After competing against each other these two sides will now work together. The part I like most about the article is that they will try to promote MLS to the youngsters, which will be huge if these talents are to stay and not look abroad. www.mlsnet.com/content/03/mls0319uscs.html
right now, it's a marketing deal. The technical assistance is nice, but it's a good necessary step to the bigtime: club coaches who's job is to develop players for A league and MLS Clubs...not necessarily win games for the sake of winning and impressing parents. But on the scale of getting the soccer community to work together, it's a big success.
There is more discussion on this topic in the Youth Soccer Forum: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=39559
I coach my under sons Under 5 team. Most coaches bring out twice as many cones as they have kids. They are Paul Gardners worst nightmare. It is obvious to me that most of teh coaches haven't played soccer since they were kids. God bless em for trying and being interested. My point is - I would guess 1/2 of them are barely aware that MLS exists. I know we are talking about the youngest level of youth soccer here, but the trickel down on this is going to take years. Too bad this initiative wasn't started years ago. Darn nice to see now, though.
A couple of things to note. US Youth Soccer and AYSO are ALREADY official partners of MLS. US Club Soccer is a relatively new (formed in 2000) competing youth organization that was not making serious in-roads vs USYS until they joined forces earlier this year with the USL/Super Y League. This is a good thing, but it's not like MLS and youth associations weren't working together at all before.
Well, any relationship is only as good as its effectiveness to suit the needs of its participants. If there is no vertical teaming regarding player development then it's nothing more than a glossed over image situation.