Ranking boys leagues

[Desert Hound]

Seems you could look up the YSR score of each team in each league, and rank the leagues by average YSR score.

It doesn't work so well for ex-DA teams, but works fine for everyone else.

Not that it matters. But if you need a score it's easy enough to make one.

Overall YSR is pretty good. The best option out there to be honest.

It does not do a good job in closed leagues like DA or ECNL. Now granted we know these are the strongest teams generally speaking. But since they do not play a lot of outside competition, it is hard to compare them vs the rest of the soccer world. DA of course rarely played ANYONE outside of DA. ECNL will occasionally (not the majority) in stuff like Surf Cup, Silverlakes, or Players. I suspect GA will follow along like ECNL in terms of not a ton of outside competition.

 

[Dargle]

Totally agree that YSR overvalues blowouts. If you really need it, you can get around this by applying the YSR algorithm but excluding all mismatches.

However, if you just want a quick sanity check on the strength of CSL gold versus elite academy, do you have a better idea than average YSR score?

Perhaps the biggest problem with doing that now is that CSL hasn't set their brackets yet. The strength of Gold will depend upon who applied for and was accepted into Premier, who left for Elite Academy, which Silver Elite teams will be promoted to Gold, and who is still active as a team and a club. Same is true for SCDSL Discovery. Plus, tons of the top kids in top CSL and SCDSL teams have been trying out with MLS League teams that have tryouts and some with ECNL as well. Right now, you basically have to speak to someone with a kid in the age group who really knows the area teams and what they are up to in order to get a sense of what is really going and even they will only know a fraction of the teams.

 

[espola]

Overall YSR is pretty good. The best option out there to be honest.

It does not do a good job in closed leagues like DA or ECNL. Now granted we know these are the strongest teams generally speaking. But since they do not play a lot of outside competition, it is hard to compare them vs the rest of the soccer world. DA of course rarely played ANYONE outside of DA. ECNL will occasionally (not the majority) in stuff like Surf Cup, Silverlakes, or Players. I suspect GA will follow along like ECNL in terms of not a ton of outside competition.

That was one of the weaknesses of DA (or maybe they saw it as a strength?) -- no objective comparisons possible with other methods of player development. Was this one of the factors considered when USSF dropped the program? I don't know - I wasn't in the room.

 

[Eagle33]

Perhaps the biggest problem with doing that now is that CSL hasn't set their brackets yet. The strength of Gold will depend upon who applied for and was accepted into Premier, who left for Elite Academy, which Silver Elite teams will be promoted to Gold, and who is still active as a team and a club. Same is true for SCDSL Discovery. Plus, tons of the top kids in top CSL and SCDSL teams have been trying out with MLS League teams that have tryouts and some with ECNL as well. Right now, you basically have to speak to someone with a kid in the age group who really knows the area teams and what they are up to in order to get a sense of what is really going and even they will only know a fraction of the teams.

The difference between CSL Premier and SCDSL Discovery is: CSL have 3-4 top teams and the rest is crap and SCDSL have 3-4 crap teams and the rest is good.

 

[Dargle]

The difference between CSL Premier and SCDSL Discovery is: CSL have 3-4 top teams and the rest is crap and SCDSL have 3-4 crap teams and the rest is good.

Hard to make a generalization like that. It has depended a lot upon age group. More relevant to this thread, though, is that it’s hard to know for sure what’s left of either right now. Even without pandemic-related drops, the big change for boys is that the number of DA teams used to drop as you went up in age groups (a talent funnel process), which meant lots of strong kids returning to Premier and a Discovery. Now, the MLS league (former DA) and Boys ECNL (still very new) provides lots of opportunities at older age groups, as does the brand new EA and ECRL leagues. Premier and Discovery are likely going to have some teams that stay intact despite all of that and lots of teams that struggle because of dilution.