Look at soccer rankings. Beach's and Legends ECRL teams would be upper half in SW ECNL. The talent is there.
How’s the 2023-24 season going?
- Thread starter CharlieMurfee
- Start date
See what I'm talking about?
Big ECNL Clubs that could handle 2 top teams per age group are being forced to hold back primarily so they don't put smaller ECNL clubs out of business. Additionally, not being able to field 2 top teams forces players to drive long distances just to play on a high level team. Or they can choose to play locally on a lower level ECRL team.
Interesting topic. I’ve always wondered why there are a few ECNL clubs that have been gifted two teams. Concorde Fire, FC Stars, Michigan Hawks, PDA, Real Co, SLSG, Sting Dallas all have two listed for the same city. In some cases, like Sting, they’re not even the strongest club in their area. I’ve always just assumed it was a power play of some kind. Anyone know?
Code
GOLD
A 7-0 score will only give the team a bump if they performed better than expected, which would cause the score to be reflected in green. If a score was predicted to be 7-0, and the result was 7-0 or within 2 GD, it would not really bump up the team much, and the score will be represented in black. If the score was predicted to be 4-0, and ended 7-0, they will get a bump, and they should, because they outperformed their prediction.
There are plenty of examples of teams winning by 5-1 and still having the SR move down (score in red). That is what makes SR accurate, you can't really effect the ratings much by sandbagging, or avoiding playing certain teams; the teams actual game results compared to the predicted results (team ratings) is what causes a change. It is easy to see if a teams rating/rank is incorrect; they will have many results in green and/or red in a short amount of time. If most of the results are in black, the rating is very close to being accurate.
This is only the second summer of cross-play data being added to the teams algorithm since the new App and data sets were started just over 1.5 years ago. When the App started, you could see that team ratings were initially set by the teams year group and league association. As soon as cross-play started last summer, team movement in rankings was constant and significant. Things stabilized throughout the league season, and then started a lot of movement again during this summer, but not nearly as significant as last summer. I think the within leagues ratings of teams is very strong, due to all of the league data over the past year. The cross-league comparison was probably a bit off coming out of league this year, but with play-offs, finals, and summer tournaments, I suspect the rankings accuracy is going to be even better now. We will probably see a lot less red and green results throughout the next year.
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SDSC Surf and SD Surf are separate clubs. Surf is just a marketing brand franchise name clubs tack-on to their name to bring in recognition. Same goes with many of the other teams with similar names. Just because teams share a name, does not mean they are the same club. Most have completely independent boards, directors, and coaches. Usually if a location/area is tacked onto the brand, it gives you an indication it is a completely different club. ie. Legends SCV, Albion Central, East County Surf, AYSO United Los Angeles....
Code
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I agree, as long as there is promotion and relegation determining who is really fielding a top quality team. Let a club have 5 teams in the GA/ECNL, as long as the level of play is consistent. The only sure way to do that without involving club/league politics that I know of is promotion/relegation.
Code
GOLD
I think the exact opposite is happening. There are more players are driving into these top clubs from out of the area than there are driving away, because there is no local high level options. We should be expanding the top league options, not concentrating them into clubs that already control the market. Give some outlier club ECNL or GA access and they will field competitive teams within a few months. Like everyone says, all clubs are recruiting guest players all the time. Most of the top teams are running 22+ player rosters, and a lot of talent is still overflowing to the ECRL/DPL/NPL/E64 teams, because there are not enough teams in the top leagues for the amount of talent. The way the ECNL/GA gatekeepers have set up and syphoned all the top players is self-fulfilling to prevent competition for their customers. Place an ECNL/GA club into the Mission Valley area, and there would be a completely competitive club in no time, with minimal effects on the existing ECNL/GA teams. The ECRL/DPL/E64 teams would take a hit though, but eliminating some of these secondary letter leagues would actually be a step in the right direction.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
An example was provided by PM (poster legitimately didn't want to call out teams publicly, probably the safest method all around), where a good (but not great) team played a recent tournament, and they had a GD of +19 with 4 shutouts over 4 games. It may be pretty fair to say they were sandbagging in a lower tournament than the team was capable of. But even with all of those wins (one of them a 9-0!), the tournament results bumped up the rating for the team a grand total of 0.05 goals, and 2 places in state rank (team was between 30-50). The example provided was actually a very strong example for what Code is stating above. Some people continue to believe that a good team intentionally playing down to destroy inferior teams will be helpful in their SR rating/ranking, but it's just not the case. The more they look into specific examples to try and support that belief - the more they will realize they are mistaken.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Academically/mathematically this makes sense, if each team could be considered a separate entity to be judged fairly on its own. But in practice there would be a ton of implementation problems, mainly around making sure that the rosters are locked and a superclub with 5 teams can't just manipulate rosters as desired to protect their lower teams from relegation as the season goes on. Limiting clubs to 1 team makes that type of manipulation much harder.
Code
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TGS would make roster check and balance pretty simple. Actually, it be more difficult to get creative with rosters when all the clubs teams are rostered in the same system vice multiple leagues that are not monitoring each others rosters. The players that move between US Club Soccer (ECNL), US Youth Soccer (E64) and USYSSA (GA) are the ones that are able to bend the rules the most. If all the teams are under one umbrella, it is harder to hide.
I’ll guess the reverse. Teams which had high GD last year will start this year with some green for league play.
We’ll know in a few weeks.
It's both, local kids needing to travel for competition because XYZ club isn't interested in them and kids without a high level option that need to travel to ABC club for better soccer. Having a limited number of ECNL/GA teams benefits clubs + hurts players because there's less high level competition available.
Promotion / Relegation is the ideal but allowing top ECNL clubs to have more than 1 top team is a bandaid solution that bridges the gap between clubs as they exist today + what people really want which is Pro/Rel.
If a club has the resources (kids, field space, coaches), they can apply to run a second ECNL program (must have a team at every age group).
Adding teams does not add high level competition. It gives you more, weaker opponents.
ECNL added teams to help create the NorCal conference. It gave us shorter travel, and was a good idea overall. But the added teams were not competitive.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Took a look at the NorCal ECNL 2011B bracket for the fall (link), and I see where you're coming from - at least for that earliest age group. For what it's worth, the 14 teams have an average SR rating of 42.90. The average rating for the NPL West B2011 bracket in NorCal is 43.15. The top two teams in NPL would be expected to beat 100% of the teams in ECNL. At the progressively older age groups, it quickly becomes MLS Next dominating the top 20, with ECNL (NL) Norcal looking like this below, with not much more representation than RL/NPL: (top level of NPL has been renamed as ECNL-RL for Norcal boys)
| Year | # of NorCal ECNL boys teams in top 20 (CA) | # in top 50 (CA) |
| 2010 | 1 | 5 |
| 2009 | 0 | 4 |
| 2008 | 1 | 8 |
| 2007 | 1 | 5 |
| 2006 | 1 | 6 |
You could argue the same thing with Solar now. They played one SW ECNL team and lost to them but they are ranked higher overall than the SW team that beat them.
it’s very possible Solar hasn’t been as strong as they were at the Youngers but their competition results show that they are where they belong beating DKSC multiple times with their last meeting ending 4-1 (DKSC who has played numerous SW NL teams we can compare from). They lost to an Eagles team that peaked early in the season that was top dog for a quick flash until they weren’t. Eagles should have went to Virginia but unfortunately they didn’t get the chance and lost to eventual national champions Koge.
In my description of Solar’s performance, we mention several top 10 teams in the age group we can compare to. That’s why imo their ranking holds true and no one is debating it. You cannot say that for Top Hat unfortunately as you can only draw from Charlotte SA who they tied 1-1. Like I’ve said, probably a top 15-10 team, but I don’t have them at #2 until they beat someone of merit.
As I was saying.. and these weren’t even top 5 NL teams
Using your logic top Socal teams should have attended TH's big tournament they just held.
Would have been a good opportunity to beat a higher ranked team.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
It's certainly not a strong showing at the beginning of this new season. Drawing with Carolina, just a day after Carolina lost to a team ~#400 in the US, isn't an emphatic endorsement of how capable TH 2010G may be. Both game results were well below expectations (as shown), and if it continues as the season progresses - their rating will continue to adjust to the new performance level.
Code
GOLD
Oh look. TH finally had a chance to "smack around" some of their local ECNL teams. I do believe TH is a really good team, but also agree they have a very small amount of cross-league/cross-region play compared to most teams. I know the screen shot was already posted, but it left out the interesting contrast in performance between GA Summer Showcase (vs GA teams), and Dicks Invitational (vs ECNL teams). I also suspect that if they played some of the top 30 ECNL teams there would be a serious eye opener; we are looking at results from ECNL teams ranked 49th and 142nd.
