Chelsea’s had 68 players play in an FA Youth Cup final in the last 10 years. They’ve played in a total of 84 senior team matches, an average of 1.2 matches per player. Nobody’s played more in that group than Josh McEachran, who’s featured 22 times on the senior level. … Chelsea will continue putting off their first team minutes until, by the time they’re 23, they’ve been shipped off on a bevy of different loan spells in myriad different systems. Lacking a consistent, solid ground on which to plant themselves, they’ll then be sold off to a middle-tier club in Europe with a fraction of the nourishing first team experience they could’ve had.
And that fits with the German emphasis on education:
“When I went to Aston Villa eight years ago I told them our players, under-17, 18 and 19, go to school for 34 hours a week,” he says. “They said: ‘No, you’re a liar, it’s not possible, our players go for nine hours.’ I said: ‘No, I’m not lying.’ They said: ‘It’s not possible, you can’t train and do 34 hours of education.’ I said: ‘Sure. And what do you do with the players who have for three years, from the age of 16 to 19, only had nine hours a week of school?
“They said: ‘They have to try to be a professional or not. They have to decide.’ I said: ‘No, we can’t do that in Freiburg. It’s wrong. Most players in our academy can’t be professionals, they will have to look for a job. The school is the most important thing, then comes football.’ We give players the best chance to be a footballer but we give them two educations here. If 80% can’t go on to play in the professional team, we have to look out for them. The players that play here, the majority of them go on to higher education. And we need intelligent players on the pitch anyway.”
In the new ESPN “30 for 30” documentary Of Miracles and Men, we see footage of Anatoli Tarasov, the man given the unlikely job of starting Soviet ice hockey from scratch. In a 1992 interview, he says he was told he would have little to see of other countries’ games and would need to “work on his own hockey.” “They were right!” he exclaims.
More footage from his coaching days shows him imploring players to smile, have fun, and love each other. He borrowed more from ballet than Canadian hockey.
His daughter, Tatiana Tarasova, picks up the thread in the present day with a brilliant quote:
“If you follow someone else’s road, you will never get ahead.”
Does this apply at all to U.S. youth soccer?
(Tarasova, incidentally, coached and choreographed figure skaters such as Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Johnny Weir, etc.)
The brilliance of the TV show Friday Night Lights is that it’s not about football or Texas or even Taylor Kitsch’s abs. It’s about identity.
Jason Street is the All-American QB with his college and pro future neatly laid out for him until an accident leaves him in a wheelchair. Matt Saracen is a quiet, nerdy guy who is thrust into the spotlight as the team’s QB. Lyla Garrity’s perfect life is shattered by boyfriend Jason’s injury and the gossip that pushes her away from cheerleading. Tami Taylor is tired of being “the coach’s wife” and nothing else.
This may be our developmental system’s biggest problem. When losing a game or losing your starting spot means losing your identity, you panic. Your fight or flight system kicks in and stress completely subverts all your best intentions and reasonable considerations. Quick, accurate decision-making and performance is impossible. Fear makes us forget what we know. Those thoughts don’t even make it to the frontal lobe once the emotional brain gets hold of them.
Seems like a bad idea in general to tie one’s identity to one thing. Even worse to tie it to something as ephemeral as athletic ability. And even worse to start tying it to one sport at an early age.
(Granted, it’s a bad thing to do as an adult, too. I say that as a flimsy excuse to play the following video for comic relief:)
On Saturday, I had the honor of speaking at the NSCAA Convention, presenting what I’d put together toward my Single-Digit Soccer book, sharing ideas, and making bad jokes about my youth team being named Athens Applejacks.
In case you couldn’t make it — or in case you weren’t writing things down — here’s a synopsis. It may even have some things I forgot to mention. U.S. Youth Soccer will also post slides later.
About the book
Single-Digit Soccer is an exploration of issues, a guidebook for parents, a collection of fun stories and so forth — all in the U-Little age groups (U10, U9, etc.).
The book will come out sometime this year, but I’m still seeking input. Please chime in and let me know what you think.
About me (writer)
USA TODAY, Long-Range Goals, Enduring Spirit (if you’re on this blog, you already know I can be found here). My youth soccer work started in earnest when I covered the unveiling of the U.S. Soccer curriculum for ESPN.com.
About me (parent coach/player)
Yes, I was the starting sweeper for the U14 Athens Applejacks 1970. As a player, it’s been all downhill from there, and I recently retired from indoor soccer goalkeeping because my hand didn’t recover from a couple of saves.
As a coach, I’ve been involved with House league, All-Stars and a “crossover” program in which our U7s and U8s sign up for extra training and play against teams from other clubs. I have an “E” license and will get my “D” this year.
The age we’re talking about
I love this video:
Mixed messages
There’s a chasm between what we say and what we do. U.S. Youth Soccer says we shouldn’t have competitive tournaments, tryouts or a split between “recreational” and “competitive” at U10. Then we have U9 State Cups.
Tryouts
We worry about kids not having enough fun, getting too serious too soon, and then quitting. So at U9, we’re telling kids they’re not good enough. You don’t get to train with the great coach. You don’t get the fancy warmups. You can’t play in a tournament.
The kids who make it
Then we tell other 8-year-olds they’re hot stuff. These kids strut around school like they own the place. “Hi, Coach Beau! I’m really good — I made travel!” Then coaches wonder why these kids aren’t devoted to improving themselves. It’s like Nuke Laloosh with the quadraphonic Blaupunkt.
Trickling down
And it trickles down even lower. U8 ID Days. U6-U10 Tryouts. And if your club isn’t doing these hyperserious things, the club next door is. In our “crossover” league, we took 48 kids who just signed up, split them into four teams and took them into games against teams that had tryouts for the top 12 players. It was House players who signed up for additional training vs. a travel team in everything but name.
ISSUES
The idea here is to frame the discussion. Some of these issues don’t have simple solutions. Some are just things to weigh in the balance when making any sort of decision about soccer — how to set up a club, how to coach, what parents should look for, etc.
How much is this going to cost?
Big issue, especially for parents. Travel teams can easily cost $1,000 per season not inclusive of tournament fees, uniforms, postgame stops at McDonald’s, etc. And one elite league in my area has a four-hour, 35-minute drive between clubs. For a league game.
How much time will this take?
Again, see that travel distance. Now all these other commitments. Welcome to the U9 Academy, where you’ll spend three days a week training for your 30-35 games in a 10-month span.
What do parents really want?
Not that simple. Some are chasing college scholarships. Most just want their kids to do something fun and healthy. Some hope their kids can play high school soccer. Some hope their kids get the social experience of playing travel soccer with other kids who love the sport. And some don’t want to drive more than five minutes to practice.
Should we play year-round?
Probably not. That’s what orthopedists and psychiatrists would say. But parents are terrified of their kids being left behind. Or they play indoor soccer in the winter because they get something different from that than they get from their house leagues — they can play with their buddies.
Winning vs. development
The big one. Entire rooms at NSCAA tackle this issue. And we all say development. Are you rotating everyone on defense and in goal? Are you selecting only small numbers of players, like some teams do in our crossover and All-Star tournaments? Are you teaching your players to foul, dive and do other acts of wanton gamesmanship? I saw it at a U9 tournament.
Fun vs. development
Some kids are content playing “Mr. Wolf, What Time is It?” Some want to play actual soccer. And then there’s the whole notion of keeping score. A lot of kids want to do it.
Fun vs. structure
How many of your clubs have time set apart for free play, where kids can come in and play in mixed groups with parents and coaches told to shut the bleep up? We say the game is the best teacher. We warn against joystick coaching. Is that message getting across? A program near me has three training sessions for every game at U8 — the games are every other week, and they just play other kids in the program. I can’t think of a kid I’ve coached, and I’ve coached some very good ones, who would enjoy that.
Fun vs. parity
Kids like to play with their friends. Some groups of friends have greater interest in and aptitude for soccer than others. So the typical house league might bust them up. Fair? Perhaps. Fun for all? Maybe not. Are there other ways this house league could be fair without splitting up all the groups of friends?
Development vs. parity
Are unevenly matched games a good challenge? Or a waste of time?
What kind of development?
Some clubs and curricula think we should teach passing at early ages; some insist that you can’t. When Claudio Reyna unveiled the curriculum, he warned against “overdribbling.” Coaches at the back of the room were puzzled. (I bumped into Reyna soon after the curriculum presentation — he used Barcelona as an example of a team that takes 1-2 touches and then passes, rarely dribbling.)
Tracking/segregating
Do “A” players need to train apart from “B” players? Will it drag down the “A” players to be around other kids? Should we ban them from playing at recess with their buddies? And what’s an “A” player at age 8 anyway? Can we do it differently, perhaps putting everyone in one pool and only pulling them out for voluntary extra training and merit-based tournaments?
Burnout
Are we burning these kids out? Mentally and physically?
RADICAL IDEAS
This part will work best when you can see the slides. I list the issues on one side of each slide, and I highlight the ones that are addressed by each idea.
These are not Commandments. These are discussion-starters. Some of them actually contradict each other. Some may make sense for one club and not another, depending on your geography, your schools, your staffing, etc.
Tailor practices to your team, not vice versa
By all means, try to follow a curriculum, but meet reality at some point. Your curriculum may tell you to do a completely different set of exercises each week, but your kids may not have that kind of attention span. The kids I coach usually don’t, and I can’t spend half of every practice explaining the new exercises.
Put more coaching education online
This is actually happening — through NSCAA, U.S. Soccer, AYSO and others. That’s great. We need to train parent coaches, and they can’t always drive 90 minutes for two weekends a year to get a “D” license. We’re asking them to volunteer as soccer coaches, not join the Army Reserve.
Don’t push specialization
We need to make what we say match what we do. I’m not sure how. Maybe just talk to your parents. The trouble is that if you don’t offer something, they may sign up for a program somewhere else. But we can encourage kids to do other things. Basketball will help teach team tactics. Swimming will keep them fit. Martial arts can teach discipline. Chess, music, acting — everything else will make them well-rounded people. That, moreso than a singular focus on soccer, will help kids at college admissions time.
Teach positions, or at least basic tactics
My first youth sports experience was at the Athens YMCA playing four sports a year, mostly under the guidance of football coaches. In football season, we ran plays. The coach could call “32,” and I knew it meant a running back was going run into the hole between me (the right guard) and the center. Then in the spring, we all played 11v11 soccer, and it wasn’t a total train wreck.
One reason this is important: “Magnetball” can easily drive skilled kids out of soccer. They can’t get the ball, so they can’t use their skills.
Do programs through school
We ask parents to pick up their kids from school, take them home for an hour or three, then drive them back to a soccer field that might be right back at that school. Meanwhile, the local karate school is picking the kids up in a van. Parents who strain to make one soccer practice a week will gladly sign their kids up for five days of karate. It’s not because they’re chasing a karate scholarship.
Don’t travel more than 90 minutes for league games
Some people in the audience objected because their geography demands such travel. That’s understandable. In the metro D.C. area, it seems ridiculous.
Part-time travel
This is what I see in our local baseball, and guess what? We produce a lot of good players without segregating people. The players all play Little League. A few of them also get “elite” play on a travel team that just plays a handful of games.
Group by skill level, not age group
Another idea borrowed from baseball. If you start playing at age 7, you don’t just get tossed in with U8s who have been playing for years. You’ll likely start at Rookie baseball while more experienced 7-year-olds play Single-A. People progress through the ranks at their own pace. By the time they’re 12, they’re all in the same league.
Doesn’t that sound better than splitting into “recreational” and “competitive” at a tryout at age 8, with little opportunity to bridge the gap?
Have a program between “House” and “travel”
Another idea for keeping late bloomers in the game and for rewarding players who are serious about soccer but can’t match the elite players’ athleticism. Ideally, give everyone who wants professional training and evenly matched competition the chance to get it – maybe not every day or every week, but at some point each season.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL: Be inclusive
The one thing of which I’m firmly convinced is that THIS is the ultimate goal for all of us who care about youth soccer. We need to meet the needs of elite players with good competition, at least on occasion. We need to meet the needs of those who are not elite yet but might be. We need TOPSoccer. We need basic rec league for people just starting out. We need to give all players a good time — these are our future soccer fans and our future youth club volunteers.
And I want this project to be inclusive. I want to hear from you. Comments, email, Twitter, skywriting — anything’s fine. (But get a move on — I’d like to get this book done!)
We’re a multicultural nation. English, Irish, German, Scottish, Mexican, Chinese, Korean … we can hardly list all of our influences.
We’re also a rabidly capitalist nation. Sure, most of Europe is capitalist as well. But we take it to another level. Everything competes in the marketplace — sometimes fairly, sometimes not.
And we don’t kindly to taking orders from one entity. If we did, the Boston Tea Party would just be a polite weekly gathering, perhaps to watch Foxboro United take on Arsenal in an English Premier League game.
So in youth soccer, we have myriad entities calling the shots. Want something that U.S. Youth Soccer isn’t providing? Try U.S. Club Soccer. Or just form your own league. These organizations and others can also offer their own approaches to coaching education, curricula, club standards, etc. They all co-exist under the big tent of the terrific convention held by the NSCAA, which has its own thoughts on some of these matters.
In one popular NSCAA Convention session, “Building Champions: German Player Development,” German coaching guru Bernd Stoeber compared this chaos to the German way. Number of entities in charge of such things in Germany: One.
And the German system has a lot of advantages, as the classic Guardian examination shows. It’s certainly an improvement over the English system, which seems to boil down to “‘ello, your lad ‘asn’t played well for a fortnight, so he seems daft to me, and we’re releasing ‘im. Don’t worry — he’s only 17, and he ‘as a fourth-grade education, he does.” (Seriously — one of the factoids from the great Guardian examination of Germany’s system shows that their kids are going to school as much as any American child would, while English teens are going a mere nine hours a week.)
Could U.S. Soccer borrow a page from Germany’s book and take charge of everything here? Should they? Probably not, on both counts.
Not that the USSF has to be passive. Surely some of the extremes can be reined in. Maybe youth clubs should be required to have a director of coaching who has been through some basic licensing work, so I’ll be less likely to see a U8 team doing heading drills. Maybe they can ban State Cups and other hypercompetitive tournaments for U10 and below, when we really need to focus on development. A handful of mandates wouldn’t be a bad idea.
But the chaos of American youth soccer is simply a fact of life. We’re diverse — ethnically, economically, geographically, etc. The realities and opportunities of Southern California will always differ from those of Vermont.
In my Single-Digit Soccer session, I had coaches from Nebraska, Michigan, Alaska, Georgia and surely several other states. Some were in urban areas. Some had to travel substantial distances to get decent games. I feel a little more sympathy for the Omaha club needing to drive a few hours than I do the suburban Maryland club that bypasses the entire D.C. metropolitan area to play a league game elsewhere. Every club’s field situation is different — some are on school fields, some on county fields, some privately held.
So when it comes to reforming youth soccer in this country, you have to adapt the old prayer’s line about having the serenity to accept what you cannot change.
I’m not sure Jurgen Klinsmann has ever gained that serenity. He says the right things about accepting players for how they are, not forcing them to be something they’re not, and he has accepted the notion that players are going to take different paths at age 18 — college, MLS, Europe, NASL, etc.
But he’s also one of the people pushing kids to play a 10-month Development Academy season with one club. One environment. The Academy is running down toward U12 now, a notion that perplexed several speakers I saw. Non-Academy clubs are running similar schedules. Why is that the best path forward in such a diverse country?
Klinsmann’s native land, Germany, actually mixes things up, at least for younger kids. Back to the Guardian piece: A lot of kids stay with local junior clubs and get supplemental training from the federation’s traveling coaches.
That seems like a program even more appropriate to a vast country like this one. So does the idea of being exposed to different styles of play, different coaches, etc. Some serious games, some recreational, some just flat-out fun.
U.S. youth soccer today might be too chaotic. A light touch of regulation — perhaps mandating basic education for coaches — would help. But does anyone think an overbearing set of commandments from Chicago will work in this country?
One unique aspect of soccer development as opposed to football and baseball is that we in the USA are all worried that other countries are doing it better. Little League and Pop Warner coaches surely don’t spend quite as much time absorbing the lessons of Barcelona, Ajax and Tahuichi as those of us in soccer.
In basketball, the USA is just starting to ease into that discussion, thanks in part to one U.S. star raised in Italy — Kobe Bryant, who shook up the basketball establishment a few days ago by saying European players are getting better skill development than the AAU-bred Americans.
This isn’t the first time Kobe has said something like this. Here’s what he told Jack McCallum nearly two years ago (“Chaos Theory,” SI, Feb. 25, 2013 — I couldn’t find it in the online vault):
I feel fortunate that I was over in Italy (from ages six to 13) when AAU basketball (got big) over here. They stopped teaching kids fundamentals in the United States, but that didn’t affect me. Over there, it wasn’t about competition and traveling around and being a big deal; it was about fundamentals, footwork, spacing, back cuts — all of those things. Look at Pau Gasol. Look at the skills he has compared to the guys who grew up playing AAU ball.
The irony is that this is the opposite of our concern in U.S. soccer — to an extent, anyway. We’re worried that U.S. soccer players don’t spend enough time playing on their own. Not enough “free play.” I haven’t heard anyone raise that concern about U.S. basketball players, who typically go to the gym or the playground for some pickup games if they’re not practicing.
As long as college coaches use AAU and travel teams, rather than high school sports, as the basis of their recruiting, and parents continue to spend their money and time putting their kids in the youth sports machine to reach lottery-like dreams of a college athletic scholarship, the system will continue as we know it. Plus, in every profession, the road to developing talent and actually getting the job you want is not always the same.
Mike DeCourcy, a soccer guy in his own right, has a few related and sensible prescriptions for U.S. basketball, including more USA Basketball camps for younger players and hockey-style draft rules in which NBA teams can draft players and maintain their rights while they stay in college.
The latter would make sense; therefore, we shouldn’t expect the NCAA to do it.
I will be speaking about my forthcoming book, Single-Digit Soccer: Snazzy Subtitle to Come, on Jan. 17 at the NSCAA Convention in Philadelphia. (Yes, I’m on at the same time as a Laura Harvey presentation, but she’s doing several, so you can still see both of us.)
Single-Digit Soccer is about youth soccer, specifically the “single-digit” years — ages 9 to 6, 5, 3, etc. For parents, it’s a guidebook through all the complexities, oddities and entertaining bits of youth soccer. For coaches and administrators, it’s a plea for sanity.
The presentation will be for coaches (though some of them are surely parents as well). I’ll be dealing with issues and radical ideas, a few of which I’ve already addressed in blog posts:
The details are worth reading, but for purposes of continuing without plagiarism, here’s the gist of it: A program called Alianza de Futbol is finding young Hispanic players in the USA who may not have had an opportunity to play elite youth ball.
In reading it, I thought of two people who nearly fell through the cracks:
– Andy Najar. Coincidentally, Tenorio wrote about his high school team adjusting to losing him to D.C. United. After moving from Honduras to Alexandria, Va., he was “discovered” playing pickup soccer at school.
– Clint Dempsey. He played a lot of pickup soccer and only made it big in club soccer when his family started making the lengthy drives to get him to Dallas.
No, Dempsey isn’t Hispanic, as far as I know. So this isn’t simply a question of ethnicity.
And Dempsey’s story may be more emblematic of the basic problem with U.S. youth development: This is a really, really big country. You’re not likely to have elite clubs everywhere. The next great soccer player could be in North Dakota, his or her parents drawn northward by the energy boom. He or she could be busing tables in New Mexico. Or in the inner city, geographically close to large clubs but financially and socially miles away. They could even be in a comfortable suburb but unable to make the time commitment to a major travel club because both parents are working and can’t drive them all over creation to practice and play 3-5 days/nights a week.
It’s not as if U.S. Soccer isn’t making an effort to find them. From Tenorio’s story:
The Alianza showcases are similar to the larger scale efforts of U.S. soccer to reach some of the same communities. U.S. soccer stages several hundred free “training centers” per year in cities across the country to identify players outside of its academy structure.
That’s good. It’ll never be enough.
And that’s one reason why I think soccer people need to pay a bit more attention to high school soccer. Not everyone can make the time and money commitment to play club soccer. High school soccer just extends the time a student spends on school grounds, which is actually a good thing for parents who are often scrambling to get kids home in mid-afternoon.
Another factor in scouting youth: As much as we don’t like to admit it, good athletes can sometimes pick up soccer skills in a hurry. I see kids in my U11 rec league who are new to soccer but have quickly progressed past players who have been in “travel” since they were 9. Some of those kids will play travel; some won’t. But we may see them at tryouts for the high school team.
And you see it among older players. When I took my E license class, one of the other students was a young Hispanic guy who drew attention with a 40-yard blast off a crossbar and his ability to leap for a header and snap his body like a salmon twisting in midair. Did he play in college? Sort of. He played basketball.
Stereotyping, as a lot of well-intentioned but arrogant coaches and pundits so often do, doesn’t help the search for talent. (No, coach — your inner-city program, as nice as it may be, is not the sole force pushing a revolution in the U.S. talent pool.) The next great player could be kicking around on a dirt field in the exurbs. Or playing basketball. So the pool has to be vast, broad and diverse — and not just along ethnic lines.
Where does this leave the Development Academy, which comes off as a bureaucratic ogre in Tenorio’s piece on Alianza? As much as Jurgen Klinsmann and company may try, it will never, ever be the only path to elite soccer.
As long as we remember that, the Academy will be fine. Just remember to keep those players humble so they don’t freak out when some kid from the streets of Nacogdoches, Alexandria or Rogers (Arkansas, home of the player in Tenorio’s lead) turns out to be their equal in the talent pool.
You’ve seen plenty of skepticism in this space — and at U.S. Youth Soccer — about separating “travel” players from “rec” players before the age of 12, much less the age of 10. But the skepticism isn’t about the idea of having “travel” experiences — being paired with good teammates and good coaches, playing similarly skilled teams, and actually traveling more than 15 minutes away … on occasion. On the contrary, my sense for now is that “travel” should be open to more players and less exclusionary.
If you can make a strong case for or against that argument, please meet up with me at the NSCAA Convention in January. Or leave a comment. I want to hear all the arguments.
But today, I’m going back to the roots of “travel” from the parental perspective. Perhaps it’s just to smack around a few of the more elitist and ignorant (a redundancy?) people at a local parenting message board, but I think some other good may come out of my ranting here.
The question is this: Why do kids play “travel” at all?
The assumption some people make is that they play “travel” because their parents think they’re truly awesome players who are going to be the next Mia Hamm, Messi or some other player they’ve heard of. And yes, a few of those parents exist:
(No, I don’t know why this conversation is taking place in Beijing.)
Like all single-minded people, they fail to see that other people’s thoughts are more diverse. They think everyone wants the same thing. And so you see these people on message boards saying Club X is ripping off players by … letting them play travel when they’re not that good.
I never said this argument made sense.
In any case — some travel parents are more realistic and well-adjusted than the mom in the video or the stereotypical scholarship-chaser. They know their kids are likely to go no further than the local high school team. (In fact, in some cases, that’s the ultimate goal. Making a high school team isn’t easy.)
They play for these reasons:
1. The bonding experience of playing on a traveling team.
2. The training to keep up with the game so that they can play in high school, or in intramurals, or as an adult — or even a higher-level travel player should the opportunity arise. (Remember — puberty and growth spurts have a funny way of shaking up kids’ athleticism, and as much as we’d like to pretend athleticism doesn’t matter in soccer, those wonderful ball skills mean little if everyone on the field is three steps faster.)
3. Rec soccer can be frustrating. Teammates might not show up. Parent coaches may or may not know what they’re doing.
All of which are legitimate reasons.
So is it fair to accuse clubs of swindling parents by letting them spend extra money on a soccer experience that’s a little more serious than rec?
Consider the other things your kids might do. Piano lessons. Karate. Musical theater. Gymnastics. Ballet.
Are you spending money on those things because you think your kids might get scholarships or professional opportunities? Probably not. Should you be offended if some other kids who’s less talented than yours is taking the same class or visiting the same teacher? Definitely not. If your kid goes to an Ivy League school, should you complain about all the kids going to other schools in the U.S. News Top 25? Of course not.
So why do we get bent out of shape that our local “travel” clubs aren’t excluding more kids?
Only in America can a discussion on developing soccer players be riddled with phrases like “corporate initiative-driven opinion,” “single-entity, closed league,” “misleading marketing machine” and “underwear modeling initiatives.”
There’s also a haughty dismissal of MLS’s pride in its academies. “Leagues (emphasis mine) do not produce players, clubs and coaches produce players.” Then writer Jon Townsend goes on to extol the virtue of Germany’s federation-driven model. So leagues don’t produce players, but federations do? I don’t understand — is MLS commissioner Don Garber running the Sounders’ U16 training sessions?
Tying single entity, not to mention the lack of pro/rel in MLS, to youth development doesn’t make a lot of sense. In practice, single entity as it currently exists in MLS is little more than a legal term. The last vestiges of the 1996 days of Sunil Gulati assigning players to teams are a salary restraint with a lot of loopholes and a cumbersome method of compensating teams with bargaining chips to ensure parity.
Let’s see how the business structure makes MLS different. Given the fact that salaries are limited but academy spending is not, wouldn’t a club be more inclined to spend money on the academies to get a competitive edge?
Youth development questions are tricky. England is now in, what, its third decade of hand-wringing over why it doesn’t produce any more Gazzas and Beckhams, much less any Charltons and Matthewses?
You’re not going to solve them all at the league level. And you’re not going to get a Messi through sheer force of will and spending. But neither does it help to sneer at the efforts — which previous first-division U.S. leagues did NOT make — to focus on youth development. Maybe we’ll at least get a few more Yedlins, Hamids and Najars.
MLS offers plenty of ammunition for critics (get the CBA done before December, and just allow outright free agency, OK?). So does U.S. youth development (let’s have five national championships!). The intersection of the two, though is generally a good thing. And let’s not pretend the league structure has any more to do with youth development than the befuddling new MLS logo. After all, clubs and coaches develop players, not leagues.
Duresport.com 