MakeAPlay
DA
I am referring to the last couple of years, not the ancient history of when ECNL was founded. Based on that, what was inaccurate?
So the first inaccuracy is stating that Beach, Legends and Carlsbad were more competitive than many of the ECNL clubs. The ECNL clubs were chosen because they were the clubs that were winning the national championships at the contested levels. Those other clubs didn’t win championships until the SCDSL was formed. Now each of those clubs had individual teams that were as good as some of the middle to lower ECNL teams but they didn’t compare to the top teams. The reason why is really simple. Most of the top players were concentrated on those teams and even in a region as populous as SoCal there are only 25-35 elite level players per age group.
The second and more significant inaccurate statement is that SoCal teams don’t need to travel to play good competition. Although the old Coast Premier League was the top league in the country prior to the creation of the ECNL, the Coast champion didn’t win the national championship every year. As a matter of fact, they weren’t even always Far West Regional champions as there were lots of strong teams from Colorado, NorCal, Vegas. Arizona and Washington. The top teams from those states are often better at aggregating their individual area’s talent than the teams in SoCal. I will give you a better example. Of the starters on the teams that participated in the College Cup 12 of a possible 44 were from SoCal a healthy 27%. However, 7 of those players were on UCLA (a SoCal team), 4 on Stanford and only one Duke player. There is lots of good soccer being played all over the country and the world. Good luck to you and your player.