14 of those came in Minnesota's first season in MLS when they were awful. Now that he is surrounded with much better talent he's not scoring nearly as much. He's averaging .36 goals/gm in MLS. .42 goals/gm with MNU & .22 goals/gm with LAFC. One would think that playing with better players, who provide better service would lead to the opposite... In 2017 Zardes was played largely in Midfield, and sometimes as an outside back as well. Playing deeper that season affected his goal scoring numbers, as did injuries and callups. In the past two seasons Zardes is averaging .52 goals/gm.
Just a bit of a reminder that when it comes to playing young players, MLS is actually ahead of most of the major leagues out there. The overwhelming majority of these players are US (or Canada) eligible. Percentage of minutes played by current players under the age of 20 in leagues where I could find data..Eredivisie 🇳🇱 4.5%Bundesliga 🇩🇪 3%MLS 🇨🇦🇺🇸 2.5% ⬅️Ligue 1 🇫🇷 2.4%La Liga 🇪🇸 1.3%Premier League 🏴 1.2%Serie A 🇮🇹 1.1%Super Lig 🇹🇷 1.1%Liga NOS 🇵🇹 0.6% pic.twitter.com/F36N83muHb— MLS Buzz (@MLS_Buzz) June 27, 2019
The Turkish Süper Lig is where dinosaurs go to die. The median age there was 27.3 two years ago, and it's not gone down.
For those interested in numbers, here's a good mid-year report card for MLS: Consider just this stat; minutes given to U20 domestic players: 2016: 5,567 2019: currently 12,445. On pace for roughly 24k. Play Your Kids: A look at where the movement stands in 2019 http://www.americansoccernow.com/articles/play-your-kids-a-look-at-where-the-movement-stands-in-2019
under 20 is one thing....(aside: how come the french u20 team had so much more minutes than the us 20 us team if MLS plays more u20 than ligue 1??) i bet if you looked at 20-23 (or 18-23)....MLS would drop precipitously in such rankings..... that said, I realize MLS is making an effort to get young players time..and it is much needed but it is also about how the pool as whole is cultivated not only absolute # of minutes that is the more pressing issue, imo.
So far this season MLS players at the U23 level have played a combined 79,751 minutes. Interestingly SKC & Minnesota have given U23 players less then 1700 minutes thus far this season. More interesting is that Philly leads the league in U23 minutes played with LAFC not that far behind. Each have given 6700+ minutes to U23 players. RSL is third with justover 6200 minutes so far in 2019. FC Dallas has given 5100 minutes, and surprisingly Houston has given 4700 minutes. Your more than welcome to do the work, rather than making guesses to fit your narrative....
And its not just MLS. Here are the combined MLS and USL minutes over the past decade for U20 domestic players. [Its not a perfect graph because of other leagues like NASL), but we get the idea. The importance of having MLS reserve teams and a vibrant 2nd division is really crucial in our development pipeline. A player like Tyler Adams played for NYRBII in the USL prior to signing with NYRB. He's a great example of the pathway working like it should from the academy to the USL team to the MLS team to big time European soccer. Every year we're building and investing in that pipeline. I don't really understand the whole narrative of this thread, because its seemingly blind to the enormous investment that's been undertaken in the league. The biggest problem that the league has faced in this regard? Rapid, rapid expansion. Every year the league expands, diluting the domestic MLS-capable talent pool. We have three more teams about to join the league in Austin, Miami and Nashville. Three teams without academies to develop their own players yet. LAFC did a great job starting up. They've built and built and invested and invested in the youngest age groups. They now have one of the best U15 teams in the country. Next year is their first season at the U17 level. So they're years away perhaps from building a USL reserve team and advancing legitimate MLS-quality talent to their first team. There are disappointing clubs in terms of developing domestic talent. That's for sure. Houston is a prime example. But overall the league is doing a hell of a lot better than it was only 10 years ago.
I understand your perspective. I just see things slightly differently. There has been a very recent acknowledgement that MLS needs to do more for young players and it needs to give young players more minutes and that MLS has JUST RECENTLY become receptive to being a "selling league"...these developments are within the last year or 2. I am as optimistic as you are about the prospect of that shift..... if you look at the history of MLS - MLS 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 as people have coined the different iterations of the league - there have been massive shifts in how MLS operates. For the first 10 years or so, MLS would wildly change its rules every season. For the next ten years the rules were more consistent but still liable to change a lot from year to year. Finally it became a priority to codify the rules and try to stick to continuity as much as possible. In my opinion, earlier iterations of MLS did a better job of cultivating the American talent THAT WAS THERE. even though the league wasn't as good in an absolute sense...it did a much better job of maximizing the US talent pool then than it does now. there was a "taken-for-granted" synergy between MLS and the USMNT - in the beginning, each MLS team basically got a USMNT "star" or 2 as one of their key players. The 1994 World Cup basically was used to launch MLS. overall, any player who had a slight chance of becoming a national teamer was given AMPLE opportunity to play A LOT of minutes in MLS....and guess what? it REALLY helped the national team - the peak of the national team was about 6-10 years after MLS started....it is not a coincidence. when you give basically every player who is potentially good enough to become a national teamer actual first division minutes...there will be a lot of surprises and the % of players in the pool who actually become something will be relatively high. that's part of why 2002 is still the highwater mark for USMNT success. Eventually as more money and foreign investors and the level got better and better etc that synergy between MLS and the USMNT has basically disappeared. in the 1990s you could literally feel in everything MLS did how important the USMNT was to the growth and success of MLS. Now that MLS is more secure and successful it has lost that synergy and even concern for the national team. MLS is not playing young players to help the national team - it is doing so because that is PROFITABLE. despite all of the investments and growth of the league - which is great in theory - i think MLS has gotten worse as far as cultivating the domestic talent pool. the % of "maybe good enough" domestic players that actually get a real chance in MLS has plummeted in my opinion. sure the overall numbers are roughly the same or maybe slightly higher in terms of americans playing in MLS now as in the 1990s...but the sheer number of players who might be good enough that are not getting a real shot now has also skyrocketed as well. before, 90% of players who had a pulse would get their MLS chance...now, it is a much lower %. now, many players who seem promising never get an extended run of play in MLS - even national team players like keaton parks or jonathan lewis (please do not talk about these players and how good they are or arent - just using them as examples of a trend) are finding it hard to get onto the field in MLS - this NEVER happened in MLS 1.0 or MLS 2.0....any domestic player good enough to get even 1 callup to the USMNT would be an instant and bona fide starter in MLS. this, despite MLS still not being good enough to beat liga mx...AND a slew of new expansion teams - (if you look at it...expansion teams are barely playing any americans lately which makes zero sense to me...why be horrible and not play domestic players??) if MLS was going all out and competing with top euro teams for players...i would totally understand mhow hard it is for domestics to break through in MLS now.....but MLS is still basically in a similar place in the world ranking of leagues as it was throughout its existence...still not as good as mexico and most euro leagues. Now, you can say that MLS is getting better and that's why it is harder for domestic players to play...which is kiiinda true but doesnt tell the whole story. If lets just say 30% of "maybe good enough" players now get their chance in MLS as opposed to 90% in the 1990s...can you see that despite the investment in youth, etc that it isn't as cut and dry as it seems from your graph? There are more pro players now in the USA than before. kids grow up with the goal of being in MLS now. the sheer number is higher but the # of players who actually make it is not growing that much...so in essence it has become more competitive to become a pro in the USA but that just means there is more "waste" in terms of how the domestic pool is cultivated, imo. that increased difficulty of becoming an MLS player should mean that the ones who do make it to the national team should be way better than they have been, right? but they arent. the MLSers on the USMNT are most of the worst ones....if you are really honest about it. the sport is exploding. the league is taking off. but how MLS cultivates domestic talent will make a huge difference for the national team. in my opinion MLS is inefficiently capitalizing on the explosion of the sport in the USA vis a vis the USMNT. If you look at it...who are the USMNTers who never left MLS who are actual difference makers? maybe jordan morris? but he was already good before he got into MLS......reggie cannon has played pretty well vs minnows...but is far from proven. There are not really any star usmnt players who come from MLS and just stay in the league and develop into difference makers for the USMNT. still! in 2019. All of the worst USMNTers are the ones who have been MLS lifers......all of those players could leave MLS if they or the league wanted that...all of them have had interest from abroad, basically. but if you go back to MLS 1.0 and MLS 2.0 there were actually better USMNT players who came from MLS...the quality of USMNTers being produced has declined as the league has gotten better. which, on the surface, makes no sense. but when you dig into what is happening with roster building and coaching and player development you see that throwing money at the situation isn't enough. The USA spends twice as much as Slovenia on education per child but the countries have the same test scores.....the US system is inefficient. it applies to everything.....per dollar spent, MLS is doing a horrible job of producing USMNT players that are actually good enough to do well in a world cup. the USMNT is not priority when it comes to what MLS does or how it spends....but in my opinion that is a mistake from a business perspective. If the USMNT could somehow win or compete for a world cup...it would cause the value of MLS to skyrocket. if MLS made USMNT success a priority, it would help the league grow and help the USMNT be better. a higher % of "maybe good enough" domestic players need more and better opportuntities. it won't just figure itself out on its own. the thing is it is impposible to predict how a player will develop over 1, 2 or 3 years of playing time...if the players never play though it doesnt matter. In my opinion, MLS is trying to do better, but its machinations are not, in the end, having much of an impact on the USMNT....because it doesn't really care about the USMNT or at least not in a way that truly helps. if it does, the way it intervenes is not helpful. SUM probably makes more money off Mexican national team than USA...which is insane. you can point to coaching. look at almeyda in san jose....players like lima, yueill and thompson are now killing it while under previous regimes they all looked like busts basically. how you coach and develop players is very variable. it is a mistake to think players are who they are and how they are developed won't lead to wildly different outcomes. that is why I reject the idea that it all comes down to producing talent and we just have to wait for the academies to start producing. clint dempsey was a college soccer player! if he came up now, he'd likely never leave MLS because the chances that he'd see the field right away would be next to nil and his whole development timeline would be pushed back so far that the whole arc of his career would've been totally different. Overall, I think MLS has taken a total inclusion model as far as what its priorities are. they are as neutral as possible to all possible fans....no matter what national team those fans support. a lot of soccer fans in the USA are not USMNT fans but fans of other countries. So what you have in the USA and MLS is a domestic league that is probably the least concerned with its countries' national team as any in the world. there are degrees of support and concern that MLS could have towards the USMNT and it is not as if MLS doesn't care at all...it does...my opinion is just that its degree of concern and intervention on behalf of the USMNT is too low and not good enough.
a good analogy is MUSICAL CHAIRS. now there are not that many more "chairs" for US players but there are many more players hoping to "sit down". in the end, if there aren't more chairs...it really wont matter that there are many many more players that are good enough to "sit down"... that's why you are seeing national teams like curacao, jamaica,haiti etc able to compete with USMNT despite not having many players that could latch on in MLS...there's more chairs than players in those countries...so every player fully maximizes their potential...and no one "slips through the cracks"....as long as you have enough players to sit in every seat, you can have a good team. if the us has 200 players that are good enough to play for guyana....it is not an advantage....but it should be. the us has the margin of error to be extremely wasteful with its domestic player pool and still win over teams like curacao with a population of 160k....but jsut because it is winning doesnt mean that its method developing its pool is optimal or even close.
That's not true at all. It may help, but not necessarily. It all depends on the caliber of your domestic players within the league. The league may be mostly foreigners. The Premier League, for example, has a high percentage of foreign players. It used to be 69% in a couple of years ago.
Just for clarification, im not sure about Nashville, but Austin and Miami are starting their academies this fall before MLS play. Miami with 4-5 teams and Austin with one U-14 team. I know there's a couple Austin FC academy players who spent a month training in Spain this summer.
My guess is three fold: 1. Many of the U20 players getting minutes in MLS were not chosen. Some of the MLS players chosen had not been getting any minutes or were not among the minute leaders. (examples include Servania (2min), McKenzie (12min), Araujo (286 min), Matthew Real (0min), Rennicks (105 min), Keita (0 min), Durkiin 390 min. If I'm not mistaken, Pomykal and, to a lesser degree, Cerrillo were the only two MLS players that had been among the U20 leaders in minutes. Araujo was just beginning to establish himself as a starter for the Galaxy when the WC began. 2. The European season is complete. MLS season is/was less than halfway through the season when the WC was played. 2.4% of a full season is much more than 2.5% of half a season. 3. Many of the U20 players were not from MLS, where some were not getting many minutes. (Some examples: Soto (25 min), Mendez (0 min), you get the point...)
I didn't want to quote your whole post because it is very long but I did want to comment on a couple of things: 1. you seem to be using percent and numbers interchangeably. 2. You are ignoring the huge growth of USL. Many of the "maybe good enough" players now can play in USL and become "definitely good enough" for MLS, where they can work on the next step which is "maybe good enough" for the USMNT. 3. Competition for a spot is important. you seem to be suggesting that the US players be given a spot. It is one thing to play the young players when ever possible (beginning with 5-15 min at end of game) and as they improve, increase their minutes, but it is quite a different thing to just give them a starting spot.
Also note that some of our elite U20s weren't part of the squad. Our professional minutes chart would have looked different if Tyler Adams was included for example. MUCH different. Cuz that kid has already played almost 10,000 career minutes. True story: Tyler Adams has already played more career minutes than John O'Brien. He's 20. You rightly point out the fact that many of the members of that team had been at MLS academies. They chose not to sign with MLS, and instead moved to Europe. Llanez, Mendez, Ledesma, Soto, Gloster, and company. Richards had just signed a contract with FCD, and was loaned to Bayern Munich (who subsequently triggered a transfer claure)............before he ever played a game. Those guys haven't broken thru in Europe yet. Are we blaming MLS for that? Really? Its not MLS' fault that de la Fuente hasn't broken thru at Barca, or Dest hasn't broken thru at Ajax, or Scott hasn't broken thru at Koln, and on and on. Some of those U20 kids had just signed contracts. Cerrillo is a good example. Rennicks is another. Araujo is another. Keita is another. They hadn't played pro minutes because they weren't pros until right before the tournament. In fact, when I look at that US U20 roster and say "Which players should and could MLS have done a better of job getting minutes to earlier?"...............the answer is only two of them. Pomykal and Durkin. So are we really having this conversation about two players? Really? Somehow MLS didn't give enough minutes to its U20 national teamers.................and its only two of them?
Anyways, MLS is not a farm club of USMNT, their priority is to have a competitive league that draws fans and not mainly to develop USMNT players
Yes and no. MLS teams are increasingly individualistic, however when NT tv packages are combined with MLS by SUM and large amounts of SUM revenue help fund the league, the league has a responsibility to supply talent to the NT. If MLS went at it alone it would have far less of a responsibility to the NT.
I know there is a whole conspiracy vibe around here about the Fed and MLS and SUM and the Illuminati and the Pope but I actually agree that MLS is somewhat detached from USMNT. Structurally the rosters allow more and more foreign players, and DPs, such that foreign players are the majority of lineups now, and sometimes as much as 8/11 or 9/11 of them with green cards (eg, Quioto plays for Honduras but has a green card so he isn't an international slot anymore). That cannot help but shove Americans out of playing time short term. I know the invisible hand theory is Americans will push back and become stronger in the process, but the lineups are what they are. Also, I think quietly MLS lets USMNT out later than it used to. Maybe it's that we feel like we can't discriminate and stick to FIFA rules, but I feel like MLS used to release with more lead time for Gold Cup. Now it's like ok you're out on Monday and the first friendly is Friday. I have also suggested outside of the box ideas like reviving Project 40 in USL so that YNT have a dedicated place to play. But that would be tripping over the current "dibs" system where we empower individual teams who aggressively sign players like Carleton -- and then sit their butts. We are in the contradictory spot of cheerleading YNT success while not really making it much of a priority whether they play in club, and in fact right now punishing those with hit and miss work, even though this is a natural condition among young players.
I've pointed out before that the disparity is somewhere in between the U17/U20 and senior team. We are consistently top of region lately in U20 worlds. Like the last several tournaments. We are a good U17 team. But by senior age this advantage has melted away. I get that only x% of players from these teams become good ones, and some don't even make decent first division pros. But if we presumed that all NT had the same attrition rate, we should still be coming out ahead by U20 classes. We don't. So we cannot presume that we are bridging junior players as well as the next team. My theory would be that the academy and affiliate system was a forced effort but not one that proved itself by success. There are maybe like LAG, Dallas, NYRB who have taken it seriously and produce people foreign clubs and the NT can use. My Dynamo probably couldn't beat my old traditional club team, and they have produced basically 2 players who right now are backups -- Memo and Deric. Ibeagha is on NYC. Hard for me to think of anyone else. And while a few teams seem to have a knack for development, many are basically a dibs system that in league table terms is still not better than traditional clubs who play in the same leagues. Similarly, while the teams exist for different reasons and chase different players, and winning may not be the only goal, I count 3 MLS II teams that would be in the USL Championship playoffs. You would think a superior system might still be competitive by dint of teaching even if it used developmental players. Now, some of the USL teams I left out might be affiliates, but that itself would say something, that we are sill parceling out developmental players to farm teams we don't even run.
There are modulations that can be made. NWSL allows 4 foreign players. USOC allows 5. We could set the standard at 5 just the same and you would still get the DP help but there would become more US players getting PT, flowering, and perhaps useful to the NT. Before we pretend the rest of the world is some free market paradise, EPL sits behind the work permit barrier. B.1 has rules on domestic youth and foreign players. MX has limits on foreign players which they made more stringent last year. It is never "just a business," there is usually some degree of nationalism in either immigration rules or roster rules. Most leagues have some pride in or protection of the domestic player. You could still have Onstad and DeRo in Houston under the old rules, you just had to invest in Clark, Ching, and Davis as well.
Mr. Eastwood, the problem with your list is how many different academies do they actually come from. Pomykal, Cerrillo, Servania, Richards, and McKennie are FCD. Ochoa, Soto, and Ledezma are RSL. Araujo, Mendez, and Llanez are LAG. McKenzie and Real are Union. Weah and Gloster are NYRB. 5 academies, most of your players. The rumor also is that the Servanias and Cappis were told by a former MLS player and current FCD youth coach to end run the Dynamo academy and play for Dallas. It also bears noting that MLS academies (theoretically) serve the senior team, and players like Efrain Alvarez may end up playing elsewhere. Though nominally limited to 7 internationals, LAG II have 11 foreign players by my count, RGV (Dynamo) has 14. Though some of these guys are MLS first team signees. At least one function of these teams, that I have detected, may be hoarding foreign players of interest when the MLS quota runs out. That serves MLS. That does not help USMNT. For example, Houston started this year with Quioto Manotas Elis up top, all foreign, two regional opponents. The backups (Memo Hairston McNamara) are Americans and Hairston has a cap, but meh. The people in wait at RGV included Carlos Small of Panama and Bryan Salazar (now first team) of Belize. The academy is a mess raided by FCD. We put most of our effort into transfers (and we don't spend much). We have figured out a way to be semi-competitive that actually puts far more effort into Honduras, and gives USMNT nothing to work with, and does little effective development. I admire what FCD does but then the whole point is it's a limited thing a few clubs do well and the rest watch.
I'm also bemused by all the coded political arguments against Bradenton and in favor of the academies, at a time when the world champions have Clairefontaine. Again, as with the roster rules discussion, it's like we want to compare ourselves to -- and emulate -- some theorized ideal free market Europe, as opposed to how it actually gets done.
I also think you could create roster/cap rules exceptions specific to American players. Like you can burn another DP but they have to be senior or U20 capped. Or, you can have 3 DPs but 1 has to be domestic. Or, like I said above, we could create a USL -- or perhaps even MLS -- team made up of youth prospects. No more duking it out with a 25 year old career minor leaguer (rostered to end run MLS foreign player rules in case of attrition) for playing time on a second team that over-emphasizes winning. Here is your space. We will play you. Develop.