC (3):

Jack Harrison

Yangel Herrera

Ronald Matarrita

New York Red Bulls (1):

Tyler Adams

Orlando City SC (4):

Cristian Higuita

Cyle Larin

Tommy Redding

Carlos Rivas

Philadelphia Union (2):

Jack Elliott

Derrick Jones

Portland Timbers (2):

Marco Farfan

Alvas Powell

Real Salt Lake (4):

Justen Glad

Brooks Lennon

Albert Rusnak

Jefferson Savarino

San Jose Earthquakes (3):

Nick Lima

Tommy Thompson

Jackson Yueill

Seattle Sounders FC (2):

Jordan Morris

Cristian Roldan

Sporting Kansas City (3):

Latif Blessing

Jimmy Medranda

Erik Palmer-Brown

Toronto FC (3):

Alex Bono

Marky Delgado

Raheem Edwards

Vancouver Whitecaps FC (1):

Alphonso Davies

 

Subbed to MLS Live to watch NYFC game vs Rapids. Sands played well, smart and was a circulating the ball efficiently. Played somewhat similar to Gonzalez. Like many young cm's imo his ceiling is determined by if he becomes very good at playmaking in final 3rd or becomes a great defensive mid, but he currently has a great base to work from.

 

You just won BigSoccer with this post. Spot on.

 

And I'm sure your judgement of him as a player has nothing to do with your long standing bias against all things San Jose, right?

 

Update in Philadelphia:

Curtin: Derrick Jones has "hit a little bit of a wall" in his development

— Philadelphia Soccer Now (@phlsoccernow) September 20, 2017

Jones has been getting steady playing time for Bethlehem lately, at least.

 

I think with the previous coach no one on this forum liked SJ because they knew that coach wouldn't play young guys.

 

If @Golazo69 thinks people here were too mean to SJ with Kinnear, he should dig in the archives to see what the YNT forum thought of Schellas Hyndman.

 

People were critical of Schellas Hyndman even while he was leading FCD to the MLS Cup Final in 2010!

None of the players folks were bashing Hyndman for not playing ever amounted to much of anything. The youngster he had a love-hate relationship with was Brek Shea, who we now all realize is a bit of a nutter.

Some could say that if Hyndman had given more playing time to Leyva, Luna, Marosevic and company then maybe their careers would have turned out differently. I have my doubts....................

 

Perhaps he could have found some scraps for Ulloa whom he cut. And his team went to MLS Cup despite him. That guy had a very elevated reputation for someone who never won a title in 30-40 years of coaching.

 

Brandon Vasquez on (very briefly) for Atlanta.

Red carded in under 2 minutes

 

I didn't watch the game, but Tyler Adams is getting rave reviews for his performance in the USOC final.

US U20 (and hopefully Olympic) teammates sharing a moment. pic.twitter.com/EoqIWkLbtW

— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) September 21, 2017

I did watch the LAG-Atlanta game. LAG's putrescence is the only reason I can be happy watching FCD's decline. That's a team that needs an amazing overhaul. They have fewer points than Minnesota now, and when the season started I thought the Loons had a chance of being the worst MLS team of all time.

 

Here's a great article that gives a peek behind the FC Dallas curtain and shows that what they, other MLS academies and soccer academies around the world aren't going unnoticed by Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks. Sometimes we get so caught up in what MLS lacks that we don't take a larger look and see other big US sports are taking notice and notes.

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2017/9/21/16341796/nba-aau-fc-dallas-player-development

 

At times when Tyler Adams plays, it seems like there are 3 of him on the field at one time

He’s still raw, but he’s better than he was at the beginning of the season. He has a lot going for him

 

I think he's one of the best players on RBNY this season.

That probably says more about the team than Tyler though.

 

I just can't see it with the draft and a bunch of crappy NBA franchises.

Why invest in an academy when you won't get the players? And of course no dead then the Bucks, Grizzlies etc might as well contract

 

I thought it was a lame call. They even VAR'd it. He was running at Ciani in the corner, Ciani cleared it with a big kick, Vasquez kept his leg off to the side, without any force, just kept it out there. Ciani went oscar mode and yelled and dropped like shot. Definite yellow but no way close to red.

 

It was a great article even though to your point, why on earth would an NBA team pour millions into academies when everyone is tossed in a draft (without some type of homegrown clause that allows you to claim a player's rights every X seasons)? Article doesn't even touch on the 'why would they' aspect and instead just seems to think they should for the 'good of the game.'

On the flip - was glad the author was quite nuanced about the global marketplace as it relates to youth soccer as well as the current landscape. Between this and all of Ryan O'Hanlon's work, The Ringer has started to become a 'must read' for me when they pump out soccer content (at least the nuanced stuff not targeted at purely mass audience).

 

Authors definitely very educated on this stuff, and I thought it was a really good read, especially for an article meant for a general American sports population.

There's definitely barriers to having development centers in the NBA, though. It's not the point of the article to actually implement it, and more to say what's wrong with the NBA, but for the sake of discussion here's a couple of things I can think of.

For starters, it's impractical for the league at the moment. The league doesn't really care about it's level of competition because it has no other competition. Also, the draft is a huge event that keeps the NBA as a 'year-round' league so that their fans never stop paying attention.

However, the big one that I can think of is that implementing a homegrown policy in the NBA would break the closed system. The difference between the NBA and MLS is that the top players in NBA come from the youth system, and in MLS, the best players come from transfers. If the best players come from the youth system, the salary cap wouldn't matter, players would go with their hometowns, and that would lead to larger cities having all of the best players on small contracts. It would turn into a league where the best teams never from small markets, which is why soccer has pro/rel. Freedom of movement for youth players = pro/rel.

So, in other words, this is completely impractical for the NBA, but still a fun exercise. I know there's plenty of articles out there about organizing the NBA based on hometown.

 

I know its only tangentially related to this thread, but I found this article from the BBC about Man City very interesting on the youth development front.

Why Manchester City have more than a passing interest in Girona v Barcelona
http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/41348471

Last month, it was announced that Girona have become the latest members of the City Football Group, who are now co-owners of the Catalan club alongside the Girona Football Group (more of whom later).

City's decision to invest in Spain has strong footballing foundations, rooted in the club's and manager Pep Guardiola's intense frustrations with the way young players are developed in England.

 

I doubt the NBA will ever adopt those changes but could see it if US basketball starts slipping behind the rest of the world. One thing pointed out multiple times was the way the current youth group is run isn't helping young players get better and may be hindering them Also a way around having urban centers rule is what we're seeing with KC and others where they recruit players at a younger age and then they grow up there. NBA could say you have to be with an NBA franchise for two years before turning pro with that team or else you go into the draft. You can choose any academy you want (may have to pay training fees to other clubs if you end up being a pro).

 

Basketball is still a sport generally dominated by athleticism. Like the article said a guy like Joel Embiid can pick up the game at 15 and within 5 years be one of the top 20 players in the world. That whole "best athletes" argument comes from football and basketball where just being s freak genetic specimen is enough sometimes.

We just have so many kids playing basketball we can have the crappiest system ever and we'll still out produce every other country.

 

Sands is on the bench again for NYC, no Lewis though. Is he injured?

 

So Dallas got beat 4-1 by Minnesota. It's going to be fun when they clean out the whole locker room this year and Paxton, Ferreira, and Cannon are all starting day 1 next year.

 

Glad, Acosta and Lennon all started. The first two went 90, the latter got subbed out at some point. All three played well, I thought. Saucedo came in towards the end.

If only we could ship Pomykal, Carleton, Cannon, EPB, Durkin, etc to RSL for minutes................