Discovery NPL Goes to Home/Away

Woodwork said:
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.
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Well that’s obvious that Discovery got weaker in this age group with the top 2 teams leaving (Tudela is playing up in the 06) but that wasn’t the question I answered (or couldn’t answer)

They also expanded from 21 to 28 teams which dilutes the league a bit.

Most of the socal E64 teams were NPL teams last year so it remains to be seen if the competition is better. I believe it will be since all the teams are from the top half of Discovery, but we will see.

Philosophically I don’t like any of these club based leagues, including the ones my kids play in, but that’s a different thread.
 
Is Elite64 really a better league than Discovery in SoCal?

This looks like the teams that are in:
AYSO United
East County Surf SC
FC Premier
Las Vegas Surf SC
Legends FC (CA)
Los Angeles SC
Slammers FC
South Valley Surf
Strikers FC North

Not to take anything away from these teams- I'm sure they could hang with many RL teams on any given day (I feel the same about many of the Discovery teams)- But it seems like more travel for very little benefit. Are there more college scouts at these games/events?
 
timbuck said:
Is Elite64 really a better league than Discovery in SoCal?

This looks like the teams that are in:
AYSO United
East County Surf SC
FC Premier
Las Vegas Surf SC
Legends FC (CA)
Los Angeles SC
Slammers FC
South Valley Surf
Strikers FC North

Not to take anything away from these teams- I'm sure they could hang with many RL teams on any given day (I feel the same about many of the Discovery teams)- But it seems like more travel for very little benefit. Are there more college scouts at these games/events?
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Yeah, we'll see. Those teams were mostly above average in Discovery last year (except for Strikers), but definitely a few of the stronger teams are still Discovery only (Cardiff and one of the Beach teams specifically). I think the average/median in E64 will be higher than Discovery, but I'd bet the top in each are competitive with each other, just like they would be with top RL and GA teams as well as the average ECNL team.

E64 is new so we'll see if the games/events do get more exposure to scouts or not. Probably yes compared to Discovery, but that's a low bar. Probably not enough to be worth it in year 1 except for the national playoffs, but USYS will probably push hard to get a horse back in the race by year 3 (or it will fold).

Like I said, I dislike these closed club based leagues. It leads to dilution of competition overall.
 
timbuck said:
Is Elite64 really a better league than Discovery in SoCal?

...

Not to take anything away from these teams- I'm sure they could hang with many RL teams on any given day (I feel the same about many of the Discovery teams)- But it seems like more travel for very little benefit. Are there more college scouts at these games/events?
Click to expand...

Strikers G07 E64 is the old ECRL coach. I presume many of the players could be from there and maybe a few from the old ECNL team, now that they aren't part of that. The ECNL team wasn't doing great when they were there so I assume ECRL the same but lower. ECRL starts with a strike against it for recruiting as it is. Straight away, coaches are going to assume they didn't make the ECNL team. If your Club's top team plays GA or E64 or whatever, at least you don't have that strike against you.

But hey the college coaches are all going to be downloading Mark Lewis's Apple app Soccer Rankings so they may be able to tell whether you are on a comparable ECRL, ECNL, GA or whatever even without the head to head.
 
ECNL-RL, DPL, e64 and Discovery - Are there any other leagues between ECNL/GA/MLS Next and "normal" club soccer?
 
timbuck said:
ECNL-RL, DPL, e64 and Discovery - Are there any other leagues between ECNL/GA/MLS Next and "normal" club soccer?
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It's gotten ridiculous.
Do we REALLY need 6 leagues?

BOYS (and not in order of quality of league or level of competition)
MLS Next
ECNL
EA
ECRL
E64
Discovery

GIRLS (and not in order of quality of league or level of competition)
ECNL
GA
ECRL
DPL
E64
Discovery

When does this madness end?
 
timbuck said:
ECNL-RL, DPL, e64 and Discovery - Are there any other leagues between ECNL/GA/MLS Next and "normal" club soccer?
Click to expand...

Don't forget about EA and EA2. For ages 2007 and younger, I would move GA down into the alphabet soup between the top league and "normal" club soccer as well.
 
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