Looking for people to help pull together some basic data for a spreadsheet I will gladly share. I'd like to pull together past U17 qualifying and finals rosters and track the following: Name GK (yes/no) YOB Finals roster (yes/no) Qualifying roster (yes/no) World Cup roster (yes/no) WCQ appearance (yes/no) Friendly appearance (yes/no) Pro contract (yes/no) Any takers? Or maybe someone has already done this? I already did 2015. If people post stuff here, I will incorporate and then share a public Google doc. We can then watch for periodic updates. This would be more useful if it tracked all U17 MNT players, but this is a good starting point.
I'll post it later for DMN, but overall only 4 out of 25 players have caps. Agudelo, Kitchen, Gyau & Gil. Kitchen, Gyau & Gil all have less than 5 caps to their name and all of their caps are friendlies. Agudelo has 20 caps to his name, but they're all friendlies except for the 2011 Gold Cup. Dave, you might want to introduce a Gold Cup Roster/Appearance tally. 2 out of 25 never received professional contracts. Palodichuck & Chavez (drafted by Portland but released 2 months later). 1 received a contract, but in name only, as he was forced to retire at 17 the preseason after he was drafted. Herold.
Dave, is there a reason you chose the u17s over the u20s. Not sure what you are ultimately trying to get at but think the u20 info may be more interesting or tell a different story. I don't have time/energy right now but would be more than happy to help pull together some data and/or thinking about how to combine/present some of the info. While we're at it, some u23 info might be interesting as well.
Simple answers: -- I didn't know the answer to a question I had and wanted to know it. Mostly I just was riffing off @Clint Eastwood, who raised the question of how many impact players it's reasonable to expect from a U17 class and the degree to which the success of the Donovan group was an outlier. -- I (and others I believe) have actually already compiled extensive data on the U20s. If/when I can get it off an Excel sheet into Google, I will share. -- As for U23 data, could be interesting but I'm not sure what studying it will tell us. What's your idea? Certainly feel free to go ahead and I'll help with research if I can. @icedup57, thanks for your help. I'm happy to add a column in my spreadsheet for the Gold Cup, and will add your data (and anyone else's who gets it) but may not look into that myself right away. From a sheer data perspective, I simply wanted to have a level of MNT involvement between cap and World Cup. If we wanted to be completionists, the CG and even just a list of callups could be useful. But until they pay me to do this... @Sup Bro, got your info -- thanks. Will add and post the link later today. As for resources, I tend to use a combination of FIFA, CONCACAF, Wiki, US Soccer and Soccer America.
For older teams-you can search by month/year + u-17 mnt on the ussoccer website to get rosters pretty easily. Also "where are they now" type articles to see who pursued pro careers(not a lot guys wanted to make ~$12k while fighting to get into MLS). Soccerway is great for tracking international appearances.
Hi guys - Dave, happy to help if you need any more volunteers. I also did some of the team tracking here: https://andthenthehex.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/what-is-the-purpose-of-youth-tournaments/ EDIT: And for comparison, the U-20 to World Cup roster from 1990 on is here: https://andthenthehex.wordpress.com...ams-and-college-soccer-on-a-world-cup-roster/
Here is a (still very much in progress -- edits and additions most welcome) read-only table of U17 data. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UB0FNPfsVom8GURdVQLXkW3eizZmS3nfViI21gV0c-k/edit?usp=sharing More help welcome, but I think we all know where this is heading: The 1999 haul of five World Cup players on a single U17 roster is, certainly by U.S. if not all standards, ridiculous to expect. Leaving that probably obvious statement aside, if it's decided that U17 rosters "matter" then perhaps it would make sense to agree why they matter. Questions: Are U17 teams anything close to resembling a consensus elite of the best prospects to be found in the country at the time the teams are named? (Is it realistic to expect them to be?) Should there be measurable improvement in some of these metrics over time? If so, how much is reasonable to expect? If we have a "bumper crop," why is that? Luck? Timing? What is replicable and what isn't? What are the key drivers behind high-quality players being identified at this level? How reliable are they? Can they be improved? And on...
Questions like these might benefit from examining the rosters of other countries too. Looking at Spain's roster from 1999, I see only Pepe Reina and Fernando Navarro with senior caps (using Wikipedia and partial attention to check, beware). However, many of the others may have had perfectly good careers. Mikel Arteta certainly belongs in that category. And it certainly doesn't mean that this generation of players was a flop, just that they got passed up by others.
FIFA produces a technical report at the conclusion of each World Cup, and often includes prior tournament participation. The info from the 2014 WC is on page 184 here: http://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/official-documents/development/technical-study-group-reports/ I think our '99 class is on the strong end of production, but looking through, it's not unprecedented, especially since we never had all five guys on a singleWorld Cup roster. Glancing through, Argentina had two strong U-17 teams in 2001 (Mascherano, Rodriguez, Zabaleta) and 2003 (Biglia, Gago, Garay). Of course, the brightest stars of that 2003 class - Messi and Aguero - didn't represent Argentina until the U-20s in 2005. Colombia and Cameroon both featured four players from their U-17 2003 teams. The really big guns like Germany, Brazil, Spain, and the Netherlands are so stacked with good players that it's difficult for any one class to overwhelm a roster. All the other questions are outstanding ones - I need to think more about them
I missed this before... I wasn't quite sure what you were thinking the data would tell you or if there was a specific purpose you wanted to focus on (and of course, the info might tell you something else). I can't remember exactly what I was thinking at the time, but some combination of of when players came into the program and if they stayed may give some indications about our identification and development of players at different levels. - Get a historical view of how many players go on to full team from each age group (confirming/disputing the assumption that it increase). - We're players late bloomers or not identified? - Is our development gap really 16-22?
I did a comparison a while back of success in the Olympics and confed cup to future world cups. I'll see if I can find it later. There a number of instances where u23 succes led to strong world cups 2/6/10 years out. Very little in the way for confederations cups.