2020 ECNL Preseason

How long is the ECNL season? I’m pretty sure I knew ECNL players who also played high school ball.

 

All ECNL players play HS ball, that's the major selling point.

 

One thing about ECNL is that if people were concerned about uneven access based upon socio-economic statues before, ECNL sure doesn't even the playing field.

 

As a former high school coach who coached players who played in ECNL, it was sold as being in kids’ best Interest, but it really isn’t.

Players have schedules that include two practices a day at least a couple of times a week. One of two things can happen when you do that - the player won’t try his hardest,, lowering the bar for the entire practice, or the player will get injured. Another option is that the player can skip practices leading to the other players on the team to question, “Hey, I’m tired also. Maybe I should skip practice!”

I know that people in this country think that they can have it all, but the reality is, when you try to do too much, the quality of everything drops much more than people want to admit.

Playing at a high level is hard. It takes much more than just trying your hardest. You have to make smart choices or, in this case, choices that allow you to communicate and make decisions at a level and speed outside of your comfort zone every single day.

 

At my daughter's club, they don't start until the HS season is over, so I'm not sure about the two-a-days..
Concerning the socio-economics.. It's way worse than I thought. Even if you're ok with paying the $300/month club fee, you'll have 6-8 weekend trips that cost around $500 each.. And that's if they are within driving distance. ECNL is very much for rich kids and parents who don't have much to do on the weekends.

 

And thus we get back to why having professional academies driving development is vital, no matter what other baggage people think may exist.

The only realistic solution to reducing or eliminating pay to play is through professional academies.

These will expand as the revenues generated from both general operations and sales of players expand, and are only as big as they are because of expected future cash flows and overinvested owners.

But as professional soccer grows, this will grow. And there's no realistic way to significantly change the timetable right now.

 

IMO, the only thing that might possibly make smaller clubs a viable alternative to professional academies, at some level, would be if the soccer density were to increase by a factor of at least ten or more. right now, the only way that an elite team (professionally supported or otherwise) can play a schedule with other elite teams and players is through extensive travel. A county like Los Angeles, for example, with 10M people should be able to support a league (or two) with elite talent. If that were the case, travel for games would not require overnight stays, players could play for a team that is close enough to drive to practices and games and expenses would be low enough that it might be possible for a smaller club to compete with the big boys.

 

That's probably why a few areas of the country have supplied the most players - they have both population and interest to play. I could see other high population areas catching up in interest but interested areas that can't match the population of other areas will always be hard pressed to have as competitive a local league.

 

Equally important to total population is density. (I actually prefer the term "soccer density"...the density of soccer players per square mile. combined with population it should give a good relative gauge of an area's potential.)

For years, the US has had huge numbers of youth soccer players and everyone has asked the question why we aren't that good....look at the geographical size of our country and the population density for part (not all) of the answer.

 

I wonder if we overlayed a map of Netherlands or Uruguay we'd find a pretty perfect size.

 

Uruguay has approx 3.4M people. the vast majority of those people appear to be on the southern coast and the majority of those seem to be within approx 60ish mile 1/4 circle radius of Montevideo. Montevideo has 1.4M people (2017), so a conservative estimate might be an area of approx 700-1000 square miles with approximately 2M people at minimum. That would give a pop density of approx 2-3k people per square mile. Considering Uruguay is an unusual case, these would probably require other complementary conditions to be in place.

since I just used rough estimation from a map online, the actual figures could probably be off by a lot, so don't read too much into this!

 

Trying to mimic Uruguay's model in the US isn't really the right route to go. We have nowhere near the passion and interest in the sport here. It's a national obsession, and basically every kid is playing it everywhere, and every adult is an ad hoc coach and so on.

I like the idea of creating a dense, focus area, even if it becomes with the political landmine of financially abandoning the rest of the country. If nothing else, it's a great though experiment. But you really can't replicate the cultural elements at the heart of strong South American developments. You can't even replicate European levels of commitment, but those models are more similar to the US in that respect.

 

I don't really see it as trying to replicate Uruguay's model. As you say, attitudes/desires/soccer cultures are not comparable. I don't even know where the majority of the Uruguayan players come from. It seems to be a reasonable assumption that they would come from the population centers but that is really still a guess.

My hypothesis is that there is some minimum value for "soccer density" that is a prerequisite for a sustained production of quality talent. The idea of soccer density, imo, takes into account cultural elements. What it doesn't take into account is transportation issues, socio-economic issues and probably quite a few other issues that will/can affect development. I really wasn't trying to determine that minimum value when I posted the numbers on Uruguay. I just thought that @Pegasus comment about Uruguay and Netherlands was interesting and was curious what Uruguay (being the smaller country) looked like.

 

Gotcha. Totally agree.

 

Not sure how SoCal can have soccer density lower than anyone else.

 

What you can replicate about Uruguay is the way they bring all their national teams in together sort of like how FC Dallas does with their different age teams all practicing at the same time. The younger age groups all see how the full team operates and feel at home with them at a young age and feel they belong. So Earnie is already sort of doing the Dutch thing of having a standard formation for each age group so when they move up it's simple. Add the Uruguay camaraderie, the French excellence centers, the German initiative with youth in each team, Brazilian flair, Argentine #10 etc mixed with American can do spirit and we will be on our way. Easy huh?

 

Are you referring to US alone, or world. If you are speaking of US alone, I would agree that it would have to be near the top. Other areas I would expect to be relatively on par would be any border town/area with a significant population (ie texas) and the northeastern part of the US. I would still say that it is likely far behind many parts of the world.

 

Which parts of the world?

 

The short answer: most of the developed world. Rural areas in Sub Saharan Africa? India? Probably not. Countries like Australia probably have at least a slightly higher/more developed soccer culture than us (guess), but their population density (and total population) is far lower than ours which nullifies much of the effect of their more developed soccer culture.

I didn't understand your statement to require a specific locale in the answer, which leads me to believe one of us is misinterpreting the other's posts.

Let me try to clarify what I mean by soccer density: Soccer density would simply be the number of people that are involved in the soccer culture per unit area. It would need to be defined in a meaningful way that indicates an accepted minimum interest in the game....for example, kids that play 3 months of the year in AYSO but never kick a ball the rest of the year etc wouldn't be counted, kids that play soccer as their number one sport...count them, kids that play in the park in pickup games would be counted. Adults that play pickup games or Sunday games...count them. Adults that follow and understand soccer as their top or one of the top 2 sports....count them.

If the population density of an area is 2k/sq mi but 1/4 don't care about sports at all, 1/2 care more about 1/4 care about soccer...soccer density of 500/sq mi.

Pop density of an area is 1k/sq mi....1/4 don't care about sports, 1/8 care about boxing and/or some other sport and the rest care about soccer...soccer density of 625/sq mi.

I would say that if you take most countries in the world, that have a similar population density or greater, they will have a greater soccer density. I would go further to state that it is probably true for most areas in the world with 1/2 to 1/4 the pop. density of So Cal. In the US, SoCal probably has a soccer culture that is at least as well developed as most areas in the country...probably quite a bit more than some, so the only areas that might have an advantage are those parts that are similar culture-wise and have also have a higher pop density.

The reason I feel this is important is at least two fold:
1. young kids especially, will not be able to travel far for recreational soccer. No parent is going to travel, of a regular basis, to a park so their 7 year old kid can play soccer with random strangers just because the kid doesn't have enough friends that want to play on a regular basis and or want to play and are good enough to make it fun for their kid. This also applies to playing at school...lunch/recess etc.
2. The lower the soccer density, the lower the quality density as well. (if you assume that a relatively constant % of the players will be at a certain level). This ultimately means that fewer top quality teams can be created in any one geographical area and travel will be hugely impacted which, imo, is one of the biggest issues with youth soccer at all of the competitive levels.

 

That's not so. Population density in SoCal is 2.5 times higher than in Mexico. Population density of Mexicans in SoCal is higher then in Mexico! 55-60% of SoCal population are Mexican/Central Americans, another 8-10% are Middle Easterners. More boys are playing competitive soccer than baseball, football and basketball combined.

 

Comparing a couple of metropolitan areas in California to the entirety of Mexico is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison.

The overall population density stats for a whole country are far less important than the density stats of key metro areas, IMO.

 

Just a quick google search surprised me a bit. Your estimate of 55-60% sounds pretty reasonable but I found 48.6% hispanic in LA county, 34% SD county, 34% Orange county, 43% Venturna county. (last census...numbers will likely rise I'm sure). I have no idea if it will rise to 55-60% over all of So cal. that would be a pretty big increase. I do understand that the Latino population is under-counted due to the large numbers of undocumented residents, perhaps that is where you get your higher numbers? If so, what is your source?

a few comments:
1. I assume that you believe most of the well developed "soccer culture" that exists in So Cal is latino in origin....I agree fully.

2. It sounds like you believe the soccer culture among Latinos in Mexico and Central America is the same as it is for Latinos in So Cal. I disagree. Within the Latino population in SoCal there is a great deal of variation in the amount of "Americanization". I would say that the latino soccer culture in SoCal is stronger in areas where there are more recent immigrants and weaker in areas with long established roots in the US.

3. I would compare population centers more than larger areas that also have areas of sparse population. I think comparing SoCal to all of Mexico in not the best choice.

4. Population density is not the same as soccer density. Soccer density, until defined otherwise, is a subjective term, but as I interpret it I do not see how any significant metropolitan area in the US can have a greater soccer density than a significant metropolitan area anywhere in soccer playing Latin America. (Never say never, so I am probably wrong here. but you get the point....)

 

You missed heavily hispanic Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Those counties got plenty of fully Spanish speaking teams. AFAIR Donovan was the only non hispanic kid on his team. That's why he speaks better Spanish than let's say Bocanegra or Ledezma.
It looked like this in 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=112&v=p5nxZR-sxNE&feature=emb_logo
Probably around 50% by now. And if you start adding undocumented families it grows fast.
To get above 60% we probably should count all those mid easterners and eastern europeans, though. I'm not necessary compare SoCal To Mexico as Mexico has 4 times population of SoCal, but if you exclude deserts and mountains So Cal isn't that large, soccer density is high and there are no visible reasons why it alone wouldn't produce way more talent than it does.