Honestly I am worried about the quality of play for the USSF Division II League as a whole. St. Louis at least has Steve Ralston, but he will probably play only a year. Bauer, Cole, and O'Garron are not that impressive. Hopefully better players will follow. All 7 international slots are likely to be filled. Who will they sign? Players from the UK, South Africa, and France were at the invite-only combines.
Tom Timmerman explains the situation well http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/free-kicks/free-kicks/2010/02/ac-st-louis-no-2-tim-velten-us-womens-games-announced/ http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/free-kicks/free-kicks/2010/02/ac-st-louis-signs-zach-bauer/
I would't say setting the bar, though your blog post puts out some good points. But I would say the Ralston signing was only a statement. Other than that we've only one other player with professional experiance in the form of Velten. Its hard for St. Louis because we're starting from scratch. I like the direction they're starting in. But we are going up against more established clubs like Portland, Vancouver, Monteal, and Rochester who have more history and prestige than. I don't know though, we'll just have to see how it all shakes out when we kick off in April in Carolina.
I don't understand how their business plan of selling academy kids to bigger leagues is going to work. First, MLS usually doesn't pay transfer fees to USL (I think they paid one for Kandji, but it was unusual), so they would have to sell them abroad, and I'm not sure how many international scouts are watching USL/NASL. If I'm an international scout, I would be watching ACC soccer, where there are players with higher ceilings, and they are all free agents. Second, they would have to convince the Academy kids to sign with a low-paying NASL club over taking a college scholarship to, say, SLU. And if the pro gig doesn't work out, they have forfeited their chance to ever get a scholarship. That has to be a hard sell. If they go to college instead for a year or two or three, they can sign with a foreign club at any time as a free agent, and not have to worry about negotiating transfer fees with ACSTL. MLS has tried to overcome this problem with the Generation Adidas program, but I don't think NASL has anything comparable. The only thing I can see that ACSTL has going for it is the contacts that Filho may have in Europe. But is that going to be enough to convince a kid (and his parents) to pass up a college scholarship? I guess we'll see.
On second thought, maybe he is thinking about a Charles Renken type of player, who is already good enough to turn pro at 15 or 16, so college soccer is a waste of time. The problem I see is that I don't think St. Louis produces a Charles Renken type of player with any regularity. It's too bad they couldn't have formed AC Stl a year or two ago. It could be a nice bonus if another Charles Renken or Vedad comes along in St. Louis and decides to sign with us as a stepping stone to Europe, but I don't think there are enough of those players in St. Louis to count on that as a source of revenue.
Unless a player has EU citizenship or plays for their countries National Team (the best players aren't always on the national teams) they can't play in Europe. They can play in countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Begium without it, but not in the big paying countries like England, France, Italy, Spain etc. So I'm not really sure how this is going to work out for this St. Louis team. Also, most US parents aren't going to let their young kids move out of the country like Europeans do.