For those with Aug - Dec birthdays, there's an incentive for a player who is good at the existing age group to become a dominant player in the new (younger) age group. This is the same for playoff quality teams, down to those on the other end of the scale. The club needs to accommodate kids in that boat coming down - but realize that on average - the younger age team is losing kids to the year down as well. Inertia might push some clubs to try and keep teams together and have kids just play up - but it's not a viable strategy to create the strongest teams across the board if kids are playing with peers up to 18 months older. Ultimately, it's the same amount of kids trying out for the same amount of spots. Along with the obvious intra-club movement due to the change, my hunch is there will be more inter-club movement as kids jockey for opportunities.
Along with the obvious intra-club movement due to the change, my hunch is there will be more inter-club movement as kids jockey for opportunities. I think this is right. I know some families at clubs who are not fans of the coaches their kids would be moving to within the club and would change clubs to be with a good coach. I think you could see upward of 1/3 new rosters in 26-27 between the GA and ECNL clubs.
This is a good take and seems accurate. My daughter currently plays 2013 RL but was told by the club they plan on putting her in the 2013/2014 NL team when they make the switch next year. August birthday so she will be one of the "oldest" on the 2013/2014 team. Of course, it's a year away almost so anything can happen by then.
My sense is that, if you are a Q1/Q2 on a NL roster AND in the lower half of the team in terms of talent you will now be fighting for a roster spot with the grade above NL and RL “youngers” depending on how many there are. I could see anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of roster displacement. what will be interesting is the top “youngers” and if they will move down or stay up for the level of competition. Taking all the trapped dynamics into account as well.
Also, if there is strict adherence to the change there may be some top “youngers” that will choose to move clubs if the team below is not high quality. I assume a top 2011 ECNL younger would make almost any 2012 ECNL team if they wanted to move.
Anyone care to hypothesize on why the Chicago Area 2026/2027 (U19) ECNL girls are struggling so mightily early on? There should be plenty of talent based on college commitments, and they have not played Hawks, SLSG, or Nationals yet (MTA doesnt start until late in the fall). Rockford is in 14th, the onetime National Finalist Eclipse is in 11th and Inter is the star in 6th. Rockford is the most baffling with very high-end D1 commits yet they don't score and have the worst goals against average of all 15 active teams.
Injuries and apathy would be my guess. I think the motivation level wanes once signed, right or wrong.
Could be. I'd hate to be the college coach who recruited an unmotivated player. I wonder what the retention rate for players from freshman to sophomore year is. It will be interesting to see if the colleges who opted into the NCAA NIL settlement more aggressively cut players now that there are roster limits and the transfer portal is a thing.
Chicago Bears have announced they will move to Arlington Heights - right across the street from Soccer City which is home to Sockers FC. It will be interesting to see if the club is impacted with construction and events - from what I have heard, the new stadium will be used year-round and not only by the Bears.
That's very popular in texas high school football... They want their kids held back a year bc of course being bigger benefits them as players at that age and makes them look better. Will be interesting how many Q3/Q4 players there are playing on the "older team"
I would say I see a Metra parking deck on that property in the future but it's such an odd shaped lot, still I would have to think its 50/50 that something else is there 3 years from now.
Teams are practicing there as well. I suspect Evo had a 1-year lease and that was not renewed or opted out due to low # of teams or avaliability to other spaces. Its an odd lot and USPS isn't going to move, so probably low desirability. Sunday home game traffic would be an absolute nightmare for teams. High potential to be priced out due to property taxes, desire to sell, or forced out due to inconvenience... The Bears "announcement" while an attempt to be definitive, they still seem a long way from breaking ground... it just feels like a final extortion attempt. Or this... Regarding the 2026-27 roster changes, we need to hear from MLS/GA... For split organizations, this could be a mess or the final nail in the E64 coffin (sort of doubt since some of these orgs need the E64/RL since they are only in the MLS Next 2 category).
At this year’s summit, GA said they were not changing. My assumption is there’s a “yet” on the end of that statement but they haven’t sent anything official out since summit.
It was posted elsewhere that they said the opposite at AGM (GA will be switching to SY from BY, just like the rest). Somebody's not telling the truth or getting the whole story. It is weird that GA won't come out with a firm statement one way or the other for such an extended time.
They might follow MLS’ lead since the two are partners. I don’t even know that it matters—once in the league, you play against the league teams. We’ve done a handful of preseason tournaments, but that exercise could have been done with friendlies instead. At any rate, if they’re going to make a change I hope they alert the clubs before the end of the year. ID events start early.
I was talking with a club administrator from a GA club about the logistics of this all. They have at least 4 teams at most age levels. The top 2 would be GA and Aspire the bottom 2 would be USYS. It’s already going to be difficult logistically assessing whose moving back and whose going forward and making sure player numbers don’t overlap since Uniforms are on a 2 year cycle. I can’t imagine having to then track 2 different age cutoffs on top. I just hope they make the announcement and be done with it.
Not every club has that many teams, which is part of the problem. It’s going to be chaos and I hadn’t even considered uniforms. If they would just make their official announcement public, clubs and parents could plan. Right now it’s all he said/she said. I tend to give more weight to things said by GA at Summit, but that is still not 100%.
It is now my understanding that GA has officially announced internally. I assume that they are not making an official announcement now so as to avoid the noise associated with the change for something that is still 11 months away. I would guess they will announce to the public at some point this fall or at the holidays at the latest. No tryouts before February if last year is any indication so no real need to announce sooner and take focus away from fall season.
RSF, I’m curious if you can tell us how often the ratings app run by you(r friend) scrapes data. I want to see how early season results change my kid’s team’s ranking but their tournament wasn’t on gotsport and they only just entered the results of their first league game a week ago.
As I understand it, the scraper runs pretty much continuously - but new results aren't fed into the live database until late in the evening, every evening. It can take a few days for the scraper to find new data on all results sites - but if by Wednesday after the weekend, there still isn't data there (either linked to the team, or sitting in unranked), and you can see the webpage with game results yourself - I'd ping support (at) usasportstatistics.net with that link and ask them when it could be expected to be loaded. Lately I most often see new results as early as the next day, as long as we're good about entering them into GotSport for our teams as soon as the games complete. Ratings (and rankings) are calculated at least every night, so if data sources are attached to a team, you wouldn't ever have to wait more than a day to see their effect, though in most cases the user wouldn't perceive a delay, as they've already been recalculated once entered. If you can't find any of the tournament results in SR, but you have a web link to the tournament results - definitely send it to support if you'd want that tournament info loaded. If you can't find any of the tournament results online anywhere, there's nothing that SR can load from. First point of contact would be the tournament organizers themselves to find out how/what/why there isn't a link, or if it's not working properly. In some (rare) cases, SR has been persuaded to load spreadsheets of results if there is no other avenue for those results. A team should be able to show a rating once it has ~5 to ~8 games recorded against other rated teams. (FAQ)
Lots of early season hiccups. Teams like ours not yet in the habit of entering league results. Slightly modified team names that don’t match spring teams (I did email support to link up some teams my older kid beat) and even newly formed teams with insufficient results. Preseason tourneys that aren’t as formal as mid-season ones. (The only online reference I found to the tournament I’m talking about is on a Green-White FC schedule page.) it will all be more seamless in two weeks. We lost a couple kids to the new FC Utd “additional red” team, and our coach understandably dropped us a division. But I suspect between newcomers and a couple kids with a steep improvement curve, we’re about as good as we were and we may not have needed relegation. Having blown out our first league opponent, I’m curious what the rankings will make of it.
Good luck for the new season! Yes - if one cares about getting their team's results as timely as possible and as accurate as possible (if one doesn't care a whit about it, none of this is necessary - it will still do a pretty good job for most teams without any interaction): 1 - make sure tournament and league results are posted accurately and are accessible. If not, fix the issue. 2 - make sure game data can be seen in SR, if it's not wait a reasonable amount of time then contact support. 3 - if some game data is sitting in unranked, or even incorrectly attached to another team, go to the correct team - search for that game data - and pull it to the correct team and hit save If you have a subscription ($10/yr), you don't need to ask support to make any game data changes, you can make any of them that you notice immediately yourself. If you *really* don't want to support the app, if you DM me the details of a change you are completely sure of I (and anyone else with a sub) can make the change. But I find the team details / predictions you have access to with a sub very useful in addition to the editing rights.
Understood. Their instructions for how to make edits is up here. Basically you go to the real, correct team, then hit EDIT, then ADD MISSING SOURCES, then search for the data source that isn't currently connected. Once it is brought to that team, hit SAVE and you're done. Conversely - if an incorrect data source is shown on a team, just hit the trash can icon next to it, then hit SAVE and you're done. It's not necessary to do that second part each time first if you're moving a source - when searching it will find data sources that are connected to other teams as well as unconnected data sources that are in "unmarked". Clicking through any data source will show you the game data, coach, mgr, state, club, that is already associated with it. Most sources will include all, but it gets more dicey when some of that data is missing (or incorrect). It will also usually provide a web link to the actual page where it found the data, so you can verify what you're looking at. But you should never make changes that you're not fully comfortable with being correct, and it's probably never a bad idea to have support take a look at them if you're not sure.