i do find it telling that we are a USL western conference affiliated team -- RGV -- signing probably more eastern conference USL scouted minor leaguers than we are elevating our own farmhands. of the people who show up as "RGV" for last club, Memo started up and yoyo'd, hoffmann was loaned down on purpose, and only lemoine signed there directly. the way we use the team seems to be more akin to reserve for overflow as opposed to a development team. i will be curious how the roster gets handled this year with RGV being an affiliate and not our roster control. to be fair, i want them scouting the minors for overlooked players. i just think it says something when they outnumber the amount of promoted players you signed to RGV itself.
we switched to affiliate this year. they control their roster. how many loans will be allowed/tolerated? this was one concern i had with what may be setting up as a year transition. last year we ran the team. next year we may have our own reserves. but what happens to the players in between, this season? i think your analysis would hold through 2020. this is 2021. how many dumps do we get? do we have to carry more senior team driftwood than usual? how do we get them minutes?
this is not about maric, it's about cropper and nelson. something was going to happen. they had two keepers signed, one of whom has barely ever played here in cup settings and has a third keeper resume. their choices were going to be, promote RGV, sign a MLS veteran backup, sign a USL risk, draft somebody. i again find it telling we're not promoting our own farm keeper, but instead signing a scouted player. Morton's career GAA is <1 in the minors. BTW, I KNEW THE NAME SOUNDED FAMILIAR: "Jan 13, 2020 to be clear, i'm saying USA can grow keepers, not that the Dynamo can. it blows my mind how crappy the GK stats were system wide for 2019. Willis mid-1s. Deric over 2. Nelson is roughly 2 (and got retained). Corti is near 2. for comparison Pittsburgh had a keeper (Morton) -- now moved to St. Louis -- who was at like 0.8. And in MLS Miller was at 1.0. at his peak Onstad was <1."
if you want rid of maric you don't sign morton with his backup resume, you do a mutual tearup and buy a half million dollar transfer keeper. fwiw with the benefit of hindsight yarbrough ended up with a 1.4 GAA (0.3 less) and 5% better save %, on a playoff team. and he would have been mexican. if maric is on a 2+1+1 then maybe next year.
to me the keeper to sign right now would be ethan horvath, who has talent and caps but rarely plays club, needs to go someplace and start so berhalter remembers his number. he even probably played U20 for ramos. but i am sure that would cost a fee and a salary. i said the same thing on wood who pre-signed with RSL effective this summer.
Fair enough point. I suppose they might just end up sitting with zero minutes and training with the first team ala Palomino last year. There was the rumor that MLS would restart the Reserve League in 2021 as a U-23 destination, but I've seen nothing on that recently. If it does get rebooted they can get dumped onto it.
who knows, maybe they start it this year and we have both. an English team can EITHER nominally carry you on the first team but play you on the reserves and in cup games OR loan you out to another team. i think that's kind of what we used to do about 5-10 years ago, is the no-hopers got loaned out. MLS over time is converging with the rest of the world. i don't think it's ideal for the NT because if you look at their best years we had a fairly hard cap, few DPs, and limited internationals. so americans including U20s could play. it's getting not much different than europe here. so you might have 3-5 domestic starters x however many teams and that's our domestic player pool. that's a tangent, but anyway. if we're transitioning back to reserves and longer first team rosters, i don't think that hurts us much. RGV doesn't seem to be a development project. even before flipping to affiliation they have a lot of overflow international loan players and people loaned down off the back end of our team. the starters seem to be in their mid 20s and there seems to be no special focus on teaching and playing the higher upside 18-20 set. in which case how is that that much different than the old reserve team headed by wondo with a bunch of 23-25 year old draft picks and underused veterans we're trying to keep fit. i think it might be more interesting for the teams like FCD and LAG that take development more seriously and stock the team with first chance kids, RGV to me has become -- maybe always was -- focused on the older second chance player more like a regular USL team. and other than perhaps Memo there is no HGP conveyor belt or "bridge" where you work up a ladder through the academy, to PDL, to USL, to MLS. they have nominally created the rungs but it doesn't work that way. compare that to dallas and they have kids sold to germany (mckennie, richards), kids signed to first team, kids signed to north texas. there is a functioning pipeline. we don't have that, we seem to have someplace we stash another set of first team age players and internationals with a few picks and HGP sprinkled that are never heard of again. i don't see that working out much different than reserves. in fact, it might be better if they were under the coach's nose where any success is a lot more immediately noticed. RGV to me, out of sight, out of mind.
i think the german style "II" teams work if you actually play the kids. it provides an outlet to send the not ready youth player to get minutes. but i think in reality a lot of our kids go there to sit behind some career USL dude or foreign loan signing. that is like the ordinary minor leagues. that is more akin to EPL reserve league ball. the nuance that might affect us is if the first and reserve teams are integrated then you lose the ability to stash surplus internationals on the farm for a trial year. if you have "8 internationals" and integrated reserves then the 5 additional USL internationals can't exist. unless we agree to raise the limit which would only hurt us competitively. maybe naive but maybe this forces us to refocus back on the domestic and perhaps even HGP player.
It's hard to think that the reserve league is going to be limited to the first team roster. I'd expect they're allowed to field a wider number of players because the intent there is to replace the II teams and probably cut the cost of operating those. The USL Championship II teams look like they'll be nixed. More interested if the USL 1 teams like Dallas has will remain, or if MLS teams will just totally pull the plug on those. Also strongly agree that it will help to have the younger players in front of the first team staff and players on a regular basis rather than punted 350 miles south to Edinburg. The one thing I will say I find interesting about the Dynamo is the bent towards domestic players we are taking, although I cynically think this is driven by cost-cutting more than anything (Jordan's advancing a "we can't scout due to COVID!" argument but I find that unconvincing cover for a "we don't have any money!")
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2021...ork-do-ahead-2021-season-kickoff-greg-seltzer doesn't even bother to list us as scrambling
what i am getting at re the roster is this. under the old reserve league things were handled EPL style. you had a long first team roster, 25-30 players. there were few loans, and you instead kept everyone around and the people who sat or didn't dress played the reserve game. right now, we nominally have the 30 man, but several of those are explicitly in RGV on season loan. don't come back unless we have an emergency. so the practical roster is closer to 23 or so. RGV does have its own "II" team but there's about a 5-10 player overlap where we own the contract but they play the player. and what i am concerned about this year is unless they start the reserves this season, you have the long roster but maybe can only ship max 5 down within an affiliate agreement. so we may have a year of fewer roster players busy and some difficulty getting them fit, sharp, and evaluated to know whether to keep them around. i think we are mimicking europe so my guess is we are headed towards long english style rosters again. historically english teams used to have 30+ players and so you'd see cup guys with weird high numbers. now the rule is you can have 25 senior players + U21s. if you look, they register dozens of U21s. i would assume we're going back to the long rosters for reserves. i am not sure if they expand them in a pandemic but the reality of the old reserve league was they would sometimes end up fielding coaches and academicians. if you're aiming for professionalized as opposed to ad hoc i would think that would mean some U21 roster slot equivalent or eventually -- when normality returns -- simply longer rosters. i wouldn't get having reserve teams set up as literal "II" teams. i'd think the whole idea would be to run a schedule of dynamo secondaries who stay in houston without the cost of operating a whole second team perhaps even in another city. and who if you have the injury bug transition right over. and who you can watch every day for promotion purposes. the complication on that would be when they were doing things the old way those last reserve team slots used to pay $10k a year, at which point USL was competing with MLS reserves for players. if MLS competes for players by paying them minimum, whatever amount you in theory save not operating a second team, you spend some of on the incremental difference between what RGV pays contract and you pay contract. which i think is like $20k more per player who is not on loan. loan players would already be making MLS money. maybe the way they get around that is amateur academicians playing reserves. but then you're competing with USL again. why am i playing for you for free when USL will pay me.
memory serves the complaint on reserves was that some draft pick kid is competing with wondo for time. that often the primary players were adult age senior players caught in numbers games who didn't get minutes that week. that the 20 year old developmental might or might not be able to play. to be fair, there are teams like dallas that use the "II" team farm system to play their kids in the opened space, and there are teams like us who treated it more like the minors, signed older and foreign players on top of picks and HGP, and sat some of the kids behind 27 year old no hopers. so at some level the system is what you make of it. they could make rules forcing developmental use. or we could treat it as a developmental team as opposed to an excuse to play, say, Nico Hansen.
I'd assume any MLS reserve league will operate under a cost sharing mechanism like MLS rosters do, i.e. your subscription to the Reserve league will require X capital to be fronted that is then parsed out to the various teams to fund a supplemental roster. The II teams are already paying for everything involved. We aren't because of the hybrid operation (although based on the tweet about RGVFC wage budget going up, we were still running minimum payroll). Not much change for most of teams, probably more of a change for us, but again probably something that MLS is going to leaguewide mandate which makes it a moot point, i.e. Brener has no choice but to open his pockets. I also think that there is a decent chance that they put some sort of rule in place to force playing U-23s (this is how the revived reserve league was reported, as a U-23 league) and keep teams from punting veterans down long-term. I expect that MLS will be in competition for USL for the players to staff these teams, but as USL has grown that is increasingly starting to happen anyways, i.e. the lower end of the MLS bench versus the top earners in USL are probably already competitive. Take a look at some of the USL rosters and you'll see many guys that were playing in MLS recently or who probably are capable of making the end of an MLS bench. We've had a plethora of those types come through our roster since that what they used the USL team for.
Correct. Our club, knowing how talent rich just the Greater Houston Area is, (for both boys and girls) should already have had some sort of localized teams that play each other over having the only youth pipeline set up the 350 miles away as you mentioned. Personally, I would have always had a Houston II set up close to home but as well knowing that each U-19 youth player or U-23 player around town already has their own club they are deep with, I would slice up Houston into quadrants, form a team from each of these four quadrants, give each team a jersey kit color from our clubs colors thus orange is when you make it to the club of course, so I would dish out white, black, space city blue and navy blue, and have each of these teams be what our Houston Dynamo coaches select of all those players form the various clubs around their side of town. Basically take said quadrants of town and plug in what appear to be the very best talented players as they grow. This way our head coach and staff and the Academy staff can witness up close how these players link up with each other and see what cream rises to the top. Run a Houston II and invest the cost there for sure but the overhead cost for such a localized set up blows what our FO spends on RGV outta the water. All our FO has to do is rent the fields around town for the matches each month, have Academy coaches coach the teams, get a hold of our Adidas rep for free Adidas uniforms and boots handed to the players, heck, slap a sponsor at center chest from a business from each side of town if desired to actually churn in some coin. Really there is the gas money for each set of coaches to make it down to Cullen Park or Bayland Park to watch the games.
you don't have bad ideas on the academy, but to me only half the problem is whether we are producing enough development talent. the other half is whether the bridge from U18 to senior ball has ever gotten done right. they created RGV but then played 25 year olds who had already washed out of montreal -- and had no senior impact whatsoever when promoted -- or some spillover 9th 10th 11th international loaned to RGV -- ahead of their own products. you look at what dallas does and their II team is not a bunch of second chance minor leaguers, it is a mix of FCD academicians and draft picks and selected outsiders who are signed from pro age group programs and generally on their first pro contract. it does not look like a minor league team and they deliberately slotted into the third division for competition. so, are we going to do it right this year? like i said, we may have just 5 slots to work with, and whether we overstated "youth movement" or not, we did sign a few. what is the plan for getting our kids time and evaluating them? and then do we have a plan for 2022 and beyond? people can make snide TLDR or manifesto comments but fixing the pipeline isn't a bumper sticker or "empty seats" photo stunt. i see a big pitfall and am trying to raise the questions and bring in some of the history. dating back to wasting wondo we have never done that part very well. they acted like RGV would fix it but didn't. they signed some kids this year but have now agreed to a year transition affiliate agreement that will in practice likely limit how many kids we can even send. you're looking at having nelson, hoffman, adams, bartlow, castilla, palomino, and rios around twiddling thumbs and maybe 5 of them can be sent to RGV. do you send the best ones to get them ready or the worst since they have the least chance to play here. i think people are used to the farm team thing where they all just disappear and no thought is involved. and then my further point was since out of sight is out of mind i think little focus is paid to whether RGV was actually making anyone better, the 18-23 jump we need. this is a fair and important discussion just like our lack of an international slot when they wanted to sign the scot a few years back. i get we're transitioning to something else but colliding that into a year you sign a few kids is awkward.
I’m sure this tweet will end the MLS labor negotiations We stand by the @MLSPA 🤝And we urge @thesoccerdon and @MLS Owners to do what’s right. #LetThemPlay2021 #WeAreTheSurge⚡️ pic.twitter.com/rkEDkBzqOV— The Surge SG (@TheSurgeSG) February 1, 2021
Meh, I suppose their hearts are in the right place. I did notice these Surge guys of ours used the word "pitch" over field there in the last line of their tweet. Is that our FO's sales pitch fellas? Or was that an option pitch by Watson on the last play of the Texans season? Or the even more common term in sports from our side of the planet for the word pitch is what an Astros pitcher does while on the mound. Surge guys, c'mon we're Americans, I've met you guys. Its as simple as just saying field. Even the Canadians don't use pitch for field and their nation is still part of the British Commonwealth! Haha!!! Trying to sound British as an American when talking soccer is like a local Rockets fan using the metric system when cheering for our Rockets players as they "shoot from 3 meters." Or when an American soccer fan calls some rival soccer fan out as a "wanker" over the customary go to jerkoff. By turning away from your own culture's vernacular it just seems pretentious at best and at worst lame as shit.
This is how deranged the liberal MLS writers have become - they are implying that the lockout is somehow now racist or something. I say “something” because it’s strains logic to try and conflate Black History Month and a pro sports labor negotiation Major League Soccer celebrating Black History Month rings rather hollow when the league is simultaneously enjoying the idea of locking out its Black players because they won't give back raises they've earned through their labor.— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) February 1, 2021
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2021/02/02/three-big-winners-2021-mls-offseason-so-far-andrew-wiebe We're listed as a "Big Winner" of the offseason here, although if you read what Wiebe says he's tempering this more in a "the Dynamo probably aren't a last place team" anymore. I agree with that. I think that they've put together a decent roster of MLS vets that will be enough to see them out of the basement this year. The question is what then? Good or bad, this team will completely blow up at the end of the 2021 season so it's really hard to see this as building towards something. I think the only guys still under contract at the end of 2021 will be Bajamich, Memo, Valentin, Lassiter and Bartlow. Just feels like a transition year, where if we suck we can let almost everyone walk, but if we're good we probably aren't able to retain the roster.
In such a year the biggest concern for me is to find a starting unit that can defend very well, thus stop this nasty new trend over the recent seasons of losing at home. When these holes in our defense are plugged we can stop the ship of U.S.S. Houston from sinking any more, stop us being the basement team of the Western Conference. If and when this happens we keep this new starting unit and indeed let the others move on/retain a bench core to work with as desired. Obviously I, and I would like to think many of us, I am waiting on our Academy to start developing starting type talent very soon. As we know our GHA is to talent laden, to have a problem of not getting our local crop of talent in to the side is frustrating to no end. As robust of a soccer culture as we have here in Houston our FO and head coach should have so many future players coming down the pipeline that when roster turnover is on the table, the players on our roster can easily be replaced with cheaper and younger in club Academy footballers
As far as things that actually matter regarding the labor negotiations. It does seem weird that owners are willing to go to lockout when you consider that many MLS fans will simply just watch other, higher quality, soccer leagues and possibly realize they don’t need MLS that much. When you’re the 3rd-4th league of choice among soccer fans in this country I’m pretty sure labor issues aren’t the area where you want to bleed additional fans.
QFT On top of the this as MLS goes in the food chain of pro soccer in our culture, many soccer aficionados in our nation either have their kids involved in the sport and thus go watch them on the weekends, often several games a day no less. And as well the men and women that played the sport when younger, they have their indoor and outdoor teams that they continue to consume the sport at. Thus, a core demographic that is already watching MLS or a market that MLS HQ would like to take more on in their stadiums, these soccer folks are already getting their "soccer fix" in their lives. Add to this that they as well do watch on TV the Prem and La Liga, the UCL and leagues in our Americas and one would like to think that if MLS leaves the scene one year all do to a lockout, then what has been gained to get their allegiance is lost in this labor dispute here in 2021. MLS HQ and owners need to be really thoughtful on this front.
this is not a bad take (paywall) about the MLS labor dispute/potential lockout. A bit harsh but true (see excerpts below) about SGs influence and the concern over the next TV contract. Reality for MLS is that without fans in the stands they are looking at massive losses, ironically due to liberal blue state governors and mayors who love soccer and their woke progressive fans but won't open up their cities and states https://theathletic.com/2362432/2021/02/02/mls-cba-lockout-threat/ "There isn’t a ton for the league to worry about in terms of blowback. Supporters’ groups have come out with statements in favor of the players, but those MLS diehards are a small segment of the overall base. And they’re the league’s most captive audience. They’re upset with owners, but will many of them change their viewing or spending habits if the league locks players out? If MLS does lock out the players, the league will take flack from this and other outlets, but it won’t be the type of all-consuming outrage MLB or the NBA might face in a similar situation. The same small audiences that hurt MLS’ value to broadcasters are helping it stay under the radar during this labor fight." AND "One other item also sticks out, though for somewhat different reasons. A couple of sources familiar with the MLS broadcast landscape have posited that the league holding firm on its proposed two-year extension is a hedge against — or even a tacit admission that it expects — a disappointing new national TV deal."
In what should be a wake up call, FCD's Bryan Reynolds sold to Roma for $8.5m after 27 appearances in 2 years. We blew it on Manotas and Elis, and the fact Dallas is selling kids over and over to high level teams makes clear we are not doing it right.