US Soccer is mandating the elimination of the pay-to-play model to maintain USSDA membership

Pay to play can be awesome.

Two concepts dictate profit or non-profit clubs with no other funding input should charge exorbitant rates

A professional full time coach with no "Day Job" deserves to eat, drive a halfway decent car, and retire with dignity

A club should possess that financial wherewithal necessary to award a significant amount of scholarships to a wide swath of players.

A pro-Bono coach is like a pro-Bono lawyer....ya gits what ya paid for

Tax payers don't want to fund regular education let alone footie school. There is no free lunch. Until someone can convince Kochtopus about The Beautiful Game and it's relevancy for America, there's not a lot of available fiduciary champions out there. We could always fund youth soccer with an income tax on MLS salaries of players who make enough to not have to live at home with their parents.

 

Coincides with Rush Soccer going from three DA programs (Colorado, Texas and Virginia) to two DA teams next year and Richmond Kickers and Strikers combining their squads next season. If the mandate is that all clubs must be cost-free, it may be a quick way for US Soccer to reduce the number of DA teams and eliminate the chaff from the wheat. Do we really have 71 teams each with potential national team players? I doubt it.

Teams like the Richmond Kickers that are very engaged in the local community have done a good job getting sponsors to offset all costs for the academy. This is the route that other clubs must take. Unfortunately, a lot of clubs are run by soccer guys (who are great at soccer) but who can't seem to put the business (sponsorship) piece together, or they are unwilling to relinquish control over part of their club.

I know Colorado Rush charges families $3500 inclusive of travel (airfare, hotels and food while travelling). Considering there are only 2 clubs within driving distance (they fly almost everywhere), I'm betting they had to subsidize a good amount of cost to get it down to $3500. Local MLS club charges $0 and the other local club is comparable with Rush.

 

Heard the same thing years ago, and over and over.

Near NYC, we've got RBNY (free), NJSA (not free), MF (not free), and PDA (not free). Philly Union is supposed to be free from what I hear.

The question is, if it is already astronomical to play for a PDA non-DA team, how are they going to fund three free DA teams? And what about DPs? If the parents pay the pre-academy or club fees (at least $5,000 per year usually more when you add in transportation and extra program costs), and then their son plays as a DP and switches to academy, is the club going to give the money back to the parents?

It will be very interesting if it does happen. I agree that clubs will sink or swim, either sub-par clubs will get many many new players at their tryouts, or they can't afford to float free teams and will leave the DA program.

 

One thing they BETTER not do is make the boys teams in the DA free-to-play, then raise the rates on the girls teams to subsidize it.

 

That'd be like college soccer in reverse.

 

College football pays for all the other sports, with the possible exception of college basketball in some cases.

I don't think college soccer pays for much, men's or women's sides.

RBNY has a whole bunch of camps for academy wannabes as well as girls, and they get a lot of money from those. Also of course MLS clubs "should" be making money off their pro teams which puts the non-MLS DA programs at a disadvantage.

Think about it - some of the top non-DA clubs were getting between $5,000 and $8,000 per player and bringing in a tidy profit. Now they are being asked to let players play for FREE? I wonder how many will just drop out (yet still play DA teams at certain events) or rework their model.

Maybe, like baseball and hockey, every non-MLS DA club should align with an MLS (or maybe other FIFA) club so that they can be free but the associated club gets rights to any players developed.

 

Sung to the tune of Ghostbusters.... who them free teams going to play??

 

I have confirmed that the mandate has not been rolled out in Colorado, at least. DA clubs can charge what they want (although they risk receiving a poor grade from the USSF if their fees are too high or scholarships aren't offered).

 

it's not a mandate - a preference

 

They've said this before. Pretty much impossible for non-MLS clubs.

IMHO, they should keep all the MLS DA's together, and have the rest play each other, although there are perennial powerhouses like Shattuck's and PDA. And also IMHO, they should FORCE all DA programs to align with a MLS or other FIFA-sanctioned club, in both directions, making sure the developing club gets their rightful fees, and also to allow no fees.

 

There's a way for non-MLS clubs to do this. They just shouldn't be expected to do it alone. A combination of national and local corporate sponsorships, USSF funding, MLS funding, and small amount of local burden will eliminate pay to play. Heck my buddies daughters U9 has local corporate sponsors on a blow up bouncy house at games. Innovative ways. Your post offers some of those options, there are a few others combined that can and will do this.

 

Of course if the increased money is going to fund gold plated Mercedes its not going to solve the pay for play issue. You're stating the obvious. What I am saying is that corporate sponsorship, USSF funds, MLS funds, along with club initiatives that do go toward initially paying to allow our best youth prospects to a pay for free. Its a start. Any smart initiative clearly states in the contracts what the money is being used for. You don't hand over money without verification what its being used for.

 

ODP is costing a fortune the camps the training..Call back and if he makes the Nat Team more $$. If we didn't have the ability for a 3rd mortgage this wouldn't be happening. Parents of other kids here mostly take up those cost associated for those players who have little or nothing. We have to or it'd be unconscionable.

 

Got the opposite going on in Georgia our two DA programs (Concord and Georgia United) just switched from free to pay to play. The big problem down here is that a significant portion of the boys quit their senior year. HS soccer here is played in the spring, so it was free DA in the fall, quit to HS soccer in the spring.

 

Great find, although I'm pretty sure that they dropped the ball on RSL-AZ. Is $309 the tryout fee? Iirc, the cost of attending residency there approaches $50K per year for full payers.

But at the same time, RSL-AZ is one of the few places that properly looks after kids with serious economic need. Doesn't matter if the pricetag is $0 if you can't handle the cost and time required for transportation.

 

any updated info on this? i know one of the 2 DA clubs in georgia, was free to play, but is switching to a small fee because so many kids quit their senior year after choosing a college.


http://www.gasoccerforum.com/

 

This seems like the most likely development in the long term. Also I think that sometimes people believe that all foreign development programs are free, which is not what I have heard from my Skype pal in France.

Only way fees will go down is with corporate money, there is no other way to raise the funds to be able to run such programs otherwise.

 

It is a problem if families without the money cannot play academy (although in my own experience, low-income families always manage to come up with the fees), but it's as big a problem (or bigger) that pay to play means a the lack of honesty. Clubs just cannot tell parents the truth about their kids or their prospects because they risk losing paying players. And they cannot afford not to have one winning team because a winning team brings in lots of young, paying players. Let's face it, lack of honesty and dependence on winning are not good for player development. Coaches need to be able to be honest about weaknesses, areas for improvement, lack of motivation, etc. They need to be able to bench undisciplined players (without worrying they'll lose their Christmas tip), and they need to try players in different positions so that they have a chance to grow. None of that is possible if you have coaches worrying about losing team members who pay their salaries. I don't really see how any pay to play business plan can truly succeed in player development. The two goals are often at odds with one another. And, as we know, money always wins.

 

The key question for me is.....where is the money?

Are all the supposedly non pay to play systems in other countries self sustaining and if so why? Pay to play is a problem but in the US, what is the alternative? People just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts and love of the game? Because, PLEASE correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think that's what happens (by and large) even in our American sports.

USSF's centralized approach to it's own development academies are appropriate but MLS aside, how much influence do they ACTUALLY wield in the wider national soccer landscape?

European approaches to sport seem very top down, it's not like that in America even with the Olympics. So the idea that the USSF can realistically mandate the absence of pay to play without it funneling huge money to subsidize these programs is pretty loopy to me.