BrickHorn

If this heat is keeping you dumb spandexed motherfuckers off of 2222, then put me down as pro-Global Warming.

Hannity: Biden is going to raise capital gains, retirement, and estate taxes! Debt-saddled, working class Trumper with no pension or 401K and whose most valuable asset is the Punisher decal on his leased F250: Aw, Hell no!

That is true. And frankly the hardest part was probably getting into Yale, which made it easier to get into Harvard Law. But Desantis seemed to do okay at both schools. He wasn’t tip-top of the class, but earned honors. Which at HLS meant he was in the Top 40%-ish.

It was an interesting watch. Maybe my favorite part was the compilation of big-name, national level sports talk ding-dongs repeating a completely bullshit cover story about Manziel oil money as if it were gospel truth. Just shows how easily manipulated those fucksticks are. A 20 year-old dumbass who went by the name “Uncle Nate” used them as propaganda puppets.

With its speedy forwards and counterattacking style, Japan matches up well against the slow Spanish defenders. But Japan also had crazy shooting accuracy in that game and made the most of their few chances. Spain dominated possession (something like 77%) but didn’t finish. So kind of a perfect storm.

Also no Japan, Brazil, or China.

For the first time, the entire Top 3 is from Europe.

We might have just witnessed the official passing of the torch in women’s soccer. Spain’s youth academies are firing on all cylinders and they’ll be tough to catch for the foreseeable future.

Viva España!

She just let the England keeper set the ball like 20 yards ahead of where the foul happened. Lol

Sort of the same. Even our youngest started select a little late, but at least the rec coach was very knowledgeable. I now highly recommend to friends and family with younger players that their kids should move to a legit academy program if they show any interest in soccer. At the right club, it still be just as fun and light-hearted and positive as a rec team. But they’ll actually learn skills from someone who knows what they’re doing.

I agree, but we also need to widen the net at the younger age groups by shifting from rec league / parent coaching to professionally-coached youth academies at the youngest levels. Too many players waste their formative years learning bad habits from well-meaning moms and dads who know nothing about the sport. The whole parent coach thing is a weird American tradition and it’s particularly counterproductive in soccer because relatively few of us grew up playing the sport at any remotely competitive level.

We (the parents) are the problem. And as long as we are the target demographic in the club soccer business model, it will deliver what we want and not what the national teams need. And as I understand it, at least at the older ages, the MLS Next experience depends on whether you play for an MLS academy team or an independent club. I think the latter is more like ECNL.

From what I understand, on the boys’ side, our current academy system is better than it used to be. But it’s still not as good as the European model; it’s just probably the best we can do given the limited resources and soccer culture here. US academies are few and far between. In European countries, there are academies everywhere. And they all operate with the same incentive to develop players and sell their contracts up the chain. A city like Berlin has numerous soccer academies. It’s not like Bayern is identifying and developing all the players that end up in their system; they’re scouring the lower tier clubs’ academies for talent. Here, academies only exist in MLS cities and even then, there is usually only one and it may be very limited in scope (I believe Austin FC only operates one team per age group, and relies on local pay-to-play clubs as talent feeders). Players for the higher level academy teams in Europe don’t pay. Other players pay a couple hundred bucks a year. Compare that to the US, where higher level competition is typically more expensive and annual club fees are in the $2-5k range. That pay-to-play system limits the player pool through pure economics. It also has another downside: it elevates near-term success as a goal because parents (not other clubs) are the consumers. Even parents who truly value development want to see their kids play for a winning team (or mistake winning at the youth level for development). I’ve been there and I have to remind myself to separate the two issues. Changing to the European model would require a massive cultural shift that is incompatible with the structure of American pro and collegiate sports league. We do not have the kind of open club system necessary to foster pervasive local academies. And even if we did, soccer just isn’t popular enough at the spectator level to support local minor clubs and academies of the European mold. That is especially true on the women’s side, unfortunately. So I agree with alincoln. Our academies aren’t the solution. We need to find a way to incentivize local youth clubs to identify and develop talent above all else. But that’s easier said than done.

I think that’s right and I hope this WC was a wake-up call. It was obvious in watching our games that the USWNT players are now subpar on skill and smarts. And the top talent is aging / aged. We’re suddenly middle of the pack on the world stage. Backed our way into the WC Round of 16 then promptly got eliminated. And possibly more concerning: our U20s failed to advance out of the group stage last year. (Spain won that tournament, btw.)

Spain is kicking ass with apparently the best development in the world right now (unsurprisingly centered mostly in Barca’s academy). They looked great in Euros and won the U20 World Cup last summer.

True, but if you look at the results you’ll see the same few teams dominated the semis and finals across age groups. And anyway, focusing on tournament results is beside the point. The question is whether our youth club system is optimizing player development.

Good point. I don’t have access to Top Drawer Soccer, but they publish rankings that would be interesting to see. I would expect the concentration to flatten out, but I also expect several clubs will dominate the list and the vast majority won’t appear on the rankings. And I expect that the list of top clubs will be relatively consistent from year to year.

Fair enough. Then why aren’t any SA or Austin teams listed? And here’s the ECNL-only list from end-of-year 2021. Turns out adding the rest of the country doesn’t make much of a difference. 1. SUSA Academy (10) 2. Solar (7) 3. Richmond United (6) 4T. Challenge; Penn Fusion; Portland Thorns; Virginia Development Academy (4) So 39 of the top players come from 7 of 150 ECNL clubs. Only 13 of 150 clubs (fewer than 10%) have at least one player make the Top 50. I get it. You’re happy with the development you see at the ECNL level. But if you’re basing that on Solar, you’re operating in a bubble that is far from representative of development system-wide.

I’ve been thinking more about your posts on ECNL and development, and it’s become clear that Solar is the exception that proves the rule. Check out this Soccer Wire ranking of the Top 50 club players from October 2020. (It actually includes 53 players, due to ties.) Solar has the most entries on the list at 15. Think about that. Out of approximately 250 clubs in ECNL and GA, one club in one city produced almost 30% of the top players. That’s amazing and kudos to Solar. But it’s also an indictment of the system. In a healthy development pyramid where talent is being trained in clubs across the country, you wouldn’t see such dramatic talent concentrations. The best of the best clubs might develop 2 or 3 of the Top 50 players. But the other 249 clubs would do their jobs almost as well, and top players would emerge nationwide. That’s not what happens. Solar is the big dog, but the rest of the Top 50 is dominated by only a handful of clubs (12 in total): 1. Solar (15) 2. Sporting Blue Valley (10) 3. Tophat (6) 4. Utah Royals (5) 5. TSJ FC VA (4) 6. STA (3) 7T. Challenge SC; Colorado Rush; Oklahoma Energy; Richmond United (2) 11T. City SC; Houston Dash (1) The top two clubs alone developed 25 of the Top 53. The top five clubs alone developed 40 of 53. That is: a mere 2% of clubs in the two elite leagues developed nearly 80% of the top players. That is alarming. A tiny handful of ECNL and GA clubs are doing an excellent job developing players, but the other 90%+ are falling well short. That is consistent with what I’ve seen from ECNL and GA in our region.

That is certainly an issue. In the US, youth soccer is a business that makes money one way: registration fees. So clubs are financially incentivized to attract any player whose parents will pay thousands of dollars a year. My understanding is that European clubs view the youth academies as a developmental pipeline. They generate money through transfer fees. They don’t sell training services to parents; they sell player contracts to professional club teams. So the Euro clubs are financially incentivized to attract the most talented players. Whether clubs like Solar do a good job developing players or not, they are fighting an uphill battle on the fundamental economics that European clubs and players just don’t have to deal with. And btw, Solar is a huge outlier and not a great indicator of development nationwide. It’s probably the most successful club in the US on the girls’ side. So whether or not Solar is doing things the right way, that doesn’t diminish the criticism of US youth club soccer generally, which is still saddled with the pay-to-play model and its consequences (pressure to win rather than develop, unnecessary travel, narrow pool of players, etc.)

I’d give you a fight, but I’ve got Lex Fridman here.

I will add: there are also youth clubs in the US that focus on developing players and do it well. Some are in ECNL, others are not.

I’m not interested in starting a pissing match about the different leagues and clubs, so I’ll keep this purposefully generic. My kids are not in ECNL, but they play with and against kids that are. Some clubs are better at development than others, but there is no question that there are a significant number of clubs in the top leagues (ECNL and GA on the girls side) focused on winning now and making money. And it shows.

Spain is fun to watch. They play beautiful soccer. We could be looking at an all-European final four. Which isn’t entirely surprising. It was clear last summer that the European women’s game has come a long way.