Was wondering the same thing on Ferri. Pre-season there was talk this may be his year to get a shot at the first team, but it has not panned out. He appears to be getting passed over for younger guys and that is not a good sign. Ferri and Waldeck may have topped out at NTXSC.
Quite frankly the news isn't about Scott but rather the first time anyone of us has probably seen 2005 Grayson Dettoni and wow is he a top prospect. He's only 17. Is Sule sized but much smoother athlete and soft touch and very good decision maker. World team got pretty dominated by real team and has alot of good players with Dettoni at the top of their players on the team. Soared above the crowd for goal in 7th minute. Really good player, played first 45. I highly recommend the watch, I personally think he's a top 2 starting CB for our U20's World Cup and beyond.
2007 is a strong year for talent in north Texas. Also don’t be surprised if FCD adds a few 2008s from DKSC and Texans this summer. NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!Congratulations to our DKSC 07 Boys ECNL on their National Championship win today! Way to create history BOYZ! #DKSCPROUD #differencemakers #historymakers @ECNLboys pic.twitter.com/BjfgHiPNZO— D'Feeters Kicks Soccer Club (@DKSC_official) July 18, 2022
Academy playoffs, but I should’ve been more clear that my comment was mostly in relation to Reynolds and a little less about Smith. I thought Reynolds did very well. I’ve always thought he was a little underrated and Bryan a little overrated.
I don't think I ridiculed you for posting what you did... I also hope you understand I addressed the elephant in the room and ignored a silly title to mention a top prospect most of us has never seen and was quite impressed so posted in this thread no matter the title. If I didn't I thought it would be dereliction of duty to address the obvious.
The 2008 Texans just won a natty too You’re looking at the 2022 U14 ECNL National Champions! Super proud of Jonah and his Texans teammates. This is a special group of boys. They got better and developed all throughout the season. Looking forward to defending the title in 2023! pic.twitter.com/5oQUnxVAz1— Chris Gibson (@ChrisGibsonEdS) July 18, 2022
Aaaaaand their captain and LCB (not a lefty, tho) is going to FCD. Had been in at least one regional ID camp for the USYNTs. Christian Hernandez. Un nouveau défenseur central rejoint l'académie du FC Dallas.Vainqueur de l'ECNL Boys U-15 avec les dallas Texans le joueur U-14 va vite garnir l'équipe du FC Dallas U-15 pour la prochaine saison de MLS Next.#DTID pic.twitter.com/jl906ZTmab— FC_Dallas FR 🇫🇷 (@FCDallasFR1) July 19, 2022
FCD went thru a fairly expected lull in recruiting, etc. as they had a lot of turnover in the organization. That lull manifested this year in terms of results. By results I mean players worthy of homegrown signing consideration, etc. not sheer results at the youth level. ......................but they seem to have kicked it up a gear recently. There is so much talent at their disposal locally. As we know, all of Pomykal, Cannon, Richards, Reynolds, blah, blah, blah came from elsewhere. Recruiting is just so damn important. I don't know what the deal is with Ferri. What I do know is he's no longer a prospect. He's soon-to-be 22. So we're at the point of asking "are we signing him for the first team or not?" And if the answer is no, then you look at other players. As we know, the purpose of MLS Next Pro teams is solely to develop players for the first team. Its not even to play the players that might give you the best chance to win NTSC games. Time to press on with evaluating Santi Ferreira and other midfielders. [I don't really have a clue, so he could have a minor injury or something.] By the way, I think the same thing of Thomas Roberts. Same age (ish). If he's not going to be given a chance with the first team, then its time to move on. I can't explain Thomas Roberts. He was the guy I saw in the pipeline to fill Pomykal's shoes. [I thought Pax would be gone by now, but injuries prevented that.] It just hasn't happened for him under multiple coaches.
Has there been more competition in recruiting for Dallas now that the Austin academy is up and running and the Dynamo academy is putting in more effort? Or is Texas large enough that each is mostly sticking to their respective regions?
Austin recruits all around Texas, and some outside of Texas. Dallas sticks mostly within Dallas. Houston does more recruiting outside of their immediate area than Dallas, but not as much as Austin. Houston also brings in a number from outside of Texas.
Austin has been rabid about recruiting. They haven’t just been everywhere in Texas they’ve been going all around the country. If you ranked the Texas clubs by effort in scouting it would be Austin #1, Houston #2, Dallas #3. The gaps between each are pretty big as well
@David Kerr, what are you hearing about potential HG changes this upcoming year? My opinion is that Austin will become even more aggressive once they have the ability to go into Dallas (and other markets) and recruit without having to work with the current HG rules.
Texas is big enough and has enough prospects that there's more than enough for all of Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Plus San Antonio, El Paso, and the USL teams as well. So its just about recruiting to strategically fill holes in the organization. FCD is arguably in the best homegrown signing situation of any team in the league. THey have DFW to themselves, while Southern California and NY/NJ are split. The number of MLS-caliber (or better players) that are actually from Houston is shockingly low for a metroplex that size. And of course some of those actually came thru FCD (Chris Cappis, for instance). Make a list of current MLS-caliber players actually from Austin. Come on. I dare you. I get stuck after a couple of fingers. Austin and Houston SHOULD have to recruit more outside of their territory than Dallas. That's just common sense.
Dallas has just had a huge head start on the rest of Texas and a lot of the US with their local leagues, Dallas Cup and having the Dallas Tornado back in the day followed by the indoor Sidekicks when the outdoor league fell apart and then having the Burn in MLS on day 1. A few other places in the country have similar history (some even better) but not many. Dallas Cup is underrated in how much it's motivated what's happened here. So many big starts from around the world played in and stayed in local homes during the tournament.
As someone who is paid to study this, scout talent across the country, and prepare for when territories are taken down, there are 5 markets that I believe can sustain a top performing MLS academy without the club having to scout regionally or nationally: LA, NYC/NJ, Chicago, Miami, and DC Currently there are three buckets of scouting you can be in: clubs that scout nationally, clubs that don’t need to scout nationally, and clubs that should scout nationally but currently don’t. Dallas is in the third bucket. If Dallas has the mentality and recruitment strategy of “our 99-03’s produced quite a few players and some sold to Europe so players will come to us” and don’t actively try to go to the players instead, they will be left behind, as they already are by quite a few academies. In addition to this, the Dallas market is one other clubs are already eagerly targeting as we view it as being very unguarded once FC Dallas can no longer use the territory rule to block clubs for trialing/signing players, a rule they’ve been extremely stingy on In terms of players produced and sold, Dallas is obviously the top MLS academy, but in regards to current academy talent, Dallas is currently very average. I’ve seen every MLS academy in person this year and welcome debate about this. A huge reason Dallas was the top academy, was because they scouted the country and a large amount of their homegrown signings weren’t from Dallas because of it. Dallas were early movers and saw huge benefits from it, they’ve regressed since then. If Dallas doesn’t step up their scouting, they will continue to be middle of the pack which as a YNT/USMNT fan worries me because this pipeline is needed
Shrug. Just like everywhere else on planet earth, clubs go thru ups and downs in terms of academies and homegrown talent. Expecting FCD to maintain what they had in terms of 99s thru 03s was always foolhardy. Particularly when there's a lot of turnover in leadership and clubs have to reset. Philly might be on top now, but somebody else will be 3 years from now and then 5 years from now it'll be somebody else. FCD was in their position because they were one of the first to take it seriously (along with RSL, NYRB, etc.), not because they were necessarily doing anything special. There's nothing special in the water in Frisco. What was special was the people and the opportunities provided at the time. Those people (from the Pareja era) are all gone. I don't know why this is controversial or even a topic of discussion.
I’d imagine that after a 3-5 year span of less than usual academy success the fans will get pretty anxious and the organization will pivot back to being academy heavy again. The only clubs that don’t have to do this are the ones in cities that attract the superstars
There’s a lot of stuff I disagree with here, but focusing on this comment. Summer 2021 onwards they brought in kids from Seattle, El Paso, Arizona, Chicago (x3), Cincinnati, Philly/NY, LA (2x), Tulsa, McAllen (tried to get 2, maybe still will), and Miami. It’s possible there’s more that I don’t know about. That’s in addition to the uptick in recruiting from DFW clubs described elsewhere. What more are they supposed to do? Maybe your point is that they aren’t getting highly-hyped guys, but I’d push back against the idea that the ‘98s-‘03s they brought in were superstar prospects at the time. Servania was playing ODP ball in AL, and Tessmann got turned down by the Union’s academy before he tried out for FCD.
They have kids come to them, if territories open those kids that would be coming to them will have 5-10 other clubs also trying to sign them. Being an MLS scout I see first hand at events at various levels around the country what clubs are and are not scouting. Dallas unfortunately falls into the are not. Dallas will get a few national kids here and there based off reputation but if the territories come down and they aren’t actively seeking players out and going to the events to find players they’ll be impacted pretty heavily Dallas (and other super MLS academies like Philly/NYRB) have been the beneficiaries of kids moving MLS academies. New rules wouldn’t completely end this but significantly reduce it
-is it 35% of 40%? have seen both -someone add it the transfer money up -how much of it will they actually spend? With FC Dallas retaining 40% sell-on & getting around $6m up front here in addition to the $1.25m original fee, Chris Richards is 3rd-largest transfer in club history:- Ricardo Pepi $20m- Bryan Reynolds $8.5m- Chris Richards $7.25m- Carlos Gruezo $4.5m- Tanner Tessmann $4m https://t.co/c9G91SI1S6— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) July 20, 2022
I’m going to agree a little with everyone. Dallas fell behind for a few years. Losing players like JoGo and Corcoran was not all about the players wanting to leave. If you go by this from a date of birth perspective, that was two elite players in a row. You could make an argument they didn’t even have a top 10 academy this season based purely on talent. You have to recruit in the current climate, with very few exceptions. I think DC United and Inter Miami are probably the only two exceptions. Even the two LA clubs have started having some similar problems of lacking talent that Dallas is having. Dallas have done a little better with recruiting this year, including a few kids from outside of Dallas. They are still hesitant to recruit outside of Dallas though. If they keep being hesitant to recruit outside of Dallas, they will not have one of the best academies in MLS. Dallas is a top 5-10 metro, but it’s not enough to sustain a top academy against clubs that will recruit outside of their immediate metro area. The problems with Dallas also aren’t only about wanting to recruit. I’ve heard a lot about how their current academy management are not as good at it as some who were in charge in the past. Luchi Gonzalez had a lot of influence with academy recruiting. As people get promoted, others have to step into bigger roles, and it doesn’t seem like they’ve been able to find suitable replacements on the coaching and management level that they had in the past.
Wait, I thought the rule changes were going to open things up? Wouldn't getting rid of homegrown territories increase movement?
Both you and David have had this sentiment, but I do think it's a bit of a doom and gloom / static look. For one, Dallas has operated as a top academy despite apparently not doing any of these things, and while the homegrown rule might keep Portland behind them ... their track record is just fine versus the LA Galaxy, for example. There will be MORE teams that can compete, it seems to me, and more competition, but in terms of top academies, it seems there's a good chance there will be more diffusion. Two, get beat for a couple of years and organizations tend to react. If the changes go through, Dallas may make changes. If Dallas start to lose, they will almost certainly make changes. I don't know if Dallas does do a good recruiting pitch or not, but I think people are kidding themselves if they think that McKennie, Richards, Pepi, Reynolds and Jesus Ferreira's $2M deal aren't going to be really good recruiting tools.