How do leagues stack up?
- Thread starter Speed
- Start date
My only question is why is GA listed on the Boys side as a league?
What this chart is saying is that playing for the top 10 girls ECNL teams nationally makes sense.
What if your kids ECNL team loses week after week. Does it still make sense to be cannon fodder for the better ECNL teams?
This is the problem with data, some people don't understand math + jump to conclusions that aren't correct.
I took a look at the 2010s for southwest.
The ECNL distribution is shifted about 2 goals up from the GA distribution.
The top ECNL team is a little over 2 points ahead of the top GA team.
The median ECNL team is a little over 2 points ahead of the median GA team.
And the bottom ECNL team is a full three points above the bottom GA team. (GA has a slightly wider spread.)
That shift is about half as large as the spread between the top and bottom teams in each league. So a top half GA team is similar to a bottom half ECNL team, but plays considerably weaker opponents.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
That seems to match the national #'s for 2009s. Whether measured from the top 10 in league (best teams), or the average of all in league, there is a ratings difference of roughly 2 goals. It still doesn't answer the personal question of whether it's better to be on a losing ECNL team or a winning GA team, as both options certainly have pros/cons.
ECNL Southwest also has 4 out of the 10 top g2010 teams in the nation. You could probably get similar results comparing ECNL Southwest vs other ECNL Regional leagues.
I do agree that it's problematic that GA Southwest bottomfeeders are bad and should be relegated. There's a couple of DPL clubs that could replace them and provide a higher level of competition. Or maybe an ECNL club will switch over to GA for perceived wins.
Other than SE, I suspect you'll get roughly the same results no matter which region you pick. ECNL will be about 2 points ahead of GA.
That only tells you which league has stronger competition. Which league is best for your kid is a completely different question.
I don't believe it will be as stacked at ECNL Southwest vs whoever but who knows I haven't looked at the data that way.
National top 50 ECNL G2010 = 35 teams
National top 50 GA G2010 = 11 teams
From a numbers perspective alone ECNL G2010 has a 2 to 1 the number of top 50 teams GA does.
Unfortunately, the prize with Pay to Play isn't being the highest ranked team nationwide. The end goal is positioning your kid in front of college recruiters.
The question is does GA's 11 top 50 ranked teams get as many looks as highly ranked ECNL teams? You can say that ECNL pulls in 5 million times the number of recruiters. But most colleges attend both ECNL and GA events. Unfortunately, someone has to lose and someone has to win at events. Do you get more looks as a highly ranked ECNL team that loses at ECNL recruiting events to ECNL superteams or do you get more looks being an equivalently ranked GA team winning at GA events?
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
ECNL is expected to be several goals better than GA across every individual region, just as it is several goals better nationally. ECNL gets more recruiters by person no matter how the math is done. The end result is more ECNL players are recruited per capita than GA, fully taking into account the differing sizes of the leagues.
The assumption that someone will be noticed more easily on a winning GA team rather than a losing ECNL team is just that - it's an assumption that isn't shown by any of the numbers.
None of this means by any stretch that ECNL is the only way to get a recruiters attention, and none of it guarantees anything by individual.
The assumption that someone will be noticed more easily on a winning GA team rather than a losing ECNL team is just that - it's an assumption that isn't shown by any of the numbers.
None of this means by any stretch that ECNL is the only way to get a recruiters attention, and none of it guarantees anything by individual.
Isn't this the exact conversation we had last year around this time? It's obvious people have an an investment in one league or another + they're not going to change their views.
Last year the conversation fizzled out with "See you at Surf Cup". I suggest fast forwarding to this instead of wasting time going back and forth discussing perspectives that won't change.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
People are going to continue to deny reality for as long as they wish.
Your theory boils down to thinking that college coaches can be fooled by racking up a bunch of wins against weak opponents.
It's easy enough to test that theory. Look at who the schools signed:
2025 Recruiting | Socal Soccer
The numbers do not appear to support your theory. Evan after accounting for league size, early signings were about 3:1 ECNL.
I'm not saying GA is a bad place to play soccer. But the argument in favor is not "it's the best way to get on a D1 roster".
Code
GOLD
I really think taking the top 10 from each league is a statistical mistake. The base # of teams from each league is different, as others have pointed out, and likely skews the data. I wish they would have used the top 10%, or 20%; would have given a more accurate assessment IMO. Either way, I'm more interested in average of all teams in the league when evaluating the "strength" of a league. The SR App can easily tell us what the team to team ranking is. It would be interesting to see a side by side of Top 10, Top 10%, and All; if they are close the data is likely good, if there are significant differences, the data is likely invalid in one or all methodologies.
Code
GOLD
How are any of the other leagues different. All leagues have cannon fodder, some are just worse than others. The best way to tell how balanced or imbalanced a league is is the PPG stats. In a perfect league all teams would be 1.5 PPG; that will never happen. If all the teams are between 1.0 and 2.0 that is an ideal scenario. If there are multiple teams below 0.5 and above 2.5, the teams are not playing at the same level of play.
Code
GOLD
And before that it was "lets see what happens after the summer tournys", before that was "lets see what happens after League play", before that was "Covid messed up the teams, this summer tournys don't count"........
Three years ago I was on here saying that in SoCal the GA is not challenging the ECNL for top league. I also said the GA was slowly but steadily slipping in quality year over year, and in the next few years would probably by in third or lower when ranking leagues; being surpassed by ECRL and/or NPL. Today, when you look at the Top 10 CA teams per league, GA and ECRL are equal, and NPL is slightly higher. Shoot even DPL caught up to GA. If they ranked all the teams in the leagues, I'm sure we would see GA fall behind ECRL, as the GA has a number of lower ranked teams, and the ECRL seems to have more consistency in the level of play.
The conversation fizzled out because the GA proponents are like gambling addicts looking for the the "next one will show us"... but it the same result every time.
I seem to remember top Socal GA teams doing very well at Surf Cup last summer. Better than most of the mid tier Socal ECNL clubs.
Unless your kid plays on a top 10 Socal team you probably shouldn't comment.
Noticer
SILVER
For a truly reasonable assessment to be made about the 75% to 25% statistic, we have to know what the actual player-pool size is for ECNL and GA.
Just as an example, since we know ECNL is a larger league, if the total number of players from GA + ECNL is 10,000, with 7,500 ECNL and 2,500 GA,
and 750 ECNL girls are signed and 250 GA girls are signed, then it's an even proportional split.
If, however, in that 10,000 player pool, 9,000 are ECNL and 1000 are GA, and you have 750 ECNL to 250 GA, the argument is that more GA girls are recruited (per capita.)
We also need to weigh D1 school by the school’s academic ranking. An UCLA scholarship should count 10x more than a cal state scholarship.
Came across an article that was written last July that very clearly describes the current state of Girls Youth Soccer.
I thought it was good enough to share...
sports.yahoo.com
I thought it was good enough to share...
How the USWNT’s pipeline got fractured by a youth soccer turf war
The USWNT team has continued to win. But beneath the surface, cracks are crystalizing. With European powers investing and improving, the vulnerable balance of power in international women’s soccer is shifting.
Well... sooner than that, it seems.
100% and the kids and parents were stuck in the middle. Very sadCame across an article that was written last July that very clearly describes the current state of Girls Youth Soccer.
I thought it was good enough to share...
How the USWNT’s pipeline got fractured by a youth soccer turf war
The USWNT team has continued to win. But beneath the surface, cracks are crystalizing. With European powers investing and improving, the vulnerable balance of power in international women’s soccer is shifting.
