Tag: development academy

pro soccer, youth soccer

Who goes from Academy to USL?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Three coincidental bits of reading today (for two of them, thanks to Jason Davis for mentioning them on today’s show):

  1. At The Athletic, Will Parchman ranks all 23 MLS-affiliated academies.
  2. At SoccerWire, Charles Boehm has news of a new D.C. United partnership and a nice pyramid graphic showing players progressing from these partner clubs to the new USL side in exurban Loudoun County to the Chris Durkin-esque heights of the senior side. (A few stray thoughts on this later.)
  3. On a local message board, one anonymous parent reacted to this news by asking which Academy kids get to play for the USL side.

My first reaction: What do you mean — who gets to play for the USL side? It’s pro soccer. Who gets to play pro soccer? Really good players!

Second reaction: Wait a minute. Who does get to play for the USL side?

So I figured I’d do a case study on Will’s No. 1 academy — New York Red Bulls. Who’s playing for NYRB II?

The results:

Former Academy players – 8 

  • Amando Moreno (signed directly from Academy; years ago)
  • Ben Mines (signed directly from Academy)
  • John Murphy (signed directly from Academy)
  • Evan Louro (homegrown contract after college)
  • Kevin Politz (homegrown contract after college)
  • Steven Echevarria (homegrown contract after college)
  • Andrew Lombard (free agent after college)
  • Chris Lema (free agent after college)

Played for PDL Under-23 team – 3, all from 2018 draft

  • Brian White
  • Jared Stroud
  • Jose Aguinaga
  • (also: Lema, Louro, Politz, Echevarria, Murphy)

Lived in NY/NJ, then drafted – 3 

  • Ryan Meara
  • Ethan Kutler
  • Jordan Scarlett

Developed in OTHER MLS academies – 2

  • Jean-Christophe Koffi (D.C. United)
  • Tommy Redding (Orlando)

Then two other draftees, four free agents who just finished college, and six from foreign clubs.

I used a loose definition of an NYRB II player. A couple of these guys have recently been called up to the MLS side, and they’re not the only players to move up in the last few years. (Think Tyler Adams.)

So that’s eight Academy alumni out of a pool of 28 players. The ages of those players: 23, 22, 22, 22, 22, 21, 18, 18.

Sources:

Check my work here.

Back to the Boehm piece (January 2018 podcast guest): D.C. United’s partner clubs here are:

  • Arlington: Current DA through U15
  • Loudoun: Current DA through U15
  • PPA: No current DA
  • Pipeline: No current DA
  • Virginia Development Academy (itself a partnership that includes my hometown club, Vienna): Current DA through U19

So what does this mean for VDA’s older age groups?

(Side note here: VDA’s girls moved from the DA to the ECNL, but they didn’t rename themselves “VECNL,” which sounds like a horrible health insurance company. I didn’t include girls’ DA teams in the breakdown above because United’s program here is boys-only. We’ll talk about the Spirit some other time.)

 

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podcast, youth soccer

How do we raise soft, tattooed millionaires? Alexi Lalas on RSD

Posted on by Beau Dure

Alexi Lalas is a Soccer Hall of Famer. He’s also an entertainer, with interests in music as well as riling people up from a soccer broadcast studio. So when he rips the U.S. men’s national team as “soft, tattooed millionaires,” he’s drawing on both backgrounds.

In our conversation, Lalas explains that “tattooed millionaires” came from a solo release by Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson (no, not the “More Cowbell” guy on SNL), and then we talk about whether everything from the now-defunct Bradenton residency program to the Development Academy is giving us a generation of coddled, entitled men’s soccer players.

We also talk about specialization, playing in multiple soccer environments (i.e., not just in the Development Academy), high school/college soccer, the Apollo Theater, diversity of playing styles, Michael Bradley’s understanding of livestock, and Brad Friedel playing basketball.

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podcast, women's soccer, youth soccer

Podcast, Ep. 9 — Girls’ Development Academy with Travis Clark, plus a soccerpolitical rant

Posted on by Beau Dure

The podcast starts this week with a bit of a political rant. The news on DACA is hard to ignore, and we’ve had some ongoing overheated arguments in the soccer community.

The Travis Clark interview on the Development Academy starts around the 9:25 mark. A few landmarks:

  • Will the NWSL affiliates dominate? (19:45)
  • DA vs. high school (25:00)
  • Can we tame the chaos and still have multiple development pathways? (30:30)
  • A few clubs to watch in the DA (38:45)

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soccer

MLS academy vs. school: So far, school still winning

Posted on by Beau Dure
Do you know me? I’m an exception!

Soccer America raises a few questions about the MLS homegrown program, noting that a lot of players aren’t playing or have already washed out of the league.

One irony — a nice exception to the rule this year has been Jose Villarreal, who plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy. His coach, Bruce Arena, is the one who likened the current system to a “black hole” in a Washington Post interview.

One solution seems relatively simple — MLS should probably enter its reserve teams in the USL or NASL to get those players more meaningful games. Not that anything is simple in the turf wars of U.S. soccer.

The other solution: Let players try pro soccer, and if it’s not working out by age 20, let them go back to college. That just requires the NCAA to be reasonable.

(I almost said that with a straight face.)

Related in Soccer America: An interview with NSCAA CEO Joe Cummings, who seems as irritated as anyone else about the Development Academy banning its players from high school games.

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