what players are planning on leaving college early for MLS? (generation adidas i htink its called) would love to know...
Lee Nguyen Jed Zayner Jacob Peterson Marvell Wynne Cant be bothered to find/post the article (the one about Nguyen and PSV).
Yes, I heard that too from a very reliable source. They said that Nathan was getting interest from European clubs after the WYC.
same for his good friend McCarty at UNC who also trained with several MLS teams last summer. If they were smart CASL boys Harrington and Sherrard along with Ashe would take the adidas package and run. It is risky to risk injury and the senior package is not as good. At Wake we only have Curfman with the option to leave early and he scored a 1500 SAT so he will graduate.
Deacon- Curf & Solle were being looked at but both have turned down the option of leaving. (that could change up until the draft!)
Any reason to believe (beyond rampant speculation) that any of these 3 are locks to get GenAdidas offers?
Bingo ... any discussion about who's leaving, who's staying, etc. should be preceded by "Which MLS team(s) would ask the GA coordinator to get in touch with player X and make them an offer?" Just because a player "wants" to go early, or someone "thinks" he should go early, doesn't mean he will get an offer ... it all starts with a team being interested enough to commit to draft that player. I would bet that any P40 or GA player would not be a part of the program unless there was a MLS team on the other end.
sort of correct but not quite. MLS teams do not ask for a player to be signed as Gen Adidas, they are part of the scouting process in which the league determines which players are offered the Adidas Contracts. The kids don't have any idea where they will be drafted, they just know they are guaranteed a contract for 3 years somewhere.
This is accurate. At the end of the day, about 3/4 of these "rising" former Nike project 40 or now GA will not make it. I read a post that mentioned that Ashe and McCarthy are planning to leave UNC. My advise...stay in school. They are not ready yet. Talent? absolutely. Also, MLS is quickly changing from a developmental league playing soccer to a league that must put a great product TODAY. Coaches are getting fired a lot quicker than they did 5 years ago if not ask Thomas Rongen. The landscape of the league and the pressure on coaches is that it is time to show results and better do it fairly fast. Finally, the only attractiveness in picking a GA is that it doesn't count against your salary cap nor a roster spot...but how many of those can you really afford to have in your team if you need talent, maturity, depth and experience NOW.
No it's exactly correct. Without any question to be signed to an GA contract means that a player is guaranteed to be drafted which means that one and usually a whole bunch of MLS teams are in agreement that the player in question is in demand by the league. Now where the player is ultimately drafted is undecided but as collegesoccerfan#1 previously stated any GA player would not be a part of the program unless there were MLS team/teams on the other end which is an exactly true statement. Savvy?
Huh? I'm far too busy to go back and research the above. It's possible the above is a true statement for past players although I doubt it's accuracy. A 75% failure rate sounds too high to me. I do agree that many of the past P-40 picks proved to be MLS busts but my main point is going forward a far higher percentage than 25% of the GA signees will succeed in MLS.
It's something that all small players have to deal with, but I really have to wonder if Corey Ashe is big enough to really play at the MLS level. He was a great running partner two-three years ago with the U-17s with Freddy Adu, but everyone else has gotten taller, bigger, and faster. At the MLS level, he won't outrun as many players and he certainly won't be winning many headers. I don't know what his listed height is, but he really can't be more than 5'6". And McCarty isn't much taller than that - but then he mostly plays d-mid and mid - and height is less of an issue. Ashe #15 From left: Michael Callahan (fr), Scott Campbell (fr), Dax McCarty (fr), Michael Harrington
At the ACC tournament, I was sitting with Craig Reynolds from the Fire who was there scouting the tournament. I asked Craig this exact question during the UNC/NCSU game. His response: "The real question is whether he's smart enough. Size isn't a great metric to use but how he thinks about the game is." So he didn't answer my real question which was "Can Corey play MLS" but I thought it was interesting to hear his take on the whole "size" issue.
soccertom- I don't see how what I posted is incorrect. You basically said the same thing a few posts above that I did. The difference I was trying to make is that a specific MLS team does not determine which kid is signed, that they (the teams) are part of the process in which the league decides which kids to sign. He didn't mention anything about mls teams (plural), I was showing the distinction between one team telling the league to sign a kid and what really happens. I also mentioned the gauranteed contract.
Not sure if size has as much to do with it as heart and playing intelligence. Look at guys like Paul Dickov or Richie Williams, both are really tough bast@rds who never let their lack of height keep them from playing at a high level. Dickov, who plays up front like Corey, really, really knows how to get under the skin of a defender. It's just that sort of bulldog mentality which will be necessary for Corey have in working his way up through higher and higher levels of competition. It seems to me that Corey might have more skill and potential than either of those guys, but that really means nothing if he doesn't have the fighter's mentality to go along with it.
Merely semantics. I was just trying to get us all on the same sheet of music. I think we are all communicating quite well now.
There will always be small players. Spud Webb had a very successful NBA career despite only being 5'6" or 5'7". Muggsy Bogues, all of 5'3", even survived in the NBA. But - it's hard, and getting harder for smaller players to exist in professional sports. All things (talent/experience/speed/smarts) being equal, the larger player is going to have an advantage. I'm not saying that Corey Ashe won't make it MLS, but instead that players of his size have trouble - and will continue to have increasingly more trouble finding jobs in MLS.
Um. Maradona? Pele? Shaun Wright-Phillips? You can play at the highest level if you are short, but it REALLY helps to have speed if you are short.