The 2023 U-17 Player Pool Thread

I agree with a lot of this.

I think Philly has done a great job with their academy production in recent years, but I’ve been very disappointed in how they’ve utilized their ‘06 age group. They had Francis playing as a defensive midfielder (which I believe he played before he got to Philly), and then they moved him to striker halfway through last season. You are right about the errors he makes, but he’s also 15 years old, and some of these kids are very raw. I also think he’s excellent at winning the ball back. Having technique and defensive ability gives him high potential as a #6. I didn’t understand moving his position. He’s not a speedster 1v1, and lacks striker instincts.

I also didn’t like how they moved the position of Matt Routzahn from CF to CM. I thought he was the top CF in the age group a year ago, and now I don’t know where to slot him or what position to slot him at. I didn’t like the idea of moving Perez into midfield either. CB suited him a lot better. I think you let him play that position until he physically cannot keep up, if that ever occurred. Maybe he grows to 5-11/6’0 and his height isn’t a problem. As a CM, I think he’s very average.

That’s probably three of their best four prospects in their ‘06 age group that they’ve changed their position and it’s not been successful IMO. Darboe should pan out, but what about after him? I think Zielinski and Rick are good prospects, but neither are so great. Medrano has a chance to make it, and Andrus might also, but I’m a little disappointed in their utilization of some of these kids.

As to Heard, I agree. I think he has some obvious talent, but the performances are not as good as the talent level dictates. I’m not sure at this point that he’s a YNT level player. I think his prior reputation still has a lot of influence. I’m not sure though that he’s developed as well the last few years as what most of us believed his initial potential was. He still could make it, but I’m not sure he’s one of the top 30-40 06’s.

 

As far as NYCFC goes Mark Cajamarca and Christian McFarlane, I believe both have been injured for some time now. Alex Hauschild should have been called up, he's a great LCB but he has not been a regular starter with NYCFC U17 this year as their CB position is stacked with talented players that are slightly older than he is.

 

Do you guys think
A) the best talent is clearly and overwhelmingly funneling to the mls academies?
B) scouting is so limited due to Covid/usynt coaching carousel that picking almost solely from MLS academies is just easier?
C) the usynt wants all talent to feel the pressure to be at an MLS academy so they pull almost totally from there as a nudge to get kids there?
D) there’s just very few good kids at non MLS clubs?

 

What Dave said...................plus I think kids at certain MLS academies are the most scouted and most visible. If you're at Philly right now, you're going to be seen and scouted. If you're playing at Waco United you're not going to be seen as much. Particularly with so many high visibility youth tournaments being cancelled over the last two years.

I always come back to the long, long, long, long list of USMNT-caliber guys who had no involvement with the U17s for a variety of reasons. Being excluded from the U17s doesn't mean anything. Maybe the poster children for that right now are Chris Richards and Brenden Aaronson. I'm sure people can scroll thru all of the other names. Matthew Hoppe. Miles Robinson. Tanner Tessmann. Paxton Pomykal. Caden Clark. And on and on.

There's a real tendency to overanalyze when it comes to U17s and below. I know that's the whole point of these threads.

 

A big part of the original Development Academy was to create a funnel of talent. I know a lot of folks think the ideal setup for US Soccer is to scout far and wide, identifying talent no matter where it is and being completely ambivalent to the team the player is playing for.

But that's not ideal for two reasons. It's actually ideal to funnel your talent to less teams and then have those teams play each other.

One, from a scouting perspective, it is far from efficient. It's a massive country, and resources are not unlimited. Paying someone to watch every team isn't feasible, and evaluations should be done over a series of games.

And over a series of game against as consistently high competition as you can. Which isn't going to happen if everyone plays on their childhood club.

Two, from a developmental perspective, you want the best playing the best. One of the biggest challenges in US player development is how far a team has to travel to play a quality opponent. If there are five top youth teams in your city, everyone is going to get better. Our talent is increasing, but it isn't geographically dense.

So yeah, you actually want the talent to move into clumps. Better players in practice, better players in games.

That's the DA Model, and then USSF abdicated it to MLS Next. I know a lot of people object to MLS, but the academies are free, professionally coached, have amazing facilities, provide a path to pro, and can practice with the first team. They are the best options to create the funnel around.

And there's plenty of non-MLS academies in MLS Next, and I'm sure US Soccer and MLS will find a way to play and scout USL Academies even if there's not full integration.

Are the best players in MLS academies? I suspect a lot of them are, and at the same time I suspect there's plenty of good players that aren't or will improve enough to be included someday. But good players should try to at least move to MLS Next, because that's where the scouting SHOULD occur and will occur, and in the end, that's probably the best developmental situation.

Yeah, that's why it is right this U17 camp doesn't feel like a "Top 36 but rather a 36 of maybe the Top 100 with a West Coast Slant."

And that's probably right. It will not surprise me to see a Texas-based camp and an East Coast camp in the 6-12 months.

 

Is Diego Roccio the only 2007 on this list? I feel like I'm missing someone. I saw no Turner or Macfarlane.

 

On the final list, yes. Turner and Perez were initially thought to be on the roster. It’s not clear exactly why they didn’t make it to this press release.

 

It seems you have deep knowledge of the teams other than DC United 06. As a team sport, Soccer is not very objective when evaluating a good player, it is more subjective compared with the individual sports like track and field, swimming or tennis etc. Different people have different opinions when selecting a good soccer player in the young age.

From watching the DC United 06 team more than 3 years, I can say that the team has 2 top talent Middle Fielders (including Gavin Turner). Gavin's parents (my good friends) and I called them 2G for short, The other G player, the team engine (from the view of many parents in the team), was just back to the field last month after 5 months of injury recovery since April. He only played a short game (20 minutes) in the whole five months before he attended the 06 YNT ID session in Philly last month. However, he still showed he is one of the few best middle fielders in the region. I watched the whole id session, my feeling is that overall he even did a better job than some of the middle fielders from Philly Union, Red Bulls and PA Classics in the region, for example, Alex Perez and Luke Zielinski. For the YNT id session in Philly in April, the other G player is the only 06 CM selected from DC United and unfortunately he missed it due to the injury.

The unlucky thing is that he missed five months of critical time for the YNT selection this time and it is also a really hard time for him watching his team losing the games (especially the quarter final with NE Revolution in the MLS Next Cup in Dallas four months ago), and he couldn't do anything but sit in the bench to watch. The good thing is that he can play soccer in the field now, his puberty is started recently and his physical is catching up (His physical testing result is No, 3 in the team which was measured a few weeks ago)

What I want to say here is that 2G is the two players DC United really wants to develop in the middle field because both of them have showed high potentials in different aspects for the last few years.

 

Where the best development happens?? Don't even know where to begin with a statement like this given the actual facts...what is this statement based on?

 

For Jaden Francis, I have a friend and his son is Jaden's teammate in FC Delco. He told me that Originally Jaden played the #6 holding mid position in the FC Delco team, however he didn't do a good job at the position, although he has a big body and good technical skills, his playing style is not tough enough to play the position, and also his decision making is not quick enough to distribute the ball faster, so the coach moved him to the #10 attacking mid position before he joined the Philly Union. DC United 06 has similar player like him and the DC United coach did the same thing as the Delco coach. I saw Jaden play a lot of Futsal games and he is a really good technical player. So, I am thinking #8 or #10 position may be good for his style.

For Alex Perez, i agree with you as long as he can reach 5'11 to 6' in the future as a CB. However, I am not positive about it due to his early puberty. That might be the reason why the club move him to the middle field.

For the root cause why the Philly Union treats players like this, I can think of two reasons -

1. Their 06 middle fielders are not talent enough, so they keep testing players to find the best combination.

2. For the top players from the club's evaluation such as Alex Perez, Luke Zielinski, CJ, Bajung, Gael, the club needs to move other players to give these players slots to develop.

For the current Philly Union 06 players, I still think their middle fielders are still weaker than the DC United 06 middle fielders because Philly Union 06 team doesn't really have a top #6 holding mid player to move the ball more smoothly and faster. DC United 06 has good #6 players and is weak at front line compared with Philly Union. I am thinking maybe move CJ to #6 position is a good solution to make their middle field stronger and move ball more faster and smoothly. I saw CJ play as CM in PDA club and he is a smart CM.

 

I agree with you. Many talent players in this age are still in the early stage of puberty, some players even haven't started the puberty yet. How to evaluate a player with fully puberty and a player without puberty yet? it is too early to evaluate it except some genius.

 

The actual facts do seem to be that professional academies do provide the best development overall.

It's pretty logical that a program which has development (not winning as the sole goal), has a strong financial incentive, has professional coaching as well as access to first team training, top notch facilities would in general be better than other programs. It's not to say all professional academies are always better than all other programs, but there's a lot of reasons why the pro program should be better, even before you get to better teammates, better access to competition, etc.

And the output seems to bear out.

Do you have data to the contrary?

 

I won't pretend to have nationwide knowledge of the strength or weakness of the striker position in the 06 age group, but if it is as thin as indicated in this board, I am still surprised Axel Kei wasn't selected. There was a comment about him several pages back that asked whether his success is due to being an early developer. I very much respect that question and mindset, I see far too many kids scouted where early development makes them look better than they are (and then they flatten out in a year or two). But, while this may or may not be the case with Axel, I believe these rosters are shaped with a view towards winning an event like the U17 Youth World Cup. I have seen Axel play multiple times this fall, and he isn't just a beast who can run past lesser developed defenders. He has some deficiencies in his game (analysis by some well-versed players who have played with him), but he is far more impactful than some of the other front-line players on this roster.

 

For those who really nerd out over these things (and honestly if you don't then what are you even doing here in this thread?) you can find many of Barcelona's Cadete A full matches on youtube. Adrian Simons Gill is in the 10 shirt here:

 

A reasonable suggestion (not that I've studied this) is that high-level youth programs might like to produce pro prospects, assemble high-performing teams, and generally "develop players" over time, to varying degrees. It seems logical and a professional club should be more concerned with the first, generally, than other clubs. If you believe that, and you ran a pro academy, you might put a larger emphasis on things like recruiting and scouting, which is not to say other types of clubs don't do those things too, along with development and coaching.

I could see there being a way to study this (maybe examining the origins of players on top-level youth club U17 rosters over time or something) and... I'm not gonna do it! Maybe someone already has?

 

Please name the MLS clubs that are regularly developing (not recruiting) and playing young players? Simply because the majority of the best players in the country find their way to MLS clubs doesn't make them the best developmental environments. Recruitment doesn't equal development. There are 10-15 MLS academies I would never send a player. There are 4-5 MLS Academies that I would only send a U19 or older player because they have only shown to be successful with older players that typically come from outside of their market. There are 1-2 MLS Academies that I would say you need to send a player at U15 or younger.

Look at the list of homegrown players. Research how long the average amount of time these players spent in an MLS Academy and it is no higher than 2 years. Then take a look at the positions that are typically signed to Homegrown deals. Defenders coming out of MLS Academies don't typically do well. The young defenders that are doing well in MLS come from youth academies more often than not.

My point with all of this is that in this country this is a nuanced discussion. Outright saying that the best development happens at MLS Academies is categorically untrue. There are youth clubs doing a fantastic job in this area as are some MLS clubs. There are youth clubs that are doing a crap job at this as are some MLS clubs. I will agree that there is a point (meaning age) where the top players need to be in an environment where they can have access to a first team. But being held up at an MLS Academy whose 1st team's roster composition philosophy does not rely on the academy is not helpful to a young high potential and I would argue that the MLS Academies have been more guilty of ruining high potential talent in year's past than helping.

 

If Timbers are to be believed, Dunne was supposed to be on the final roster but couldn't go due to injury

Congrats to #TimbersAcademy players Milo Wray and Michael Dunne for their call-up to the U.S. U-17 National Team!

Details: https://t.co/LzfGeouZUy | #RCTID pic.twitter.com/4jAX99gshb

— Portland Timbers (@TimbersFC) October 30, 2021

 

Not this old trope again. Recruiting is an important part of development, playing against other teams of top talent is an important part of development, having top resources is an important part of development, prior to covid top teams can travel internationally and have teams travel to them, top teams have top prospects train with first teams, top teams can hire top coaches....all around improving everyday. At some point in your early to mid teens top players have to move to get to first team professional football. Development doesn't happen in a vacuum unseen. You have to convince MLS academies you are good enough to join them to ultimately get to first team football.
If not you're just on the internet telling everyone how much better a player you are than all the MLS academy and first team players.

 

Again, please show me the list of MLS Academies producing pro players year over year for their 1st team...There is very little of what you said that I would argue with, but there are less than a handful of MLS Academies that are using these supposed greater resources, coaching, competition with the end result being players for the their 1st team.

This is a nuanced discussion. In some parts of the country, 100% the MLS Academy has the best development, but there are vast parts of the country where this is not an accurate statement and that's been my point from the very beginning.

I'll choose to step out and go back to lirking. I've made my point and as per usual no one is going to change their mind on a subject based on some anonymous ramblings on a message board (including myself)

 

It looks like the FMF Twitter account posted a U17 roster with Fernando Delgado on it, then replaced it with one without him. They are having a camp in the same window. Chicago Fire's Celestino Vasquez is the only American listed.

 

I don't see anything wrong with both points on this thread. The best development happens at some MLS Academies and some MLS teams are doing zero development. It is obvious some non-MLS Academies are also producing top talent (Barca).

It would be great if every MLS team was like Philly. But I will say something nice about Garber and MLS here, they have certainly done more than enough to incentivize and mandate that clubs develop players. Have they done everything? Probably not (Homegrown territories), but they have certainly changed the incentives for developing and selling players immensely in the last three years.

I also agree that recruiting a 15 yo and developing them is important and how it happens around the world. Kids are too inconsistent in their development to identify every great 8 yo and work with them for 10 years. Even great 17 yo's don't pan out. Dortmund is thought of as a top development club, but most of their best players didn't get there until 16.

Recruiting outside the local area is a key and was an area some of the better youth developers, like RBNY, failed at for awhile.