I wrote about US players who transferred from MLS to Europe here: https://andthenthehex.wordpress.com...s-national-team-transfers-from-mls-to-europe/ I have mulled over this dynamic for (apparently) two years now (most recent analysis was here, for those who want to see a rough draft.) Laying out the transfers over time provided me with some additional context. Here are the guys who made a World Cup roster and had a full transfer from MLS to a Euro club. The clubELO score of the club at the time of the transfer is on the Y-axis, and the size of the circle indicates how much playing time a player received in the first season with the new team. A few thoughts 1) A player's age certainly matters - a lack of first-team playing time at age 18 is less concerning than at 23. 2) Timing in the World Cup cycle matters, too. Look at the guys from the 2010 World Cup...Dempsey, Edu, and Bradley would all find more playing time with clubs as the cycle progressed. On the flip side, it's a shame Altidore didn't find a stable situation until AZ. 3) Among US-caliber players, the ELO range of 1600-1700 seems to be the sweet spot from MLS. 4) For recent guys, Yedlin and Miazga went high. Today, Yedlin is playing for Newcastle (ELO score of 1628) and Miazga on loan at Vitesse (1480) 5) I didn't include loans (as that might influence playing time decisions), so no Donovan or Olsen. I also didn't know how to capture Agudelo's time abroad. For reference, Stoke was at 1656, Utrecht at 1459. 6) Cameron and Ream had quiet but successful moves. 7) I had to double-check, but with the exception of Goodson, the Great Scandinavian Migration never materialized on a World Cup roster. Guys like Parkhurst and Califf transfered to teams in the 1400-1425 range.
I don't know if pro\rel is a factor but I will say this. Our second and third division have to be stronger, every country with with great soccer has very strong and competitive lower divisions. Until we get the second and third division to play longer seasons, better wages and they have a truly competitive environment, we will have to send our youngsters to stronger leagues, Europe or South America. All of our lower divisions have to get together and make it work, right now, other than MLS, everything else is amateur, part time jobs...
What's the average Elo score for MLS teams? (And it would improve more or less steadily over the course of this gtaph)
Agree and I think a big milestone will be when the lowest paid players in MLS are getting 100k guaranteed... Thats the type of money a player can blow off college for even if they don't have the talent to spend more than a year or two in the league. Not sure what that milestone number would be for the lower division but maybe 67-75k for D2 and 40-50k for D3.
I believe there's much to be gained from a more stable D2 and below, particularly if the focus is on 16-22 year old players. I think back, and even guys like Brian Ching and Herculez Gomez (who represented the US dozens of times) wouldn't have made it without playing time in the lower divisions. How many more players could we develop who, for whatever reason, aren't ready to be a full-time starter in MLS at 21 or 22?
Not sure...it's definitely lower than Liga MX, as Garber himself admitted, but MLS teams play so few intercontinental games that it's difficult to measure. If I had to pick a range from this scale, I'd say better teams are somewhere in the 1450 range. I imagine that both MLS and Liga MX would have a pretty tightly distributed league.
Probably nit picking here but once a player reaches 18, there is little to be "Developed" technically speaking, you can get some improvement but not enough for me to classify it as development. Another piece is the starting salary for college Grads vs MLS/ Lower Division Club. I remember sitting next to Andre Akpan (Harvard) Mom for a few games his rookie season and remember her talking about the "lost money" for chasing his Pro soccer dream. This also came up with Jordan Morris reason for staying in school working on IT degree that paid well over turning Pro. Other than a player chasing a dream, it will be quite some time before our lower divisions pay scale exceeds what a college grad can earn.
Are you talking about technical development? That I largely agree has an earlier end point, if the player has been exposed to it. If we're talking about mental, tactical, and psychological development then I don't.
Here is an article from October in Soccer America, tracking some of the same ideas: http://www.socceramerica.com/article/70870/us-players-in-europe-a-quality-problem-not-qua.html The 1,784 Brazilians exported are mostly the product of their own development programs. Of the 69 U.S. players playing in Europe, 28 (41 percent) of them are products of another country’s youth development system. Seventeen of those 28 players (61 percent) have at least one cap for the USYNT or USMNT. The other 41 are products of the U.S. youth development system. If we trust Wikipedia of those 69 players, six (4/2) of them are goal keepers, 23 (13/10) are defenders, 17 (10/6) are midfielders and 23 (14/9) are forwards. (The first number in parentheses indicates the U,S. developed players) This surprised me, I would have thought that there will be more defenders and midfielders. Out of the 69 U.S. players, 20 of them are playing in the top five leagues of Europe. Well to be exact they are playing in the Premier League and the Bundesliga and there are no US players in the Liga, the Serie A or the Ligue 1. Out of 20 only six (30 percent) of them have been developed by the U.S. youth development systems. Of those six, only Pulisic is playing for a team that competes in the Champions League or Europa League. The article goes on to say, that most USA players in Europe are benefitted by having two passports and the USA with only 69 players currently playing abroad is not one of the top 15 exporters of players. This article is fairly comprehensive with some excellent analysis.
Once our 2nd, 3rd and 4th division put their stuff together and get rid of the drama that has been going on for years, then I will know we are serious about becoming a power house. For now, our lower divisions are not competitive enough and we don't seem to care about it for some reason... we cannot move forward if the lower divisions stay the way they are.
Uh, people in America largely don't care about soccer. That is slowly changing and demographics look good but it's still a niche sport.
To have strong lower divisions you need an excess of interest beyond the top flight. You need markets that are underserved but have enough interest to financially support teams. People generally tend to get more competitive when there is more (money and prestige) to compete over.
Does ELO rank all leagues? Most UEFA leagues get one club in the Champions League qualifying rounds and three clubs in the Europa League qualifying rounds. These four clubs are guaranteed to play at least 8 games combined. In 2016-2017, 21 out of the 53 UEFA leagues (excluding Vaduz of Liechtenstein who plays in a Swiss League) played 14 or fewer games, meaning that the country had its clubs combine to advance no more than three rounds. MLS clubs play 18 or 20 games in a CCL Group Stage depending on if the Canadian club was grouped with an American club (making 18 games) or a Mexican club (making 20 games). If three MLS clubs advance to the Quarterfinals and are eliminated there, that makes 24 or 26 games per season. @cpwilson80 Can you post the percent of minutes as a table or redo the graph so the percent of minutes is one of the variables instead of the year? I'm more interested comparing how good the club is to the percent of minutes the American got than comparing how good the club is to the year the American came? If you redo the graph, you can put the year with each player like this: "Convey Reading 2004"
On a tangent (and an idea I'm toying with for the next research project/article), but I think the interest is there. Scaling profitably to the appropriate interest level is the uncharted territory. League-wide, Liga 2 in Spain, Serie B in Italy, and Ligue 2 in France all average ~7,000 fans this season. The third tiers in England (~7,700) and Germany (~5,800) are roughly in this range as well. NASL averaged ~4,700 this past season, and USL ~3,500 (medians are more like 5,000 and 2,500, respectively). Not surprisingly in the USL, the MLS reserve teams dragged down the attendance (my guess is ownership didn't double the sales and marketing efforts.) With some concrete structure from USSF, it's conceivable that those numbers could increase and reflect a lower-tier range found in the Big 5.
this is great stuff, thanks for posting! Out of curiosity, am I just missing Sacha here or did he not fit this profile for his transfer to Anderlecth when he was on Chivas USA in 2010? edit: Nevermind, I think I see why. Sacha never made a WC roster.
I don't remember ever seeing elo scores for clubs outside of Europe. National teams have elo scores but I don't think there is a world wide elo club formula.
We will be lucky to have 2 solid Divisions by 2017 (NASL is dead for all intents and purposes even if US Soccer says they are 2nd with USL in 2017), not sure where you are coming up with 3rd & 4th Divisions unless your counting beer leagues they just don't exist.
Indeed, though I suppose it's fair to include him as potential WC 2018 at this point! Anderlecht were on a tear when Kljestan transferred there: they won the 09/10 league by 12 points, won the Belgian league playoff, and made the Round of 16 in Europa League (a 16 year-old Lukaku led the way.) They had an ELO of 1761, good for the 27th best team in Europe. Kljestan played 42% of the league minutes...his dot would be roughly the same size as McBride.
The ClubELO methodology rates clubs in all Euro leagues, from Spain to San Marino. I like using this site, because I find the date/sorting function very well done. The circle size on the chart should give you what you're looking for, but if you want to play around with formatting, you should be able to download the CSV file from Tableau. Kitchen is first with 91% of minutes played, with Ream, Mathis, Howard, and Bocanegra 80%+
That was my point that the focus should be in organizing the lower divisions. There are other leagues other than the usl, I believe is called the NPSL.
It will take a while. Up until pretty recently, MLS was largely a semi-pro exhibition league. I recently read an article about guys on the Galaxy explaining to Beckham and Abel Xavier that there were guys on the roster who were paid $13,000 a year (that's what the article said - I think it was quoting Gordon). Becks and Abe were like, "you mean per week, right? So ...... per month?" As Karen Carpenter once sang ..... it's going to take some time.
Attendance is one part but there's also what is the level of interest from potential owners and sponsors. It seems to me that small clubs in Europe can be somewhere between a marketing expense for a rich local business owner, a toy, something with generations of family connections, a charity, or a community center with broad levels of membership. In America there is generally more of a business ethos, meaning consistent, long-term losses are less likely to be suffered. There's also less marketing value for local sponsorships. That's even before we talk about the allure of promotion.
It's a long way off, but if C-Caf and C-bol are merged, one would think that there would be a Western Hemisphere club championship.