@Clint Eastwood - you are familiar with FCD - is the article directionally correct wrt the revenues and costs of their academy and youth system?
Every high level youth team in N Texas charges about the same. there are usually two to three spots that kids in need claim that are free (scholarships). FCD charges market rate. Perhaps every telling clubs they are money grubbing and should be happy to lose money or only make what others think they should should disclose their own investments and income so we can judge what they need to be doing with there money. What you went and bought some beer? That could have funded a session for a kid at a club!
of course, FCD is the only N Texas club with a monopoly that allows them to have 250ish teams. FCD arent some benevolent owners who are getting screwed over. They are billionaires who have eliminated domestic competition, used it to profit off other kids, and act like these kids should be indebted to them and sign with them when there are much better options. All that is happening in these situations is that they are seeing competition for their players from better clubs. Since the league is anti-competition, they are confused and whine about it like entitled brats.
But those other clubs aren’t demanding more than S/TC from other clubs, are they? We’ve heard multiple times that if MLS clubs can’t sell DA players for big money, they’ll stop having DAs because of the money they’ll be losing - yet every time we ask about the profitability of these programs, we get no answer from those who are most likely to know. Furthermore, we now have an article stated that it’s not the case.
Donovan, Beasley, Dempsey, Howard, McBride, Pope, Nelsen, Yedlin, Mastroeni, and Holden all came out of the league. Adams walked into the starting lineup of a top B1 team. McKennie needed little lead time before becoming a starter in the B1. The league has a track record of developing quality professionals.
Dallas will make a lot of money of Wes. It's called marketing expenses. Him going straight to BL will bring more/better players to the club.
That is about 10 players from over a decade ago. This past decade is only Adam's and Yedlin. Who knows what happens to Yedlin if there wasnt a WC to facilitate his move. He certainly wasnt prepared for the EPL. He had to be loaned out and spent that season learning how to defend. NYRB did an amazing job with Adam's. The question still remains what would have happened if they didnt have a parent club to sell to like most of the rest of the clubs. Would he have been sold or would they have put a huge price on him that nobody would pay? Miazga could be added. NYRB did a decent job getting him on the field but questionable one preparing him for the next level. He had to sit in his first loan until he improved substantially with the ball at his feet. This isnt a great track record of taking HG players and turning them into high level players. That may change in the near future, but the past is what it is.
The league has a track record of developing role players for MLS teams. You would hope a top tier monopoly in a country of 330 million people would have a list of players longer than 9 over 25 years! How many Brazilians or Argentinians or Croatians have been developed and played in the Champions League? None of your 9, with only one being in the last 10 years, has played in the Champions League. There is no international market for MLS players because they sell so few. They sell so few because they have a subsidized monopoly in this country and the lack of established market doesn't give them the prices they want. A few outliers is not anything but a few outliers. For every Adams and Davies, there is an Almiron and Larin that have done little after high profile moves. MLS needs to develop young players, which involves playing them before they are absolutely ready, and selling them as soon as possible for small amounts with sell on clauses. Once a market is developed, prices can go up. Everyone knows this. Pretending different is silly. Even the people preventing it, know it (FCD, Vancouver, NE, and some other owners).
I don't see them dropping their academies. The academies provide the key part of their equation: fodder. MLS does actually have to have some American players on their rosters. W/o academies, they'd have to plug college guys in. I think they'll keep the academies. If they don't, USL teams will be there, filling in the gaps. Hell, if MLS drops academies, it would be a big boon to USL. It would boost their talent pool by a lot. It would make their teams more competitive in the Cup. And, to the extent that it made USL the American League, I'd be a huge fan. There is a genie out of the bottle element here. It is clear that the U.S. can be a rich source for young, inexpensive talent. If MLS dropped academies (they won't), the gap will be filled. Mamas don't let your babies go to mls academies
Right, dropping the academies doesn't solve any problem. They will just have to buy all their players because the NCAA is not developing MLS ready players anymore. All the problems are of MLS's own making. Garber and the competition committee could get together on Skype at lunch today and fix all the reasons guys like Mendez left for free. If you listen to Alex or Uly talk, they really didn't want to leave their family and friends and go to Germany at 18. It just became the only sane choice for them because of all the internal rules that MLS has set for itself. HG territories, contract terms, chance for renegotiation, free agency at the end, disincentives to selling American players under contract, the money paid for the first 8-10 players on a roster versus the free American fodder makes breaking into the team very hard, etc. Your elite 16 year olds will leave for Dortmund if they can. But FIFA rules make it hard for almost everyone to follow that path. If MLS would just offer the best players shorter, more lucrative contracts, and play them they would sign. But then they would have to be sold, or like FCD is finding, the pipelline is clogged and players start leaving again. MLS wants free players for the bottom of their roster. That is all they ever wanted. Talk about closing academies is just an attempt to force USSF to give them what they can't attract anymore.
Everyone is aware that the PLAYERS negotiate for these things in the collective bargaining agreement right? MLS and its' investor/operators were not the ones against training comp and solidarity payments, the MLS Players Union was/is against them. It is their view that these payments/costs are restrictive to player movement. Seriously? A lot of USL teams struggle as is to break even without running academies. Where is the money for these academies going to come from? The main reasons for the success seen at the Academies of FC Dallas, RBNY, and recently Philly is the amount of money these organizations have and continue to invest in/commit to their youth systems. Coaches, scouts, USL teams and facilities cost a significant amount of money to not only build, but more importantly maintain and improve. It also takes a fair amount of time to fully build out a youth setup that will consistently turn out not only high level youth players, but a handful of players who have the potential to play at the professional level (never mind at the international level).
I'd say there's very little truth to anything anybody has said in this thread about FC Dallas. But I'm tired of the fight.
Right. MLS is just looking out for the players. Or maybe, that was a convenient excuse until they finally had players go through their academies. Apparently they dont care what the players want now. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019...g-compensation-claims-and-solidarity-payments
What did "The Dallas Morning News" get wrong? It appears that FCD youth programs pay for their academy and still have enough left over to be a profit stream. Do you not think this is correct? If so, please provide details.
What is it that you want? In one post you damn MLS for not getting with the rest of the world and having training comp and solidarity payments. Now you damn them for doing just that? Does anyone actually believe that European teams have American youth players best interests at heart? Does anyone believe that they don't just view young American players as cheap developmental talent at the end of the roster? The list of players who went overseas and didn't catch on is a lot longer than the list of players of stuck for a career. The notion that all MLS academies should be churning out Senior National Team level players every single year is simply not based in reality. Many people see La Masia and their once in a several generation class of Messi. Iniesta, Xavi, Puyol, Busquetts, Pique, & Fabregas and think every academy should be like that. If every MLS academy, or a handful for that matter, were as good as Athletic Club Bilbao's academy we should all be over the moon. That would be a huge stretch too. Pro Athletes are the less than one percenters. National Team level players? That makes up 1% of those aforementioned one percenters.
The fact that second division clubs struggle to turn profit speaks to how screwed up the structure is. I'd assume they would pay for it like FCD by having paying kids subsidize the academy. On top of that would be transfer fees, training comp, and solidarity payments. This would actually be good for the game as many more clubs could get involved in this than the 30 or so in MLS. Why do you think it would take so long? Because it took MLS so long to start churning out players? Anyone starting an academy now, wouldnt have to make all the mistakes MLS teams did. They wouldnt have to drag their feet in the beginning. They also would start with younger academies and add older groups as the kids grow up vs MLS academies doing the opposite in the beginning. LAFC's academy is very young and already look to have some quality players in a couple of years. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2018/09/23/lafc-embracing-opportunity-start-academy-scratch
You are the one that tried to make it sound like they were leaving it up to the players. I'm not impressed when somebody does something they should have done a long time ago because it finally becomes advantageous for them. In the long run this will be good for them, but the motives had nothing to do with the players. Yes, they view them as assets that they want to maximize their value. They arent directly looking out for their best interests, but their incentives are aligned. Hmmm... I wouldnt call Pulisic, Mckennie, Adam's, Weah, Reyna, etc as cheap developmental talent at the end of their roster. A lot of players wont make it, but the percentage that do is much higher for those who go to Europe than the ones staying in MLS. Why are you comparing them to Barca's golden generation? Also, the issue isnt that evry club should be as good as Bilbao, but that Bilbao is dramatically better than all of MLS.
There are second division teams all over the world that struggle to break even every year. It's not just an issue, or evidence that the structure in the US is screwed up. There are teams in the English Championship that lose millions of pounds every season. You assume? Come on now. Transfer fees? Are you assuming again that all academies are going to have a conveyor belt of professional level talent that professional teams are willing to pay for? Training comp and solidarity payments? Again.....assuming that every academy is going to be a conveyor belt of professional talent is not realistic, nor is it a good business plan. MLS academies have been starting out with younger age groups for many years now. In fact there are posters who complain about this very thing! They lament that Minnesotta's academy has yet to produce.....even though they are just now fielding U18 teams. Ditto NYCFC. Some posters would argue that this is in fact "dragging their feet." You are aware that LAFC's ownership group is one of the richest in North America right? They've invested a significant amount of resources in their academy. LA is also one the soccer talent hotbeds in North America. Liga MX teams have been mining talent in SoCal for many years.
It is surprising to know that an MLS doesnt see any problem with the structure of professional soccer in this country. There is quite a bit of young talent coming out of the US. If MLS stepped aside, USL would be the top dog. MLS teams would need to rely heavily on these kids to fill out their rosters. They would have to pay transfermfees or training comp. The same would be true for those who wanted to try their hand abroad. Of course these clubs would also have paying kids programs that covers the upfront costs. That isnt how they started. Many roginally didnt have teams below u16/17 and were confused why they didnt produce talented enough players. Those posters would be idiots. What is the point of spending energy on 17 and 18 year olds that dont have the potential to make it. How much did they invest? How much did they take in from other paying kids. The one thing is clear that they went about it in a smart way. They decided what age they wanted to begin having academies and started with teams at or just above that level. Their oldest team a year and a half ago was u14. Most MLS academies started with no age groups younger than u16/17. There are still clubs without USL teams to bridge the gap. Heck, FCD who is the supposed leader of youth development just started their USL team last year.
respectfully to both you and @Clint Eastwood and acknowledging that @bsky22’s open animosity towards MLS doesn’t encourage open discussion, the question of whether MLS DA are large money losers that require high dollar sales up the meritocratic ladder is an area that hasn’t been discussed - the open assumption is that they will close DAs if they don’t get paid for the Westons of the world. We have an article that stated just the contrary and I think it warrants discussion or we should just assume it’s true? I’d rather flesh it out.
Its correct. But there's nothing interesting there. FCD's development academy programs are free. Those are the players most likely to be future FC Dallas first team players. The Premier, Select Teams, and Junior teams in Frisco aren't free. They're basically community outreach programs. Of course, kids have to pay to play youth football and be in the Boy Scouts' too. Or almost anything for that matter. FCD may have over 10,000 kids under their umbrella. I don't know the exact number. How on Earth are they all playing for free? You realize that FCD has over 4,000 kids in their Mexico-based academies alone.................right? They also run multiple academies in Puerto Rico. That they run an academy in Costa Rica. FCD runs 11 different affiliates in the US outside of their center in Frisco, including their productive affiliate in El Paso. If a kid shows elite promise in any of those affiliates, they come up to Frisco to try out for the free DA teams. Ricardo Pepi is an example. He came from the El paso affiliate. The infrastructure, the coaching, the travel, the administration, etc.. Do we live in some sort of dreamland utopia? Where do people think this money comes from? Does it just magically appear? If FCD uses some of the money from the community outreach programs so that the academy programs are free.....................why the hell is that a problem? Why is it even interesting to anybody? And most importantly #2...............why the hell has FCD become some sort of target on the USMNT board? FCD has had more homegrown players get senior USMNT caps than half of MLS has even signed homegrown players. The two most recent ones are Brandon Servania and Jesus Ferreira. And that doesn't include players they didn't sign that spent time in their academy like McKennie and Hyndman. It doesn't include Chris Cappis who just got a senior USMNT callup. Shouldn't people be complaining about Houston or Chicago or one of these bigger market MLS teams that produce very little? What's with the never-ending criticism of the team doing the most?
remember subbing on daniel lovitz or nick lima when we needed offense? at the very very least gio reyna has to be the first offensive impact sub off the bench now.
It is interesting because folks in MLS and its fans go on and on about how they are investing so much on academies and are being wronged because kids rightfully are doing what they think is right for their lives. They threaten that they will shut down their academies if players keep bypassing MLS which is a joke. The reality is all the programs are intertwined. FCD clearly isnt losing money on all their youth programs. Having an MLS and USL team make their academies more attractive. Having the free academy makes the rest of their youth programs more attractive as well. I'd bet they make a lot more than what they lose on the academies expenses than if they didnt have an academy. FCD gets discussed on these boards because it is strongest program in the US and it fans like you advertise it all the time. Most people would realize that they still have a long way to go and actually looks so good because the competition is so embarrassing. For all the talk and lists of players, FCD still hasnt developed a USMNT starter level player yet. Maybe the first will be Cannon. Or maybe Pomykal or Ferreira or Pepi. The problem I have is that FCD/MLS fans have been talking like this for years and the prospects dont reach their assumed potential year after year. Most of the teams are just plain embarrassing. What is interesting in talking about that.
this is helpful. Thanks. I do think that it puts to bed the concept that if a DA program doesn’t get paid for an elite prospect other than S/TC, they’ll consider cancelling their program - all that money would be surplus on top of what they are already making on their total academy program (which would hardly be as successful without the free top tier IMO). this doesn’t mean that youth shouldn’t sign with MLS DAs but the statement about how these programs will be uneconomical without high end sales appears wrong.