CSL Strong???

[Woodwork]

The issue here is that placement should be by skill level of the individual athlete not the team. The team isn’t a going concern...it’s an ephemeral thing with just the name of the club...the coach or players may shift in or out. The defense might not be ready but the striker or goalkeeper might. The remedy then is that striker or goalkeeper will leave which leads to the tryout circus season and club hopping we all bemoan. Meanwhile that team now needs to start over and find a new striker or goalkeeper

CSL's pro/rel is not so strict. Experienced clubs and coaches know that you can appeal to CSL if you have other evidence that the team would be appropriate competition at the next level. I have also seen teams skip levels and opt out of promotion.

Tryout circus and club hopping are just as much SCDSL as it is CSL.

Plenty of teams in CSL finish in the middle one year, earn a move up the next. Builds character. Its not like 8/10 teams just fold every year in CSL. The inability to choose which level you play in, rather than spend a year earning it, is a mega-club control issue. It isn't a fairness issue.

 

[Grace T.]

There's politics in csl like any other league...I know of a team that lost every game in a season and moved up the next....my understanding is that top 2-3 teams move up and bottom teams move down...middles team stay..and it wasn't that there was no room for them in other brackets..teams that had much better season stayed in their bracket without moving up..

yeah this is yet another issue. The biggest argument for pro/rel is that soccer is a meritocracy but it really isn’t a pure one. Sometimes it depends on the coaches connections or the power of the club and they might advance a team early or stop a team from being relegated (I know a team that lost every game, some badly, in the intermediate tiers yet still not relegated)

It’s the same on the individual basis. We all know people who have bought their way onto teams. Clubs sometimes bring kids onto the a team to recruit new families rather than bring lower kids who might be ready up. Clubs sometimes keep weaker kids in higher teams because they are integrated into the system or have been there a long time and either have friends or want to minimize disruption.

 

[Grace T.]

CSL's pro/rel is not so strict. Experienced clubs and coaches know that you can appeal to CSL if you have other evidence that the team would be appropriate competition at the next level. I have also seen teams skip levels and opt out of promotion.

Tryout circus and club hopping are just as much SCDSL as it is CSL.

Plenty of teams in CSL finish in the middle one year, earn a move up the next. Builds character. Its not like 8/10 teams just fold every year in CSL. The inability to choose which level you play in, rather than spend a year earning it, is a mega-club control issue. It isn't a fairness issue.

Yeah there are also clubs who use their connections to avoid relegation or to advance when in comparison to the others there are better teams. Pro/rel works only is soccer is a true meritocracy and we all know it isn’t.

 

[Woodwork]

Yeah there are also clubs who use their connections to avoid relegation or to advance when in comparison to the others there are better teams. Pro/rel works only is soccer is a true meritocracy and we all know it isn’t.

Hard to tell what you are advocating for. First place teams get promoted in CSL. Sometimes other teams get promoted but I haven't seen one that was way out of place yet. In SCDSL, the clubs figure it out on their own, sometimes they get it right, sometimes nope. Either way, I don't see the CSL's system as being worse than SCDSL's. The season is about three months of the year, not the whole team's identity. Competing in a pro/rel league with real stakes is fun. You should see the way kids celebrate when they finish first in CSL. Even better, see when they finish not last.

 

[El Clasico]

You're talking about last place. Ignore that-- talk about the third place team that plays great soccer but the top two teams have Rayden Smith and Raiden Martinez, who score every time they touch the ball. You're going to screw over this third place team for a year at least when -- especially at the youngers -- they should move up and be playing harder competition to get better faster.

You most certainly can move up in CSL if you finish in 3rd place. You can petition to move up, you can finish well in state cup, you can play tough tournaments and do well and demonstrate that you deserve to move up. There are a variety of ways that a team finishing in 3rd can move up.

However, what I have seen on many occasions is that teams that finish 2nd or 3rd that can, or should, move up don't because the coach intentionally requests the same flight when submitting the team application. They do this so they can romp the competition the following year and then they tell the parents that they tried but CSL wouldn't let them move up. If you didn't move up, it is because your coach didn't want to move up. It really is as simple as that.

 

[Grace T.]

Hard to tell what you are advocating for. First place teams get promoted in CSL. Sometimes other teams get promoted but I haven't seen one that was way out of place yet. In SCDSL, the clubs figure it out on their own, sometimes they get it right, sometimes nope. Either way, I don't see the CSL's system as being worse than SCDSL's. The season is about three months of the year, not the whole team's identity. Competing in a pro/rel league with real stakes is fun. You should see the way kids celebrate when they finish first in CSL. Even better, see when they finish not last.

Not really advocating either position. Both have side effects and neither is perfect given the other things going on in club soccer. I’ve given a lot of thought over how to fix the tier systems over the years and I’ve never come up with a good alternative.

but yes where they finish is entirely part of the team’s identity. After asking b or g and year the next piece of information parents shopping for teams ask is “what level?”

 

[notintheface]

The inability to choose which level you play in, rather than spend a year earning it, is a mega-club control issue.

A quick glance at the club directory for SCDSL to look at all of the local privateer clubs is all it takes to definitively prove your statement to be 100% false.

 

[notintheface]

You most certainly can move up in CSL if you finish in 3rd place. You can petition to move up, you can finish well in state cup, you can play tough tournaments and do well and demonstrate that you deserve to move up. There are a variety of ways that a team finishing in 3rd can move up.

Come on, let's get real here. Coast does not do that in 99.9% of the cases. Yes I have seen it but it is absolutely not the norm.

Here's a fundamental example -- imo, any team that doesn't lose all of their games in Bronze/Flight 3 should be playing in Silver/Flight 2 the next year. They've had a year of training and playing together, they understand the game, and that lowest tier should be reserved for kids new to the game or absolutely brand new teams or AYSO kids taking the next step. It is perfectly fine for the lowest tier to be a revolving door because you know all of the teams start out on roughly the same footing, especially as an introduction to the game. Will teams struggle in Flight 2/Silver as a result of this? Sure, but they are playing stronger competition and improving their own game faster than they would playing against lower tier teams.

Under the Coast model this can't happen and the overall development of these kids, especially at the youngers ages, gets harmed because of it. Nearly every single compatriot I have talked to laments the idea of having to push their youngers to win games instead of improving their skills, even the coaches who you see out on the field with that "win at any cost" mentality. The coaches don't want pro/rel. It is not a good idea for kids. Professionals? Sure. 9-year-olds? No way.

 

[Grace T.]

Come on, let's get real here. Coast does not do that in 99.9% of the cases. Yes I have seen it but it is absolutely not the norm.

Here's a fundamental example -- imo, any team that doesn't lose all of their games in Bronze/Flight 3 should be playing in Silver/Flight 2 the next year. They've had a year of training and playing together, they understand the game, and that lowest tier should be reserved for kids new to the game or absolutely brand new teams or AYSO kids taking the next step. It is perfectly fine for the lowest tier to be a revolving door because you know all of the teams start out on roughly the same footing, especially as an introduction to the game. Will teams struggle in Flight 2/Silver as a result of this? Sure, but they are playing stronger competition and improving their own game faster than they would playing against lower tier teams.

Under the Coast model this can't happen and the overall development of these kids, especially at the youngers ages, gets harmed because of it. Nearly every single compatriot I have talked to laments the idea of having to push their youngers to win games instead of improving their skills, even the coaches who you see out on the field with that "win at any cost" mentality. The coaches don't want pro/rel. It is not a good idea for kids. Professionals? Sure. 9-year-olds? No way.

Here's a good example of this. One of my son's early teams, a GK, was an AYSO United Team. They played 3 tournaments in the summer, losing all 4 games of the 1st (1 badly 12-0 against another AYSO United team that went on to play gold and just had kids that could bang it into goal from the half or on the kickoff), coming in 4/6 on the 2nd and 2/8 in the final. CSL required them as a new team to play bronze even though the coach wanted them to play silver. They said no, citing in particularly that one badly lost game. In the fall season, they go on to sweep all their games, sometimes badly (even with a passing rule) 15-0. My son, the GK, is basically sitting there during games, not getting very much practice. They advance the bronze levels in League Cup very easily but then hit the silver and silver elite teams....team suddenly is unable to score and gets panicked....my kid, who is extensively trained, sees stuff like 1v1s he's never seen before and doesn't know how to handle it. Coach goes into a melt down screaming at my kid and screaming at the attackers who are falling apart...blames them for stuff they've never seen before. They should have been learning this in league, but instead they were out there destroying other teams by double digits.

Here's a hypothetical: assume a closed universe U12 boys with only 3 tiers, 1/2/3, where coaches get to self-select. Where will the majority of teams be placed? They'll be placed in 2 because most people, rightly or wrongly, will assume they are an average team, not wanting to have the stigma of being the worst (kids leave) or of being destroyed by the best. The distribution in U12 for boys CSL is the opposite...the vast majority of teams are bronze, stacked like a pyramid. But in this self-selecting universe you will have games with 12-0 results because some teams will place inappropriately, sometimes deliberately so to establish a winning reputation.

 

[notintheface]

Gives them another year to develop better defense. How are you screwing them? They obviously haven't figured out how to stop one player defensively yet so why do they have to move up? What's the necessity in it?

This is how you lose kids in a hurry. You are unfairly holding them back for circumstances that are mostly out of their control.

If you are trying to teach 10 year olds build-up play, they are going to leak goals like crazy. It happens as a natural course. That team should not be continuously playing league games against lower-tier teams, period. They should be playing against teams that will punish the sloppy pass to the middle so that they learn to tighten things up.

The fundamental argument here is that parents believe that the coach does not know the true ability of a team and that an arbitrary rule somehow shakes out that true ability. That rule does absolutely nothing in a world where there are limited games and a normal amount of player movement. "This team should not play at this higher level" is the sound of gatekeeping and I don't believe it in 90% of cases.

 

[Emma]

This is how you lose kids in a hurry. You are unfairly holding them back for circumstances that are mostly out of their control.

If you are trying to teach 10 year olds build-up play, they are going to leak goals like crazy. It happens as a natural course. That team should not be continuously playing league games against lower-tier teams, period. They should be playing against teams that will punish the sloppy pass to the middle so that they learn to tighten things up.

The fundamental argument here is that parents believe that the coach does not know the true ability of a team and that an arbitrary rule somehow shakes out that true ability. That rule does absolutely nothing in a world where there are limited games and a normal amount of player movement. "This team should not play at this higher level" is the sound of gatekeeping and I don't believe it in 90% of cases.

The reasons we lose kids is because we (adults & parents) make them think that they must move up a flight every year in order to be good enough to continue as soccer players. That's false advertisement and why every year we create new flight 1 levels. Europa isn't enough, we need to add Champions, then Champions isn't enough, we need add to discovery, then discovery isn't enough, we need to add CRL, DPL or ECRL or GA. That's how we ended up with this mess. SDDA added blue and gold to their flight one as they got older because parents needed it. Now we are starting to do discovery at younger age groups because teams already played in Flight 1 last year.

While your children are in school, they just advance to the next grade level if they are good students. We don't move them to higher tier schools every year. It's not realistic. Only the few that truly are superior to the average student should move up. As with soccer, we should not be moving a team up unless they are superior not just slightly better to the rest of the flights. CSL did have a petition if you added a few great players (move up quicker) or lost a few great players (stay back in the flight). They weren't unrealistic to the movements of players. Obviously, like in everything in life, there is definitely a level of politics, it was minimal.

If you are teaching them build up and they are still leaking goals like crazy, why do you force them into a stronger league with faster players that will make them leak more goals? Why not learn the fundamentals of how to build up better?

 

[Grace T.]

The reasons we lose kids is because we (adults & parents) make them think that they must move up a flight every year in order to be good enough to continue as soccer players. That's false advertisement and why every year we create new flight 1 levels. Europa isn't enough, we need to add Champions, then Champions isn't enough, we need add to discovery, then discovery isn't enough, we need to add CRL, DPL or ECRL or GA. That's how we ended up with this mess. SDDA added blue and gold to their flight one as they got older because parents needed it. Now we are starting to do discovery at younger age groups because teams already played in Flight 1 last year.

While your children are in school, they just advance to the next grade level if they are good students. We don't move them to higher tier schools every year. It's not realistic. Only the few that truly are superior to the average student should move up. As with soccer, we should not be moving a team up unless they are superior not just slightly better to the rest of the flights. CSL did have a petition if you added a few great players (move up quicker) or lost a few great players (stay back in the flight). They weren't unrealistic to the movements of players. Obviously, like in everything in life, there is definitely a level of politics, it was minimal.

If you are teaching them build up and they are still leaking goals like crazy, why do you force them into a stronger league with faster players that will make them leak more goals? Why not learn the fundamentals of how to build up better?

Because this isn't the way it works in actual practice, at least on the boys side. U9 U10 teams are basically about outrunning the other opponents and you have to have a striker that's a pretty good shot. On the boys side that means coaches built up teams with the fastest biggest kids they can find and if they can only find a few they put them up top. Usually these kids are pretty close to the age line (which the kids have zero control about). I or 2 kids can make a world of difference and the GKs take at least 2-3 years of training before they can stop anything except a moderately hit shot hit straight at them. Team advances a level....drop the dead weight and recruit more kids looking for a higher placed team...rinse repeat each year until you are flight 1. That's the winning formula to advance. If you are teaching kids on the defensive line to play possession and play it backwards in U9 and U10 it means you are going to leak goals the first couple years which means you are behind the hierarchy (and recruiting) of teams moving u. Those teams that do not move up will lose their best players and be forced to repeat and rebuilt. It does sort itself but the side effect is the constantly shifting teams and the cutting/moving people always complain about on these boards.

As to the school analogy, if that were true, the vast majority of teams are "average" and therefore should be playing silver flight 2....leaving higher 1 and elite competition to the few. That's not the way the boys pyramid is organized though. It's organized like a pyramid with the vast majority playing flight 3 which is below average or just starting.

 

[Emma]

Because this isn't the way it works in actual practice, at least on the boys side. U9 U10 teams are basically about outrunning the other opponents and you have to have a striker that's a pretty good shot. On the boys side that means coaches built up teams with the fastest biggest kids they can find and if they can only find a few they put them up top. Usually these kids are pretty close to the age line (which the kids have zero control about). I or 2 kids can make a world of difference and the GKs take at least 2-3 years of training before they can stop anything except a moderately hit shot hit straight at them. Team advances a level....drop the dead weight and recruit more kids looking for a higher placed team...rinse repeat each year until you are flight 1. That's the winning formula to advance. If you are teaching kids on the defensive line to play possession and play it backwards in U9 and U10 it means you are going to leak goals the first couple years which means you are behind the hierarchy (and recruiting) of teams moving u. Those teams that do not move up will lose their best players and be forced to repeat and rebuilt. It does sort itself but the side effect is the constantly shifting teams and the cutting/moving people always complain about on these boards.

As to the school analogy, if that were true, the vast majority of teams are "average" and therefore should be playing silver flight 2....leaving higher 1 and elite competition to the few. That's not the way the boys pyramid is organized though. It's organized like a pyramid with the vast majority playing flight 3 which is below average or just starting.

It's soccer so you need fast or quick runners to win, even if you are playing possession soccer. If you can't get to the ball before your opponent, you can't possess the ball no matter how good you are at positioning. Slower teams should play lower flights. They won't be able to keep up with fast teams and it's OK. They may or may not get faster as the years change their bodies.

I've seen plenty of teams with 1 great and fast striker but a good coach will teach them how to defend against those players. Don't let it get to the striker. Force the passes away from that striker, cut off the angle. That's learning to play defense at a young age. If the kids are unable to do that yet, can't read that team's middle, or put enough pressure on defenders to not allow those big kicks forwards, they will lose and those are the things they should continue to work on.

The build out line was created to prevent those easy goals at a young age. If your team can't play from the back reasonably with the build out line in place, well...that's something the coach should work on with the team and not force them into a higher level.

How is forcing them into a higher level going to help?

As for levels - we have so many levels in soccer right now in SOCAL - no one even knows what level is what. (created by big clubs for big payers who want to believe their kids have advanced to a higher league even though it's just renamed) We have rec level teams in club. Average is level 3 - like a C nothing wrong with it. Flight 1 should be the best of the best. Flight 2 is fantastic but missing a few components like speed or vision. Flight 3 - Average. Flight 4 - Beginning Club Flight 5 -Rec. Most teams should be playing Flight 3 and they are but they don't even know it because Big clubs and leagues work together to rename the flights for the parents egos.

There's nothing wrong with player movement. Players change and sometimes they need a different place to train. Sometimes teams outgrow players and sometimes players outgrow teams. Sometimes teams keep weak players because it's a local team that wants to give that player a year or 2 to get physically there but still allow the kid to play on the same team as his/her friends. Sometimes great players stay at weak teams because they want to continue playing with their friends and will find other ways to improve their skills without having to train with the best players often. Choices are made by parents and kids - not by big clubs selling fake flights.

 

[Grace T.]

It's soccer so you need fast or quick runners to win, even if you are playing possession soccer. If you can't get to the ball before your opponent, you can't possess the ball no matter how good you are at positioning. Slower teams should play lower flights. They won't be able to keep up with fast teams and it's OK. They may or may not get faster as the years change their bodies.

I've seen plenty of teams with 1 great and fast striker but a good coach will teach them how to defend against those players. Don't let it get to the striker. Force the passes away from that striker, cut off the angle. That's learning to play defense at a young age. If the kids are unable to do that yet, can't read that team's middle, or put enough pressure on defenders to not allow those big kicks forwards, they will lose and those are the things they should continue to work on.

The build out line was created to prevent those easy goals at a young age. If your team can't play from the back reasonably with the build out line in place, well...that's something the coach should work on with the team and not force them into a higher level.

How is forcing them into a higher level going to help?

As for levels - we have so many levels in soccer right now in SOCAL - no one even knows what level is what. (created by big clubs for big payers who want to believe their kids have advanced to a higher league even though it's just renamed) We have rec level teams in club. Average is level 3 - like a C nothing wrong with it. Flight 1 should be the best of the best. Flight 2 is fantastic but missing a few components like speed or vision. Flight 3 - Average. Flight 4 - Beginning Club Flight 5 -Rec. Most teams should be playing Flight 3 and they are but they don't even know it because Big clubs and leagues work together to rename the flights for the parents egos.

There's nothing wrong with player movement. Players change and sometimes they need a different place to train. Sometimes teams outgrow players and sometimes players outgrow teams. Sometimes teams keep weak players because it's a local team that wants to give that player a year or 2 to get physically there but still allow the kid to play on the same team as his/her friends. Sometimes great players stay at weak teams because they want to continue playing with their friends and will find other ways to improve their skills without having to train with the best players often. Choices are made by parents and kids - not by big clubs selling fake flights.

Agree the flights have gotten confusing. Love your 5 flight level team structure but there are 2 issues there: would require a unified governing body that could shuttle kids to appropriately placed teams not the fractured leagues we have now and AYSO being its own thing (adults caring more about their turf than an organized system for the kids), and in the end kid's soccer is about college looks, admissions and scholarship which is why the pressure from parents to play higher (not about the ego) because no one is going to look at the striker for the flight 3 teams in your schemes and they aren't going to play the showcase tournaments.

Disagree that the coach can teach the team to defend against that striker. The height disparity given the age line, particularly on the boys, is too much to sometimes overcome. Don't really see any way around that beyond breaking up the age groups into 6 months brackets but then some smaller clubs/teams won't have enough players to play in the absence of some super organization regulating all this stuff.

I had a bet once with a buddy what the build out line would mean. He said that after the build out lines teams would never go back to punting and long balling the ball. He's admitted he lost that bet. As soon as the build out line is removed the boys go back to punting. Now you could keep the build out line in place until U16 but there's a large group of people that were unhappy with the build out line even at the youngest ages. Interestingly, the higher level the boys advance the less of that you see, but there's still a lot of punting and long balling even at the higher levels. Soccer is ultimately a game about mistakes and one short cut around that is not making mistakes too close to your side of the goal.

 

[Grace T.]

Agree the flights have gotten confusing. Love your 5 flight level team structure but there are 2 issues there: would require a unified governing body that could shuttle kids to appropriately placed teams not the fractured leagues we have now and AYSO being its own thing (adults caring more about their turf than an organized system for the kids), and in the end kid's soccer is about college looks, admissions and scholarship which is why the pressure from parents to play higher (not about the ego) because no one is going to look at the striker for the flight 3 teams in your schemes and they aren't going to play the showcase tournaments.

Disagree that the coach can teach the team to defend against that striker. The height disparity given the age line, particularly on the boys, is too much to sometimes overcome. Don't really see any way around that beyond breaking up the age groups into 6 months brackets but then some smaller clubs/teams won't have enough players to play in the absence of some super organization regulating all this stuff.

I had a bet once with a buddy what the build out line would mean. He said that after the build out lines teams would never go back to punting and long balling the ball. He's admitted he lost that bet. As soon as the build out line is removed the boys go back to punting. Now you could keep the build out line in place until U16 but there's a large group of people that were unhappy with the build out line even at the youngest ages. Interestingly, the higher level the boys advance the less of that you see, but there's still a lot of punting and long balling even at the higher levels. Soccer is ultimately a game about mistakes and one short cut around that is not making mistakes too close to your side of the goal.

p.s. in your 5 tier pyramid structure, if we are really talking truly superior players, flight 1 in the SoCal area would be limited to about 5-10 teams of each gender with the intention to play future pro. There's no need to promotion/relegation...they are a handful of MLS teams and affiliates that recruit players. Flight 1 would be reserved for players with the potential to play professionally. All other college bound players in flight 2 or 3. In some states like Utah they may only have 2 teams and Idaho probably only has 1 which means a lot of traveling, given the size of the country.

But then you'll just get parents that complain about being shut out of flight 1 MLS and set up their own tier 1 league, hence the need for a superorganization that can regulate all this stuff.

 

[SoccerFan4Life]

p.s. in your 5 tier pyramid structure, if we are really talking truly superior players, flight 1 in the SoCal area would be limited to about 5-10 teams of each gender with the intention to play future pro.

But then you'll just get parents that complain about being shut out of flight 1 MLS and set up their own tier 1 league, hence the need for a superorganization that can regulate all this stuff.

Consolidation is definitely needed. Parents and clubs have created a complex system of false tiers to make money and for parents to feel like their player is in a special league.

 

[Grace T.]

Consolidation is definitely needed. Parents and clubs have created a complex system of false tiers to make money and for parents to feel like their player is in a special league.

It's not about feeling special. I'm sure there's some of that but that's not the primary driver of it. It's college admissions and recruitments that distort all of this. If we were to look at Europe, Academy level play is reserved for certain very high level players with pro ambitions....they have to basically surrender the college track and there's a bunch of train wreck stories and documentaries out there about what happens when kids wash out....everyone else plays rec. In the US, because most kids playing higher level are looking for college not pros (because unless you can play in Europe the pay in the MLS simply isn't worth it), it creates a need to create higher level teams so kids can get a look at college recruitment. If we really meant flight 1 was only for superior players, almost all of our kids wouldn't play flight 1 and teams in SoCal would be limited to about 5-10 very high level teams (probably more for the boys than the girls since there are more pro options for the boys).

 

[soccersc]

It's not about feeling special. I'm sure there's some of that but that's not the primary driver of it. It's college admissions and recruitments that distort all of this. If we were to look at Europe, Academy level play is reserved for certain very high level players with pro ambitions....they have to basically surrender the college track and there's a bunch of train wreck stories and documentaries out there about what happens when kids wash out....everyone else plays rec. In the US, because most kids playing higher level are looking for college not pros (because unless you can play in Europe the pay in the MLS simply isn't worth it), it creates a need to create higher level teams so kids can get a look at college recruitment. If we really meant flight 1 was only for superior players, almost all of our kids wouldn't play flight 1 and teams in SoCal would be limited to about 5-10 very high level teams (probably more for the boys than the girls since there are more pro options for the boys).

I'm not sure about that. Sure college admissions adds to it, but clubs aren't creating leagues and all sorts of acronyms because of college. Sure that might end up being a byproduct of what they have created, but @SoccerFan4Life does kind of have it right when he says parents are looking for the special name in a special league.

Don't forget why these clubs are really invested in it, its not for development anymore, ALMOST all are in it for the money, and what brings the money- parents. If it was for development there would be consolidation and kids would be placed in the correct level to develop, not just be placed on a team because you have to fill the roster. And what are MOST parents looking for, a team that has an acronym tied to it, not because that is a team that can help them develop but because they want to be on the best. Then of course, colleges will come watch those teams, but parents are making those decisions way before college recruitment becomes involved.

 

[Emma]

My son and daughter's teams have played against fast strikers. Ifthat's the only player they need to beat, most of their coaches have always made the adjustments required to contain that 1 player. Sometimes its a tie, sometimes its a win and sometimes they lose in close games because they let a few big kicks by the defenders get by. Generally - they lose by a lot because there is more than one area that they can not beat the opposing team, mid or defense too. So it's not because of the fast striker alone that makes team look bad against another team, it's because they allowed the defenders or midfielders to make that pass close to the striker many times. I hear parents say this all the time - we lost by 6-0 because they had that fast striker. It's not true. The team lost for more than that reason - did your offense press the defenders to make short or bad passes? Did your midfielders get in position to win the balls? Did your goalie cut off the angle as much as possible?
Teams do punt but they don't do it all the time now. Before the build out line, rarely did you see a team play from the back. Now, teams punt when the front press is tough for the defenders - which is why one would punt, the match up is better in the middle or up front. Or they punt a lot because they have goalies that make bad decisions when passing, choosing the side with the incoming/fast forward rather than the wide open side with no forwards pressing. You play the style the game/match up dictates.

That's why I'm arguing for CSL. CSL is not perfect. All these years, CSL has tried to put teams in the right bracket and keep things simple and more transparent. SCDSL and ECNL have not done that. They've closed up competition and created "Super" leagues regardless of skills and created an infinite amount of leagues and flights with too much complications.

If ECNL/MLS NEXT allowed outside strong teams to play into their leagues like CRL, it would be a much better league and an open league but they only allow their handpick clubs to be part of it in order to try an force more players to leave their local teams and good coaches to join an ECNL team.

If parents are pressuring their u9/u10/u11/u12/u13/u14/u15 into a league or team because of the opportunity to get into college, they are focused on the wrong things at those age groups and probably forgot how important grades and learning skills are. The time spent on looking for better leagues and teams should be used on how to help their children develop better studying/work habits. Maybe we need those baseball signs up that say "this is youth soccer, your child will not get a scholarship today"

 

[soccersc]

Parents are sold by what level they are on and clubs are trying to SELL their product. The sad but true news is that clubs are more about the money now days then the player. I am sure there are exceptions but I mean in general. Look at these numbers from Liverpool in Irvine.

In 2014 their Technical Director made almost 150,000 and the club brought in 1.8 million
in 2020 they brought in 5.3 million. Think about that, multi million dollar

Its about marketing, and what parents are going to buy, so unfair to the players and soccer in America.

F C Blades - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica

Since 2013, the IRS has released data culled from millions of nonprofit tax filings. Use this database to find organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as well as download tax filings going back as far as 2001.

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