Should have a system covering youth academies, high school and college into one system. Perhaps based on the minutes played, goals, assists, interceptions, passing accuracy, etc. Have rankings on that.
Don't they rank football players pretty accurately? But then again, when US Soccer uses a less than objective measure to call up youth players to YNT camps how can we expect TDS to do something more? Just did an interesting look at the first DA championships that happened in 2018. Very few on the three rosters of those three championship teams (u15, U16/17, and U18/19) received a call up into the system. If the Girl's DA was US Soccer's own creation to ID the best of the best and train them in their preferred manner then why did they not call in more from those championship teams? What was the point of all of that if even US Soccer didn't pay much attention to those players. In fact, most of the players on those rosters that did get a call up received those call-ups even prior to the DA starting.
More money is spent on it because there is a potential return based on accuracy. College and pro football are huge money makers and yet its still an inexact science. How many would you expect to get call ups? Best team today does not have to equal players have the highest ceiling or YNT potential. Without rehashing the GDA thing, it was a poorly thought out idea. Until there is real money in professional woso and a path into it for younger players to develop, there is no value in rankings until the draft.
Mark does get a good number of internationals. That said, more than half the team are domestic recruits. 2 of our international recruits played HS in the US. Most of our domestic recruits are 3 star or 4 stars per TDS. Only Jaelin Howell and Jenna Nighswonger were 5 star level. Kaitlyn Zipay and Lauren Flynn both were 3 stars that contributed significantly during the fall. It would be fun to go back and look at rankings for those kinds of players IMO.
I believe the information is there if you want it. This took me no time to find 10. Florida State Commitments: M Jaelin Howell (Real Colorado – No. 2), F Kristina Lynch (Indiana Fire Academy – No. 63), M Kirsten Pavlisko (Florida Elite Soccer Academy – No. 140), M Yujie Zhao (Shanghai Youyi High School)
You have found one of my achilles heels. I don't know how to find that on my own. When I go onto TDS, the recruits rankings only goes back to 2020, at least as far as I could find.
So looking at the TDS top 25, Stanford has 3 including #s 1 and 2. UCLA has 5. Duke has 4 all in the top 10. UNC has 4. Penn State has 2. The one above that surprises me the most is Duke. I get, or at least I think I do, the whole academic prestige thing, but at least the other aforementioned schools have won Nattys. Not trying to be disrespectful, but Duke has done squat. Where is UVA in this list? USC? FSU? Yeah, I know FSU is low man on the academic totem pole but still top 25 public university, so no slouch. Plus 2 nattys. I would be curious to know if these Duke commitments think they may be the ones to break through and win a natty, or if the prestige of the degree is taking precedence. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, because making a living at soccer is usually short lived and not very lucrative at the moment except to a very very few!
@Tom81 a team needs to press, attack and defend together as a team as well as all buy into the coach's game plan to win a natty. A team of very good players who consistently play as a team can beat a team of elite players who don't any day of the week.
SHV, I guess you are saying the teams that have won those nattys have done that better than their counterparts that year. I would agree with that. I would argue (my opinion) that the two nattys we won were against teams with more national level talent. UVA in 14 had Morgan Brian and Emily Sonnett. They also had Colaprico, Doniak, Shaffer, Torres, McNabb and Ratcliffe. We had no USWNT quality players. We had lots of very high quality players, but none that would sniff USWNT or the equivalent. Iceland, Ireland and Finland NTers, but not the equivalent of USWNT. Heck the last couple of years, Gabby Carle who is a Canadien NTer couldn't sniff All ACC honors. Same could be said of Stanford in 18 vs FSU. Guess Mark does a pretty good job with that metric.
FSU does great job with international players. With that said, Coach Krikorian to me is the best coach in college soccer. Far better than many NWSL coaches IMO.
I'm not expert enough to judge that. I will say, there is no college soccer coach I would trade him for. That is not a shot at Anson or any of the other great coaches out there. I just think Mark does more with less than any coach out there. JMHO, but if we had Stanford talent year in and year out, we'd have a few more nattys.
A lot of it is also about finding the right fit for your program. These kids may be ranked high on TDS but that doesn’t mean their style of play necessarily fits how a program wants to play. I think Mark does a great job at Florida state finding kids that fit his system regardless what their rankings are. Also crushes it in the international recruiting and of course those kids aren’t ranked on TDS.
One thing that I’ve ruminated over during covid is the dependence on international kids for college teams. I’d allow one per team or zero per team or a certain scholarship amount. Why are we, and public schools at that, paying for college educations and experiences of international kids? Obviously FSU does it and other D1’s but it’s so prevalent in lower level men’s teams as well. I’m having a hard time justifying why this is a good thing. (Other than it can make a tram better. And international kids bring diversity and a bigger worldview to our campuses and teams. specifically, why spend scholarship money on foreign kids? What’s the upside?)
Not saying I agree or disagree with your point, but these same public universities often give academic scholarships to international students as well. It's not just athletics.
@upprv the Internationals for the most part bring a lot to the teams and help the American players around them grow. Most of those Internationals came through professional academies and would have a pretty good soccer IQ. There's a lot of kick ball out there. We need them!
If FSU were limited in recruiting internationals, you might as well eliminate FSU from CC contention. We only rarely beat UNC, Stanford, UVA and UCLA head to head for domestic recruits. I refer again to the 2022 top 25 TDS recruits. So looking at the TDS top 25, Stanford has 3 including #s 1 and 2. UCLA has 5. Duke has 4 all in the top 10. UNC has 4. Penn State has 2. FSU 0.
Right. And I agree *in theory* with the diversity and global nod these students bring to campus. But as college admissions narrows and limits opportunities for our kids it might be worth revisiting. honestly I’m very much opposite of an America First mentality and love the richness of a global community. But to have state tax dollars go for scholarships for foreign kids (who graduate and leave the country) seems a small ROI. I’d sacrifice lower over soccer IQ in college soccer for more opportunities for kids who have come thru our youth system and then graduate and remain in our own communities.
This discussion has lots of merit but this is a bigger issue that WS rosters. First, international players pay out of State tuition rates. A school in CA would discount them just like they would a kid from NJ. Of course, State money is used on academic and athletic scholarships but the idea that State taxpayers are paying for foreign students is not exactly correct. LOTS of foreign students pay full freight especially at the Graduate and Professional level where they work on computer code and things like cancer treatments. ALSO - internationals are a huge plus to enrollment. Some schools would have an enrollment collapse without them. I think I discovered a few years ago that the US College with the most international students was USC - it's like 12,000 students. Google the NAIA mens All-American soccer listing and you'll see what I mean. There actually are not enough American students to fill all the seats at US colleges. Demographics and statistics suck sometimes.
@upprv - I think if you look at women's rosters overall Div 1 and Div 2 in the South and West US you'll find a lot of teams don't even have international players or they just have 1 or 2. And a lot of times it's a GK. Yes, the international players are maybe taking athletic scholarship money, but they're not stopping any domestic players from getting academic scholarship money. There seems to be a lot of internationals on the boys side.
All depends what you want from a College coach. Fans judge them on wins, losses and titles. Players and family judge them on a lot more than that.
I do not pay for Top Drawer information, so I do not know their rankings, but overall I agree with the 2022 data you have. On the basis of national team performance up until COVID in early 2020, Duke would clearly have the best class with 4 in the top 10. But remember that things change over 2.5 years, and by the fall of 2022 the list should look quite different. (But TDS tends to keep with its initial evaluations and is slow to make changes in its top 150 much less its top 10.) But I do believe that Mark potentially has the Number 1 player in the 2022 class in Olivia Smith. I watched some films of her as a fourteen year old and she has all of the tools and is a hard worker. By the time she matriculates she should have a bunch of caps with the Canadian senior women's team. ...unless she fades as a late teen.... but I doubt that will happen. Cheers!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/so...for-the-future-of-canadian-soccer/ar-BB1dEpzv Some good highlights and interviews linked within the article. Ironically, she is not ranked in the 2022 rankings, although TDS lists her as a 4Star.