It's the latter half, I believe, of this episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/advisory-opinions/id1490993194?i=1000469281822 The two lawyers who co-host this podcast are both right-of-center politically, so if that perspective matters to anyone introduced to it for the first time, just want to give that disclaimer. But--at least from my perspective--they play everything pretty straight and tend to recognize when their own personal biases might be coming into play.
This is an excerpt from the MLS released article: Major League Soccer announced the launch of a new elite youth competition platform intended to provide year-round high-level matches for MLS club academy teams and non-MLS academy teams that previously participated in the U.S. Soccer Development Academy which ceased operations. The new platform will provide elite competition against domestic and international teams. MLS is also evaluating expanding participation to include clubs beyond the former U.S. Soccer Development Academy, in addition to future potential competition opportunities for girls. so it doesn’t sound all that different from DA in terms of allowing non-MLS affiliated teams in.
I guess I should have worded it better, but how many players came through the MLS DA teams and signed a "homegrown" contract and established themselves as above average MLS or USMNT regular players without going to college? How many MLS veterans or regulars are out there due to the homegrown contract? I think the number isn't as high as we think it should be. Essentially became professionals through the DA system? Steffen came through DA and went to play collegiately and then became a professional. Pulisic played DA and then went to Dortmund to play for their youth team.
That's perhaps a more interesting question, but I'm genuinely not sure if it's based on a false premise or not. The Development Academy was never an "academy." It was a league of 90+(?) clubs by the time it was over. So I'm not sure if you can look at the league and say "its job was to produce players straight into the pros on a regular basis." I understand, recently, more and more players were signing MLS contracts (and then often being allotted to a USL side) straight from DA. But is it so bad if someone went the Steffen (or Jordan Morris) route? If DA offered them a better setting for competitive play and a more professional experience than their local state league and the annual trip to regionals... that's a good thing. If you look at DA's purpose as having a structured, professional setting to train the professionals of the future and offer a better setting for college coaches to identify talent, I think that was accomplished. The fact that something from MLS is immediately replacing it tells me as much. If it was truly about completely revamping the American system and making DA-to-MLS the standard for the average (or above average) future professional... yeah, it fell short there. It moved the needle some, but fell short overall. But I'm not sure that was truly the expectation at-large for many people.
That's a completely fair point. I guess we really need to understand what the premise/goal of DA was? My interpretation/premise was that it was supposed to be a pathway to the pros and develop a greater talent pool for the USMNT program and the professional game. Not a more refined avenue than youth regionals to develop collegiate players and the occasional professional player. I'll concede that my interpretation/expectation of DA might not have been the program's goal. But when one of your slogans is "World Class," how can you not be selling my point? Is the USMNT talent pool much greater than what it was pre-DA? That's certainly up for debate as the results of the senior and junior national teams have pretty much regressed since 2010. Is the overall domestic MLS player talent pool higher than pre-DA? I think that argument can be supported.
Those of us who have been around the youth game for the last 15 years or so have actually seen growth in ability from the best small sided teams up thru the u-19’s. There appears to me (at least in my area) much better players with stronger ball skills and an understanding of the nuances of the game. GREAT GK’s. . And, horrible striking skills. Just the worst. But, as Red Star has pointed out has it led to a deeper pool? Or, is college now the goal?
As one of my coach friends says, "It's all about the Benjamins." Klinsmann got hell for recommending that the top young Americans should go to Europe, rather than MLS. Remember that he was an employee of USSF at the time, and USSF held the rights to the players in DA. Now MLS will have the rights to the equivalent level of players. Also remember that MLS is a unitary organization. They hold the contract rights for all MLS players. They have an elaborate system to allocate players to the teams, which includes the teams' general managers looking for players they want. But MLS holds their contract and writes the paychecks to them. So now MLS will have the rights to all of the up and coming kids. All of the transfer fees to foreign clubs will end up in the pocket of MLS. Hummmm. I think it won't be very many years before MLS starts selling the contracts of the kids or loaning them out to second tier clubs, particularly in Europe. Loans are frequently 'rent to buy' situations. One parallel is Belgium, which has a long standing practice of teams bringing in younger players and African players. The league survives, in a small market, by then selling the contracts of the best players to fancy European clubs. Will MLS end up looking like that? Transfer fees from sale of American youth players to, maybe, Championship League teams or maybe Series B teams, being used to bring in a bit older South American players who can play in MLS now, or maybe that well known European player who is now on the bench at a big club but who would put butts in the seats for MLS. It's a world market for players. How long before we hear worries that MLS doesn't have enough American players to fill out the USMNT? MLS doesn't give a flip about the USMNT. Just a risk that one of their players will get hurt. Power has shifted from USSF to MLS but the story isn't over by a long shot.
But don't players have to sign a contract with MLS in order for MLS to get a transfer fee? I know that Gio Reyna and Weston McKennie both went to Europe on free transfers. I don't see how the shift from DA to MLS's youth league changes anything--Reyna and McKennie were with academies of MLS clubs. Obviously some kids are signing MLS contracts at 14-16 years old, but not very many. My guess is that this really ends up changing nothing. The country is too big and spread out for MLS academies to cover everything. Their press release said they're considering having other clubs participate. And why wouldn't they? I'm sure they see it as a chance to make money and an opportunity to keep a rival non-MLS youth league from challenging their dominance.
Their transfer was free but they did have to get a transfer/release. The club that has their rights does not have to collect a transfer fee. Giving them a free transfer may be an honest effort to help the player's development or a 'good riddance to bad rubbish' decision. You see any number of European pros that are given their release so they can go elsewhere without their new club having to pay the current club a fee. Under FIFA's rules, your club holds your transfer rights. This is why even an American youth club that wants to register a 15 year old who is not a US citizen must obtain a birth certificate and a release from the national federation of their home country. The home country is saying, with their release, that they have no information that would indicate the player had a registration with any club in their country. If you were playing with a DA team, you were registered directly with USSF, even if the team was sponsored by a MLS club. USSF held your player rights. If I had the time, I could even scratch around and find the name of the players whose transfer resulted in a law suit because USSF wouldn't share the transfer fee with the youth club that was entitled to it under FIFA regulations. It's been about 12 years, I think, but I believe the lawsuit involved a player from Washington and a player from Oregon.
As I've said for a long time, the ultimate goal of MLS should be to become a league at a similar level as the Eredivisie. Nothing about this week has caused me to change my stance on that. The world's best players in basketball, baseball, and hockey come to the leagues in the US (OK, also Canada) because they are the best leagues in their sports. The best leagues in soccer are in England, Germany, Spain, and Italy (not necessarily in that order). I'm hoping that MLS will take this as an opportunity to get these players to a spot where the best of the best can be big players in Europe. As for officiating, I would imagine that MLS academy and reserve matches will become a bigger proving ground for young officials on the upswing.
Interesting. I didn't realize that was the case. In that situation the MLS teams can't do anything about it, and USSF would have a PR nightmare if they tried to sell teenagers to European clubs. Yes, I remember hearing about this. I know it ties in with the solidarity payments to youth clubs, which the rest of the world is okay with but which have all kinds of legal issues in the US. I think there are a lot of problems with the US's system, but I also think it's naive to assume that the rest of the world gets it exactly right. When 14-15 year olds (or younger!) are treated as commodities and potential profit makers for the clubs, that doesn't always lead to things that are in the best interest of the children involved.
Pelican86, I can't disagree with that statement. One of the reasons that FIFA has what seems like a very young age as the point where a transfer release is required involves European clubs and agents. There is, or was, a pipeline of agents going to African countries, which is to say, poor countries, and signing kids as young as 14. They would then take them to Europe and try to get them into the youth programs of 1st or 2nd division pro clubs. If they make it to the bench of a 1st division team, they get rich and the kid gets rich enough to make a significant difference in the life of their family back home. But, just like with DA, the vast majority of the players don't make it. When the kid gets released by the youth program, the agent cuts his losses. The kid is dumped on the streets. I remember walking out of Vatican City, back into Italy, and there were a bunch of young African guys trying to sell pens or other trinkets to the tourists. Obvious former players who had been dumped by their agents. Really sad, but nothing I could do about it.
In a perfect world, these kids in your post would be nurtured so that if they didn’t make it in pro soccer, that they would be set up to attend university/college or find other ways to be a productive member of society. To know that some of these kids are in this situation is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, the world is far from perfect.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020...eagues-its-not-time-exclude-it-s-time-include Latest from MLS is that they will be inviting all DA teams to join the new league, so I’m guessing the overall structure will not be changing that much outside a few teams choosing to go to ECNL instead. They also are claiming they were caught off guard by USSF’s decision to terminate the league. I’m pretty sure I’m not buying that, especially considering the formal announcements came about 15 minutes apart.
I wonder if this includes the girls teams? I thought all of the MLS teams had been pushing for an MLS only league for years. Now they finally got it, and it’s just going to be DA Part 2? At the competition level, I mean. Of course the politics about signing players and the national team and European clubs will be different. But it’s just the same teams? They mentioned not having younger players travel as much, which is understandable, as well as lower cost. I’m not so sure it will be such a huge price drop for the non MLS teams.
Answering my own question: DPL (Development Player’s League) is starting a girl’s academy for 2020-21 season. More details in the article. https://www.soccerwire.com/news/for...ademy-clubs-to-join-new-girls-academy-league/
Agreed. I've never been with a "bad" referee on a DA game, but I've wondered how some of them got put on these matches.
Hadn't they already gotten it in a fashion at the U-19 level? The red conference appears to have all of the MLS teams. Then the DA Cup that just started explicitly defined a top and bottom division of U19 teams, "At the U-18/19 level, teams have been divided into two tiers in order to increase the number of meaningful games for all clubs."
It's an entirely separate can of worms, but there is a question of if NWSL exists after the pandemic is over.
If it goes, something would fill the void in relatively short order. WUSA was followed by WPS, which then led to NWSL. There will be women's professional soccer. My point is just that NWSL is not an established brand like MLS with (relatively) greater financial and reputational stability. It also doesn't have the type of investors and money committed that MLS has. I could be very wrong about even speculating, but I just think NWSL isn't guaranteed to survive a missed 2020 season in the way that MLS is. Oh, and all this is a reason why NWSL doesn't need (or really have the power) to bless some sort of national youth league.
I have worked quite a few DA games with "bad" referees and it makes a lot of sense why that happens in certain areas when you peel the onion. During the fall season, a lot of good referees are busy working college games as well as semi professional games (USL and others) limiting the pool of good referees that can work DA games. Additionally, assignors always have to balance availability with skill. Some of these "bad" referees have wide open availability ensuring coverage. Additionally, its important to remember that the referee fee structure was odd and that especially for the referee, there was a lot of post game work in regards to the paperwork. Even for the rest of crew, expectations for how early you got to games make them less appealing. DA was (thought it became less so over time) a great place to assignments and build up your resume but once you got to higher levels, the appeal of DA became much lower. Additionally, coaches/clubs have less power with regards to referees in DA then other places. The reason being the assignor works for DA for assigning purposes and not the club so the assignors don't always get feedback on referee performance. The local youth assignor who works for a club has a much stronger motivation to ensure that the referees assigned to their top games are good because the feedback loop (and accountability for the assignor) are much more direct. Lastly, typically the assignor for DA matches is assigning a very large geographic area (entire states in many cases) so in areas where they don't have a strong network of referees they know, they go with folks with the right referee grade and availability.
I have my doubts that NWSL is breaking even pre-pandemic and it makes no sense for them to play games behind close doors because 90%+ of their revenue is tied to attendance. It simply won't make any financial sense for them to play a season behind closed doors. They will lose even more money with essentially zero revenue. It's why the USL and MLS seasons are over despite what their league leaders say. MLS has a 90 million dollar TV deal. Not a billion dollar TV deal like the NBA, NFL or the EPL. USL has what a streaming deal on YouTube? They need gate revenue where the other leagues really don't. It makes zero economic sense for MLS to play matches behind closed doors. They will lose more money than they will make.