Rant: League fracturing is asinine

[sigmabody]

I know it's been said before (numerous times), but we're well past the point where US Soccer needs to step in and obliterate all this idiocy with respect to different fractured leagues.

My son plays BU16. Currently his team is in EA2. There are rules for EA/EA2 (and SoCal, and presumably most of the other leagues) which prevent cross-league play for most players. Currently, these are the major fall leagues for BU16 in SoCal, as far as I can tell:
- MLSN-HD
- MLSN-AD
- EA
- EA2
- ECNL
- ECNL-RL
- ECNL-RL Regional
- N1L, with 4x divisions
- SoCal League, with 4x regions, and 3x divisions
- PSSLU
- SWSL

Almost every single league is all over the map, in terms of team levels. The EA2 league alone ranges from Top 15 in the state, to equivalent of SoCal Flight 3, and this is not an anomaly. This make competition levels absurd and unbalanced, and for absolutely no good reason, other than the competing pathways, club priorities, and walled gardens the leagues have created and propagated.

Having 10+ leagues would be acceptable, in concept, if there was a hard and enforced rule that leagues could not prohibit cross-league player participation. This might lead to a lot of league forfeits and scheduling issues, but at least in that scenario, kids could get playing time in competitive games. The current status quo is utterly ridiculous, though: teams which are at vastly different skill levels are being forced to play each other, just to satisfy arbitrary divisions in competition groupings, just because all the league operators want to "win", at the expense of the kids and the sport itself.

The only real cross-league competition happens at tournaments, which are expensive and often travel-heavy. Truly, is this the best US Soccer can do? Or are they just completely asleep at the wheel here? As a parent, this is immensely frustrating (and I'm not even considering other concerns here, such as practice squad players on high-end teams, etc.). How has soccer become this terrible?

 

[Scrub It Kook]

 

[Grace T.]

View attachment 41112

Agree but in fairness we can't agree on an objective in what it's trying to do and in trying to hit all the objectives we wind up hitting none of them including at cross purposes with each other. Simultaneously it is: 1) to develop future pros and to provide cannon fodder for those pros to practice against, 2) to develop college athletes, 3) to enable high school players to gain a leg up on rec and multisport counter parts for slots and thereby either gain extracurriculars for their list or just play for their high school for the fun/glory of it all, 4) to provide athletic and moral enrichment for children, 5) to secure trophies and bragging rights for parents, 6) to provide kids a place to practice team work and socialize, 7) to provide salaries for coaches, refs and Docs, and 8) as an investment for those who build and manage clubs. The only way to really remedy this is to provide 1 unified pyramid under the command of US Soccer but that's simply not going to happen esp. since you can't get the top (the MLS) or the bottom (AYSO) to play ball together. The only rational marker here is the girl's side (for the time being, until they are forced to adopt the academy model to save the USWNT) at least makes a little more sense.

 

[sigmabody]

Agree on the point of conflicting objectives, although I still think US Soccer could do substantially more to fix the existing and obvious problems, even without tacking all of them.

For example, consider if they simply mandated two things:
- Leagues are no longer allowed to restrict competition for players and/or teams (or have their charters dropped, etc.)
- Regional leagues are encouraged to develop and share platforms to coordinate scheduling friendlies between any two teams which are geographically close and competitively similar, while streamlining logistics for such

You could still have your closed leagues and such, but suddenly the world would open up for alternative friendlies, and all the leagues which are only there as walled gardens and/or "pathways" would be exposed and weakened significantly. Teams wouldn't need to attend tournaments to find level competition, and many mid-level teams could probably forgo leagues entirely. Then US Soccer could revisit in a couple years, when the dust settled, and refine further.

I do not think it's an intractable problem at all, but it's not going to solve itself by the only powers who could solve it doing their best ostrich impression.

 

[Grace T.]

Agree on the point of conflicting objectives, although I still think US Soccer could do substantially more to fix the existing and obvious problems, even without tacking all of them.

For example, consider if they simply mandated two things:
- Leagues are no longer allowed to restrict competition for players and/or teams (or have their charters dropped, etc.)
- Regional leagues are encouraged to develop and share platforms to coordinate scheduling friendlies between any two teams which are geographically close and competitively similar, while streamlining logistics for such

You could still have your closed leagues and such, but suddenly the world would open up for alternative friendlies, and all the leagues which are only there as walled gardens and/or "pathways" would be exposed and weakened significantly. Teams wouldn't need to attend tournaments to find level competition, and many mid-level teams could probably forgo leagues entirely. Then US Soccer could revisit in a couple years, when the dust settled, and refine further.

I do not think it's an intractable problem at all, but it's not going to solve itself by the only powers who could solve it doing their best ostrich impression.

At the higher levels olders players are not looking for more games. You’ll only hear them groan. More games are more chances of injury for little benefit (no college looks, no help getting on high school teams, no points towards a trophy). Typically the middle school parents are the parents who want more games…it will change.

Ps if your kid is bu16 he’s a freshman right? The high school season is brutal. If he’s playing high school the last thing you’ll want is more games that make him less healthy. Freshman year was the last year my kid played Latino league (since he was only jv that year). Once varsity hit forget it.