I did some digging on the Conmebol site and found the 2001 U-20 qualifying rosters, along with the 2004 U-23 qualifying rosters. Then I counted the number of players for each country who made both squads. Brazil - 3 Peru, Uruguay - 4 Chile - 5 Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay - 6 Bolivia, Argentina - 7 Venezuela - 11 Why is this interesting? By my count, 14 of the 18 members of the 2001 US U-20 qualifying roster are still in the running for our U-23 qualifying squad: Warren, Countess, Lewis, Donovan, Onyewu, Martino, Convey, Davis, Gray, Beasley, Carroll, Casey, Buddle, and Yi. Only Arena, Akwari, Salyer, and Trembly are out of the picture. IMO, this lack of new faces is cause for concern. Our situation is even more extreme than that of Conmebol bottom-feeders Venezuela. [Note that Concacaf 2001 squads were limited to 18 players; all other squads are 20 players.]
I don't think this is necessarily a cause for concern. This may not have anything to do with depth/quality of our youth squad or the inability of our coaches to scout new talent. It may actually be the influence of some other variable. The Sud Americans may have transfered to Europe after the U20 tourney, and their new teams may not have released them for this tourney. Or the U23 players may have been in Europe (or in 1st division of their home country) during the U20 tourney and not been released (remember how crappy the England team was in the recent U20 tourney). I think only 2 of the US possibles you list (Yi and Gooch) are not based in the US, and MLS seems to have much smaller (nonexistant) club vs. country conflicts. Also, I think you might be comparing apples and oranges when you compare Conmebol's set rosters to US players that are in the mix. I don't think every name you listed is a "lock" for the final roste4r, so that may have inflated the final count. The US youth system may have some problems, but, on the whole, I don't think this data is a strong indictment of our system.
I think the momentum of young US Soccer Players progressing to more senior US Teams like the U23s comes down to a couple of things: 1) We just don't invest in a large number of young players. The 40 (IIRC) kids in Bradenton have a leg up on their same-aged competition for years to come. They're the exclusive club that got quasi-professional training at the vital age range. When they leave Florida, every other kid in the country has a lot of ground to make up. Contrast that with the hundreds or even thousands of kids in professional environments in the countries of South America. These kids are on a more level playing field. It makes sense, then, that more frequent change occurs. 2) To some degree, I think it is a condemnation of our scouting system. US coaches are afraid to look outside the cozy confines of youth US teams. These kids are known quantities, and to a huge extent, the rest of the young players in this country are unknown. Because of this, a strong argument can be made that the most influential person in both US Soccer today and the US Soccer team 5-7 years from now is John Ellinger and his staff. I don't think MLS is much different. MLS coaches have pennies in their scouting budget. Reading Top Drawer Soccer this week, I was surprised at a comment that many coaches make decisions on players almost exclusively by what they see in the highly disorganized combine. That's it. The combine is their one chance to see kids in person. So that they are often afraid to take risks or gamble on a player is no surprise. When they do, it is often a local kid who they got to scout through proximity (I'm think Borchers in Colorado as one example, and Jamil Walker in San Jose as another). Anyway, I could be completely off-base, but I think these are two areas that help to explain the symptom described by beineke above.
I think Nutmeg is correct here. We simply do not have enough quality young players in a professional environment. That being said, I do think that we are somewhat different in that we DO seem to do a pretty good job of talent selection at the younger ages, and thus see more players, perhaps, move up the food chain than we see from other nations. The particular group is rich in talent: we have three players -- Convey, Beasley and Donovan -- who could play in any first division in the world, and will be fixtures on the senior men's team in the next cycle. Frankly, I think Edson Buddle is not that far behind. It's the "glass half full" perspective. The problem is, of course, that our margin of error is slim. A country like Brazil, with all of its youth development programs attached to clubs, can afford to have guys cycle through who, long-term, can't cut it. They're dealing with large numbers, and as evolution tells us, species with a large amount of offspring can afford to have many fail. But we don't have that luxury. We have to get it right, and get it right early. This is hard.
I think it's more than just a sheer lack of numbers. Another important factor we lack is a diverse group of people with varying opinions on who can and cannot play this game. A below average talent scout will occassionally have a more accurate evaluation of a player than the best scout in the country. What makes a great scout is not that he's always right, but that he's right alot more often than the average person doing the job. But that person is still sometimes right where the great scout is wrong. I'd like to see a system where different people, with different views on player development were assigned the same groups of players to pick through. In my opinion, this is the single most intriguing thing the prospective Chivas MLS franchise could bring to the table.
IMO, this is a nice point. A related phenomenon is that in many contexts (e.g. sports rating systems), "average" decisions tend to outperform any individual expert's. So just to echo what you've said, it'd be nice if our scouting decisions were built upon the perspectives of a variety of different individuals, in effect averaging them out.
To be honest, I think that we are jumping too quickly to the analysis part of statistics & analysis. I've been really impressed with the quality of postings in the other threads I've read on this forum, so I know that everyone here knows that correlation doesn't equal causation. I think that beineke (or someone) needs to account for the "third variable" explanation before completely trashing our youth system. I really don't think the rest of the world places as much emphasis on the youth (U-20) tourneys as USSF does. But I think the Olympics has cachet for everyone. That's why I'd expect more European-based stars on the U-23 teams than the U-20 teams.......do you have a link for your data source beineke? I can't promise that I'll have time for any analyses anytime soon, but maybe someone else can track things like this down.... I also want to say that I don't disagree with most of your analysis. I think we do need more and better scouts, scouting methods, and youth academies (eventually). I'm just not sure that this data provides strong support for that. Finally, for those interested in beineke's point about average decisions being better than expert decisions, here's a link to a page that has a pdf of a review of this literature (synopsis: for the past 50 years, pretty much every study has shown that statistical predictive techniques are better than experts' predictions): http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001558.html
Thx for the comments and the link. Data is on the Conmebol website and accessible by following links to the various events. It isn't hard to find. A few comments... (1) I disagree that South American feds or players take youth events less seriously. If anything, they're under more scrutiny. (2) My impression is that most South American countries do not have many European-based youth players. Heck, not that many of their senior internationals are European-based. I expect that Brazil is affected by the unavailability of some of its Euro-based U-23s, but IMO, this phenomenon is unlikely to have a noticeable effect on other countries' turnover rates. (3) The issue we're discussing -- lack of turnover in US soccer from one age level to another -- has been described anecdotally before. (I haven't seen any other side-by-side comparisons with other countries, though.) By no means is my data meant to be mathematical proof, but it does seem to follow the pattern. If you can make a case for a credible hidden cause (or show that this was a one-time occurrence), please do so. It'd be fun to hash over.
The roster for qualifying is now up, and there are 10 overlaps from 2001: Warren, Countess, Lewis, Donovan, Martino, Convey, Davis, Beasley, Carroll, and Buddle Two players off of the 22 man roster won't play (although I doubt most of these guys are in danger of that). So we're better with new blood this cycle than Venezuela, not quite as many new faces as Argentina. Interesting that two players that seemed locks for this roster (Casey and Gooch) weren't let go by their club teams.......
FTR, If we keep these ten, then we will have brought back 56% (10 of 18), versus Venezuela, who brought back 55% (11 of 20). [If we had been allowed 20 in 2001, Eskandarian would have been among them.]
Not to be too pedantic, but I think the final qualifying roster is actually 20 (the front page of the US soccer website has it as that, as do the posters on the youth nats forum), so we'd be at an even 50%.
The 2004 Concacaf roster is 20, but the 2001 Concacaf roster was 18, whereas the 2001 Conmebol roster size was 20.
I think Nutmeg got it right. When you have a small group of players receiving better training than anyone else, it makes sense that those players would continue at their high level compared to others. And theoretically, if you scouted perfectly, this wouldn't be a problem. But the fact is that some players are going to slip through the cracks and the more opportunities players have to play at a high level, the better.