When I see the Red Bulls wanting to spend (waste) $120million to get ronaldo I just say to myself, with all that money, MLS could build the best soccer youth academies in the world and produce year after year world class AMERICAN talents for merely nothin... When I see how in France we have produced the best european players (at EVERY position) in the past 15 years with only 2,2 million players (of whom 1,1 million are less than 20 year old) It shows how much the success of american soccer and MLS depend clearly on better soccer youth academies You have all seen the effect of Pélé in NASL when he retired... I wonder, in long term what is better for MLS ??? Spending tons of money to buy finished foreign superstars or investing to build top world class youth academies all around the country to produce the next american Ronaldo, the next american Zidane or the next american Beckham ???
You've actually said something sensible for once. Although Messrs Lampard, Gerrard and Rooney may contest your belief that the French have produced the best European players in any position in the last 15 years.
LOL If you are trully know soccer, you should admit that French have produced a HUGE amount of worldclass players in the past 15 years... And it is more than obvious that the french acadamies are the best, many people agree with that in Europe... Just take the best teams in europe, and you'll find at least 1 french player Chelsea : MAkélé, gAllas Arsenal : Henry, Flamini Manchester Utd : Louis Saha, Silvestre Liverpool : Cissé BArcelona : Giuly Juventus : Zebina, Thuram, Trezeguet, Viera Real MAdrid : Zidane Bayern Muchen : Lizarazu, Sagnol Roma : Mexes And the list can go on and on... We have produced so many players that we can even create 2 french national team with merely the same level Don't forget that we won the world cup in 1998 without Cantona and Ginola... And we have young stars coming up (Benarfa, Nassri, Clerc, Gourcuff, Benzema etc...) And I forgot all about those who retired (Desailly, Blanc, Petit, Ginola, Cantona, Deschamps etc) I love Lampard, Rooney and Gerrard but they are NO way near the class of Zidane or Henry... And most importantly, french players are versatile, which means we can play everywhere, in Spain, Italy and England as well... We can't say the same for English players, only Dutch players can contest the french supremacy ...
Hargreaves plays for Bayern Munich mate. Beckham plays for Real Madrid. Dutch players are just as much as French. Hasselbaink being my favorite.
Aside from Landon Donovan, all of the "next American Ronaldo" players (Beasley, Keller, Reyna, Gooch) go overseas. EJ and Deuce are probably going soon. Why not let the teams have the ability to keep one or two of those players here? I can also promise you that RBNY isn't going to spend more on Ronaldo than they did on the Metrofarts AND a potential stadium combined. They didn't make tons of money by being stupid with it.
I think this thread has residency academies in mind and not the ones that take a lot of your money for a few days of "training".. Beckham's is a 3 day and 5 day academy, I believe.. He will help many without a bunch of money, however, as he is doing in England. We have many such programs here already at every level.. What we are talking about, I assume, are full time academies such as the one we have in Florida that Adu lived at along with most of the U-17s.. IMG Academy.. http://www.imgacademies.com/home/default.sps Full time academies associated with the MLS teams and others is what we are looking for...
Before I get hammered, yes I did see the thing on Ronaldo and $120 million. In fairness to myself, I had no clue it would be a 10-year contract. That's a lotta wings to get.
What good is it for the league if you develop all the best young American talent, only to have them go to Europe anyway?
the hope is so many years of producing better talent the level of play will increase. Once the league gets to be on par with say the Bundesliga or the French Ligue 1 (sorry on spellings) then the "american beckhams" will decide to stay instead of leaving. The level of competition will go up as a direct result of academies but what is not known is the potential of america in regards to football.
A. You get to pay them a lot less than Ronaldo is on, and they'll stay. B. Pocket hefty transfer fees.
I 100% agree with Krayzee's assertion that French soccer is fantastic... when you have Henry and Zidane on the field, that is. Without Zidane, it was looking more like the Swiss were going to be accompanied from their WC group by a no-name team of Irish (w00t!) or Israelis. The USA is an untapped source of potential greater than any country out there when it comes to soccer. Academies will do a lot to bring our potential to fruition... However, we also need to start working now on making MLS a world-class soccer league by attracting the best foreign talent as well.
we need world class talent yeah but we dont want to get that talent at the expense of coming another nasl. I think this Ronaldo move goes against everything that Garber worked for and his plan of building slowly. RBNY dosent even control their own stadium they shouldnt even be thinking about a player of Ronaldo's caliber until they are in their own grounds. For them to pay that much for a single player would merely just be pissin money away. If the RBNY wants to attract fans to matches how about putting a decent product on the field. Spend the money on a few "good" players instead of one superstar.
The money they wanted to spend on Ronaldo would build a rather nice stadium with something left over for a few good players.. If not that.. They could start the finest academy in the world with half that, perhaps.. (to get back on topic)...
seriously, the united states has 11 million registered soccer players in the country. I figure half that figure to calculate girls and adult league players and you have around 5.5 millions american males under 18 playing soccer. If these U18 male soccer players started their own country they would be 108th in size, just by themselves. We have tons of youth playing soccer, and if we start making the sport more accesible to lower income kids the numbers will swell even higher. As of right now players in this country do not get the proper coaching they need to develop into good technical footballers. Ernie Stewart said it best in a recent interview. He pointed out that when kids are young they are often coached by their dads who mostly never played soccer growing up. Whereas in europe players at academies and even those who are not are recieving training from players who have played at the highest levels in Europe. A bit of a difference. If we could create top notch academies state side we could begin to better develop the better talent in the country into real stars.
certes, les bleus ont les joueurs nécessaires pour gagner le coupe, mais quant à moi je crois que la france ne va pas faire grande chose sans un entrainer compétent-- c'est-à-dire que domenech ne se montre pas capable de gagner les matchs serrés. la suisse n'est pas une puissance mondiale wenger would be a great choice-- few are better at nurturing young talent and fitting them cohesively into a team
Peut être mais rappelles toi lors de la coupe 98, Jacquet était décrié pour avoir écarté Cantona, Ginola et Anelka, on a vu la suite... Personnellement je jugerais après la coupe du monde...
Well, Ronaldo can bring more fans, which brings more interest to the young demographic, which can result in more players.
*ding ding ding* we have a winner! another note: if these great academies make great players that sign overseas, the transfer fees may some day actually completely make up the cost of the academies. but also, i'm sure a lot of the players that could go overseas that are developed in these academies won't go overseas. yes quite a few will, but a lot won't. the level of play WILL increase much more overall with academies than bringing in aging stars.
This won't happen under a single entity system unless its paid for by the league. What is the point of developing a player if MLS is going to take the transfer fees. In other single entity sports in the US the league dumps the development duties on colleges and high schools. The same will continue to happen here.
How long before you can ge tthese academies up and running, get players participating, have them improve their skill, then find spots in MLS? In other words, how long before we would actually see the benefits of youth academies?