USSDA Season

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BRONZE
Academy season starts next week. What games are you guys excited to see? Who is your favorite team to have the best record by the end of the season? Let the comments begin
 
I think I'm out of the loop. Where did all the animosity toward Nomads come from?

The 02/03 age group has been weak at Nomads for pretty much the last 4-5 years. Then again the same could be said about the Surf 02/03 group until they brought over the Aguilar players last year and Albion players this year. The truth is for the last several years in that age group only Aguilar and Albion have had success beyond the San Diego area. If I were to guess, I think the rise of Aguilar and Rebels ate into Nomads talent pool for several years. But if you go into the younger age groups 03/04/05 Nomads has put together some strong teams, so maybe it's not a long term problem. Who knows.

Just to play Devil's advocate, I will say Nomads is the only club in the San Diego player to put multiple players on the Senior US Men's National team and multitudes of professional players in the MLS and Mexico. So I find it a bit laughable that some are saying the club should cease to exist because a few bad teams/age groups. Surf has produced no USMNT players and the few youth national team players they do have, 90% of them originally came from Nomads. Albion hasn't produced any USMNT players or any youth national team players in recent memory. Their biggest claim to fame at the professional level is Ariel Lassister who is stuck on the LA Galaxy II team in the USL and can't get minutes on the Senior team even when half the roster is injured.

I read a little bit of the 2003 USSDA topic with a bunch of parents foaming at the mouth over a few scorelines. It just confirms that many DA coaches and parents are treating the new DA leagues as just another Flight 1/Gold bracket where bragging rights are at stake. Nevermind the development of individual players and see how the teams progress over the course of the 9-10 month season. Perhaps Nomads is in a downward spiral. I don't know much with what's going on with them these days. But I do like that I'm not constantly getting emails for Private Training and expensive camps from their coaches every week. I like their attempt to have an inhouse school, so their program resembles a real academy. I like that they try to make both their club and academy teams affordable instead of raising the prices every year. And as mentioned above, I respect that Nomads over the last 10-15 years has had the most success of any SD club at generating professional and USMNT players. The list of alumni on their site is mostly just from the past 4-5 years: http://www.nomadssoccer.org/alumni They're generating about 1-2 professional players every year and USMNT player very 2-3 years. Albion and Surf have nothing close to that on the boys side. Lots of college players but almost non-existent pro-level players.

So yeah I'm a bit puzzled about the Nomads hate and shutdown requests unless I'm missing something that's happened recently. Because otherwise, they still have the best long-terms results by far of any San Diego club.
 
Easier to be decisive vs supportive but last few years have not really been kind for the nomads in the DA league.

11-0 blowout or 5-0 scoreline don't help the perception.

Short term results vs longer term development. For most, easier to see the short term and some miss or forgot about the longer term.

DA is what you make of it. Approaches differ but consistency can be difficult to see across the league. Really need more quality coaches, not enough of them and the "old" boys network could use some freshers faces.

Some don't know about and/or follow the DA principals, mandates, behavior expectations, and Respect Initiatives very well. The league doesn't really enforce them as much as they could partly due to USSF being really slow or indecisive on the reviews & audits

The biggest problem is that DA is a closed market and clubs are almost "made for life" no matter if there competitive or not or follow the mandates they remain. Getting admission for new clubs is very difficut and the cost for DA is very high, about 4x what a normal club team costs.

A promotion/regulation system would help the DA league starting at a certain age (U15/16 for example) in the long run IMO but I doubt we will see that in the near future.
 
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younothat said:
The biggest problem is that DA is a closed market and clubs are almost "made for life" no matter if there competitive or not or follow the mandates they remain. Getting admission for new clubs is very difficut and the cost for DA is very high, about 4x what a normal club team costs.

A promotion/regulation system would help the DA league starting at a certain age (U15/16 for example) in the long run IMO but I doubt we will see that in the near future.
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I'm not sure if a promotion/regulation system would be the solution. Locally, CSL has been doing that. SCDSL started out to be more development-oriented, but it has arguably shifted toward the competition-centric model. If DA adopts promotion/relegation, would it be just another competitive league, instead a development model?

These are the symptoms. Our problem is systemic. USSF has basically transplanted the European academy model. However, it hasn't been as successful as it's in Europe, I believe, due to a few unique things about American youth sports. One is that they have the solidarity payment system that USSF and MLS oppose. Another is that soccer outside North America is a major sport, often the only major sport. Another is that American youth sports is largely school-based, at high school and college levels. If I remember correctly, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' father introduced sports to American schools a century ago, and it's been a unique American youth sports tradition. Where else in the world is any college sport a national pastime and a big money business? Where else in the world does a high school spend $65mm to build a stadium?

What USSF lacks is vision. It lacks an understanding that unlike other FAs in the world, it has the dual responsibility to development talent and grow the sport. To make the sports "native" so to speak. To make the sports a cool sports for kids. Football, baseball and basketball are cool sports because they're part of kids social life. Until USSF recognizes it, and provides a vision to change that soccer, no European or South American model can work in America. That's just my two cents.
 
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Interesting.

We now have single age groups for u12, 13, 14, and u15.

But it seems 2002 players are pretty much the only ones left out in the cold. They are in a combined age-group with 2001s. Judging by the past, most combined age group teams have 80-90% of the older birth year. DA now only has two combined age groups, u16/17 and u18/19. By u18/u19 the physical differences are negligible, but with u16/17 (which is basically 14 and 16 year-olds grouped together) there are still some noticeable physical disparities. There's going to be a lot of 2002s out of the DA system next year.

In the past, there were fewer DA clubs and teams, so if a player left DA during an off-year they could still find some good competition in CRL, Nationals, SCDSL, and etc. But with so many clubs and age groups in DA now, the off-year competition is going to be even more thin. I actually think combined age-groups are a good thing when done properly because it forces players to play-up. The problem is clubs take so few of the younger birth year or give them such little play time, it basically just becomes like any other single birth year team with a couple of outliers. And in this case, the 2002s have aged out of the single age groups and the younger 2002s will probably struggle to get on teams of 16 year-olds.
 
Eusebio said:
Interesting.

We now have single age groups for u12, 13, 14, and u15.

But it seems 2002 players are pretty much the only ones left out in the cold. They are in a combined age-group with 2001s. Judging by the past, most combined age group teams have 80-90% of the older birth year. DA now only has two combined age groups, u16/17 and u18/19. By u18/u19 the physical differences are negligible, but with u16/17 (which is basically 14 and 16 year-olds grouped together) there are still some noticeable physical disparities. There's going to be a lot of 2002s out of the DA system next year.

In the past, there were fewer DA clubs and teams, so if a player left DA during an off-year they could still find some good competition in CRL, Nationals, SCDSL, and etc. But with so many clubs and age groups in DA now, the off-year competition is going to be even more thin. I actually think combined age-groups are a good thing when done properly because it forces players to play-up. The problem is clubs take so few of the younger birth year or give them such little play time, it basically just becomes like any other single birth year team with a couple of outliers. And in this case, the 2002s have aged out of the single age groups and the younger 2002s will probably struggle to get on teams of 16 year-olds.
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The current u15(01)/16(00) division is more 16's but at the some bigger clubs 40/60 ratio is common,

There is a small reduction in amt of teams U15 (11) to U16/17 (10) for 17'18 and lets say 60% of those remaining don't play DA so about what 100 player or so for SC will be looking at other teams or to play elsewhere?
 
Final 02 USSDA Standings. Missing the last game of Galaxy vs Santa Barbara since its still not posted.

Team Win Loss Tie Points GF GA
LA Galaxy 24 2 0 72 129 26
Albion 17 5 5 56 80 43
Real So Cal 16 6 5 53 75 37
FC Golden State 16 9 2 50 73 43
San Diego Surf 14 10 3 45 79 62
Strikers 13 10 4 43 82 66
Pateadores 12 8 7 43 73 53
Arsenal 11 13 3 36 42 45
LAUFA 7 14 6 27 48 66
Santa Barbara 4 20 2 14 26 84
Nomads 4 22 1 13 23 110
CC Aztecs 3 22 2 11 33 128
 
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