The homegrown territory rules are being loosened already. Teams can recruit in Southern California. The Galaxy can only "protect" 54 players in their territory, and 45 of those are players in their academy. So the Galaxy can prevent very few players from outside of their academy from moving wherever they want. You double that with LAFC and we're still only at 108 players in the youth soccer Mecca of Southern California that are locked into the territory.
Meanwhile, Pax Pomykal, who went the anti-Klieban MLS route, just got called back into the USMNT and signed a brand new contract that will presumably give him a raise. (He was already making 700K per.) https://www.fcdallas.com/news/paxton-pomykal-is-back-to-his-best-for-club-country There have been plenty of success stories of Americans passing on MLS and going abroad to make big riches. But the Kleibans haven't been able to claim many of them. Eventually, potential clients will start to notice.
I think it’s a good thing they are being loosened. I think a big contributing factor to some of the issues we’ve seen is that for a long time you had one team with basically a monopoly on one of the most populous parts of that country. If that academy is not being run well, making less than ideal choices on player evaluations, not providing a path to the first team, etc, than there’s not a ton you can do about it. Obviously now LAFC exists too, and not everything about how the LA Galaxy did things was terrible. But it’s a good thing that we are no longer reliant on a single club to develop all the talent in the LA area. The London metro area and the LA metro area are roughly the same size. LA has 2 clubs, and London has 17 total (in the EPL, Championship, and League 1).
Two players that Kleibans publicly insulted on twitter..............McKennie and Pomykal. Its one thing to pump up your own players incessantly. When they started attacking players from other academies, that should have been the end of things. However, it only ratcheted up their sycophants even more. Recently the 3four3 account has been "all in" on sharing and backing nonsensical Wynalda tweets. Note to self: If you want to be part of the machine, you can't spend all of your time raging against the machine.
Not necessarily 108, both clubs will end up protecting a lot of the same players. Same as the New York clubs. The in August both pairs had multiple players that were on both clubs lists, we’ll see what it looks like now that the new lists have been submitted when they’re sent out in the next week or so
The new system is an improvement over before. I think there's more than can and will happen over time to continue to improve things.
Your general point is true. (That said, there's also Orange County SC in USLC and the Loyal not too far away in San Diego). But I would also say that trying to compare the US to England is comparing to the most concentrated club set up. While England has like 9 levels and is fully pro down past the 4th, it's worth noting that even in countries with really good teams, they don't have that level of concentration -- Italy and Spain start going pro-am around Level 3, for example. I think in the case of LA, USLC should look at another location around LA, perhaps more northern. There's plenty of LA that won't go to a OCSC game at all. Bigger picture, I know some clubs do expand their academy footprint, like FC Dallas, but I do wonder if it wouldn't be interesting to see some of these generate a second fully funded academy somewhere in a slightly different footprint. You lose the ability to train day to day with the first team, but the Quakes could run an academy an hour north and get a ton of kids.
I mean we probably will never have the club concentration of England. But it’d be good if more MLS teams could pull players from the LA area as well. I know Orange County SC is there too, but Orange County is very much a separate entity from the LA area. It is the 6th largest county in the US and it is also a very talent rich area on its own. San Diego is even more so it’s own separate entity and even bigger than OC. More broadly I think that the more USL teams can start building out their academies the better. Because there’s never going to be enough spots in MLS academies relative to the size of our population. LA is a good example of that and also why we want to give other MLS teams at least some access to players there. A Portland for instance, may not have as much talent around them, but they can very much supplement it with guys from CA and make the academy investment worth it (it’s worked pretty well for the Oregon Ducks in college football).
Yeah, I don't disagree, but I also think it is important to build up local options. Not everyone is going to be able to or want to move large distances, either with family or leave them at a young age. And not everyone is going to be identified at 14 as someone worth moving. So there needs to be ways to generate local scale as well.
No matter how good your academy is, it is very unlikely to find 2 players from every each group to become a professional with that team. There needs to be more clubs to scout, develop and compete with other teams. SOCAL has population of approx 24,000,000. Northwest of England has population of 7,300,000 but has 16 clubs including 4 premier league clubs (Man C, Man U, Liverpool & Everton), 3 of biggest in the world plus large clubs that will be close to premier league such as Burnley, Blackburn, Bolton, Preston etc. All these clubs are in competition with each other for players, every kids league is scouted and when players released there opportunities for some to continue the journey. OCSC and San Diego Loyal can help with this in the future but there needs to be more.
More is better, but I wonder what a reasonable density target is. We're never going to be England, either in demand for people to watch soccer, or in demand for kids to play soccer. We also don't have government funding like some countries or an EPL media contract to funnel down. Given that, I think it is a real struggle to think we're going to have a ton non-pay-to-play clubs that generate enough revenue to survive off ticket sales or player sales. Especially in a high cost of living environment. For example, I just can't ever see multiple successful clubs in San Diego that way. Theoretically, you could do an MLS club and then a low level club in Temecula or Chula Vista or something, but the latter ones simply would not necessarily be stable enough to really generate the cash to have a fully free academy all the time. That would likely take years. And even if I'm wrong on that ... San Diego isn't going to have like 4 clubs supported by ticket sales. LA might be a bit easier. Put a club in Thousand Oaks/Ventura (there's a USL1 club going into Santa Barbara next year). Maybe one out in Rancho Cucamunga. But I'm not sure that LA proper would take a third MLS-level club like you could in London. OCSC drew 3,600 fans last year. Not exactly a stable economic set up for a team in OC.
Oh, and I will toss this out -- a lot of people will talk about community connection, etc., and that definitely helps in England for support. We don't have 100 years of history. But Americans do have those small clubs that draw 1,000-3,000 people (or more), are cheap, are community centered, and have government funding. It's called high school (and college) football and basketball. Texas has 20k person stadiums for high school!
Agreed whilst there are a huge number of players teh demand is not her eat present to have anything like the UK. However, I still think there is room for non-MLS teams to spring up in other areas. OCSC has now built up a fanbase going from barely getting 600 to regulary getting 3000 plus, with fans who seemed engaged. Its a decently run club( looking from the outside) and at moment doesn't put many resources into their academy but this can come with time. If there was a USL in thousand oaks area, one in Carlsbad, one in IE...creating at least an opportunity this would be a massive improvement. Sometimes the smaller clubs end up developing more than bigger clubs. Crewe Alexandria a tiny club 30 miles south of Manchester has produced a massive number of proffessionals.
OCSC is currently doing a sort of recruit-players-who-want-to-go-Europe-and-grab-small-transfer-fees-and-PR. I know they have an academy, but I'm not sure if they've really developed guys so much as given them a place to play for a year until they jump. I'd like to see them transition to a more real development model. Thousand Oaks could do it, easy. Carlsbad/Oceanside, I'm less convinced. I think you'd have better luck a bit further out and east -- north of Escondido or something. I think if the Loyal get into MLS and ticket prices go up, there's the cheaper angle, though.
Yeah I’d very much settle for OCSC having a real academy they invest in and having at least one professional club solely covering Orange County. Long term more is better, but we’re basically staring at square one at current.
Wait is Llanez only just now moving away from Kleiban Paradigm Sports welcomes Ulysses Llanez (@uly_soccer7) for full-service representation. Uly is a talented winger on VfL Wolfsburg currently on loan at SKN St. Pölten. Uly has represented the USA Youth and Senior National teams. Welcome, Uly! ✨ pic.twitter.com/CbltM6YiOn— Paradigm Sports (@ParadigmSports) February 22, 2023
And there goes Cuevas too Welcome to the team, US U20 Captain and Club Brugge defender, Maurio Cuevas! 🤝🏽🇺🇸🔥 #usynt pic.twitter.com/RgFh05ySBK— Jeevi Rai (@Jeevirai6) February 23, 2023
I don't think the damage can be undone at this point. It might have been better to stick it out to at least get the opportunity at Kleiban's partner club FC Vuvuzuela. In any event, at least the con appears to be over. More kids won't be harmed by it. The book's out.
Update on how the Kleibans sending their kids to Europe to play for starvation wages is working out ❗️ Liga MX side, Atlético de San Luis, is close to signing former USMNT u-20 international, Alex Mendez, as a reinforcement. Mendez does not occupy a foreign position since he has dual nationality.[@mariaLch16] pic.twitter.com/OQksnE4h90— USMNT Otaku 🇺🇸 (@USMNTOtaku) May 15, 2023 He’s also getting paid less than MLS minimum too, absolute peanuts.— Paul Harvey (@Thundering165) May 15, 2023
I've long read this thread, and I just want to mention something I kind of mentioned in another thread about this, but Mendez likely moving to San Luis turned a lot of people who had been hyping Kleiban up very much against him
I am curious what happened this year. Last year he had 6 goals and 5 assists in around 1700 minutes, this year his minutes were cut nearly in half, and he had 5 goals and 2 assists with another 2 goals in cup competition. Confused as to what happened. Seemed like he was doing okay, all be it in a yuck league.
I've been very anti-MLS in general, but I've begun to warm to MLS over the past couple of years w/at least certain organizations, especially now that it is clear that most players can and do get opportunities overseas if they are ready for it (and sometimes when they aren't). In the past this hasn't always been the case, but it seems to have really grown into a selling league in recent years w/most organizations. I don't think any hard and fast rules seem to exist though unless you're thought of as an elite prospect and have a passport that can get you to Germany etc like Pulisic and Reyna. It does seem to benefit the best of the best, but it also seems to punish those that are very edge prospects. We have had an absolute of ton of guys coming through the U17 teams and U20's that were second tier types like KHF's that have imploded after going relatively early. Wonder if there's anyway to reliably ascertain whether its good to jump early, or stick with MLS at a reasonable level, or if it's simply far too individual of a thing. Would prefer to not have so many KHF type scenarios, Uly's etc happen the last few years, but even Bello has shown that sticking MLS longer can still hurt you too, perhaps if you're simply a touch overrated. Doesn't seem to be any clear answer beyond openness.