Also going pro/rel.
Amazing that Discovery NPL is now offering a completely unremarkable product and still outcompetes CSL Premier, which had all its games at the Great Park last year (phenomenal fields and location).
Discovery NPL Goes to Home/Away
- Thread starter Woodwork
- Start date
Also going pro/rel.
Amazing that Discovery NPL is now offering a completely unremarkable product and still outcompetes CSL Premier, which had all its games at the Great Park last year (phenomenal fields and location).
On the boys side quite a few teams shifted to EA2 and Elite64. And they weren't able to form a couple groups for the youngest due to lack of interest. Part of the 'discovery' aspect was that it was supposed to be used as a showcase for college recruiting and higher level team (e.g. MLS) but they rarely (if ever?...anyone know if they actually got anyone to go at Norco) got anyone. And with inflation and gas running as high as it is they got complaints about the drive (particularly as they bring in teams from up north which declined to do NPL in the past because of the driving distances so played CSL). It's essentially now the new glorified flight 1 for SoCal League.
Pro/rel is a mistake and is going to accelerated the drive of top teams away from NPL. Unless the entire system is a closed loop and has pro/rel, or the flight really is the top flight (MLS Next/ECNL for the older boys) it has the disadvantage of locking players in which means they'll look elsewhere. If a club has their second or third tier players in NPL, they can't afford to promote the best players because it will leave the team vulnerable to rel the following year which means the top players will have to change clubs to move up. It will create lopsided results because some teams will manage to hold it together and others won't, and unless it can maintain a prestige factor, it won't be able to attract the top second tier talent evenly across the teams.
CSL is in freefall decline particularly now with some of the northern teams headed to Socal League.
Looking at a couple of the age groups, CSL looks to be something like one-fifth the size of SoCal. Teams are traveling hours to play weaker competition than they would play locally in SoCal. How long will that last?
CSL seems to be doing what it can by allowing teams to choose to stay in a division if the travel is better. Teams opting out of Premier for the Gold/Championship group. Honestly SCDSL/whatever has the same travel problems. My local OC team in Flight one has to travel to the desert half the time.
Yup, the "Elite 64" seems to have eaten up the top of Discovery teams. With home/away and relegation I am not sure that the teams moving from CSL to SCDSL got what they were sold. Discovery is glorified flight 2 and any team that competes at a high level has jumped to some version of fake ECNL instead of Discovery. What a joke.
Discovery NPL has always been promotion/relegation. This isn't new.
Clubs and teams wanted home/away for NPL. No one wants to drive anywhere anymore or pay for parking and gas prices are still high. Post-Covid everyone just wants to play close to home. ECNL, RL, GA, MLS Next, etc, all play home/away. Why should NPL be any different as it is a National League as well but with Regionalized play and National playoffs.
Expect the National platforms with alot of travel to start changing too. People have had enough. We live in a different world now and the bragging rights of being in a traveling national league are leaving parents broke. Look for all of the leagues to implement changes when it comes to travel. They won't have much of a choice.
You're funny. Travel to the desert "half the time"? From OC? Maybe in CSL you'd have to do that but SOCAL doesn't have that extreme geography.
From what I understand, one of the rationales originally for having things in a central location was to create a showcase environment for recruiting. If that didn't materialize, then with gas and parking so high, the rationale for organizing NPL that way goes away. The other challenge (at least in Los Angeles) is field space. Coast particularly has struggled with it (I've seen some really really bad fields including once a field with metal poles on the corner, mud instead of grass, and the entire pitch slanted on the diagonal and another with its own homeless encampment behind one of the goals). One wonders if SoCal league will enforce the minimum field standards, which kept a lot of the poorer clubs out of SoCal league for a long time.
Soccerdad_562_
BRONZE
we should see if this is true
"NPL teams will be required to provide fields that meet the criteria established by the NPL Committee. Should a club not have fields that meet the criteria, clubs can rent fields directly from Silverlakes or Oceanside to host their home games"
G07 - Flight 1 East
Bracket A
- Legends FC (CA) Legends FC G07 FC
- ALBION SC Temecula ALBION SC Temecula G07 Academy
- Empire SC Empire SC G2007 Orange
- Murrieta Soccer Academy G07 Pre Academy
- Legends FC (CA) Legends FC G07 Gold
- Legends FC (CA) Legends FC Temecula Valley G07 FC
- City SC Temecula CITY SC TEM G07 Pre-Academy
- Spartans FC Yucaipa Spartans FC Desert Girls 2007 Black
- SoCal Elite FC G07 BLACK
- AC Brea Soccer AC Brea - G07 PDA
- Strikers FC North Strikers FC North G07 BF
- SoCal Elite FC G07 GOLD
- Strikers FC North Strikers FC North G07 LR
Temecula
Temecula
Murrieta
Yucaipa
This is 100% worse than anything AC Brea had to do in Gold last year (and they would have been Premier, with all games in Irvine this year in CSL).
SoccerFan4Life
PREMIER
What age bracket? Glorified flight 2 maybe at the 05 age group because not too many teams are left.
I don’t see the Desert in any of those games.
Strictly from a geographic standpoint, AC Brea being placed in the East is a bit of a headscratcher, especially when that division has more teams in it than any other. Being placed in South or even West would probably be better. You should call your coach/club and have them reach out to MR to see if anything can be done. There's gonna be pushback, but it's worth a shot.
Right. Not my kid's club, but one of my local clubs.
I appreciate that you get the point and aren't focused on pedantics. This is a two-hour drive in traffic to a burnt turd of a field for kids to play in 105 degree heat. I'm not arguing regional annual precipitation here. A burnt turd is a burnt turd.
So let's figure out what flight you are if you are a G07 Slammers Discovery team:
| 2007 | U16 | HB Køge ECNL 2007 | ECNL | |
| 2007 | U16 | Slammers FC ECNL 2007 | ECNL | |
| 2007 | U16 | HB Køge ECNL RL 2007 | ECNL-RL | |
| 2007 | U16 | Slammers FC ECNL RL 2007 | ECNL-RL | L |
| Girls 2007 Elite 64 | Matt Sanger |
Looks like three flights above you. Flight 4?
With the drought I think most fields look like burnt turds these days unless they are turf. Venues are overplayed, counties are under water restrictions, school districts lack field maintenance staff and fields are dry and beat up. Temecula is no worse than anywhere else but at least it’s the wine country and the vineyards are nice to visit!
Saw a couple teams that finished 2nd in flight 2 last year promoted directly to Discovery, skipping Flt 1, in the G05, G06 age groups. But, right after things opened up I saw a lot more happening in the G07 as well, teams that had never played flight 1 going straight to Discovery to fill in the initial 30 or so.
The top few teams in discovery were legit, though. But now they mostly left to other leagues, any specialty league that will get them out of Discovery, like E64 or DPL or what have you.
While this is "kinda" true- With the various affiliates- its a little bit geography based.
The RL teams will pull kids from the various CDA, South, Sporting, etc.
So some teams train at Great Park. Some further North.
I'm not sure how well the RL teams do in competition - too many places to look for results these days - I do know that their discovery teams seem to do pretty well against other (non-ecnl) clubs "top team". Maybe they move ringers down to get wins. I haven't personally seen this at Slammers (definitely seen it at other clubs).
I believe I can answer this. The Slammers E64 team is the Fullerton team that finished top of NPL last year. The Slammers HB team that is still in NPL finished 4th last season and beat the Fullerton team 3-1 during league play. IIRC, The Fullerton team beat the RL team a couple times last season.
Wait, I can't answer the tier question, maybe I'll stop worrying about it again.
Let me break it down for you. When the top teams leave to another league, your league is de facto the lower flight.
One of the downsides of being in a lower flight is that you don't have the same opportunity to play the top teams and demonstrate comparable worth, like you clearly enjoy. Without the opportunities to play better teams, the experience gap widens between the lower flight players and the higher flight players.
Slammers Fullerton was clearly not getting enough from playing in Discovery and took the first chance to jump ship. Discovery is worse for the loss.
But, if that doesn't bother you or your young player, don't worry about it.