one peak at the recent US u17 and there is one glaring thing that stands out like a sore thumb...no Atlanta United players. Further, our youth club has been floundering in the DA. And, we have seen no legitimate prospects coming up through the ranks. For a team that can pull 40-70k fans regularly; this is terrible. We need to seriously look at our youth development department and sort some things out.
Isn't this why we brought in FdB? I am not to concerned. You've got Bello and Vasquez on the 1st team. I don't care if we lose games, even by embarrassing scorelines, I just want us developing players. Anyone want to go to an AU2 game. I have free tickets.
I don’t know what he’s doing, granted it’s year one, but our reserves are an absolute dumpster fire. I mean we are being annihilated in every single game. I pray someone has the good sense to drop us down to League One because we are terrible.
I do think the drop would be a good idea. MLS2 teams are operating with a different emphasis vs other USL teams, since they're less concerned about end results and more about developing those 1-3 stars that have a shot at the varsity side. You obviously hope to win regularly but sometimes you're more prone to experimentation than fighting for every possible point. There's also a lot to be said about relative conditions. With Atlanta having just won MLS Cup and only changing 2-3 starting positions I would hope that the top 12-18 players are beyond what last year's academy produced. If we were Colorado I might feel differently. Also, it's not like the academy was starting with a raft of kids (or coaches) from La Meisa. They said from day one it might take several years before you regularly see kids capable of sustaining a pro career. Considering how little talent I see coming out of the academies of Arsenal, Bayern, etc, I'm not exactly panicking yet.
Players can develop only in the environment where they're competing. We started with a strong enough team that it's going to be difficult for a lot of academy players to come up thru the ranks. Carleton's from the area, but I think he'd have been better off with a club that wasn't trying to win anything. He'd have gotten more time, IMO. We are developing youth --Miles, Barco, and Bello are examples-- and those who prove to be better enough than the rest of the league to play for us will play for us. But no MLS academy is gonna produce the sort of players we're used to seeing in the Stripes.
With Nashville coming into MLS, and Charlotte hopefully coming in (although that is going to test my loyalties as I’m much closer to Charlotte than Atlanta) one has to wonder if Atlanta is going to face stiffer competition for scouting. Selfishly, I’d like to see Atlanta become the Real Madrid of MLS... signing the biggest and best players. And focusing on the glam. Meanwhile, Charlotte/Nashville follow the FC Dallas model, and bring up youths through the ranks.
I won't mind the glamour approach provided it comes without drama or prima donnas, but you need the academy to do well regardless to help pull the side through with the name brand players don't pan out. (You never know when that big money singing from, say, Argentina, struggles to perform.) Either way the thing that matters most is trophies.
My guess is, not really. MLS team scout nationally and internationally, just pay less than the destination clubs for our talent. I don't think our proximity to those cities will create any extra comp for players. In theory, we're competing against all 23 teams for talent (in reality, we're competing with about ten). Changing that number to 24 or 25 won't do much. I've been saying this for two seasons. It's one thing to focus on bringing up from the youth levels, but the reality is that that talent can be only as good as the talent they trained against and with. We have one title already because we have better players than MLS academies can develop. Gressel, as a former college player, is an outlier. So glad to see how he's stepped up. I know we're hamstrung by MLS' financial limits, but we can stay ahead of the rabble by using what money we can use. de Boer's success at Ajax is at least in part because they were still a big club despite not winning for w while before he got there. He may be a great developer, but he had game-changers coming into Ajax (relative to the Eredivisie). No US team has that. That said, there isn't much glam associated with any MLS team, not even ours... yet. But we should be able to distance ourselves from half the league on the weight of our money, and fill in the spaces with the talent we DO develop. Nashville has stated its plans already? We'll see how they do... Agreed. We got a glam manager, in the sense that he's famous and European. The spat against Pity was starting to look like that, and the "spoiled fans" comment wasn't wise, regardless of how it was intended. Yes, we should be in the mix every season. We're not like some of those other franchises we play against.
We are competing with them for Academy players though. I believe Atlanta has a region from which they can sign Academy players. Once Nashville and other southern cities join, that region will shrink.
Yeeeeaah, let's not get ahead of ourselves. If his progress parlays into even a partial collegiate scholarship at some point, I'd be over the moon.
Have to have high hopes and dad brag... I’ve got to say my daughter is 16. And I swore that any kid of mine would be obsessed with sports but I’ve raised the biggest dork on the planet lol. While she’s never going to be the most athletic, she has a 4.5 GPA and already taking college level courses.
Obviously a highly subjective topic for any ranking system but I don't disagree with the comments. Until the team knows how to take a great youth player and turn him into a bona fide first team regular then the academy isn't fulfilling its role. The good news is the local talent is there and in FdB they have a coach with insight on talent development.
I've not checked up on them in a spell, but have been busy with personal matters of late so maybe by the month's end I can investigate.
I’ll say this - Atlanta United has existed for seven years now. And not only have we not produced any quality HGP (it would be generous to say Atlanta developed Bello), but we are developing a very negative reputation of not being a good place for young, domestic players to play. If we don’t want to get left in the dust, we need to do more in this department.