How many college scouts are there? We've seen many examples of soccer players getting scholarships and entering the draft after a year or two. Jack Harrison springs to mind. Number of men's college soccer programs NCAA D1: 204 NCAA D2: 172 NCAA D3: 394 NAIA: 216 NJCAA: 291 Total: 1,277 Number of male scholarships per team: NCAA D1: 9.9 NCAA D2: 9 NAIA: 12 NJCAA: 18
How exactly do you bring in DA academies together to play against kids who can't afford pay to play? For starters they will need to play in a tournament and will need to travel to said place. How can they travel if they have no money? I get your point but the one doing the traveling will have to be the DA academies all over a state just to compete against kids who can't afford it.
I think the English There are 400,000+ kids playing at high schools. Let colleges focus on the suburbs and pro soccer teams focus on the cities. Of course the problem is most coaches are too busy trying to get their players' scholarships in other sports and NCAA rules are very restrictive.
...Make it local. Host sets of heavily localized tournaments that anyone can play in. Play them in the local sports parks in each town/city. I don't necessarily think it's always about the best, moneyed players, but the fact that players with no money aren't seen. Yeah, it'd be nice if we could see the best players with no money against the best players with money, but the fact is, we have theoretically millions of unregistered players who just play locally. They're not going to get the chance to travel around to play the best travel teams. It's going to have to be enough that a scout goes to those localized tournaments.
Why do they have to even play in travel tournaments? Playing 6-12 games in a weekend is NOT good for development. It also can have detrimental affects on the body as well, which can lead to injuries. A league format, where players practice and train during the week, and play a game on the weekend would be better IMO. This is largely what the DA structure is all about now. The Pay to Play Travel soccer clubs and format may be good for getting kids scholarship money, but it isn't the best way to develop talent.
Isn't this how local leagues operate? Practice during the week and play on the weekends. I've seen it done the problem is the "pay to play nay sayers" keep on insisting that in those leagues is where the best talent is. (Some even go as far as saying that the next big super star is playing everyday on the streets.) If that is the case how can you prove you are better if you don't compete outside of your city because of funds? In order for a team to travel they need money, without money you fall and play only against others in your local league, usually the same city. The US is a big country and if you want to be seen or find competition you need to travel otherwise you will be stuck.
Years ago when my sons played every pay to play team had scholarships for poorer kids to play for free. Sure some were missed but with MLS academies (except for DC apparently) free for all along with those other teams scholarship spots there should be plenty of free spots. Perhaps MLS teams could provide scholarships on other teams around the country for prospects they find who are too far or too young to play for an MLS academy. Supplement their satellite and main teams until kids get older. This could also perhaps be done in a deal with the NCAA but I'm not sure MLS teams would be interested in providing a scholarship for a player that's not good enough to get one from a college team on their own.
New landing page for US Soccer's Talent Identification Department. Not a lot here, to be honest. Pretty boilerplate stuff. https://www.ussoccer.com/talent-identification-scouting
I agree this would be ideal, but then there is the issue of rural areas where you often find isolated towns/cities between 2,500-50,000 that have a decent crop of players, but not enough to support league play without considerable traveling. Outside of metro areas or major population corridors the opportunity discrepancies are even more exacerbated with out any sort of pay to play traveling.
English youth competitions usually include two group games on the Saturday with the semis and the final, plus games for the losing teams on a Sunday.
As much of a bummer as it would be to be the overlooked Pele of north central Nebraska, odds and logistics make that a risk U.S. soccer is going to have to accept missing out on.
...because of the incompetent USSF and their corrupt SUM/MLS ponzi scheme conspiracy? Are you volunteering to organize one? There are 1,290 cities with populations > 25,000.
No. I'm not getting paid and I have no connections. I also know that USSF has not saturated the large urban communities with scouts, because people from LA, NYC, Dallas, Houston, and others from MSA's of millions of people, keep falling through the cracks. Start there, and keep going outward. I wouldn't mind outreach to 25K towns in Nebraska, but we don't have saturation in San Jose yet...
I don't know much about Nebraska, but you would think there would be a way for US Soccer to better support the state association to find a solution. To a certain extent, waiting for it all to come out of Chicago will not be the most efficient way of going about things. I know there is a huge range of competencies for state's that do have associations, but getting continuity across the country there would certainly appear to be a beneficial strategy.
I agree, but even then it makes more sense to prioritize likely areas over sparsely populated states with little to no soccer culture. Wyoming may produce the next Pulisic, but if that's the case, I kind of feel they may not have any problems getting lost in the crowd. Even the most inept state association should be able to handle that.
There are 285 cities in the US with 100K or more people. San Jose is ~1.3 million, Sf is ~1.1 million, and San Jose's most successful DA academy is probably.... Ballistic United, based in my hometown of Pleasanton, 45 minutes northeast from the Quakes, in a town of 65K. There are ~8-10 million people in the Bay Area depending on where you draw your lines, with the northernmost reaches (Tracy, Stockton, Concord, etc.) growing the most, particularly as the housing markets near the City push people out farther and farther. So, San Jose is going to have to extend their net out further and further to find kids. I'm going to err on the side of, they're not sending out 10 scouts to watch all the U10-U17 kids play in Stockton, for example. There's one club, Stockton Storm. I highly doubt the Stockton Storm have separated all of the wheat from the chaff in a city of 300K... Everyone always says this, but people and space are big deals. There are a lot of people, and lots of ground to cover.
I wasn't saying San Jose had enough scouts to scout the whole Bay Area. What I meant was that in addition to the 125 USSF scouts spread across the country you also have MLS scouts. So it's a hell of a challenge wherever you are based.
It is. I'm just saying, it's going to take a hell of a lot more people. When you said USSF had 125 scouts, it seemed to me like you thought that was a big number. It's not. It's a drop in the bucket on a national level. Then, looking at San Jose's theoretical scouting reach, MLS team scouts are woefully inadequate also. And we're just talking about registered players here, the kinds of middle-upper class kids that BigSoccer poo-poos, and that mainly go onto other sports or stop in college anyway. We haven't even scratched at the unregistered, underserved kids.
With all these Academy players (Richards, Soto, Mendez, Llanez, Booth, Duke, Ledezma) off to Europe for trials, my mind turns to scouting. How actively are these European teams (Gladbach, Bayern, PSV) scouting our Academy clubs? My guess is that the DA finals were pretty heavily scouted, which is probably why news of these trials/training stints are coming out now. Would be interesting to read more about Euro clubs and their scouting efforts in the U.S.
Good thread Niner! I think there is ample circumstantial evidence that the BL heavily scouts our kids. I agree that they are probably limited to YNT and DA finals apart from the clubs that have established US organizations. Back when Bobby was breaking out and Chicharito was selling sombreros for Leverkusen, BL clubs were not subtle in talking about a desire to break into the North American market. Plus, cheap untapped talent.
I believe I remember the head of USSF scouting saying that the BL scouts outnumbered American scouts 2:1 or something at the last Nike Friendlies. All sports teams are copycats. Only 5 teenagers had more than 20 appearances in the BL last year. Two of them were American and both were signed for free.