Huh, old thread resurfaces. Regarding the location of academies... That doesn't make sense to me. Areas that have produced disproportionately high numbers of professional quality players will probably continue to do so, and areas that have produced practically nothing will probably continue to do so. Just as St. Benedict's Prep would no longer turn out professional soccer prospects if it relocated to Dubuque, dropping a single MLS academy in heartland USA will not reverse the demographic and cultural factors that favor places like LA and NYC. I doubt that facilities and coaching can accomplish great things in the absence of a ready supply of extremely talented and extremely committed young players. That's one reason I'm a bit skeptical about Friedel's new academy - why would you make an absolutely critical decision (academy location) on the basis of an apparently irrelevant factor (where Brad Friedel was born)?
Other than getting better trained players amongst the crop "failures", I'm not sure the Acadamies would affect the college game that much, IMHO. Would schools draw more fans with higher quality players (all American players)? Probably not, since most people that go to matches are there to support the school more than the product. Would there be a reduction in scholarships? I seriously doubt it. Would there be more media attention? It seems like there's been more attention paid to NCAA soccer in the last ten years than less, when the likes of a Donovan, Beasely, or Adu would have dominated the college game. It seems the biggest change would be to the relationships between college coaches and youth club/ODP coaches, but many probably feel that would be a good thing...
It's not a zero-sum game, though. Coming in behind LA is not the key factor for a club like KC, the only real factor that's important is whether you can develop players good enough to be transferrable commodities and thus profit from your system. A good chunk of Friedel's players aren't local, anyway. He's running a boarding program.
Yeah, I know... and from what I read on this thread, the process for recruiting non-locals seems a bit unconvincing. Either collegiately or professionally is a pretty low bar. Six players recruited based on one coach's local connections? Spotted playing pickup soccer in the streets? I know nothing about the actual players, and I guess they could be promising prospects, but it sounds pretty haphazard to me. And that's the point - fledgling academies (either MLS-affiliated or otherwise) probably won't have the resources to effectively scout and recruit from a nationwide or international pool, so the presence of a local population of strong players is important. Putting an academy in a relative soccer backwater and then scrounging around for out-of-town recruits seems like an inefficient use of resources.
If you want kids to train year round, they have to get stipends. Otherwise, only the rich can afford it.
You can do a bangup job finding, say, 20 kids age 13-15, and you'll still be doing well at developing them if a 5 of them end up as professionals, and 1 of those generates a transfer fee. If you're running a professional program, you've covered your costs this way and then some. The coach has 80-some NT caps (he's Des Armstrong) and the locale is the greater Washington, DC area (Armstrong is from this area). They're looking specifically for kids who can't afford the current generation of travel teams. Maybe so. I can't argue that if you're looking for young, developable soccer talent on the streets, the first places you'd have to look would be LA and NY. But it still kinda strikes me that you might be making best the enemy of better here.
This analogy occurred to me too, particularly in terms of the question that started the thread, i.e., will MLS academies diminish college soccer? If the MLB analogy is a good one, then I guess the answer is probably yes. After all, MLB having a real farm-system means that a lot (but not all) of the most promising kids turn pro (or semi-pro, depending on your view of single-A ball) at 18, so college baseball is an afterthought even though baseball is a first-tier US sport. On the other hand, college soccer is already an afterthought to the general US sports fan. So if the MLS academies actually raised the quality of the US game and therefore its profile, more (and better?) athletes might start playing soccer, which in turn might mean that even the guys who didn't make the MLS rosters at 18 would be better, which would improve the quality of D1 men's soccer and people's interest in it. (Even if MLS got a larger percent of that increased interest.) So, I guess I'm saying, "Err, I dunno." Brilliant.
College will always be there to catch the late bloomers, the guys considered too small or too slow for the Academies. Would Chris Rolfe really have made a competitive Academy team at 13 or 14? As far as I'm concerned, the more avenues open to players, the better.
Maybe if there were some real academies, with really elite competition - say 16 Bradenton's they might have an impact on development. But with a few exceptions, what they have now is more of the same under a different name. The coaching hasn't changed and travel costs are already becoming an issue at least locally. Plus competition is divided with many of the best players in the country from Cal-South, Texas and other places not part of the system. If the training actually did make a noticeable difference it would likely improve the college game much like it has in Baseball and hockey. The primary development path of both of these sports was through an extensive minor league system (especially in hockey). Yet more kids are coming up through the college systems than ever before in both these sports. From a local Cal-South perspective its a general negative. It's fragmenting competition and has been disruptive to HS season. There are far too many non-elite kids involved who have no realistic shot of becoming decent D1 college players let alone professionals. Losing these kids reduces interest in the sport at the HS level which I think will negatively impact interest at the college and professional level. You can win a regional title and no one in your community will care. However if you score a bunch of goals for your HS team, the community becomes interested in your progress as you develop and play for higher levels. I also tend to believe a year or two of HS ball at a school with a good program is probably better than playing club ball because it puts kids with bigger, stronger mature players - possibly for the first time in their soccer career. Most of the players that have done well in Europe have a few years of college soccer experience which also provides a similar benefit. Bottom line - they are much ado about nothing unless there are some considerable changes in their structure. Primarily because the critical aspects of development are completed long before the age they start. Secondarily, because they offer little change in coaching or competition from what previously existed.
scoachd1, a couple thoughts one your post: 1: I don't necessarily think the SoCal experience is representative of the rest of the country. SoCal actually has that 'density' that NGV is talking about earlier, and that's going to make it much harder for a national program to come in and 'fix' whatever is 'wrong' (if anything even is wrong in the same sense as in the rest of the country). 2: I do take your point about high school and college being 'playing up'--obviously though this only counts for the underclassmen. I think the senior year for either HS or college is, for almost any kid with the ability to move on, a waste of time.
That's why if each MLS club has their own academy then you'll have more bases covered in this country. Like I'd assume the Red Bulls will put their youth academy in the....New York area...which will cover that ground, and LA will cover that ground, and so on. Then these guys can spot kids playing pickup games in their own neighborhoods and find diamonds in the rough.
I agree that Cal-South is not representative. Neither is Texas, Chicago, Cleveland or anywhere else. Take a look at the recent Super-Y league championships. I didn't see any Cal-South teams in the U17 division but the two that were in the U15 & U16 team won their respective divisions. In U16, have the teams were Academy teams including LAFC which won. Can you tell the difference in results between Academy and non-Academy teams? If you go to CSL.com you'll see that LAFC U16 didn't win a single game in their league all season. With some possible exceptions of a couple MLS teams, this just more of the same under a different dance card. Under the existing system if clubs charged too much, coaching wasn't good or whatever, the consumers could move. Now with the so-called Academy, you have the USSF claiming 64 elites and potentially institutionalizing a lot of mediocrity. This great for the good old boys (note how Pats, Nomads, Surf, Strikers all are on board, but a clubs with Hispanic talent like Celtic, Valley United, Barcelona that have been marginalizing them are not), but not so great for development. What is the procedure for removing the poorly run clubs? What is the procedure for adding new ones with better coaching, scouting or development models? Its not well thought out. Its not elite. For California its a mess and a step down. For East Coast and Mid-west, its not that different than the regional leagues these teams used to play in. More practices less games whoopee. Again my point is that it is currently much ado about nothing.
These guys don't have any money for scouting and even in sports that do such as baseball, basketball and football don't have people looking for talent pick-up games.
I think you have raised some good points. Just a few comments: I thought the academies were set up in large part to get away from just viewing a team from a won-loss perspective. If the benchmark of a well run team is solely the results of any one tournament, I think we are right back to where we began this discussion. (I am not suggesting this is your argument, but rather think we need to widen our concept of development.) Granted there comes a time when clearly a change needs to be made, and I imagine procedures will need to be adapted to fit the new academy model. But this has been in operation all of 4 months. To mark something down as a failure or complain they don't have everything worked out after such little time I think discredits the attempt. I imagine in the clubs themselves these same conversations are taking place as well. I also think some of the clubs may be taking a wait-and-see approach. Not all the big clubs got on board. But the comments I have heard from some of the club coaches seemed to be quite positive. And I think players can still freely move from one club to another--I have heard nothing to suggest otherwise. I imagine if things are not working out for a particular team, parents will complain, kids will leave, and coaches will be replaced. Much like it is now.
It's way too early to pass judgement on the program just yet. Alot of the elite players who are 16-17 won't jump ship to a new club simply because it's an academy because they have their system that got them to a big youth club and they have no reason to move. But once this really gets a foothold (say 1.5 - 2 years) and the academy showcases are featuring the more developed MLS academy teams and the brandeton teams then there will be more college and pro coaches than any super-y tourny. The top kids are going to want to put themselves in front of those scouts, and this is a much easier way to become a possibility for the national team pool than ODP. But even if this fails we needed to try something else. The method that we've had for the past decade has put out a very low number of good pros relative to the amount of kids who play.
I can see how that might be true, but it's a bit early to go out on that limb. Here you're not being fair, I think, since this is the stated goal of the system It's the firm (and, I might add, researched) belief of USSF that players tend to improve more in the long run in training than in games. Indeed: http://images.ussoccer.com/Documents/cms/ussf/USSoccer_Development_Academy_Application.pdf This is the application. Notice no place for trophies won or win-loss records, only for what individual players have come through the club in the past (and who the coaches are, and what the facilities are). The only reason I would think kids would feel at all 'trapped' in an Academy setting is if they felt that the Academies were better. This is the second cousin to the argument I have heard so many times about school vouchers (note: I'm not trying to take a side on that issue, just commenting on a particular argument): "It's bad because it will take students (and therefore the funding attached to them) away from public schools." Ummm, only if the public schools are doing something wrong.
While its true the score of a particular game is not that big of a deal, teams with better players that play better soccer typically beat teams that don't once the kids are out of elementary school. If you go to an event like Dallas cup you will see the non-US youth clubs typically win their games and one can assume they also have some focus on developing their players. Also I should have checked Super-Y's definition of U16 before I posted. I found it hard to believe LAFC U16 team could have won without some guests and found it it was instead their U17 team which is actually a pretty strong team that finished in the top half of their league. But again the main point is that this is not much of a change and will have little impact on college soccer. The attempt should be discredited because it has been neither well thought out nor well executed. If they had someone that knew what they were doing they would have either put in place some smaller pilot programs to test some ideas or they would put together a solid well thought out plan. This instead is a poorly constructed pilot pushed out on a national scale. It is unnecessarily costly, disruptive, and will ultimately be counter productive as compared to a well organized and constructive plan.
The reason I wrote whoopee is that the whole practice thing is really a smoke screen. The Hispanic clubs in Cal-South don't go around participating lots of tournaments if for no other reason than its too expensive. Whether on Hispanic or non-hispanic teams, my kids rarely played that many tournaments. So again from my perspective there is little change except what was an open system is trying to be changed into to a closed one. What is even worse the folks that are trying to monopolize control have demonstrated to date very little in the way of excellent leadership, planning or soccer training. The only area where they have excelled is getting foolish parents to part with their money. It boggles the mind as to why people believe this is such a great thing or that it will lead to significant changes in the college game.
I hope you realize that by the time kids get to 15 its too late. If they aren't already technically skilled with a good innate understanding of how to play, they'll likely never be great. A guy like George Weah didn't get named as the top player in the world because of the great soccer Academies in Liberia. The primary reason for our limited success relative to the pool of players is that we have had a relatively poor soccer culture. As a result most of our children never have a true opportunity to become great. Very young players had not been taught skills by friends and parents so they learned to play a very crude version of the game. This has rapidly been changing and with it, so has capabilities of our young players. The reason we've had so much success with keepers is because they are more of an exception and start to specialize after they reach puberty so it is possible to coach a great older athlete to become a world class player.
I fully realize that the vast majority of a soccer players formative years are the 7-13 time frame. But a better (for now just different) structure to accept 14 year olds can only help the process. If this is really that much of a failure, then the current clubs who arn't in the academy will still be successful and they will continue to thrive. I guess I just don't understand why you're so upset.
In our continuing digression from the original subject, a different model can also hurt the process and the kids involved in it as well as the sport in this country. I believe this does. It tries to create a closed system that consolidates power with people that don't have a very good track record. If they get enough critical mass they may succeed. This is especially since the primary driver, the improved soccer culture for the 3 - 12 year olds, will help the country create increasingly more capable players. In the French model the focus is on centers of excellence and free technical training for the very best. Instead we get an unfunded, expensive travel based model of competitive play that is comprised of a group of clubs run by and for generally well to do suburban folks (and of course the people who make their career catering to them). If there were 10 Chivas USA's to every Patadores in the program rather than the reverse, I'd have a very different opinion. The kids that will get hurt the most are the kids that have the passion for the game but not the parents with resources. I think it is great that a group of generally less well-off kids like those from Celtic got a chance to play at Dallas. One of the great things about Cal-South is that the top levels of play are open to entire teams of generally less well-off kids while other places only small number of the most promising players like those ever gets a shot. You also get knew clubs at the top replacing those that fail to develop and attract players.
Has there been any word from the USSF that the 64 clubs tapped for participation in this will be constant? We've already seen the texas clubs drop out, perhaps there will be some criteria that a club must meet in order to maintain their status within the system. As to the money issue... The sad fact in this country is that outside of a few situations, having money is a requirement for participation in youth soccer. It's just not a poor man's game here. Perhaps this will change in the next few years with the emergence of the MLS youth system, but as it stands now very few low-class kids have an honest shot.
My problem with the college game is the same as it always has been - the players simply don;t get to play enough games. The NCAA won't change that anytime soon, but the acadamies will help. I wonder how this might affect the other side of the equation - the PDL option. BYU certainly has closed the competive gap in a hurry...but they may be a unique situation after all is said and done.
One of the local Spanish-language papers in Houston, Rumbo, has an article today on the Dynamo's youth academy. It mentions that the Dynamo intend to promote at least one player next year to the reserves, but are also going to present a proposal to MLS to allow teams to promote more than one player from the academy. It also includes some interesting comments from Dominic Kinnear and James Clarkson, the Dynamo's director of youth development, about how current MLS rules are based on the premise that kids in the academies will want to pursue college soccer, whereas the Dynamo academy is filled with kids who would rather become professionals by joining the Dynamo reserves instead of going to college. I have the link and translations of the interesting bits at this post.