AYSO United will play in DPL and EA2 this fall. Will AYSO's inherent advantages (so many thousands of kids coming into its program year after year) allow it to become a big player now that it seems to be getting a foothold in the letter leagues? DPL and EA2 aren't the highest levels, but it seems likely that they will quickly gain access to GA and EA (or is it called MLS2 now?).
AYSO United joins DPL and EA2 - impact?
- Thread starter TopesWin
- Start date
You cannot generate new talent from thin air. With all those "letter" leagues carving their territories, where does our local league go? Now, C and D team players have to travel far to play against another C/D team since their team is now in the "elite" league. DPL is now the third tier, and EA2 is 4th tier.
FelixCardenas
BRONZE
are they getting licensed coaches or is it still a parent volunteered coaching?
justasoccerfam
BRONZE
DPL basically grasping at straws to pull anyone in at this point...
They openly admitted on their website that they are now the 3rd tier league for clubs that have GA.
GA - GA Aspire - DPL - DPL Open
They openly admitted on their website that they are now the 3rd tier league for clubs that have GA.
GA - GA Aspire - DPL - DPL Open
It's a mixed bag as you might expect given how big the program is. Most of the top teams have professional (and licensed) coaches. Some have coaches with high licenses but they voluntarily volunteer to keep costs down. I believe its a minority of the teams that have what you'd call parent volunteers.
Girls E64 program, now NL Club Premier 1 has been pretty strong, not so much on the boys side. It looks like the boys side dropped out of the USYS circuit to focus on EA2 while the girls side will do both USYS and DPL. It seems strange that they are hedging their bets that way.
Also Legends now has 3 spots in this renamed NL Club Premier 1
I don't see ECNL or GA letting United in because it would materially hurt their member clubs financially. MLSN probably doesn't care if they can start funneling boys to the academies. AYSO should provide the ideal funnel: Rec -> All Star -> Extra -> United -> Letter League -> Academy plus they have the field space and money to fully fund the top teams in each region. The politics aren't any worse than at all the other clubs.
But I guess the whole landscape has got to keep getting worse before it gets better.
Syrix
BRONZE
It’s so broken. Do we need 10 regional/national leagues? Nowhere near enough talent to support this.
On girls side add E64 RL….comprised almost entirely of bottom flt 2, flt 3, and flt 4 SoCal teams. So now we have a diaspora of wildly below average teams traveling out of area to play a caliber of team which there are dozens of in their back yard. And clubs boasting about these leagues to recruit?! Pure garbage. Better off arranging friendlies, saving the time and money, and foregoing leagues altogether.
Anything without an asterisk could just stay home and play flight 1-2-3.
*MLS Next
*ECNL
*ECRL (development path to NL at best)
ECRL Socal
*GA
GA Aspire
DPL
DPL Open
*E64
E64 RL
*NPL (clubs with no access to the other leagues)
Really you only need mlsn to function the fodder role for the academies. Everywhere else we could go back to flight 1-2-3-4 unless the girls finally get an academy system. You left out mls 2, ea, ea2, and usl on the boys side so it’s worse than your chart.
Which hub is this? Doesn’t ayso still have different hubs around SoCal like ayso South Bay, ayso conejo? Also haven’t quite a few ayso regions dropped extras post covid…I was told it’s because they have a hard time getting competent volunteers which is why it was dropped.
It may only be a pretext but the reason cited for not letting ayso into the higher letter leagues has been the “everyone plays” philosophy is incompatible with the restrictions of higher letter league where the number of substitutions are limited. And “everyone plays” has been a philosophy (if more honored in the breach) that ayso united purports to still believe in. If you are in a league where some players don’t dress, kinda hard to have everyone play.
Code
GOLD
This^^^. I don't know why people can't clearly see what is happening. Just go back and look at the E64 threads if you want to know how the next couple seasons will go with these new name changes.
Which hub is what? There's like 10+ hubs in SoCal yes. The club based leagues require all home games at the same location so those leagues tend to get teams from the closer hubs. Extras is region dependent. Some don't want it, some aren't big enough to do Extras + United, some can't get volunteers. My point is that the framework is there and largely accomplishes the tiered rec system. More accurately, balanced teams in the fall, tiered in the spring for the core. Extra + non-letter United is tiered rec in the Socal league.
It's just a pretext. The big clubs need the inflated fees for their rec level teams with the promise of the top leagues later. United just wouldn't carry rosters > 18 (which I'd still argue should be the norm outside of academies)
Which hub is e64 and which hub is ea2?
The issue with the hubs is unless ayso gets broader penetration across all its hubs, this is just scraps. Because that 1 hub will get some traction while the others die after letter league begins. No one from the conejo is going to trek to South Bay for ea2.
As to the pretext it’s been cited as an impediment to the top tier: mlsn for the boys, ecnl for the girls. I’m not aware of any ea teams carrying a lot of non-dressers (except maybe some championship teams)…usually 2-3 tops…not 10.
It looks like they dropped e64 for boys, so I assume whatever hub for boys had e64 will have ea2.
Yeah. That's one of the issues with these club based leagues and clubs with multiple hubs. The travel for EA2 is already ridiculous even if your home games are not too far. Lancaster teams playing against San Marcos teams? A weekend trip to Vegas is better than that.
It's just getting worse and worse as all the leagues are going club based. The top team based league in Socal is NPL which is now treated as 4th tier at best?
I was under the impression DPL will become GA Aspire. Same league it just formalizes the relationship that DPL (soon to be GA Aspire) is the feeder for GA just as ECRL is the feeder for ECNL. Is that wrong? Also I thought that EA will become the lower tier of MLSNext.
MLSN announcement says "Operators will include the National Academy League (NAL) operated by 3Step Soccer, Elite Academy League (EAL), Sporting Development League (SDL), Cobalt Sports, and Cal North Soccer Association."
So EA2 will become simply EA and the teams that were EA will be badged with MLSN
MLSN announcement says "Operators will include the National Academy League (NAL) operated by 3Step Soccer, Elite Academy League (EAL), Sporting Development League (SDL), Cobalt Sports, and Cal North Soccer Association."
So EA2 will become simply EA and the teams that were EA will be badged with MLSN
Actually DPL is managing GA Aspire so honestly DPL is becoming GA Aspire.
from the FAQ
- ASPIRE Structure and Management
- Who owns the league?
- The GA ASPIRE League is owned and marketed by the Girls Academy (GA).
- Will the league be sanctioned by the GA?
- Yes, the GA ASPIRE League is fully sanctioned by the Girls Academy.
- Who is responsible for managing the league?
- The Girls Academy (GA) and the Development Player League (DPL) have entered into an exclusive management agreement, under which the DPL will oversee the day-to-day operations and management of ASPIRE.
- Who determines club acceptance into the league?
- A joint oversight committee, composed primarily of GA staff and board members, along with DPL representatives, will evaluate and recommend clubs for acceptance.
- Who will manage ASPIRE events?
- Elite Tournaments, the official GA event partner, will manage ASPIRE League events with operational support from both GA and DPL staff.
Here is the rest from the FAQ
- Do DPL clubs need to apply to ASPIRE?
- DPL clubs that believe they are ready for the next step in their development are encouraged to apply. There are no automatic acceptances for DPL clubs. The selection process ensures that clubs are placed at the appropriate tier of competition, with merit-based advancement opportunities available over time.
- What happens if a club’s ASPIRE application is unsuccessful?
- Clubs that are not accepted into ASPIRE are encouraged to remain within the GA/DPL ecosystem by applying for a spot in the DPL. Additional guidance and next steps will be provided after application decisions are finalized.
Either way it seems MLSN and GA are making moves. ECNL will have to answer. These agreements take what was a ad hoc arrangement and formalize it into an "ecosystem" We will see if the pull of MLSN will bring clubs over from ECNL to GA on the girls side. ECNL boys could easily become a third tier league.
- Clubs that are not accepted into ASPIRE are encouraged to remain within the GA/DPL ecosystem by applying for a spot in the DPL. Additional guidance and next steps will be provided after application decisions are finalized.
No. They just moved some ea teams (without any real rhyme or reason…there are some new coast and ea2 clubs, clubs without mlsn teams, clubs who didn’t perform, clubs left behind that did perform) into mls2. Ea is now third tier (with some clubs having performed like SoCal elite getting a demotion, and some like Albion la/santa Ana/santa Monica/england fc being forced to combine) and ea2 is 4th. Nal is the ea breakaway on the east coast that precipitated all this…the mlsn clubs wanted more control…for the stated reason of being able to bring down the bencher, futures, reserve and bio players with more flexibility and to move up players who would otherwise not dress
Totally agree with this, fwiw. At least on the boys' side, it doesn't seem like there's much differentiation at all, and there are not enough truly advanced players to really support much above just the normal SoCal flights.
Case in point: when my son's club became eligible for NPL, the top 2011 boys team became NPL, and the F2 team moved up to F1. There was no perceptible change in skill level for either team; they just "shifted up" because that's how all the teams were shifting at that age. They could have just as easily stayed F1/F2 without introducing NPL, and achieved the same level of competition for both teams in the league; the whole introduction of the NPL tier seemed like just something to make parents feel better about their kids' progress.
Above list is missing EA/EA2 (and probably others). Many EA teams are strictly worse than SoCal F1 teams. ECRL teams are roughly on par with SoCal F1, in my experience. ECNL seems above NPL on average, but there's some non-trivial overlap in skill there. Almost all these leagues are just there for people to feel better about paying more money for club; there's only so much skill on the bell curve of player development.
Also, fwiw: Some of the stronger teams in SoCal F1+ (and beyond) are AYSO United, at least for my son's age group (2011). They seem to be developing just fine.
AYSO United has the same problem that some other non-MLS/ECNL boys clubs have (like the former Santa Monica Surf which had strong teams as well among the youngers but then had a drop off at the olders). Once the higher letter leagues open up, the best players tend to migrate out, so to staff your slots, you just have to shift them upwards.
p.s. the spread amongst both MLS2 and EA next year in Socal is going to be beyond ridiculous among the olders, particularly if MLS2 works as intended and the MLSN clubs bring down their nondressing and futures players. Teams like LA Surf or Strikers (and even Albion LA by combining several teams) are going to romp through newly formed/promoted groups like Oaks FC and Juventus or those without MLSN teams like Laguna or Riverside or those expanding rapidly like the Bulls/LASC. In EA, unless they fall apart, Bakersfield, SoCal Elite, and Strikers are going to burn through weakened teams like Albion SM/Santa Ana or newly promoted teams.