College soccer and the YNTs - the writing is on the wall and it says "go pro ASAP."

My comment was with regard to Stanford. Playing 4 years of college is like playing a longer time than usual in the minors for baseball. Some good players have done it, but most of the best move through pretty quickly. From my point of view 2-3 is probably the ideal for most true pro soccer prospects. That would likely be reduced if the quality of the reserve program improves by quite a bit.

 

...and a "B" team to an "A" team that is currently ranked 34th in the FIFA world rankings....

 

More than half of these guys are still young enough to have played in college this fall, which shows how much of a head start they're getting.

 

Camp is Jan 8-Jan 25, so even if Ibeagha hasn't signed a pro contract, he's presumably not an active student any more.

 

Rongen the other day: Andrew Wenger didnt get any better in his three years in college. Not exact quote but you can search for exact quote.

 

If the actual quote is anything like that, it seems kind of dumb.

Does Rongen really believe Wenger was already capable of being both the best defender and the best attacker in the ACC - and winning the Hermann trophy - as an 18 year old freshman? If so, I'd like to hear him explain why Wenger wasn't on the U20 World Cup roster (or qualifying roster) in 2009.

 

What Rongen actually said was, "Wenger was as good or even a little better when he went into college."

My reaction was pretty much the same as yours.
https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1885373&page=2

 

To further clarify Rongen's remarks:

With the proviso that he also probably got physically stronger (which you can do in a gym regardless of where you're playing), I think he's probably right. Wenger was high school POTY and USSDA First XI. He was then ACC Freshman of the Year/all-ACC First Team as a frosh. It appears, from a technical and tactical perspective, he was never really challenged by college soccer.

In all honesty, I think the only stumbling block is that that award is based on accumulated reputation that you can't build in a single year, but in terms of being one of the very best players in college soccer his Freshman year? He probably was.

Not that this is a good reason in and of itself but. . . age probably had a lot to do with it. He missed by only one week being age eligible for the 2011 tournament.

 

No excuse at all. Rongen made Dillon Powers a starter despite being younger than Wenger.

"Wenger was as good or even a little better when he went into college."

If Rongen is correct in that statement, then he's also making a statement about his own incompetence.

 

The fact that we listen to anything Rongen says is what is shocking. A poor coach whose only contribution to player development was that he was good at finding foreigners who had an American parent. A poor coach from the old boys club that fails time and time again and somehow just keeps showing up. Please leave American Soccer forever!

 

No matter what you say about Rongen, he did a heck of a job with this....

American Samoa's dream team
http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/ne...eam-team-thomas-rongen-brent-latham-us-soccer

 

Great. If we play Tonga in the World Cup, he is the guy to call.

 

One former two-year college player became the first American to score a hat trick in the Premiership.

 

Fwiw, Dempsey was at Furman for three years.

 

Don't mean it as an excuse, I'm just saying 'which story is easier to believe'. Guys getting passed over because they're too young happens for 'UX' teams all the time, it's one of the more endemic problems. My guess is, if he's a year and a half older and 10lb heavier, he's a mortal lock. But college soccer appeared to be easy for Wenger from day one.

Btw, talk about another guy who didn't get any better in college, Powers. There's a guy whose stock probably went down during the time he was in school.

 

How much on not getting better lies within the player as opposed to the environment ?

 

What we're talking about here is a glass half-full, half-empty situation.

In a case like Andrew Wenger, there's a tendency to give the college environment too much credit because as you say, he was under-rated coming in. Correspondingly, in a case like Dillon Powers, there's a tendency to give the college environment too little credit because he was over-rated coming in. (Considering that Powers wasn't good enough to start as a freshman, it's a bit of a mystery why his stock remained so high for as long as it did.)

Are there problems with college soccer as an environment for development? Yes, of course, lots, and they've been discussed to death. But for anyone who watches over a few years, it's tough to avoid noticing that most individuals playing in college do improve. Not all, but most, and it's grating to see Rongen mis-represent that.

 

There's no definitive answer to that question in an individual player's case. I'd say Michael Jordan was in the top couple percentiles of all NBA players by his third season in, but I'd also say he got better after that. Wayne Gretzky was at that level probably by his second season in the NHL, but yet he probably got better.

That said, I think it's a lot harder. Playing with, and against guys, who clearly aren't as good as you is not the way you'd prefer to advance if you had the option.

Of course, it can be countered that guys aren't expected to make huge technical advances after age 18 anyway, that they are >90% finished products technique-wise by that time. You could even plausibly assert that lessons they're not picking up tactically in college will be waiting for them when they do turn pro. If that were true, then what is really going on is that he basically delayed his career.

I don't think Dempsey, to use another example of a guy who probably stayed too long in college (he played 3 years of college soccer), would likely have a dramatically different 'top out' as a player in the Premier League if he'd never gone to college; what probably would have happened instead is that a player who just truly found his stride last year and this year (his goals in all competitions for Fulham by season have gone: 1, 6, 8, 9, 13, and this year 15 [with 16 league games and some cup matches left to go]) at around age 28 would have gotten there a couple years faster. That might have gotten him a better shot at a big club, it might also have gotten him a few more career NT goals, it almost certainly would have made him a wealthier man.

You can argue, though, that in the aggregate, if we got everything right with the development system up to age 18, the NT could overcome that sort of problem with brute force of numbers. Ie we'd have more Dempseys and Wengers, so it wouldn't kill us if each of them had slightly shorter peaks.

What it couldn't overcome, and what's more obvious, is the kid who, by age 17, is already good enough that he should be getting first team minutes somewhere and in order to waste time and money going to college, would have to waste time and money finishing his high school career first. We haven't made many of those kids yet. But if we get everything else right, we might start.

 

... and another theory is that the college provided a fertile ground for him to personally develop after struggling with poverty and the loss of his sister growing up. Because of this he was able to comfortably develop as a player. An environment where the coach sees you as a person and is concerned with your personnel development as opposed to a commodity that can be developed and eventually sold for a higher price than the price invested in you as a player (European model)

Maybe his development was as it should be. Maybe going to college allowed him to flourish when he went abroad because he had matured enough from his college experience to meet the challanges. Interestingly, Clint Dempsey went to college and reached his prime at 28. Landon Donovan chose a different route (europe/mls) and reached his prime at 28. Who is the better player ?

 

An interesting thing about Dempsey is that even though he started almost every game over three years at Furman, he never led the team in goals or assists.

I can't say I know why that was, but you have to wonder whether he had the right level of maturity for the pros at the time.