I used 538 too -- and B1/Serie A have tons of stinkers. La Liga a few too. Coaching/training does matter. But I've been laughing at years at the people who think training/practice for a big club is better than playing at a small club. It's not how players develop over the long haul. Look again at those top UCL players and look how many don't play before they're 20. It's probably very very few. Pulisic is the extreme example. He is a once in a generation talent. He's the exception -- not the rule. To expect guys to succeed like he did at Dortmund would be naive.
As I in my post mentioned those elite programs in the Netherlands are specifically tuned to match the development with the rigours of real life match experience. You may think it's useless, but the top coaches Klopp and Guardiola and Bayern management have said in interviews they envy the Dutch top clubs for that beneficial playing of young teams in a real pro setting. I takre those guys opinion over yours.
Lol. I specifically listed a Dutch team as a an elite developer of talent yet you’re upset.....Ajax and PSV are top 100 clubs and Ajax a top 30 one. Are Mendez, Llanez making a mistake training with the youth teams in the Netherlands? Was Dest? Should they have stayed in MLS?
No, I'm not upset. I react to your statement about irrelevancy of playing time and competing against adults. It's not about Dutch clubs. I gave them as examples as I know them best and the opinions about that by top managers.
So you think Dest, llanez and Mendez should have started in MLS? They would have played faster against adults as it’s a lower level of competition than their existing clubs.
First of all, I'm talking about the development track for young talents. These donot get playing time in the big 4 leagues at top clubs (Klopp's Liverpool recently the exception with very young Dutch defenders). For development in the sense to apply what you learned in tactics, team work and your personal technical abilities it's essential you play against men, not other youth teams, to learn what you will meet on the pitch playing against adults. In that sense our second tier, mls or loans to lower in the table clubs are several levels better than playing against youth or simply training at a top club. We at Feyenoord had a superb U16 CD talent Bruma, who by everybody in the Netherlands was considered to be a future top defender for the Orange team. Chelsea lured him away with a big bag of money. Despite daily training with the likes of Drogba, he never made the level he was destined for. It was like he forgot everything he learned. He hardly made minutes, just a couple of matches for the first team of Chelsea. Because of the Chelsea badge he made it into the Orange team, which was an affront to all other Dutch defenders. He simply was a failure and after returning to the Netherlands at PSV he was the laughing stock of the Dutch defenders. It took him over 2 years to get back at a reasonable level. So much for training with the best players. When you're 17-18 it's without any doubt you need to leave the "kiddies" game and forge yourself in adult confrontations. You live in a fairytale world where talents train with top players and presto slide into the first team. That's not the case, except for the once in a generation players. Those however arenot the ones we're discussing.
2 points: 1 - Top 100 doesn’t mean only big 4. I already said that Ajax and PSV are included. 2 - you didn’t answer a direct question; should these young Americans have played in MLS or gone to elite Dutch clubs (which are in the top 100)?
It in principle doesnot matter where they go, as long as they play. Mls is notorious for having a team play well one season and the next crap or vice versa. It's by chance if you land in the right moment in an mls team. If they go to the Dutch top clubs with Young teams in the second tier (PSV, AZ, Ajax), they get playing time plenty enough. So the trade off is between playing time in mls or in the elite Young teams. In that case I would suggest to take the Dutch route, as with the play minutes you also get the development specialisms of the Dutch and when good progress is shown adaptation time in the first team.
On the bench for Jong Ajax: Voor de liefhebbers pic.twitter.com/DrPbUMGc5W— Mark van Rijswijk (@markvanrijswijk) August 19, 2019
Played final 10 minutes. Ajax were missing a few Jong Ajax players who were with the team going to their CL playoff match in Cyprus. Ajax usually posts some pretty detailed highlights for these matches. But the whole matches are hard to find. Fox Sports does a couple per week and you can find them if you look really hard for streams. I watched Dest play a few times last year via that.
Ajax Showtime (in Dutch, not sure how much if any of this is new) https://www.ajaxshowtime.com/article/hoofdnieuws/124722/alex-mendez-doet-mij-denken-aan-eriksen
This is about all I could find... evidently there was a stream so a video could exist somewhere soon: Match ends in a 3-3 draw. Ajax could have put it away with a penalty late but Victor Jensen missed it. Then NEC got a scrappy goal late in stoppage time. Mendez was a deep-lying mid. Got 5-6 good touches, 2 good defensive interventions, lost the ball once.— scuffed (@scuffedpod) August 19, 2019 It's just 10 minutes -- but with how Ajax plays under ten Hag, Mendez as a deep midfielder makes a lot more sense than him as a more advanced guy. Time will tell but guys who are less athletic/good passers play as organizers deep like Schöne did the last coupe years.
Jong Ajax play in the Dutch second division and the competition is pretty good. Most of the matches are televised and one can often find a stream to watch if so inclined. I didn't see the match yesterday (watched Wolves/ManU instead). Gravenberch, Taylor, and Jensen may be the starting MFs for this team but Ekkelenkamp, Lang, and de Wit are still eligible for this squad (they tend to be called up to the first team more often). Mendez will get a lot of playing time. It's usually the policy to rotate players in as subs early in the 2nd half so that they can all see playing time for evaluation. The biggest talent in the youth ranks at Ajax is Naci Unuvar who has been playing above his age for a while. He just turned 16 and is now with the Ajax U-19 team. I expect he will be called up to Jong Ajax later this year (he's an attacking MF; I don't know what position Mendez plays).
Interesting article that very briefly explains the Jong system: https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...x-psv-az-utrecht-teams-dutch?CMP=share_btn_tw
Here's the thing though. American players are still charting a course to get there. The path is much less defined than for other nationalities. Largely Spain, Italy, and France are closed to our guys. The Scandinavian leagues can no longer outpay MLS. Premier League teams don't develop youngsters and although the championship has improved greatly, it's become a sort of purgatory. Young Americans have this choice if they want to really prioritize a career in Europe (and I'm going to generalize in black and white here): either sign with an MLS team that they can't usually choose *due to geographic territories* that may or may not care about developing them to sell and oftentimes care more about developing them and locking them into a contract OR going to Germany and Holland. I expect this will begin to change if MLS is serious about becoming a selling league, but we have yet to see the league really sell young American talent (Adams was more of an internal transfer) AND we have yet to see clubs really pay for young American talent. So far the needle has only been moved for MLS now being an intermediate destination for SA talent before Europe. So what would you have had Mendez do? He moved to a good youth development setup, showed well at the U-20 World Cup, and then moved to a club that just developed two of the biggest young talents in the world.
Uhm, one. Frenky de Jong was developed by Willem II and bought by Ajax for 1 €. Actually Overmars had a deal to buy him for 800,000€€, but the board was against it (to be precise, Theo van Duivenbode). Overmars managed to make a deal with Willem II for 1€ plus a sell on percentage, which resulted in around 8 million.
Mendez is the same age as De Jong when he moved there. Frenkie will have more appearances for Barcelona than he will have had for Willem II by this time next month. Yes I understand he spent formative years there, but development doesn't stop at 18. 14-17 is crucial. But so is 18-21. The crux of what I was saying is talking about the American path to development and IMO being on a non-EU salary being paid by a club that produces its fair share of elite talent is better for Mendez than if he was still in America playing for an MLS club.
I can't and won't deny this as it is true for most players. However for FdJ it was more fine tuning and putting in field experience than true development in the sense of putting in knowledge and skills. FdJ played many matches as CD while that's not his position at all. It showed him as CD what is important that the midfielders do in relation to the defense, so he could use that experience in his midfield role.
There are lots of things that are insane on Internet forums but this may take the cake. Imagine comparing Mendez to Frenkie de Jong. Holy moly. Think what you want: the Eredivisie is in no way shape or form clearly better than MLS quality wise. Look at the budgets of Eredivisie teams. The lower 1/3 is lower than all MLS teams. It is not a good league. Without Ajax, the coefficient of the Netherlands is like 18th-22nd. It's terrible. The way to develop is play matches. Playing Eerste Divisie matches is marginally better than USL but no where close to MLS. Mendez needs to play a lot. And I do not think he is good enough. I'd be wrong happily but watching Ajax and watching him: he isn't in the same stratosphere.
In no way was this a talent comparison. It was a simple observation that they joined Ajax at the same age.
Okay, cool it down Ajax fan. You're now plain bullshitting. I watched several mls matches for some time between the top on the mls table (we get all mls matches on Eurosport). One thing is for sure, the mls is NO match for the "Eredivisie" top 10.