N1 seems like the new basic competitive flights, agree?

This is the current SoCal League N1 schedule page: https://system.gotsport.com/org_event/events/54026

Unlike the former NPL, which had 1 select group for each gender/age, the N1 division has up to 4 flights per gender/age. Judging from the ratings app, N1 team strength goes from roughly second tier (for the highest end team) to formerly low Flight 3, and skews toward the lower end (ie: only about 1/3 of the N1 teams would be ranked high enough to be Flight 1 in previous league formulations). It doesn't seem to be exclusive at all, but just a parallel competitive structure to the other/legacy Flights structure.

Am I right in concluding that this is effectively the new competitive SoCal League, and the current/remaining Flights system is now effectively just rec soccer (in an overcoat)? Cause it sure seems like there's no effective distinction between the two groups in terms of team strength, except that N1 is a patch on the jerseys, and an opportunity to maybe play against the low-end of ECNL-RL at the end of the season.

I will be watching but I think it is too soon to make that determination. We really need a full 12 months of this in existence before we can draw any logical conclusions or make informed opinions. But I share your concern.

sigmabody said:

This is the current SoCal League N1 schedule page: https://system.gotsport.com/org_event/events/54026

Unlike the former NPL, which had 1 select group for each gender/age, the N1 division has up to 4 flights per gender/age. Judging from the ratings app, N1 team strength goes from roughly second tier (for the highest end team) to formerly low Flight 3, and skews toward the lower end (ie: only about 1/3 of the N1 teams would be ranked high enough to be Flight 1 in previous league formulations). It doesn't seem to be exclusive at all, but just a parallel competitive structure to the other/legacy Flights structure.

Am I right in concluding that this is effectively the new competitive SoCal League, and the current/remaining Flights system is now effectively just rec soccer (in an overcoat)? Cause it sure seems like there's no effective distinction between the two groups in terms of team strength, except that N1 is a patch on the jerseys, and an opportunity to maybe play against the low-end of ECNL-RL at the end of the season.

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No this is not at all accurate.

More accurate is:

N1 Premier 1 Top NPL / National League teams.

N1 Premier 2 Lower NPL / Lower National League / Mid to high Flight 1 (and then Gold / Navy is split for geographical purposes)

Current SOCAL now is:

Flight 1 = Flight 1 & High Flight 2

Flight 2 = Low Flight 2 / Flight 3

Flight 3 = Low Flight 3 / Rec

Correct me if I am wrong:
N1 premier 1: A team of locked out club
N1 premier 2: B team of locked out club
SoCal flight 1: C team of locked out club or D/E team of big clubs
SoCal flight 2: kids who didn’t make the cut for AYSO extra

My impression (or relative strength) is:
- N1 tier 1 ~= ECNL-RL, MLSN-AD, or EA, and some higher level teams where the club is not in stronger letter league
- N1 tier 2 != ECNL-RL Regional, EA2, top-end of Flight 1 (who didn't get into N1 for whatever reason)
- N1 tier 3-4 ~= prior Flight 1-2, AYSO Extra
- Current Flight 1-4 ~= former Flight 2+, AYSO, rec

See my previous rant about league fracturing, but this whole SoCal League further splitting their teams is certainly not helping, especially when there's a long tail of utter garbage teams in lower division N1 and their former competitive tiers. Are we really better off in this league system, vs DOC's just arranging ad hoc matches for entire seasons? Cause it doesn't seem like it from where I'm looking.

The ordering of the different tiers in the leagues that you've listed may in fact be accurate, if someone's trying to rank the average strength of the leagues from top to bottom. But it may be downplaying the fact that the difference between the top teams in each bracket and the bottom teams in each bracket, is going to be much wider than the average differences between the leagues. A good N2 team would stomp a bad N1 team. A good flight 1 team would stomp a N2 team, maybe even many N1 teams. The fact that so many different leagues exist, that are all shooting for exactly "this much" of talent/experience/whatever, doesn't mean any of them are actually good at attracting exactly "that much" of it. There is going to be a very wide variation from team to team, which complicates things for people trying to objectively say that this league is better than that league, which is better than that other league over there.

RandomSoccerFan said:

The ordering of the different tiers in the leagues that you've listed may in fact be accurate, if someone's trying to rank the average strength of the leagues from top to bottom. But it may be downplaying the fact that the difference between the top teams in each bracket and the bottom teams in each bracket, is going to be much wider than the average differences between the leagues. A good N2 team would stomp a bad N1 team. A good flight 1 team would stomp a N2 team, maybe even many N1 teams. The fact that so many different leagues exist, that are all shooting for exactly "this much" of talent/experience/whatever, doesn't mean any of them are actually good at attracting exactly "that much" of it. There is going to be a very wide variation from team to team, which complicates things for people trying to objectively say that this league is better than that league, which is better than that other league over there.

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This is what Ive been saying for years.

Other than MLSN Homegrown because of its direct association with pro teams all leagues are roughly the "same". What I mean by that is processes implemented to run a league are the same. What makes them different is level of competition. Which is all well and good but if you were a recruiter looking to evaluate talent in different leagues. What's going to happen is you'll probabaly look at the top 10 clubs in each league for players. This means top clubs in crappy league will get more attention than mid level clubs in a good league. Sometimes its better to play in a league that sucks as long as your kid is on the top team in that league. Frustrating and annoying but recruiters dont care about the intricacies of what league is better or worse and why. They just want to look at the winners and see if theres talent available.

I agree somewhat. But it's also true that "recruiters" aren't going to be looking at any "crappy" league for any purpose, at any time, for anything. It doesn't matter if you're on a dominant team or not - nobody cares. If you want to be seen, you need to play where the eyeballs you're seeking are located.

RandomSoccerFan said:

I agree somewhat. But it's also true that "recruiters" aren't going to be looking at any "crappy" league for any purpose, at any time, for anything. It doesn't matter if you're on a dominant team or not - nobody cares. If you want to be seen, you need to play where the eyeballs you're seeking are located.

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Recruiters will feign interest in all leagues even if they dont think they're very good. Which goes back to what I was saying. They'll look at the top 5-10 clubs in the sucky leagues just to say that they looked at them when asked.

Also leagues can put all their resources behind one or two of their top clubs. So they dont leave and so they have something to highlight.

Its a weird popularity contest with all kinds of moving parts. The ranking app provided a lot of clarity. But when players get older and more is on the line all the old tricks come out.

My girl is in 13/14 N1 this season (single division). she played 2013 NPL last season.
Not much difference in competition so far between the two as far as I could tell. Maybe a little flatter competitively than last year but I think that is just variation in the age groups. The NPL division last year had a couple really strong teams that would have been among the best ECRL teams in Socal. I felt last year the NPL league was a higher quality than ECRL-Socal and under ECRL as a whole.

This year N1 seems similar - probably, as a whole, it is stronger than ECRL-Socal but definitely under ECRL, however their is meaningful crossover among the teams (i.e. the better N1 teams are better than the weaker ECRL teams and the better ECRL-Socal teams are better than the weaker N1 teams.

We have been pleased with the experience so far - most of the games have been pretty competitive across the league. Of 12 teams there is just one team that has no business in the league and is just getting wrecked (and no one is running the table).

The numbers say that the N1 bracket is playing almost identically to the RL Socal bracket. The top teams in RL Socal show a little stronger, but the bracket average is similar. Both of the brackets are a little over 1 goal back from the RL bracket. A team in the top quartile of any of them is going to have a much better time than one in the bottom quartile of any of them.

It's interesting that Empire Surf is playing a team that is just called RL and not RL SoCal, in the RL SoCal bracket. Beach is doing the same thing. Wondering why the league didn't make them update the team names to be more accurate when they joined that bracket.

To give some examples from the current BU16 N1, White division (https://system.gotsport.com/org_event/events/54026/schedules?group=519137), for color:

There are 5 Athletic Soccer teams in the N1 division. Per the rankings app today, they are ranked in CA as:
- 117
- 222
- 226
- 651
- [unranked]

Formerly, it seemed like NPL was all roughly 50-200 ish, in the state. N1 seems to span former NPL or above, but now all the way to the bottom also. It seems like the teams in N1 now would be in all former flight levels, if N1 wasn't a thing.

ASC is a bit of a weird case, no? They are all of the old AYSO United teams who left that organization to set up that new Athletic organization. It's interesting that they dumped so many of them in N1, if it looks like they can't hang.

In NorCal, looking at a club I'm familiar with, all of their N1 teams are 20th percentile teams in state, they aren't competitive at all. They are all the club's second team, when they really can only support 1 competitive team at the RL level.

RandomSoccerFan said:

ASC is a bit of a weird case, no? They are all of the old AYSO United teams who left that organization to set up that new Athletic organization. It's interesting that they dumped so many of them in N1, if it looks like they can't hang.

In NorCal, looking at a club I'm familiar with, all of their N1 teams are 20th percentile teams in state, they aren't competitive at all. They are all the club's second team, when they really can only support 1 competitive team at the RL level.

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I just picked ASC because they have 5 teams in that N1 division alone, and the teams by rankings seem to cover all the former flight levels. It's a good example of what I'm talking about, though: last year in NPL, a club might have one team, and it would usually be the top team, at least for clubs without letter league access. Now it seems like just an alternative league, with all levels and flights, exclusive and competitive in fantasy only. SoCal League could do a meaningful service to all the kids and parents by just collapsing N1 back into their regular flights and divisions (to allow more competitive and more local seasonal games), and call it a day.

In my son's club, their remaining teams got bounced from N1 when they moved their top teams to EA2, but it's the same thing: the club's top teams are not in N1, they are in the letter league (even as, in our case, that league is still the bottom rung, and also not any more competitive than former SoCal flight 1). It's all just smoke and mirrors to sell parents and players, outside of the actual competitive leagues, on the diminishing fantasy of "your player can still be special".