This from the latest Crew article from the dispatch and 1340 Fan radio: New team in town Worthington businessman and Crew investor Joe Milano Jr. announced the formation of the Columbus Stars at yesterday's media event. The organization will field three teams for play in the amateur levels of the United Soccer Leagues beginning with the 2003 season. Milano founded and owns the organization, which will feature teams in the collegiate-level Premier Development League, the WUSA feeder W-League and the Super Y-League (U19-U14). "We'd like to use these three platforms to bridge the wonderful youth programs we have with the top programs like the Columbus Crew,'' Milano said. Nice! Any team that has an amateur feeder system in place wholly connected with the team is a good thing to me. It's yet another sign of the permanency of MLS. Just another solid root from which to draw nutrients... Let's hope that Hunt Sports (a purported notoriously frugal organization) will be willing to watch the efforts and results of Mr. Milano, his organization, and those who might succeed him; and hopefully incorporate a version for KC soon. That said, I don't think it's likely to happen with Hunt Sports' dollars until someone can demonstrate a business model that will add to the bottom line over time. One would think that someone over at 1 Arrowhead Drive would have the basic business accumen (read: non-marketing business begree) to put together numbers reflective of the massive demographic and business info they must surely possess already. Maybe they have and it data says to wait. Who knows? We get little info. Then again they may be busy selling tickets and formalizing the schedule times. The other angle that might actually be happening is that Hunt Sports is simply using Mr. Milano's efforts as a test balloon. Free info on Milano's dime, whoo hooo! It's difficult to imagine an accociation with the Crew that isn't fully disclosed (and regulated) by Hunt Sports. Of course with the minimal KCW reporting of the KC Star, we will not find out until much later...if at all. Putting all of this into a "big picture" puts the eventuality (if you can call it that) of a KCW amateur system into reality only when and if a stadium, and more importantly the surrounding youth facilities/fields, gets built. I believe we are all aware that this will not happen until taxpayer money is allocated to do it. Also interesting is Milano's inclusion of female amateur teams. Pure speculation would point out that The WUSA is on the brink of failure so a reincarnated version of the league might be a possibility for MLS in the future. It's a reach, but a system of amateur womens' teams controlled by MLS could facilitate creation of a WMLS in the future and[/] everything that currently exists. Just some thoughts. Hunt Sports SOP would be to tes others make the mistakes, learn, do it right the next time, and live with what exists currently; ie. USISL affiliations and whatever info network KCW use for "scouting". Even this may be for the best as a future KCW amateur system would have the benefit of the experience gleaned from the succeses and failures of the Milano effort.
I am thrilled to see that Columbus is building an infrastructure for development, and I hope that the Wizards and the rest of MLS will do the same eventually. I think the biggest current drawback to developing local talent is that there is no guarantee that it will benefit the team that provides for it. For example, the Crew may develop loads of talent headed for MLS, but the Superdraft could see this talent spread all over the league, and the incentive to developing young players is lost. MLS needs to find a way to encourage teams to do this-the hard part is keeping them eligible for NCAA(the players) while being "owned" by a pro team. Obviously the other benefit of a program like this is a greater presence in the soccer community. While I'm sure that everyone involved in soccer in MLS cities are well aware of their MLS team, my deduction from several posts that I have come across indicates varying levels of apathy toward the MLS in soccer communities. For this reason I am a little surprised that the Columbus program not only has a different name, but different color scheme as well from the MLS club. I know there may not be an "official" partnership between the two, but I would think that they would want to feed off each other as much as possible.