Mods, feel free to move this tread if it is in the wrong place. The FED has spent a ton of money trying to develop players. Yesterday, over half the team played college ball. I know the debate is out there if playing a year in college is a detriment to a player's growth. It just seems some of our best players have a year in college before they turn pro. Maybe the college game still holds some real value for the USMNT. I know many talk about the professional environment. Still, players like Gooch, Davies and Feilhaber haver not hurt their development spending one year in college.
I respectfully disagree. The 20 best players in the world DID NOT go to college. The defense rests it's case.
Your point? For almost all US players between 18-22, there are few options other than college. MLS is not an option (no player development at the moment). Going overseas may sound great, but isn't easy and is high risk (career over at 21 or 22 with no degree). Slowly, overtime, college soccer will have less of an impact...
It doesn't hurt, but I fail to see where it really helps their development. Yes it is a step up in competition and I have met some very fine D-I coaches, but they are limited (time and resource) in what they can accomplish as compared to say a prominent Euro Academy. It is probably the best direction if you cannot to commit to an academy when you are 15. The transition at 18 is probably a blood-thirsty age in academies as this is the time that makes or breaks these kids. There is something to be had by a year of campus living that preps them.
After further thought, I'll give you a reason why I think college is still popular with young players right now. Currently, our youth soccer system only goes up to age 18. Some players at that age are good enough (or large enough) to make the transitions to pros (whether its here or in Europe or Mexico). But the vast majority still need 2 more years to solidify their game. Currently, the institution that fills that void is the NCAA and college soccer. I would propose that each MLS team have an U21/reserve team (including Toronto and Vancouver) that plays 20-30 matches a year. I'd say each team should carry a 12-18 man roster of full time paid reserve roster. Maybe allow 4-8 players in each reserve game to be over 21. These U21 players would also be eligable for the fll roster at any time. Its expensive, but its definitely worth it.
Iron sharpens iron. If our men's soccer culture had a more blacktop basketball proving ground mindset, a more dedicated pick up game hunger to our boys soccer training away from their clubs...just on shear numbers alone our nation could produce youth players that fill the NCAA ranks with very rugged and crafty talents. Then any talk of the value, or lack there of, with college soccer towards our National Team is forgotten. The best of these NCAA guys get plucked for pro teams here or abroad at 18-22 and that's for the ones that didn't get picked up by MLS or other pro clubs when they were 15-18.
Cujo- I hate to break the news, but MLS scrapped the reserve teams this year. Too costly, given the financial situation clubs face. The big question is how does MLS plan to improve their business model so that they can afford reserve teams, among other things. Stay tuned...
Well the thing is, if MLS allowed financial independence amongst the teams, Seattle, LA, and probably Portland, Vancouver could financially support small reserve teams. And then there's DC, Houston, and Philadelphia who wouldn't be far off on this front (not to mention NY, KC, and SJ who will probably do better at their new facilities). In 3-4 years, this could be feasible, the only problem areas are teams that look like they will continue to struggle in the coming years like New England and Dallas.
If I'm getting you right your saying merge our reserve squads? I like this idea. Check this: Reserve Squad 1: Galaxy/Chivas Reserve Squad 2: Dallas/Dynamo Reserve Squad 3: Revolution/Toronto Reserve Squad 4: New York/Philadephia Reserve Squad 5: Seattle/San Jose Reserve Squad 6: RSL/Colorado Reserve Squad 7: DCU/Columbus Reserve Squad 8: KC/Chicago Each team plays each other twice. If MLS is going to run with this single entity crap then they should take advantage of it.
College soccer is HORRIBLE for the USNT system. Few games with a essentially a three month season, bad rules (substitutions) that encourage work rate over skill, academics is more of a focus at most schools, bad coaches, bad style of play, poor officiating, maximum amount of time you can train in a week, etc....... This thread must be sarcasm.
I have to agree.... I think that US Soccer has a whole may need MLS to eventually take care of the issue of kids dropping soccer sometime in middle or high school. Even if college soccer were to fix many of the problems you've noted, they can't fix the NCAA's position that the sport must take place within one semester. The USMNT would be better off with the MLS taking the college basketball and college football role of scouting talent through high school. That may sound impractical, but I don't have much faith in college soccer being fixed to satisfaction.
Let me ask you a question. Would it be better if there was no college soccer, and everyone who wanted to continue in the sport had to give up on their education and go to the USL? Of course not.
1) in any sport, there are athletes that bloom at the age of 18, or later. In soccer around the world, if a kid hasn't been signed by the time he's 17?, he won't be a soccer player. With college soccer, you get the late bloomers. Feilhaber probably wouldn't be a pro soccer player w/o college soccer. He was a friggin walk on at UCLA. No college offered him a scholly (doesn't mean he wasn't recruited to walk on, I don't know). Would he have gotten a pro contract anywhere? What's Davies background? Is there any indication that he was on anyone's radar before going to college? Look at the NFL. There is no way that soccer around the world scouts youngsters more thoroughly than the U.S. H.S. football players are scouted. Yet, in the Super Bowl, you'll find that many, if not most of the player did not go to the bigtime programs. They went to schools that were in the bottom half of D1 schools, or were D1AA. Those are kids that would have dropped out of the system if it was soccer-like. Later bloomers. 2) I'm not buying the myth that college soccer players only play soccer 3 months out of the year. These guys play soccer every day. Either at practice, or at pickup games, or PDL games. In another thread, I was saying that the USL should try it's hand at player development (on a very small scale). It was pointed out to me that there are something like 120 PDL squads out there. If you go to college, you're not banned from touching a ball other than on the NCAA decreed practice days. ----- The development of our 18 y.o.'s & up isn't "the problem" with soccer in the U.S. It's the development of kids 16 & 17. And, that's not the fault of college soccer.
But college soccer is not a substitute for a professional environment. I agree that right now, college soccer is an essential part of the US developmental system. However, I am of the belief that we need to start migrating away from this system (whether its in small steps or one big step) over the next 5 years. The college soccer system is NEVER going to produce a Messi or an Iniesta. Because of that, it will need to have a limited role in the development of talent here in the states if we are to seriously contend in a World Cup. I envision (6-7 years in the future) MLS teams having sufficient reserve squads to deal will players that graduate from their academies. For those that aren't good enough for MLS reserve squads, they can go to college. So in other words, our top 40 or so players in any age group will become MLS reserves at age 18-19, and any other will play college ball.
The following USMNT players who entered the game at Azteca played college soccer: -Stu Holden - Clemson - 1 year -Oguchi Onyewu - Clemson - 2 years -Carlos Bocanegra - UCLA - 4 years -Benny Feilhaber - UCLA - 4 years -Jay Demerit - UIC - 4 years -Steve Cherundolo - Portland - 2 years -Clint Dempsey - Furman - 3 years -Ricardo Clark - Furman - 2 years And last but not least Charlie Davies - Boston College - 3 years SO 9 of our the 14 who played yesterday played College Soccer. Can you really argue against it now?
There are some great coaches and teams in college soccer. But the season just isn't long enough to really help fully develop to players' potential.
We need college soccer. Fact. That doesn't mean we should encourage it to everyone. We need guys like Jozy. We need USA versions of Gio Dos Santos, Jonathan Dos Santos and Carlos Vela. (Players developed abroad.). It will happen eventually.
It most certainly would be better with the MLB model where the option to get drafted out of high school is balanced with college sports.
Our sporting culture, as it is set right now, will never produce a Messi or Iniesta type player. College soccer really doesn't have anything to do with it. Players like Messi or Tevez grew up with a passion for the game and skills honed by unsupervised pickup games as kids - the way basketball is played in this country. MLS isn't seen as a viable option as the pay is too low, it's completely off people's radar. Seeing soccer as lucrative as the NBA or the NFL is the only way to lure kids into playing with the determination they need to make it as top flight professionals. MLS academies will play a good role in the development of professional-type players, but as mentioned above most 18 year olds aren't physically ready for professional sports, they need a year or two of "seasoning", which college provides. In the coming years, we will most likely see a shift, where our top attacking players spend less time in college and move on professionally, while our top defenders and goalies, who need more time to develop, stay in school. I sometimes wonder where Seitz would be if he had stayed at Maryland all four years if he would be starting for a club now as opposed to backing up Rimando. Defensive players would especially benefit from this, as most teams are not willing to allow a 20 year old to start in central defense, it's too risky. But in college these players have 3-4 years of being the starter and getting valuable game experience they would not professionally. Would a reserve league change this? Yes, probably, but that is not an option now.
But that option doesn't meaningfully exist, because while baseball is a fairly big business, with the Yankees being worth over a billion dollars, MLS is small potatoes.
This. College soccer is not hurting U.S. soccer. It's helping it immensely. It is developing guys that would otherwise be done with soccer. To wit, how many guys are there currently on NCAA rosters who could currently have a pro contract somewhere? I bet you could count them on one finger. So, the guys on the current USMNT who played college soccer would be out of the game, if it weren't for college soccer. They'd be teachers, Doctors, engineers - but they would not be playing soccer. How would our team look without those guys? And, in 2014, how many of those guys will have played college soccer? In 2018? In other words, are there kids out there that will turn out to be as good as Gyau, Renken, Jerome, McInerny, etc. that for whatever reason, no one particularly rates right now? I'll bet there are.