In your view, how many GA teams are actually at the level of the average ECNL team?
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In your view, how many GA teams are actually at the level of the average ECNL team?
Depends on the geography.
I'm not going to get into a back and forth on which teams are better or worse than others. If you want that kind of detail review the rankings app.
I will say (because my kid has played in both GA and ECNL) that from a league perspective they're nearly identical. League Games are the same, events are the same, playoffs are the same etc. The differences are the clubs involved and ECNL has an official 2nd tier called ECRL.
WatchthemPlay
SILVER
Agree with this. SD is lucky to have a great option in GA and a couple of great options for ECNL. This isn’t the case in every region. I agree it isn’t about “ECNL” or “GA” unless you just are focused on bragging about a league. If your kid’s goal really is college, it’s about researching the club and their historic success with getting kids into college. Coaches watch top ranked teams in both leagues equally and the leagues have the same basic structure. History matters…college coaches have more trust in programs that consistently produce college players.
Pick the GA or ECNL with the best history of college recruitment success where your kid also has the opportunity to play a lot, likes the team and likes the coach. A kid can get recruited on a less competitive GA or ECNL club, but it require being more proactive and maybe flexible about options. It is also harder to get recruited if they aren’t getting much play time even on a team that gets more exposure. Don’t downplay the value of a coach as it is critical they are promoting your kid to college coaches. It will be more difficult if they don’t have relationships with college coaches or aren’t willing to be an advocate. Talk to the coach about what they do in the college process and talk to athletes who are already recruited in the club to get a better idea.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
That would require either ECNL or GA to completely go away
The YSR app will give you an idea of who's the best of the best. Not perfect, but the best objective tool out there.
Im ok
The rankings app is better than nothing. It shows an expected win/lose for cross league teams. The problem is because of the different leagues splitting things out some teams will never get the opportunity to play other teams. Parents react to this by seeking out teams for their kid to play on that only play top clubs. Which perpetuates the "my league is better than your league mentality".
The real issue is with the crazy expensive youth leagues is talent is often overlooked by ability to pay.
Im ok with all the current youth leagues going away. All they do is take their cut + reinforce things that don't matter. (Goals over development)
The rankings app is better than nothing. It shows an expected win/lose for cross league teams. The problem is because of the different leagues splitting things out some teams will never get the opportunity to play other teams. Parents react to this by seeking out teams for their kid to play on that only play top clubs. Which perpetuates the "my league is better than your league mentality".
The real issue is with the crazy expensive youth leagues is talent is often overlooked by ability to pay.
It’s not just the parents. If you ask them, the kids at top teams don’t want to play the weaker teams. They want to play each other.
And they have a point. Playing blowouts isn’t much fun, but it does risk injuries and chew up your limited game time.
So they try to avoid teams which seem like they are weaker.
I've never seen a kid that isn't happy after a blowout. Unless they've gone though multiple, 5+ blowouts and playing is getting boring. (Been in both situations.)
At least blowouts silence the competition if they're questioning the top teams position/ranking.
You hit the nail on the head there.
For a top team, multiple 5 point wins is normal. Solar had 6 last year. MVLA had 12. Surf had 13. Recurring blowouts are a thing.
There's teams in other leagues that go through the same thing. Obviously limiting who you play against isn't the answer if you're already getting blowouts in the current league.
It's almost like having a single league with multiple levels of play all defined by pro/rel is the way to go. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that before.
The annoying thing about curated leagues is that coaches/clubs that aren't very good get into positions of power + blame players when they don't win. These are the teams that get blown out when they're playing in a high level league.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
Yes, pro/rel for youth leagues has been talked about before and is generally frowned upon since that would go directly against development for youth players.
My point is more that any top team is going to be selective about who they play. No matter how it is organized, the #1 team in socal isn’t going to want to play team #20.
Pro-rel would make it clearer who is #1 and who is #20. But you’d still have #20 saying “play us” and #1 saying “prove yourself first”.
That's not the reason clubs don't want to do pro/rel.
The reason youth clubs don't want to do pro/rel is because they have teams at every age group. Doing pro/rel on team by team basis would mix clubs up and not allow coaches to coach multiple teams. (Increases the cost for clubs) You could do pro/rel at the club level but this just encourages clubs to join different leagues if they get relegated.
Also, the real reason clubs are against pro/rel is if there's multiple leagues there's multiple kings/queens of the world at the end of the season. Clubs want their paying customers to be happy with the product so more winners = more customers. It's the same thing as when tournaments hide the levels teams play. It allows more players, parents, and clubs to be a winner. Which is what people are paying for.
Clubs on the inside like the letter leagues because it guarantees them a top flight team in every age group. Clubs on the outside hate it, for a similar reason.
The development argument is that top teams act as regional all star teams. If you want to develop top players, then those players need to find each other. “everyone go to DA” or “everyone go to ECNL” sounds like an easy way to make that happen.
And it works, until it becomes “half of you go to DA and half of you go to ECNL”. Then it’s a mess.
Just hope we don’t go there again.
soccermax2
SILVER
Not a fan of blowouts with older teams. The lesser team tends to get overly frustrated and resort to fouls. If there isn’t a good referee it quickly get out of hand. And injuries always follow.
Looking at the quality of Rebels 2008 girls commitments, maybe they are not pushing their players to get committed early for the sake of saying their players are "committed."
Rebels 2008s also has a lot of younger players in the 2027 grad year. They will probably being going to good quality schools too.
Rebels 2007 appears to have a lot of commits too, one going to Stanford and one going to Princeton.
wait what? - I thought all the top GA teams were moving to ECNL? That was the rumor.. i recall the word "inevitable" being used.
Carsbad2012
BRONZE
Haha, ok, that's what is. Players are being pushed to commit so the clubs can brag. But the Rebels aren't. They are the outlier that doesn't do that. They are quality over quantity. My whole point was that City is a GA team that is getting girls recruited. They provide a lot of support and it shows. You can say they are pushing players to commit if that makes you feel better. I'm just making an argument that you don't have to only play ECNL to play college soccer. We all know ECNL is a better platform currently for college recruiting. It's just not the only pathway.
Think you mean to say ECNL is a better platform in SOCAL.. US Club soccer (parent of ECNL) owns SOCAL. Between ECNL, ECRL and NPL (all part of US Club Soccer group) they have a dominant position. The rest of the country is not the same way. Other leagues, mostly in the USYS organization are either equal to or bigger. In AZ we do not have NPL we have USYS based state cup competition.. with Pro/Rel. USYS is in all states where US Club is not. Your local USYS league is CALSOUTH.
Appears that the synergy between MLSN and GA/DPL is making a push. MLSN is by far the most dominant league and with MLSN2 they will start converting Boys ENCL teams. There are 3x as many boys teams as girls and the partnership with MLSN will pressure clubs to go GA and not ECNL for girls. See how ECNL counters
keeprunning
BRONZE
"There are 3x as many boys teams as girls and the partnership with MLSN will (soon) pressure clubs to go GA and not ECNL for girls."
AZ is primed to go crazy very soon. There's clubs with MLSN + ECNL. There's also been a clear preference for MLSN over other options. Might be a situation where in a single move AZ has its own league for both boys and girls.
We do have the state leagues in USYS/Arizona Soccer association plus all the letter leagues. They tried to bring in US Club Soccer and NPL two years ago, dividing the state league in half. That didn't last long and NPL is no more. Now it seems like all the clubs that were EA are getting MLSN2 the DPL clubs are going GA2. There is a consolidation going on and hopefully it all works out. other than State leagues and the extra curriculars there (E64) there will be 2 camps US Club Soccer (ECNL/ECRL) and GA/MLSN (MLSN, MSLN2, GA, DPL). The split in the state league caused a lot of issues but hopefully that is resolved now and we get back to high level non travel games.