Coming back to this very late SJ started out by partnering with the club (Mustang) where Quakes GM John Doyle had been Director of Coaching. It's not a great club, and it's located a long way out in the East Bay suburbs. When SJ's academy started to make its own way, its prominent hires included former players like Chris Leitch and Stephen Wondolowski, even though they had minimal experience coaching, let alone operating a pro academy. By this point, the Development Academy structure had already turned the De Anza Force into a magnet for area talent, and from what I've seen, their coaching is really good. At some point, they'll probably slow down, and the Quakes' name will enable them to take over, but it isn't a no-brainer.
Strong enough that Rubin was offered a homegrown contract, but turned it down to pursue Europe. Rubin is mentioned several times in 2012 and 2013 on the Timber's academy news, so he would have met the 1 year in the Academy "requirement" that MLS has.
Being mentioned in academy news doesn't mean a whole lot. Do you have a link for the homegrown offer?
Nothing other than twitter. Back when he signed the pre-contract with Utrecht there were a few tweets from people that cover the Timbers that cited the ever popular "sources within the Timbers", but I don't believe it made it beyond Twitter and into a linkable story.
Hmm. The Timbers would have been dumb not to try to sign him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was eligible. It sure seems like by the time the Timbers set up their academy, he was gone to Bradenton and he never really spent much time with their academy teams. That being said, Rubin is a good enough prospect that the league might have allowed Portland to sign him anyway, as there have been other questionable HG signings in the past.
When you look at Tommy Thompson being HG eligible for SJ, and I'm still trying to figure out how Tommy Redding was HG eligible for Orlando City. I think MLS probably would've given the ok for the Timbers to offer Rubio a HG deal.
Expansion teams are allowed to submit a list of players that they would like to claim as HG players when they join the league. I also think they have to show an affiliation between the team the player is on and the team. Redding is likely on that list for Orlando City, while Rubio probably was not on the Timbers list.
I was actually able to find it now. Redding's old youth club, FC America, is now an Orlando City affiliate.
At the end of the MLS season it would be interesting to look at total number of minutes played by homegrowns for each team...
The Sounders may be signing 2 homegrowns this off-season. Darwin Jones is a senior and major contributor at the current #1 soccer team with 6 goals and 4 assists and the Sounders have said several times that they are expecting to sign Jordan Morris once Stanford's season is over. The question is where they will end up. The Sounders are expected to announce their USL Pro team on Tuesday and the going theory is that Kovar, Okoli, and Jones will be playing there, but Morris may be on the senior squad depending on how well he does in pre-season.
There is a similar interesting statistics about players recruited via Super Draft: http://mlssocceranalysis.blogspot.com/2014/01/superdraft-score-card-of-mls-teams.html No surprise, Quakes are near the bottom in recruiting young talent via SuperDraft.
Signs are pointing to the Sounders signing Victor Mansaray to a HG contract. http://instagram.com/p/uewmZwheOT/ Read the text. Says he is looking forward to playing in front of 40k next season. Likely will be putting most of his game time in with S2. But who knows.
Dang! This forum is dead. Let's see if I can stir things up a bit? HGPs in the playoffs report. GAs as noted SKC vs NYR Ellis 90' Dwyer 90' (GA) Kempin bench Lade 1' DAL vs VAN Zimmerman 90' (GA) Ulloa 76' Acosta 14' Hernandez bench Sampson 90' Tiebert bench Adekugbe bench Mattocks bench (GA) COL vs NER Caldwell 90' Fagundez bench Trapp 90' Speas bench LAG vs RSL Zardes 90' Villareal bench Salcedo bench Gil 90' NYR vs DCU Lade bench Hamid 90' Martin bench DAL vs SEA Ulloa 90' Hernandez 90' Acosta bench Zimmerman bench (GA) Yedlin 90'
GA "graduation" rules are based on playing time and are vague. Nobody really knows what the cutoff is. From a standpoint of tracking players, though, I don't think it is particularly important to know if a player is still GA. It seems more interesting to note where a player originally came from (draft, GA, HG).
It is now official. http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/artic...-victor-mansaray-homegrown-player-2015-season Also, Darwin Jones was talking about signing after the College season is over with. But that isn't official yet. I expect Jordan Morris will be signing around that time as well. But you never know. He has options and there has only been speculation, no real clues like Mansaray and Jones were giving on their own.
US U-17s won 3-1 against England. Good game by Dallas HGP Zendejas with the goal and assist. There are four or so players that are eligible for HGP.
Is anyone tracking how Homegrown players are doing vs those who enter via the draft? I will say it seems to be a little hard to do a head to head comparison as homegrown players generally enter at a younger age (although some do finish college and then simply just skip the draft). Is there a list of 2016 homegrown players? Here is a start of a list for 2017: (only 3 so far) http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2016/...-center-back-alex-crognale-homegrown-contract