We may be talking about different things. I can see that being on a Pre-Academy team would give you a leg up in making it into the actual Academy as Coaches would be familiar with the player and have a better sense of attitude, coachability, etc. But the Tweet I referenced implies that the Pre-Academy is made up of players only from teams in the Crew network (the Youth teams around the state that are affiliated with the Crew). I'm just curious if that's actually the case. Cheers.
David can certainly confirm, but Pre-academy is for younger ages and I'm failry certain they don't bring in kids from far off places at the younger ages. As he mentioned that starts to happen at U15 but I think moreso once they get to U16/17...so they can drive to practice and not be such a burden on billet hosts. there have been a few cases of younger players moving here with a family member. I recall at least one such case from Pittsburgh a in recent years.
Not sure how much of a relation there is at all with the youth club and the USL2 team anymore. The connection at the beginning was with their executive director of coaching, Jimmy Walker, and Aston Vila. Jimmy's dad coached at Aston Villa for 17 years. The youth club had an affiliation with Aston Villa that started somewhere around 2013. The USL2 team then also got in on the affiliaiton through Jimmy and his dad. Well, Jimmy has since left Pacestter and is now the head women's coach at BGSU. Once he was gone from the club I think the link went away.
Once you hit u15 most of the roster will start to trickle in from out of market. A couple players will come at u17 but it’s mostly happening at u15 Pre academy is regularly pulling players in from Michigan, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Even at u11/12
A few years ago, I saw a team practicing in full crew banana kits at Lutheran West's stadium (western suburbs of Cleveland). Any idea what partner club/satellite pre-Academy that might have been?
I guess a non-answer is as good as an answer at this point. The optics of it looks like soccer politics at the highest levels filtering down to pre-academy levels. I'd think you'd want to get kids into the pre-academy regardless of their club affiliation so that they start building that relationship/thinking of themselves as part of the Crew. Then start playing hardball at the actual Academy ages. But maybe there's behind the scenes stuff I don't know about.
I agree in principle but in reality the list of clubs in the Crew Network are generally considered the top clubs in the area. I would guess that 98% of the top players already are in those clubs' systems. I mean Dublin United is listed in there and most of those teams are barely a step up from rec league.
You want to see politics in soccer? Check out ODP sometime. It's just too bad that Internationals has much of Northeast Ohio locked down tight. They can draw the lions share of the best players and since they have their own MLS Next teams, they aren't about to cheerfully pass them on. The Internationals we have are getting a bit long in the tooth, like Williams and Nagbe. Evan Bush too I think (may be wrong). Brad Stuver was here but now gets his paycheck from Satan.
That number seems high, but I don't have a good way of getting to what it might actually be. I just look at that rankings app thing for 2012 and see Cuyahoga Valley SA as 3rd in the state and two Force teams as 10th/11th and even with a grain of salt on rankings, that there's no representation in the Pre-Academy from either, when there's multiple players from the 4th, 8th, and 16th ranked teams seems off.
I'm not sure this is accurate now and the Internationals website isn't 100% clear about it. I think there was a merger/consolidation a few years back and what's left of Internationals is a girls-only carve out. Don't quote me on that though.
I admit that I may be behind the curve on this. I know it was true not long ago but I haven't paid much attention recently. ( And that girls program is just scary. They don't just beat you, they crush you and keep their foot on the gas until the final whistle. If you don't like losing 12 -0 then you should have stayed home)
My 98% number was solely on clubs based in Central Ohio/Columbus area which I agree are not usually the powerhouses statewide.
As someone who works in scouting and scouted a good chunk of players in the academy currently, going off of GotSport for who is the best club is a terrible method. CVSA’s 2012’s are a good team, but only one of them is arguably at the level of Crew’s pre academy. Force also has one arguably at that level but it’s not a lock, Force’s best 2012 played for them in Super Y but really is from Pittsburgh and plays with Hotspur during the fall and spring. Challenger 2011’s are the best team in Cleveland at that age and the two best ones are in pre academy. As a metro area overall, Cleveland is seriously underperforming compared to their population, the only worse Midwest metro production is Pittsburgh, the two areas are way behind other comparable areas Generally the top ones in Cleveland will trickle into Force, Challenger, or whatever Spire team Mike McLaughlin coaches. But by the time they hit u15, all of the good ones are at Crew already. The exception to this is the Spire u19’s who have Nolan Spicer, Patrick McLaughlin, and Justin Shreffler who were all at Crew’s level but weren’t able to do the commute with their schools.
Trying to rank club teams is a futile exercise these days. Mostly due to the various leagues/sanctioning bodies. You have USYSA, US Club soccer, Super Y league, MLS Next, ECNL etc. I get a kick out of naive/uneducated parents bragging on social media about their child's team beating the # 2 ranked club team in the state. It's truly meaningless and more than likely not even truly accurate. Bottom line is there are good players, good teams and good clubs in all of those places. But comparing them is is nearly impossible (and frankly useless) mostly because there is very little competitive crossover opportunity for them to place each other. I would say on girls side most of the best talent (certainly not all) is generally concentrated on ECNL teams. Being on an ECNL drastically improves a girl's chance of D1 opportunity. Mostly because just about all the D1 coaches go to the ECNL showcases. I've seen games with over 30 D1 coaches watching it. Boys on other hand is all over the place. The good thing is it does give MLS academy scouts a job. They have to scour through them all to find talent.
How much is Cleveland hurt by the fact that many coaches have an indoor background because ex-indoor players are the guys with name recognition in Cleveland (i,e, impress parents and thus draw in players)?
At the youth level? No. Still plenty of kids who avoid MLS academies or go undiscovered. Locally Emmanuel Sabbi is a good example.
Not as much so anymore. It’s hard to find a player outside of a small market’s immediate territory that 2-3 clubs aren’t pursuing
They can say that the Crew Academy is exploding with great talent t all they want but US Soccer is holding a U14 National ID camp in California and no Crew Academy players were invited. For contrast, Dallas had 3 as did the quakes. Redbulls and Fire both had 4.
That's what they say and that's great. But how can there not be even one single high level prospect in the entire group? Naturally some classes will be stronger overall than others, that's a given. And not to put too fine a point on it but today's U14's will.be U17's in 3 years.
I don't think this is true. There will be a ton of turnover for, first, the U15 cycle and then, again, for the U17. You can see it in their announcements.