Bundesliga or MLS development more important to USMNT?

MLS development is more important in the long run. Having your home clubs being able to produce those players who are good enough to play in the bundesliga is how you build a good national team long term.

In the short term? It depends on the MLS club a player is at and the skill level of a player. With MLS clubs being more open to playing young players and young players increasing MLS minutes every year then there is more reason to trust the league. But if you have the talent, you should be considering the jump abroad.

 

It depends! You're welcome.

 

Obviously MLS Academies and non-MLS Academies are extremely important from young ages through U17. The players that have a passport and can leave at 16 for Europe are the minority, so the others need US Academies until they are 17 1/2 or 18. From there, if the player is wanted by a Bundesliga club (I would even argue a good 2Bundesliga club) they need to leave immediately.

I didn't mean to dodge the question, but the answer is both. Domestic Academies are extremely important until a player can leave, then the Bundesliga club becomes important.

 

MLS is more important when the kids are younger since only a few can play in Bundesliga at even 16. Bundesliga is a great finishing league though. Bring in a promising gemstone and they cut it and polish it.

 

This either/or BS is irrelevant. Don't chase the squirrel. This isn't even close to the developmental conversation we should be having. It shows its ignorance with its existence.

 

How so

 

Because there's no choice being made between the two and no need to make a choice?

At the end of the day, though, we need a domestic development system. Outsourcing our players' development on a national level isn't practical or scalable.

 

And the path that Pulisic took compared to Adams is not the same, despite starting for elite BL clubs before their 20th bday.

 

Also, don't take for granted how easy it is for an American to move to Germany when they're 18. The Bundesliga could change their non-EU rules whenever they want. And if Die Mannschaft puts up more 2018 WC type performances the next couple years, they may revisit how many minutes Germans are receiving.

 

Nobody said make a choice. It was a question of which folks feel will be more important for USMNT success. That isn’t an either/or; it’s a stack ranking of importance.

To me it seems fairly obvious that over the long haul the largest impact will be domestic.

 

As MLS raises the salary cap and the academies continue to improve it will become more important to the success to the USMNT but for our top 3-5 prospects in every age group should be trying to head to Europe, especially if they have a Euro passport and can go at 16.

 

Critical years for development for the overwhelming majority of these players is in the US. Without that foundation.......................the Bundesliga is meaningless. There's a reason young American soccer players weren't moving to Germany in 1985. @Pegasus referred to the Bundesliga as a "finishing school" for our best prospects, and I think that's a very good phrase. A player like Weston McKennie was at FCD for 7 years moving thru their levels and developing. He then moved to Schalke and debuted within a year. Reyna officially signed for Dortmund in July of 2019...........and debuted for them in January of 2020. Hello? He was developed domestically, and the Bundesliga club will now hopefully pick up the baton and develop him into an elite international player. Same by the way was true for Pulisic. He moved to Dortmund, and debuted within a calendar year.

So its not an either/or thing. We're developing players. The elite are going to be plucked away by big European clubs....................just like young Argentines, Brazilians, Croatians, Japanese, etc. are. There's really nothing particularly unusual about it. MLS is becoming a bigger player in the world market, both in terms of selling and buying. This is how it works.

 

And it's not just that. Within 5-10 years, if COVID doesn't really wreck American soccer, there's probably 60 American professional academies that have well over 100 kids each being developed.

That's 6,000 kids in professional environments, getting free instruction and possible interaction with first team players. The vast majority of which, as you point out, can't go to Europe before 18, and even the remainder really can't before 16.

How many of our prospects will the Bundesliga take? Yes, it's going to take a larger percentage of our best, and should, until American academies and leagues catch up (if ever).

But given the hit rate on prospects and development, volume is so critical. And the Bundesliga will never have 6,000 kids in German academies even at 16 or 18; never mind those years before. We'll be lucky to have 50 when they turn 18!

 

I think the real answer is "neither." The most important stage for development in this country happens well before the DA (or DA replacement). It happens at 7 years old when kids need to be getting enough quality touches and quality play to create a base of soccer-specific fine motor skills to build on. Soccer isn't american football, where you can start playing at 14.

To answer the actual question, I think the DA age range is by far more important, and I think we have a long way to go. We're still way behind in producing players with great tactical awareness and what the English would call "class." As far as we've come, the good players we're producing now are still 'ball at their feet'-type guys. Not that we don't need those guys. But when the DA (or MLSDA or whatever) produces a guy like Thiago or Modric, then I'll believe we're starting to catch up on development.

 

Yup.

But..............the DA and MLS homegrown initiative only started in 2007.
And half of MLS is less than 10 years old. We really are babies when it comes to youth development. Even the clubs that have been in the game for a long time like FC Dallas only recently started up their reserve teams. Other teams don't have the younger age groups yet.

The fact that we're routinely rolling out young players that clubs in big European leagues want is a testament to the work and investment that's been done so far. They want our raw materials. We still have a long way to go. And I suspect that we're going to see huge changes over the next 10 years as the USSF has passed the development baton to MLS.