Youngsters in MLS (1997 or later)

http://americansoccernow.com/articles/tyler-adams-is-the-present-and-the-future

Great piece by Brian on Tyler Adams' development and his future endeavors.

 

NYRB and FCD academies had a nice night against Portugal!!!

 

Seattle and DC's as well.

 

Except NYRB and FCD both had 3 alumni on the roster, and 2 players I thought had really nice games (Miazga/Adams and McKennie/Acosta).

 

Atlanta's USL team is official:

https://www.atlutd.com/post/2017/11/14/atlanta-united-announces-plans-launch-2018-usl-expansion-team

I found this significant:

"Atlanta United’s current roster has 12 players with USL experience, in addition to three players who will join the team effective Jan. 1, 2018 (Lagos Kunga, George Bello and Patrick Okonkwo)."

I believe this means Carleton and Goslin will stay with the first team.

 

This is great news, now let's hope Carleton stays away from it.

 

The press release is just saying that Kunga, Bello, and Okonkwo have MLS contracts that don't kick in until 1/1/18 and they'll join a group of players on the MLS roster that contains 12 guys who have played in the USL in some capacity.

I don't think the statement has anything to do with plans for Carleton and Goslin in 2018.

 

With Ty Reynolds and his brother @bryanreynoldsjr, there's no sibling rivalry. Only unconditional support. More: https://t.co/bOWDur9sz5 pic.twitter.com/09nwG6v82f

— FC Dallas Youth (@FCDallasYouth) November 15, 2017

 

Anyone know how long Generation Adidas contracts are?

 

4 or 5 years usually. Cyle Larin for example had signed a 5 year contract.

 

Caleb Porter out at Portland. Crossing my fingers for some more minutes for Farfan.

 

And Ebobisse

 

And possibly using their Academy.

 

For those of you who care about this (and I realize I'm presuming much by assuming any of you do) I updated my Hack Parity Spreadsheet (spreadsheets!) with the final 2017 standings. (MLS put the Galaxy last in the Shield rankings.)

Toronto, it turns out, was one of the most-dominant first-place teams in league history in terms of the proportion of available points they took -- tied for second all-time, actually. (I figure 1998 LAG will be hard to top.)

They were so good, in fact, that it didn't matter that LA wasn't historically bad by this measure: The 36-point spread between "% of available points taken" for TOR and LAG was only fifth-widest all time, and in line with the league's historical average.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sn-t6FExw6rCrJSyKirzebUL-49zxdTrUI7HT2MvR6o/edit?usp=sharing

 

Interesting twitter thread about the LAG academy since they will be releasing a lot of HG players:

Something to remember next time the Galaxy pretend their academy has been anything other than an expensive tire fire.

Oh, and the key people responsible all still have their jobs. https://t.co/XXoLtKmQVd

— Ryan Rosenblatt (@RyanRosenblatt) November 27, 2017

They really haven't done a good job developing the talent that is there in Los Angeles. Players like the Villarreal brothers, McBean, Mendiola, etc all showed glimpses of potential to at least being serviceable MLS players (especially Jose Villarreal), but none of them have developed much at all. Doesn't seem like much is going to change. That is really the next step for all these MLS teams in general, most of them are signing HG players. But can we say any have really developed their talent at all? I don't really think so.

 

Lest we forget, most drafted players (outside of say the top half of the first round) don't stick around very long in MLS. There's a very high failure rate, and we shouldn't be surprised to see the same amongst homegrown players.

I just question whether players like McBean, Villarreal, Sorto, and company were really ever MLS quality. Or like FCD did they really, really want to get their homegrown initiative started & so signed some kids that really weren't great prospects. They advertised them like they were because they wanted to hype up their academy so the next generation of kids joined. Villarreal looked like Danny Garcia who looked like Bryan Leyva who looked like so many others. They looked like guys with ceilings of MLS rotation or bench players. Which is fine, but most clubs do a big clear out of these types of players every year. The shelf life for those players is very limited. There's little to no MLS "middle class." McBean has had how many years to show he's capable of playing at an MLS level?

It should be noted that most of the FCD players that were cut went to the USL or NASL.........................and didn't hack it there either. Most are out of the sport.

 

The biggest strike against LA isn't the number of misses, so much as the lack of hits. A lot of Dallas HGPs haven't worked out, but they've also produced Acosta, Gonzalez, Ulloa, Pomykal, etc, who have all been helpful for the first team.

Ryan's point is dead-on. They're sitting on a massive talent pool, and in 10 years they've basically just produced Zardes. Even he needed 4 years in college to turn into anything. That's 1 decent MLS player in 10 years.

 

Let's pile on:

• Zardes only played one season in the academy
• LA U18 played him at center back

 

To be in Southern California and invest real money into the academy but have almost nothing to show for it in more than a decade is embarrassing. But the Galaxy did that and everyone responsible is still in place.

— Ryan Rosenblatt (@RyanRosenblatt) November 27, 2017

 

It's only been in the last three years that the LAG has raised their DA to somewhat professional standards (approximating the arrival of Brian Kleiban), so it's somewhat understandable that they haven't produced much for the 1st team until now. Starting with the 00s, the talent level looks to be upgraded, and so from this point forward the expectations should be a lot higher. It will take another 2-3 years to see how many, if any, of the current LAG DA players can reach the 1st team (and contribute).

As an aside, though all the previously named players were let go, one who is still there is Bradford Jamieson IV. He started to show signs of soccer life this past season, and I hope he's finally past the concussions which had slowed his progress. I don't project him as anything earth shaking, but still, if he can contribute then he has to be considered somewhat of a success.

 

I'm not sure his point about the current set-up is correct, although past results is certainly fair.

I think they have a number of players with first team potential, Lopez, Lonergan, Arteaga, Bailey, Hernandez, Mendez, Sepulveda, Llanez, Castillo, Alvarez, Molina, Cano, Ceja, Killeen, Isidoro, Castro, Roca, its one of the more talented academies within MLS.

 

It's really amazing - and a damning indictment - that the Galaxy academy hasn't yielded more to this point.

 

Dallas declined Coy Craft's option, but they said they're negotiating to re-sign him.

Other YNT-eligibles who might be in trouble:

Fernandez (CHI)
Lucatero (HOU)
Obinwa (CLB)
Swanson (CLB)

 

We can say that about almost all of the academies in the league.................most of whom have only one or two success stories. As was noted, at the last USMNT game there were three FCD products (Gonzalez, Acosta, McKennie), three NYRB products (Miazga, Adams, Agudelo), one DCU product (Hamid), and one Seattle product (Yedlin). There aren't USMNT candidates from most of the academies in the league.

LA Galaxy is the most damning case because of the supposed youth soccer goldmine that they're sitting on. We have expectations for the Galaxy academy that are different than those for Portland and Columbus.

Who didn't see this coming, though? For the last several years the Galaxy have loaded up on aging veterans in the off-season. It was always about short-term solution after short-term solution after short-term solution. Maybe that's because Arena saw where he was in his career and wasn't interested in a long-term development project. When you look at the current state of their roster after the purge, its completely unbalanced.

One thing to note from their purge is they dismissed all three goalkeepers. Now I know they're going to sign somebody (Chris Seitz is available, for instance)...................but that's gotta mean USYNTer Eric Lopez moves into the first team. No?