Youth Residency Program Expanding Again

Could we eventually see 2 sets of youth teams on the East and West Coasts? It would cut down on travel time and would allow for more players to be in the system. The cream of the crop could then come together to train for a few weeks before any major competition. There would still be the same overall director, coaches, etc, but they would just be split.

 

Fantastic.....

I think the Galaxy have new facilities on California...just like you just said EAST VS WEST whoever coach win a series of squirmishes will win the TITLE OF COACH OF U-17.....eventually the west can divide on southwest (L.A) and north west (OREGON) ditto for the EAST SIDE, this will create competition

 

Meanwhile the kids from the central part of the country still have to travel thousands of miles. It doesn't matter where it is. This is all going to be a precursor to MLS youth reserve teams.

 

Well maybe, but the truth of the matter is that one of the big stumbling blocks to MLS Youth teams is distance.

In most European countries you can bus your kids or your reserve team or whatever over in a couple hours or, if a little farther, on a train. No big deal.

But when you start having to move a youth team from Columbus to LA or from Colorado to New England, it starts getting expensive. Add in meals and hotels, etc. and you're talking a goodly chunk of change.

Also keep in mind that there are really only ten teams, more if you add in A League. Very few slots come open each year with an 18 man roster (plus six dev slots).

Remember that MLS only has 180 full time jobs. If each team has a reserve side and a couple youth teams, that's another 540 players being processed by a league which may have 10 or 15 openings a year.

Put it all together and it just doesn't add up.

For the USA, the USSF program scooping up many (not all, but many) of the best youngsters ensures that they get to develop the real talent and feed it into MLS and the USMNT, which is the goal.

We just do not have the raw numbers in terms of talent right now and won't for many years. There simply are not hundreds and hundreds of talented kids falling by the wayside. Professional youth and reserve teams are for guyus who have a chance to develop into pros.

And right now the talent pool is just not so deep that there are the hundreds and hundreds of guys needed to fill up these programs. You could get warm bodies, sure, but there aren't 540 guys with genuine pro potential.

I think expanding the national program, maybe splitting out the 18-19's into a separate camp, is, for the foreseeable future, the best and really only, realistic approach.

 

I disagree. I think that if we were to get kids at 13-15 years of age and put them into residency programs, we would have hundreds of potential future professionals.

IMHO, it clearly is a chicken and egg thing. If we look at elite youth players in this country, I am sure that there are thousands (or at least a thousand) of kids at each age group who would surely qualify as having pro potential if given the right development environment. That "right" environment is not evident (or only rarely) in the tournament/trophy obsessed elite youth organizations.

The right environment may be closer to what happens down in Bradenton. You will see expansion of residency style academies and so we will see if that translates into creating more and more players with pro potential.

 

that and IMG is probably one of the best places in the world for a young athelete to train at. Soccer isn't the only sport they get kids ready for and these guys do an amazing job. Honestlty, the only other place than Florida that I would rather see our younger players at would be the Ajax youth system

 

I think that there are not massive amounts of talent out there either. However, I could easily see getting together the 18 best prospects in MLS population centers and training them at the U17 level.

I'm sort of with ApoonU on this one, the higher quality coaching we can get at the 12-14 year old level the better.

Imagine if we could get a city's top 50 prospects into an immersive situation from 12-16. This is basically what happens in Europe/South America albeit with more numbers. From there the players separate themselves but have all had a base level of training. This would require having a scouting formula but lateral agility and touch are quite noticeable at this age level IMHO. Straightline speed and physical size are pretty much dependent on how the kid matures through puberty IMHO.

Personally I'm not very big on kids having to live in a place other than their home. Sure, it allows for scheduling and logistics benefits but it's also damned expensive to put kids up and then feed and educate them. Within big cities, there should be a way for kids to get to practice in the afternoon on weekdays, and weekends could be used for the two a day sessions. They could invest/lease a couple of suburbans and that would be a whole helluva lot cheaper than building a residency facility.

Residency academies a la Ajax are a long time away IMHO.

 

I'm not sure about "thousands". There may be two to three hundred, although there would probably be more if they would teach a less direct style of play(which is totally dependent on size and straightline speed).

 

I am with you.....

Well.... USSF should combine efforts with MLS in the future and have all this youth trainning centers all over the country, it will make easy for scout, more kids will be expose to a better training enviroment and the Landon Donovan case won't repeat (talking about Bayer Leverkusen sign him and sell it back to us)

 

We need to be sure...

That kind of asumption lead to the embarrasing situation of BAYER LEVERKUSEN sign an american u17 under our nose and then selling him back to us, the amount of money still a secret we need to be sure that this situation will never repeat

 

Better late than never...I just wish they would have done this a few years ago.