I did some number-crunching on the FIFA Reports from WC02 and WC98. I looked through the resumes for each player and noted their previous appearances in WC Finals, Olympics, WYC (U-20), and U-17 WC. (Note: a "player appearance" below is not quite the same thing as a "player who appeared." In the rare cases when a player appeared in an event more than once, I counted it as multiple appearances.) # of player appearances in the previous World Cup Finals WC02 -- 175 players from WC98 (20 teams) WC98 -- 156 players from WC94 (18 teams) These numbers are virtually identical, ~8.7 per team. Due to our youth build-up for World Cup 94, the US has had more returning players than most countries. In 1998, 13 players were returnees from WC94, the most of any country. In 2002, 11 players were returnees from WC98 (3rd), and 7 were returnees from WC94 (1st). Now that the Class of 94 has gotten old, we're unlikely to see many returnees next time. # of player appearances in Olympic Finals 02 -- 133 98 -- 121 At this level, there is only a slight increase. # of appearances at WYC Finals (U-20) 02 -- 137 98 -- 64 The numbers have more than doubled, fueled by teams like Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Portugal. They each had 11 player appearances at the finals of World Youth Cups. Without a doubt, their strong youth players helped fuel their qualifying success. # of appearances at U-16/17 WC Finals 02 -- 40 98 -- 16 At this level, the growth is even faster -- 150%. Although the raw numbers are still very small, let's remember that only 16 teams qualify for the U-17 World Cup. It's hard for a youth national teamer to qualify for this event. Even though the numbers are small, some of the players who do make it are exceptionally good. The following list of standouts accounts for half of the former U-17 Finalists who made it to WC02... Arg. -- Aimar, Gallardo, Veron Braz. -- Ronaldinho CR -- Medford Fra. -- Petit Ita. -- Buffon, Coco, del Piero, Totti Jap. -- Inamoto, Ono Nig. -- Babayaro, Kanu Port. -- Figo, Abel Xavier Sp. -- Casillas, Xavi USA -- Beasley, Donovan, O'Brien, Reyna One other thing that I learned is that exceptionally good youth teams do carry over to the senior level. Uruguay's U-20's made it all the way to the championship game of the 1997 WYC, and that team provided a whopping *7* members of its 2002 WC squad.
The numbers have indeed gone up quite a bit for the U17 and U20 levels, however, could you sort the data so that we can compare it to the total number of players that participated at the WC? Using that formula we could find out what percentage of player participated at the youth national team level and what percentage did not. If you count multiple appearances of the same player, then that wouldn't accurately allow us to do the above calculation correctly.
Look at the professional player population of Costa Rica, Portugal and Uruguay also. That would partially explain also why so many of their youth players graduated to the senior team.
Re: Re: The Youth Explosion It's hard to compute this percentage accurately. You'd need to find qualifying rosters for all the teams that failed to qualify, and you'd also need to know each player's injury history. Once you've done all that, your conclusion will be the same -- the numbers are skyrocketing. This is important news. In the past, we've looked at bleak youth team numbers and concluded that a program like Bradenton can only have limited effectiveness. However, Bradenton-like programs around the world have made dramatic improvements. Donovan and Beasley are not an isolated case.
Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion I'm only talking teams that made the World Cup finals, not in qualifying. I also didn't understand why you placed 20 teams next to 1998 and 18 teams next to 1994. Who said Donovan and Beasley were an isolated case? I think what people are saying is that if you take 120 kids and train them like the U17s are trained, that you'll get a lot more Donovan, Beasley, Convey, Quaranta and Johnson types. I think USSF is doing as well as they can with their resources. The situation is still not close to being ideal IMHO.
Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Bradenton programs can only have a limited impact. Take 120 kids and train them like the U17s and then you have a much larger pool of high quality. The competition between them leads to a higher standard. It's really not that difficult to fathom. More numbers in=more numbers out. I think people criticize Bradenton programs because it only hits a small percentage of total youth players. Bradenton works, but only for a small number of players. It may in the end propel us on to winning a World Cup, but we're going to have to have to be lucky with regard to injuries. USSF has realized that it's beneficial to have more players in the system. Otherwise, why would they have added more players to the Bradenton set-up?
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion There were 20 countries that were involved in both the 1998 and 2002 World Cups ...
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion There's a dirty little secret here: only a tiny percentage of all youth players matter to the national team. The rest are just training fodder. If we can bring together our 15 best prospects each year, we should be able to develop on average at least 3 of them. After ten years, that'll give us 30 fine players in their 20's. Add in a handful of Zak Whitbreads who develop without USSF input, and even though it's not perfect, it's good enough. Think about it this way: Bradenton has already missed out on Danny Karbassiyoon and Alecko Eskandarian. They're both impressive young prospects, but how much do they matter to the senior national team? Will they beat out Donovan, Quaranta, Johnson, Adu, and the future Bradenton forwards? As you've said elsewhere, the key is finding future superstars. BTW, I do agree that it was important to expand the residency. In the past, it was essentially a program for even-year players -- great for 84s and 82s but not very good for 85s and 83s (e.g. non-resident Ricardo Clark). By adding more 87s to the 86s, we're developing odd-year players as well, the cream of a different crop.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion I agree to a certain extent. I just hope that we can avoid the injury bug--we have a long history of having our best players injured. Ramos, Wynalda, JOB, Reyna, Mathis, Wolff, etc. Isn't it actually about 3-6 players every two years? It was a great idea for them to expand training to the odd numbered years. Now hopefully they won't miss the next Conor Casey, Cochrane, Klaas, Grabavoy, Clark etc. just because they're born in a different year.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Yeah ... my projections already extrapolate to the situation where we're developing a full crop of players, both from even and odd years. As noted in previous discussions, residency has taken kids from an extremely narrow age range. It's not only a problem of even years. Apart from a handful of phenoms, residency has selected kids who were born in the first three months of the year. More attention is needed for kids with birthdates from April to December. Ricky Lewis and David Stokes were born in mid-1982, and they didn't advance beyond ODP regional teams. Who was selected ahead of them? Defenders Greg Martin (born Jan 5th) and Kellen Kalso (born Jan 16th) were. At that age, a few months can make a big difference in a kid's development. If our scouts had taken that difference into account, they might have made better decisions.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion You are correct. Our player pool for 2010 is shaping up nicely. Consider how many players we'll have that can play central/holding/attacking mids that have turned pro since '99. I'm a little concerned about the defensive side of the ball but we've got some late blooming defenders in the pool who should be good into their thirties (32). And this is NOT including the current residency players, or the ones that will follow in 2005 and 2007. I'm not so sure that the 2007 residency players will be available for 2010 though. Competition will be fierce.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Despite my general optimism about the Bradenton framework, I'm concerned about the defense, too. The problem of age bias applies especially to defenders because scouts want defenders to be physically big and strong. Here's the age breakdown for the current residents (omitting Adu). Only one of our 15 defensive players was born in the second half of the year, and he was born July 10th. IMO, that points to a big hole in our scouting. Jan 86,87 - 6,1 Feb 86,87 - 1,3 Mar 86,87 - 5,1 Apr 86,87 - 3,0 May 86,87 - 1,0 Jun 86,87 - 1,1 Jul 86,87 - 1,1 Aug 86,87 - 1,0 Sep 86,87 - 0,0 Oct 86,87 - 2,0 Nov 86,87 - 1,0 Dec 86,87 - 0,0
That might be slightly exaggerated because the first U-16 WC was in 1985, and there were plenty of players at the 1998 WC who had never been eligible for a U-16/17 WC. Have you done any research on whether the bias towards players born early in the year carries over to the senior level?
The offensive players have developed a bit faster, but I see quite a few defensive graduates of Bradenton having a big impact in the next few years. Players like Onyewu, Spector, Owens, Marshall, Freeman will be the backbone of our defense within the next five years. I agree with the point that only a tiny number of players matter from each age group for the senior national team. If you think about it the senior pool at any given time consists of about 40 players. Their age distribution at any point will cover about 10 years. That means about 4 players per calendar year--roughly 1 starter and 3 backups--are what are needed for the senior team. My own observation is that of those 4 players per year, 2 or 3 are identifiable by the time they are 17. Which leaves room for only 1 or 2 "late bloomers" per birth year.
Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Good comments ... somebody once posted a link to an academic paper that shows how the early-year bias persists in different countries. The results are striking. In addition, I have MLS player data that shows a sawtooth pattern between alternating years of birth. Going all the way back to players born in 68 (the start of the U-16/17 WC), even-year players have been better. I'm not sure why this pattern is so strong. Regarding your other comment, you could balance things out by omitting pre-1989 appearances from the 2002 analysis. If you do that, I believe the numbers are 38-16, leaving out Medford and one other player. Another concern with my data is whether FIFA's tracking has improved. In compiling the numbers, I found three errors in their report, so there are probably more.
Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Beineke -- Very interesting analysis on your part. Thanks for sharing this. By the way, I agree that the key thing is to develop one to three "star" players every year through our development process, and we can field competitive WC teams for the foreseeable future. I would add to that we need to continue to have a 1st divisions professional league so that this pool of players can continue to get top training well into their late 20s. On the age bias article, here's the link. http://www.psychologie.uni-bonn.de/sozial/forsch/ageeffx.htm This is a very well done study, and the evidence is quite compelling on the "systematic discrimination" against kids born later in the competition year. They studied professional leagues in Germany, Brazil, England, France, Australia, Japan and found that an abnormally large percentage of the current professionals were born in the first few months of their youth age group, with an abnormally small percentage born late in the year. Reason is simple. Coach looks at a group of little kids, says I'm going to pick the best players out there because they are the "prospects." They tend to be fairly old for their age groups, because a few months make a big difference among kids. These chosen kids not only retain their relative age advantage throughout their youth soccer years, but they get the better coaching, positive reinforcement, etc. so that the early decision to label them as "better players" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A perennial debate at the old CNN/SI boards was whether or not the US' success in youth cups meant anything for the future. So I decided to try to look at the issue objectively, in a similar vein to what beineke did. I went to the FIFA site and wrote down which nations did well at youth tournaments. Then I checked how those teams did when that age cohort was in its prime. I compared within confederations, since it's hard to compare a strong US youth team to a contemporary strong Argentinian youth team or French youth team, because US players would hit a development roadblock pre-MLS. And there was a correlation. While many of the players would change, in general, a strong youth team was good news ~8 years down the road. Nations would make qualify for the World Cup, or succeed in continental championships. One example I can remember is Germany...look at how (W. & E.) Germany youth teams were performing in the early 80s to the late 80s. Then compare the seniors' results from the early 90s to the late 90s. The arguments against their being a correlation tended to focus on the low number of players who impacted at both levels. But that wasn't really the question. The question we were talking about was whether the US' success at the youth level was a harbinger. My supposition is that it's about conditions...whatever conditions there are in a nation that gives it a strong youth team, also gives it a strong overall pool in that age cohort. So while many of the specific players wouldn't carry over, because they just wouldn't improve, the conditions create a large group of almost-as-good players. And from that large group, some of them will exceed expectations, and take the places of the disappointments. I would note that we were having this argument a few years back. The correlation among players seems to be higher now.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Off-topic somewhat, but I remember a few years ago reading of a school system that was enrolling kids in kindergarten every semester instead of every year. The plan was at some later point to get everyone on the same track. But the system avoided having kids who were 5 years 1 month in there with kids 6 years old. And I'm sure you know that alot of parents will hold their kids back if they're going to be the youngest kids...this split system prevents parents from having to make that decision. A simple yet brilliant idea. But my son was born in January, so f*** everyone else.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion Funny you should mention this, because the authors of the study also suggest a staggered system like this, with 6-month groupings, as opposed to 12 month. They note that it could be adminstratively cumbersome, but I think at younger ages, particulary u14 and below, it would make a lot of sense -- if you had enough kids to field teams. I have seen U14s who are shaving, and then others who still look like they're 10. I think one way to do it is to have a combination of age and height/wt. cutoffs. This way, an older kid who gives up so much size can play down a year, and he isn't getting knocked off the ball so much. By the way, in youth soccer, we are beginning to see a trend toward calendar year groupings, as opposed to school year. Super Y next season is going that route, as is the U14 Nike Cup. So kids who were born in August of the competition year -- early when you use school year -- now become DISADVANTAGED, as you move to a Jan 1 cutoff.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion This may be a good strategy for club soccer. Most of the other sports have age cut-offs that correspond to the school year. By using a different cut-off, soccer wouldn't have to go head-to-head for the same kids. (BTW, thanks for posting that article again.)
Re: Re: The Youth Explosion I agree with this 100%. This is part of the reason why people shouldn't get worked up if ODP "can't" scout properely. If a good player isn't part of the ODP regional pools or the USYNT's, it isn't necessarily because somebody missed him. Sometimes it is, but more often than not it's because the player isn't good enough, or is a "almost-as-good" player. There is nothing wrong with having a 30-man strong U23 player pool (or U20, U18, U17, etc) and a 30-man pool that is "almost-as-good". Of course than you have another group of 60 or so players that are behind the 2nd group. From these separate groups you'll find you 2-3 studs that make up the Senior Nats. It's these 120 players that need to be on MLS U19 and U17 squads - but of course you all knew this.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion An intelligent point. You're correct, we only need a couple of national-level players for each calendar year. Two questions - 1) What percentage of potential U.S. national team players are in the 25-30 kids who are selected for Bradenton? Forget the training ... I'm just trying to get at the accuracy of talent identification. 3) With those kids who do have national level talent but who fail to be selected for Bradenton, how much are they handicapped? If the answers to these questions are "a high percentage" and "not much," then I agree with you, our program is in decent shape. However, if the answers are something like "30%" and "a great deal," then we're leaving a whole lot of talent on the table.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion These are problematic points. Our system certainly has the potential to get stronger if our youth clubs and talent identification improve. Still, there are two mitigating factors... 1) We have talent to burn. With millions of kids playing soccer, there is abundant raw ability. What we need is to transform that talent into a collection of good professionals who know how to work together. 2) The better the prospect, the easier to identify. In 2002, we only had 4 former U-17's on the team. However, they were exceptional players -- Reyna, O'Brien, Donovan, and Beasley. (At one point, Mastroeni was chosen for the U-17 team, too, but he couldn't participate due to citizenship issues.)
A number of people have commented about the birthdates of players and where they are in the year and one or two have alluded to the problem, but I don't think anyone has hit it on the head yet... The problem is the difference between the calendar for club teams and for ODP / International teams. ODP and International are based upon the calendar year -- current U17's are all born in 1986 -- Jan 1 thru Dec 31. However, the club teams form their teams based upon the Aug 1 to Jul 31 calendar. So the current U17's are born Aug 1, 1985 to Jul 31 1986. So beineke, it's not an issue of first half of the year guys vs. second half of they year guys being older and stronger -- it's an issue of the guys born before Aug 1 having 1 more year of playing experience. There is a pretty large step up in sophistication of the tactics of play from U14 to U15 -- particularly defensively. It happens gradually from U12 to U16, but that U14 to U15 jump IMO is the biggest step. So guys who are Aug to Dec 86's are playing U16 this year and only have 1 year of experience at the older level and the guys who were Jan to Jul 86's have 2 years. That makes a big difference in their ABILITY -- and so it directly affects the number of those Aug to Dec birthdate kids who MAKE their state's ODP teams to get into the system. The second problem is a scouting one -- if you are scouting players outside of the states' ODP systems for inclusion into regional and national teams, where are you scouting. If you're looking for kids who could be added into the U17 program next year, you're looking at this year's U16 teams -- so you're seeing kids born Aug 86 to Jul 87 -- and only looking at the Jan to Jul 87's. There are just too many teams out there to be also scouting the U15's for those Aug to Dec 87's. Also, as I stated above, it's their first year at the next level up and they aren't going to look as good anyway.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Youth Explosion My belief is that it's closer to the latter than the former. I don't think it's quite that polarized, but I'm of the opinion that once we get our youth teams playing on the same calendar year as the International teams, we'll do a better job of scouting and selecting.