Understanding the "why"
- Thread starter full90
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The reason there are far less DA clubs for older is exactly for the reason you've stated herein. Number of clubs decrease with age with an intention.
USSF knows that by having less older clubs, increases competition for roster spots and they can get to the top 1% or less. By having more clubs for older, while increases the pool, dilutes the talent concentration. I've been told this, second hand, via DA DOC that heard it directly from USSF.
Aside from the growth discussion that preceded my post, which I agree with most with MWN, all these exceptions that people are stating do exist. To argue a logic is right or wrong based on exceptions, rather than the general trend, is a misguided effort by my sense. It is just as silly to use WC qualifier for effectiveness of DA.
In assessing the effectiveness, there is the process and there is the execution. My observation is that USSF has failed more in the latter than the former. While the process may not be perfect, we do not execute talent identification and development very well.
Last, the point of younger ages playing up, is an initiative that USSF encourage clubs and scores how well they do that. When my kid played DA, prior to now playing in college, at the playoffs and showcases, the USSF scouts aways wanted to know how many kids on the field were younger ages playing up.
So by the time the kid is U16, you pretty much have to accept the fact that there is no real separation between 16s~19s. As such, can you compete at that level becomes the first order filter. Is there a flaw in that logic - yes but its a small calculated risk.
Is there any data on the level of current top players when they were younger worldwide? Meaning, were all the national team players around the world clearly the best by u12, or u16 or u19? My understanding is that while some pros were obviously the best from a very early age, many (perhaps the majority) bloomed later. Many of the elite players didn't become elite until adulthood.
That is a great question and I have not seen any publicly citable sources, but for the heck of it I went and looked at the Premiere League Champions - Chelsea FC and looked at the top 14 starters with more games than anybody else. Looked at their year of birth and the first date of "Pro" (i.e. senior start date) to come up with the approximate age the player turned Pro. Here is the result:
Jersey Name Born Year Pro Age Pro
10 Eden Hazard 1991 2007 16
15 Victor Moses 1990 2007 17
4 Cesc Fabregas 1987 2004 17
2 Antonio Rudiger 1993 2011 18
27 Andreas Christensen 1996 2014 18
9 Alvaro Morata 1992 2010 18
14 Tiemoue Bakayoko 1994 2012 18
13 Thibaut Courtois 1992 2010 18
28 Cesar Azpilicueta 1989 2007 18
24 Gary Cahill 1985 2004 19
3 Marcos Alonso 1990 2010 19
22 Willian 1988 2007 19
11 Pedro 1987 2008 21
The youngest was Eden Hazard getting his first pro start at age 16 and the oldest was Pedro getting his pro start at age 21. The average age each of these "elite" players received their pro start was 18.1583846 (18.2 years of age). This result surprised the heck out of me because I genuinely believed it would be something like 24.
If you really look at this from a where does that US fit in to the "world stage" we are very far behind when it comes to youth development primarily because we have no legitimate professional lower level teams and the MLS teams would likely be the equivalent to League 1 or 2 (Premiere, Champions, League 1, League 2) and Galaxy would probably get their butts kicked by Stevenage and Barnet.
With regard to the National Team for England, I believe most of the players recently named all started their Pro careers before age 21.
You could look them all up if you have time, but here is a sample:
Born Pro Debut Age Pro National Team Age National
Joe Hart 1987 2003 16 2005 18
Danny Rose 1990 2006 16 2005 15
Harry Maguire 1993 2011 18 2012 19
Adam Lallana 1988 2006 18 2006 18
Dele Alli 1996 2011 15 2012 16
Jamie Vardy 1987 2007 20 2015 28
The vast majority of the National Team players had their professional starts at 18 and under, where some were late bloomers (Jamie Vardy) at 20.
In my mind a footballer has not hit adulthood until after age 23/24. Why? Because the world still considers those at age 22 (in development) and has a special bracket for those kids USMNT U23 through U15.
As far as becoming "elite" I believe the age is 27 for men to reach their pinnacle.
Obviously, you are very smart as evidenced by this statement "...I agree [] most with MWN..."
I also agree that the argument some make that the USMNT performance (failure to secure World Cup) is an indication of the USSDA effectiveness is simply silly. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of youth and senior development in the United States. Moreover, it ignores the reality that the US Mens National Team had a Medium Age of 27, which means that half of the team members are over the age of 27 and never played in the USSDA.
The DA is 10 years old and stops at U19 (i.e. age 18). That said, of the Trinidad&Tobago squad no player on the USMNT, but Pulisic (age 18), played in the DA within the last 4 years. It makes no logical sense to hold a program responsible for a result when over 4 years have past since 99% of the athletes on the USMNT could have played in that program.
If we really want to understand why our team lost then we need to look at where these players have trained after graduating from the youth academies at age 18. The Infamous Panama / Trinidad & Tobago Squad
https://www.ussoccer.com/mens-national-team/latest-roster#tab-1
MLS Team: 19
Mexico 5
Europe 3
19 Players from our awesomely substandard pro league and 8 from abroad. Aaaahaaa, I think we have the culprit.
Desert Hound
DA
Interesting. I had to look up some previous squads. Up to and through 2002-2014 about half or more of the squads were playing in Europe. I didn't go back further.
MLS is getting better but has a long way to go. I watched a couple of friendlies last year and those European clubs were running circles around our teams.
The MLS is still 20+ years away from competing at the International level, unless US Soccer twists their arms into making competitive changes, which won't occur until the collective owners of the MLS cash flow positive in all business units.
But bringing this back to the DA, we are in a competitive "disadvantage" to Europe and South America because we don't have domestic high-level professional teams and our youth academies are effectively subpar independents, thus, phenom/elite players are stuck in a subpar USSDA until age 18. Its only a select few with dual citizenship that can escape the US earlier (see, FIFA Article 19, which prohibits international transfer of players under 18) and then once out of the US, must deal with Work Permit status if a non-EU passport holder.
Article 19 is designed to prevent child trafficking, and we need to have a serious look at how we might make changes to allow free movement of minors that want to pursue soccer. Once we get that figured out, the US will have a chance to compete for Championships. Right now we simply compete to make the groupings so we can be eliminated before the Quarter Finals with our sub-par MLS alumni.
I agree.
It would be really interesting to see if, say, the EPL at large had older pro-starting ages than the national teams. I looked around at the soccer data APIs out there and none of them seem to include an age_turned_pro field, though I but you could scrape it off of wikipedia for the better known players.
One thing to keep in mind though is that European and South American players turn pro much younger than US players because they have robust lower leagues. Lewandowski, for example, could turn pro at 18 because he played for Zincz Pruszkow which was a "flight 3" Polish team (at the time). Also, European players don't have to worry about NCAA eligibility, where as a US players has to be absolutely sure they're pro material before giving up on their college career.
You need to rethink your logic because the fact that the average age on the team is 27 is even more proof that the DA has failed to meets its goal. If the DA had been successful at producing world class players you would have expected to have seen a much lower average age on the USMNT. By your very own analysis world class players average pro start is at age 18.
I agree with you that its not just the USMNT failure to qualify that's proof of the DA's failure, its also the Olympics, its the U-23 and below results, its the lack of impact American players on 1st division European teams...etc. We have had multiple cycles of players that have been through the full DA program with no evidence of any difference in the production of American world class players. I'm all ears if you have evidence of the success of the DA, but so far I've only heard excuses.
From all accounts the DA is a great league, and I'm stoked to have my son to play with a group of highly competitive kids, but as its presently structured its not an effective development system.
If 10 years ago they had started with 1-0-year-olds, we might be seeing a difference by now. Instead, they started with 18-year-olds, who were too far along to be given much help even by any miraculously perfect coaching method.
I agree that making a situation where all the best players practice and play together every week is the foundation of a good player development system - when are they going to do that?
Logic is sound, but my data was a bit flawed in that I misread the article (was too quick) and used the 2014 data instead of the 2017 team. There are 3 points to be made.
- There is a difference between turning pro (17 or 18) and peaking in athletic performance (age 25-27).
- What is the average age that National Team athletes are at their peak and did the Coach (Arenas) exercise good judgment in selecting the squad.
- How many USSDA athletes turn pro before aging out at 19.
Because nearly 1/2 of the squad was over the age of 30 and over half were over the age of 27, the USSDA had no impact as it didn't exist and for the balance of the players there was only marginal influence of their development given the starting 11's age. Logically speaking we can conclude that the USSDA had insignificant direct impact on the players chosen to start for the USMNT and the performance of that team had very little "direct" influence.
Your point, however, is the lack of young players chosen for the team is "indirect" evidence of the ineffectiveness of the USSDA. To analyze this point we need to look at a few factors:
1) Bias in choosing players for the USMNT by Arenas. Let's ignore this one and just assume that Arenas picked the best players, despite charges he didn't and went with players he knew.
2) What is the peak performance age for professional players. The prevailing thought is that professional soccer players reach their peak performance between the ages of 25-27. Indeed, the average of most World Cup teams is 27.5 (see, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28254123, and https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-sports-analytics/jsa0021 [25-27])
Based on the two referenced articles and statistical analysis presented therein; a successful World Cup team should have players with an average age of 27.5. This means that nearly 7-9 years will pass between when a player graduates from the USSDA and reaches their "peak performance" at 25-27 years of age. Remember, players age out of the USSDA at 18.
We come to the final question/point. Is the USSDA capable of producing "elite" players that are capable of turning pro at age 17/18, and if so, is the system capable of taking in those players domestically and furthering their training so they reach "peak performance" at age 25-27?
I believe the answer is yes (system can produce 16 year old phenoms ... Lederman, Pulisic is an example) and no its not capable of developing those players further.
US phenoms are stuck in a catch-22. The level of play in the USSDA is high enough for these players to get on the radar of foreign youth academies, but because of Article 19 (FIFA), they can't move to those clubs until they reach 18 (see, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/...ifa-rules-sidelines-young-players-abroad.html).
Once players age out of the USSDA they are faced with the choice of choosing college (death sentence for development at the mens level) or going pro to play on an MLS "B" team. The vast majority of European academies that wanted those players wanted them at 14-15, not 19, so that option is out. Once a USSDA player chooses college they basically become unavailable because their development is stunted due to the NCAA's training restrictions. So now the only hope for high level training and development is the MLS programs, which is subpar compared to their European counterparts for a variety of reasons (namely athletes in program are not elite).
Ultimately, this brings us to the Million Dollar question, can we blame the USSDA for not producing 25-27 year old soccer phenoms that will make an impact on the USMNT?
I believe the answer is no primarily due to the fact that those 17/18 year old elite players can only become world class players by training and playing at levels not offered domestically at the present time. It therefore follows that because USSDA players age out at 18 and won't reach their peak performance until 25-27, the failure of the USMNT is directly due to the failure of our domestic senior programs (MLS, NASL and USL) to (1) entice and/or (2) train players in order to further their development instead of going to college where it will regress.
Speaks volumes. Doesn’t fit the USYNT “profile”...bigger, faster, stronger. If you can actually play really good soccer, it’s a bonus.
@xav10 and @SBFDad
Ummm No. On the surface it tells us that some of us bring in biases to a discussion and don't research facts.
Ben Lederman has been brought into the USYNT a number of times and has earned US YNT caps as a U14 and U15. (https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/05/14/09/09/140514-u14-bnt-international-training-camp-zagreb). When he was banished from Barcelona due to FIFA Article 19, he returned to the US and trained at IMG. Now that he has a Polish passport he can return to Barcelona to continue his training. US Soccer also brought him in tot he U17 Residency camp (https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...2-player-u17-mnt-2016-spring-residency-roster, https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/clu...oys-national-team-roster-for-croatia_aid28806).
That said, while Ben Lederman was/is in the Barcelona youth academy system, Barcelona retains ultimate control of the lad and unless Barcelona releases the player to play with the Youth National Team, the player cannot be named/rostered. (https://www.starsandstripesfc.com/2017/12/31/16835428/weekly-youth-update-12-31). Lederman would be an idiot to ask to leave Barcelona's youth academy and train and play with the USYNT in meaningless games.
Dr. Richard Hurtz
SILVER
Jesus Christ enough with all this researching the web and referencing articles... the bottom line is DA soccer is run by the same people over at US soccer who hired Bruce Arena who scouted the same old ass recycled players. Eric Wynalda is right. Promotion and relegation is our future and MLS needs to conform. It has to start from the top down. The election held back in February didn’t change anything. We can’t have the same people running the show from 20 yrs ago. Can’t have the same scouts from 15 yrs ago. And we can’t keep scouting the same stereotypical all American athlete for our National teams. At some point it has to start with I.Q. This sport isn’t about at what age a boy matured. It’s about which boy matured mentally faster with his soccer brain. Scout these boys and then watch how well fast America will qualify for Olympics and World Cups. If soccer were a business instead of a federation people accountable would be fired. Ex soccer players should be running this show. Not Excutives.
Between NCAA offering educations and MLS billionaires not permitting pro/rel, USSF has power over AYSO and not much else. It’s too bad.
It seems like you are not following Euro national teams and clubs, there were numerous instances of European clubs not releasing their players for the national duty. They usually mask that with phantom injuries. Lazio refused to release one of the worlds most talented midfielders Milinkovic-Savic to play for U21 national team stating that he should play for a senior side and not for a u21 side that a few months earlier won u20 world cup...