YNT-eligible MLS players: 2021 In-season thread

It's fun that a Canadian team is becoming rehab central for young Americans.

 

I don’t think MLS will be selling many players to Portugal in upcoming years.

Boavista have still not paid FC Dallas for the transfer of Reggie Cannon, per sources. Cannon joined Boavista a year ago, after incentives the fee hit $3.25m.

Boavista have also yet to pay Houston Dynamo in full for the Alberth Elis deal, which was around $1m. Not great.

— Tom Bogert (@tombogert) September 24, 2021

 

Zanotta is apparently on his way to Portugal according to Buzz..................................

What a mess.

 

probably should skip portugal and go right to switzerland?

 

For all that he's supposedly done I'm not too upset to see him leave. I've been underwhelmed by his foreign signings and now that there's a blueprint and FCD has a good reputation getting top dollar for sales shouldn't be too hard either.

 

is he on his way to portugal for a new job or to get his money

 

Hard to squeeze blood from a stone. Boavista didn't have money then and doesn't have money now. They'll only get paid if they're sold. So how that works out with Boavista wanting top dollar and FCD and Houston just wanting their portion, I have no idea.

I just don't know what he could do going over there to talk about it. So I assumed a job, but honestly hell if I know.

 

# of homegrown players signed by American MLS clubs:

'01 (21): Bassett, Roberts, Akanyirige, A. Reynolds, McCue, Haak, D. Ochoa, C. Duke, Campbell, Berhalter, N. Slonina, Vint, Palomino, B. Duke, Bender, Turner, Pulskamp, Conway, Larraz, Harriel, K. Rad
'02 (23): Busio, Bello, Alvarez, Fuentes, Anderson, Yow, Gray, Ocampo-Chavez, Dunbar, D. Rivera, Tolkin, de Vries, Atencio, Dobbelaere, Redzic, Fray, Saldana, Jasson, Sulte, B. Davis, Farnsworth, Thompson, J. Davis
'03 (30): Nyeman, Sealy, Pepi, Cowell, Leyva, Freeman, T. Wolff, Gutierrez, Casas, Monis, Sunderland, Paredes, Che, Perez, Halliday, Garcia, Walls, Ordonez, Greene, Smith, Rios, Azcona, Neal, Ferkranus, Weah, W. Rivera, McGlynn, Aaronson, Pierre, Garay
'04 (16): G. Slonina, A. Rodriguez, Duenas, Leone, Torres, Emmings, Morales, O. Wolff, Yapi, Toure, Castilla, Williams, Craig, Sullivan, Dewsnup, Cisneros
'05 (3): E. Ochoa, Valencia, Baker-Whiting
'06 (1): Estrela
'07 (1): McFarlane

The reason I think this is important to track is because it's important to have more players each age group filtering into the system of the domestic first division. US Soccer needs MLS to be successful. We can have some success sending Pulisic/McKennie/Sargent/Hoppe/Reyna through European academies, but without a successful domestic first division, we will be a lot worse. Someone can check this, but I think there are probably about 50 players in these age groups in the domestic first leagues in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. If we count Canadian academies, the numbers would be higher, but I'm a fan of the USMNT, not MLS.

There are two players I'm not including, Aziel Jackson and Aidan Morris. The reason I'm not including them is because I think their signings don't demonstrate homegrown signings. They aren't lesser players because they aren't homegrown signings, but should be viewed differently. These guys had another stop after academy football before signing a pro contract with their MLS team. Jackson played with a lower division pro team in France, and Morris in college. There will likely be players in upcoming years with similar routes, but most will not.

If the goal is to get to 50 players per age group (eventually a little less than 2 per academy), I think the numbers show that we are not able to reach that number, but should be within about five years. The 01's and 02's will fall significantly short of that number. They probably won't even reach half of it. The 03's will likely get close to it. They may even reach it, but '03 is our best age group. The best age group can't be used as the average. The 04's are off to a good start, but will not reach 50. The 05's are not off to a good start. Too early to tell about '06 and '07, but they will likely be a good test point in a few years for how close we are to reaching 50.

The newer MLS academies (FCC, Miami, Nashville, Austin, LAFC, Minnesota, Charlotte, St. Louis, Sacramento) will be important towards hitting 50. We currently get very little from those academies. If we are getting something from all 27 American MLS clubs, I think we'll hit 50. That is probably about five years away. Sacramento (or another city) as the 27th club won't even be starting until 2024 at the earliest, so they can't be asked to contribute to that number any sooner than 2024.

 

Not to knock your point or anything, minor nitpick. Berhalter also played for a season in college if that is your metric for being on or off this list.

 

You’re right, so he’d be another player that shouldn’t count. He went outside the system and then came back in, while still being classified as a HG. I don’t think those players should be included.

I could also understand if someone said the guys who played in academies outside of the USA shouldn’t count, but IMO it’s close enough that I’d include them. If someone else wouldn’t want to, I see why they wouldn’t.

 

I think if players are still U20 eligible when they sign their HG deal should count. Its not like we are talking about draft picks that are 22/23/24. For the most part I think one fall season in the NCAA's doesn't hurt these players' development much if they are signed to HG deals after that first semester.

Obviously this is your list so you can do whatever you want. Historically we see a lot of HG deals around this time of year when the DA season started and some players show to be clearly above the U17/U19 level. Alternatively some teams tend to evaluate and sign players when the academy (and MLS) season is over and they evaluate their top performers and plan their first team roster for next season. This is just to say I would expect more 03/04s to be signed in the next 3-4 months. How many would you expect?

 

I agree that a year or two of college soccer doesn’t doom the career of a player. My whole point though with this is that the optimal path is a smooth one where a player is playing in an academy of an MLS club for a few years before going into that team’s U-23/USL team, and then to the first team. They could also skip that step, but most don’t. I think that is a very repeatable path to success for kids growing up in this country, and we should be trying for about 50 of those guys per age group. That will produce us a lot of good players.

Players will emerge from different paths or take slight deviations from that path, but I don’t think you can sell these other paths as highly repeatable. Larraz is another that some might not include. He left Colorado and played for Duisburg’s academy, but I think Duisburg is an environment I’d trust over College Soccer or independent USL clubs. I’d rather not quibble with anyone over a few players to include or not. We need about 50 of these players per age group with a highly repeatable path into our domestic first division. That will bring us a lot of success.

As for your question, I think you are right that we will see many more ‘03 and ‘04 signings. I think we’ll probably see another 10-20 03’s sign, and another 15-30 04’s sign. I’m a little worried with the lack of ‘05 signings. I didn’t go back and look at exactly how many 01’s, 02’s and 03’s were signed at the current age of the 05’s, but I suspect it was more than 3. There’s not going to be much to talk about with the 05’s in this thread in two years if there are only 15 total signings. That’s the age group that we need to see some substantial development this season.

 

Lots of kids on your list are currently playing with the USL teams or only getting spot minutes for the first team, not functionally all that different from their teammates on the reserve teams who don't have the first team contract but may get one if MLS relaxes their roster rules for MLS Next. We'll find out this winter, but expanding the first team roster rules, would go a long way to increasing (maybe just inflating) the raw numbers of players with a pro contract.

 

17-year-old @GabrielSlonina has now faced the top 3 teams in the East...

He's turned in a clean sheet twice 👏 pic.twitter.com/Y8mIVwqWrx

— Chicago Fire FC (@ChicagoFire) September 27, 2021

 

It just depends on the situation.
One can make a case that going to an elite NCAA program for a year is better than the reserve squad at some clubs in MLS. I don't have an issue with what Reggie Cannon did, for instance. Played the academy season, played the fall semester in the NCAAs, and then signed a homegrown deal. Started with the first team in training camp the following spring. I mean, he was still only 18.

But again, it depends on the club and depends on the ceiling of the player.

 

In that same vain going to the NCAAs likely would've helped a guy like Jose Gallegos; he likely would've gone and played ACC soccer for a semester before getting a GA deal rather than being one of the guinea pigs of independent USL clubs.

 

I think producing 50 quality prospects is the right goal.

The majority of those will always gravitate towards MLS, but there will also be the outliers who play a year (or three) of College Soccer or sign with a USL club or go to Europe.

MLS will sign plenty of youth players that are worse prospects than Aiden Morris and ideally Robbie Robinson would have signed with Charlotte FC at the age of 17 and Daryl Dike would have went to YSC and Philly Union for HS, but those are all still quality prospects in their respective year. This doesn't mean the Eddie Munjuma is a quality prospect because he isn't in my opinopn, but the main goal should be producing 50 high quality guys a year regardless of path.

Right now though if I was a prospect signing with MLS looks a lot more attractive as a US prospect that any other avenue with the very rare exception of the super high level prospects that can almost walk into the first team of a Top 5 league.

 

Maybe...Gallegos is playing at a USL-C level, which is better than College Soccer, but I think the simplest answer might just be that Gallegos just isn't that great. 4 goals and 3 assists in almost 1800 ( 2 goals and 3 assists in 1100 minutes in 2000). He doesn't seem to play a whole lot of defense.

I am sure that he is better than some of the players signed to HGP deals and players selected a GA players and ideally he would be on an MLS team, but my expectations for him are not that high notwithstanding the one big performance in the friendly.

 

I was looking at his numbers recently. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt for some games he was played as a #8. You aren’t expecting as much end product from a #8. Even if you take those games out and assess his end product numbers, they aren’t that great. Middle of the league starter level. He has the raw talent to be one of the best players in USL, but I find that his decision-making in the final third shows up in those very average numbers. I’ve mentioned before that I think it was starting to become a problem, and I think it’s now a problem. If Gallegos does not make better decisions in the final third, his raw attacking talent will not matter and he will not turn into a NT player. Getting out of USL to a bigger league is already an obstacle, but it’s easier if you are one of the best players in USL. He still isn’t that, even if he’s one of the most talented attackers in the league.

 

And yet.... American Soccer Analysis thinks Gallegos is one of the best players in the league: https://app.americansocceranalysis.com/#!/uslc/goals-added/players

 

They also think Dewsnup and Rando are the two worst goalies in the league, and they are two of the best in the league.

I've mentioned before that I think it's a valuable tool to look at, but it can't be used as an exact measure of performance. Gallegos performs well in something like this because he does well in a lot of these categories like touches, dribbles, key passes that sound exciting on a tweet, but his end-product numbers are nowhere near where it should be. He's one of the most talented, so it doesn't surprise me a metric like that thinks he's one of the best, but I don't see how an attacker who doesn't produce goals/assists within the league could be considered one of the best.

 

I think of USL play for guys like Gallegos, Luna, etc. in the same vein as I think of USL reserve team players of MLS clubs. You should be playing at that level for 1 year if you're really an elite prospect. The way that Ricardo Pepi did. Or Tyler Adams. Or Gianluca Busio. Or Caden Clark. The list goes on and on. Some of those players like Busio were part time MLS and part time USL their first seasons. Got in higher level games on occasion plus USL play.

If you don't move quickly, then you're stalling at a pretty inferior level compared to your competition.

Gallegos had interest from MLS clubs at the academy level. Wasn't it the usual suspects that we heard were interested? SKC, FCD, etc.? So its not like he didn't have the opportunity. He chose the San Antonio route. And that's fine. But you can't stay at that level for 3 or more years. And we're seeing that stalling in his game right now. What are you learning from the coaching staff at San Antonio? As opposed to going to Houston and learning from a coach that's one of the best attacking midfield players in USMNT history? Just as an example.

What Jonathan Gomez is doing is great. I just don't know how likely it is for others to follow that path. The contract Jonathan was able to sign at Louisville was pretty unusual.

Anyway, I think as time goes on..................................there will be pathways that make more sense here. Particularly when and if the MLS U23 league starts firing on all cylinders. There will be contracts for players at that level that might be more flexible in terms of early Euro moves. And the USL will have to figure it out too.

 

This is an interesting topic of conversation that FCD fans have had circulating for a while.
The topic has reared its ugly head with NYRB fan groups voicing their frustration. Its awesome that MLS has become a "selling league" for young players Europe. That's what we all want. However, do we expect casual fans to buy into that? Those of us on this board do, of course. But that's not the problem a club like FCD has. Just read FCD social media comments sections. Its brutal. The average fan doesn't want the club to sell Pepi. He's under contract thru 2025 with an option thru the 2026WC. But they know they will sell Pepi. And Che. And the average fan had just gotten to know Tessmann and Reynolds. They weren't paying attention to them for years like we on this board were.

Until @MLS teams commit to retaining developed talent, in an effort to help them better compete in what should be the priority of any pro team, winning their league, then don’t expect fans (customers) to accept it, be happy with it, or support it. pic.twitter.com/Su2o6mRkFs

— Alexi Lalas (@AlexiLalas) September 28, 2021

 

I honestly think this topic missing the point completely. If MLS teams actually create an atmosphere where young players are held against their will and are - for lack of a better word - forced to stay in MLS till they win something, then all that will happen is the Pepi and Che's of the world just won't sign with MLS.

That's all there is to it, because that is the structure of the sport. It's obviously very difficult for a lot of Americans - especially casual sports fans - to accept, but we are not at the top of the food chain for this sport.

Honestly, the whole thing feels like college sports to me. Yeah I understand there are differences, but really the concept of losing your youngest, bestest talent early is common and does not damage fans' love for college sports at all. Like, Duke is Duke or Alabama is still Alabama even though their best talent will be gone in at most 4 years (1 year for basketball, I think they still have one and dones, right?).

 

It is definitely a problem.

I think the teams especially FCD can better manage it. If they reinvested the sales and replaced the losses and fielded a competitive team then fans would likely accept it. Fans would rather keep Pepi for 5 years, but if you replaced him with a stud then they would be OK with it.

FCD has also become a bit quick to pull the trigger and I not sure that it helps the players long-term and it doesn't help FCD in either the short or the long-term. Tessmann is an example. Did they really need to sell him mid-season for $3 Million. It isn't a large sum. He likely won't even play much at Venezia. I don't really see much of a benefit for either party. Che will likely fall into the same boat, but at least they will likely sell him at the end of the season.

There really isn't space in the American market to just be a selling club.

NY Fans are definitely not use to being a low-totem pole club and basically being the AA affiliate. I think both NY clubs due a disservice to those markets and by extensions MLS as a whole.

I think if MLS gets better and players stay a bit longer and players get sold and slot into the line-up of mid-table and above Top 5 league teams then it wouldn't be as big of an issue, but selling a player mid-season to Royal Antwerp. Got to be tough to swallow especially if it is frequent.