source? Not saying it's not true but just curious. If adding 2 clubs, those would be my 2 picks as well
ECNL Expansion In NorCal
- Thread starter Highlander
- Start date
which one?
U.S. Under-15 Women’s Youth National Team To Hold First Training Camp Under New Head Coach Katie Schoepfer
Thirty-Six Players Set to Gather at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center in Southern California
Poaching? No one is kidnapping kids and forcing them to play soccer elsewhere. Players (and their families who can manage it) want to train and play with/against others who will make them better. There is a kind of gravitational pull that draws kids to the stronger teams that makes their time more worthwhile than spending it with less focused, less talented teammates. The Bay Area has enough population and density that talent clusters like MVLA, Mustang, San Juan, and Surf form and draw players from elsewhere, including from some of the other ECNL clubs. College players emerge from other clubs but the recruiting is easier for coaches through established pipelines. And that interest is stoked at the national events, not in league games between teams 30-360 minutes apart.
There are clearly good players in the valley as evidenced by strong high school teams from Clovis every year. Are their enough families there to support the expense of attending the national events and the out of state trips? That is the real question to ask if it makes sense for ECNL to include them in its league.
There are clearly good players in the valley as evidenced by strong high school teams from Clovis every year. Are their enough families there to support the expense of attending the national events and the out of state trips? That is the real question to ask if it makes sense for ECNL to include them in its league.
The question is whether we want to have a structure which only really works for “families who can manage it”, as you put it. We’re splitting the kids into two groups: kids from rich families and rich areas in group A, kids from poor families and poor areas in group B.
Splitting the talent pool makes it more expensive and less competitive for everyone. Who cares if Clovis or Ajax parents want to fly to national events? We are talking league play. If a norcal team is top notch, it belongs in the top norcal league.
Highlander
SILVER ELITE
How do you know that? With the advent of the ECRL there are very specific metrics used to promote clubs. FC Bay Area doesn't play in the ECRL and I don't think Placer has met those metrics.
Of course nothing would surprise me with ECNL doing this and going around everything they had previously laid out in terms of adding clubs to ECNL.
Logistically those two clubs are about ~150 apart...not sure how that would work as travel buddies.
GoldenGate
GOLD
Everyone should have a Ferrari! It's so unfair that only rich people get to have Ferraris! And we should bring the Pacific Ocean to Clovis so they have the same opportunity to surf as everyone else! My god dude, it is axiomatic that only "families who can manage it" should be doing "it". If families can't manage the costs of buying a Ferrari, don't buy one or whine that someone won't subsidize it for you. If they can't manage the costs of owning an equestrian horse and property, don't buy it. If they can't manage what it costs to be an elite soccer player, don't do it. That might be just about the most obvious concept in history. Almost as obvious as "why the hell would I drive my 14 year old daughter 150 miles to Fresno or Modesto other than to subsidize other people's snotty brats?"
Little known fact: Fresno/Clovis is actually about 15 miles south of the mid-point of CA, which puts them in SoCal, so get your facts straight. Let them go play there.
Also curious about this. Only rationalization I can contrive is that both clubs apparently qualified in every age group for this new ECRL NorCal division... which feels a lot like NPL Champions League. I know that domination in ECRL is how ECNL Admin "justified" Beach and Legends got back in after the whole DA debacle, but can't imagine that same logic applies. Placer has already lost many key players to other local ECNL clubs at all age groups. In my opinion, Placer can't compete at the ECNL level across the board, except for maybe with Marin and Santa Rosa. I'm not being a hater, Placer getting ECNL would benefit my DD considering training proximity (she's not there now, but was in the past, and we would consider going back depending on coaching), but I have to question the dilution of talent. The strongest players from Placer's local area have already migrated to San Juan and Davis, and aren't likely to return... barring unhappiness. The remaining talented players in the area wouldn't help much depending on age group. Placer's youngest age groups are a total disaster, but not sure ulittles matter for retention since ECNL will attract talent and stronger training environments to some degree at the older ages. Also can't deny the college connections some Placer coaches have.
Just for the record, Beach and Legends we held out of ECNL by the Member DOC’s pre-GDA. So they weren’t let “back” in, they were finally let in.
Hope everything works out for your DD.
Ah, yes thank you for the correction. From my perspective, those clubs were always of ECNL caliber; the years and multiple leagues run together at this point I guess, and I forget that they were excluded prior to DA.
Highlander
SILVER ELITE
Like I said, you do have some good points in the pile of crap you put out. Fresno isn't so bad IMHO and they are close to a lot of NorCal teams. But check this out...there is a team in NorCal NPL (South Valley Untied) that is in Valencia! They are closer to LA by one hour compared to Napa. How is it possible NorCal let them in? They should be in SoCal...this is what makes me think it is all about getting a few extra $$$ into NorCal. If NorCal wants to let them in they should play their home games in Modesto or Ripon. How in the world can you expect people to drive 4+ hours to play a game in SoCal? Totally stupid...decisions like this bring down leagues. Watch the DPL and the like start to pick off clubs because of this and because ECNL is a locked league with no realistic chance for other clubs/teams to promote. NorCal needs to figure this out or they will start to get chipped away at more and more IMHO.
Highlander
SILVER ELITE
Whoops! Miss typed it...yes, that is what I met....where is the edit button? LOL
soccerpalace
BRONZE
Thank you for proving to my point. ECRL is one main key factor, but so is GA competition. MVLA and Force can only prevent local clubs from joining for so long, but it seems AM and JB will not be able to stop this form happening. ECNL like every other league is a business and like any business, they need to expand.
More to the point, do we really need one set of roads for Ferraris and a second set of roads for Fords?
It's worse than that. 75% of your "Ferraris" have a 1.6L four-banger under the hood.
Take a look at the 2009 Champions League. Only two 2009 ECNL teams qualified. Your other six "Ferraris" got smoked by Ford Mustang SVTs. This is what happens when you slap a Ferrari crest on a sedan.
Come on, bro. You're talking nonsense. No, ECNL teams did not get "smoked" in qualifying during the fall season. In fact, no 2009 ECNL teams even played NPL in the fall. The only ECNL team that played in the 2009 NPL age group during the fall was a 2010 team playing a year up, and they finished near the top of the division. Here's the fall schedule and standings for your reference. https://system.gotsport.com/org_event/events/4892#girls
You’re looking in the wrong spot. That’s the second tier.
The top 2009 teams were over here:
GotSport
system.gotsport.com
Santa Rosa, Force, Davis, Mustang, Marin, Rage, San Juan, and MVLA are all there. Top half, but not dominant. Three out of four divisions went to non-ECNL clubs. (Pumas, Walnut Creek, and LGU)
Just checked the U13 Champions League teams.
looks like MVLA 10G is in 09 Champions League ? maybe the competition is not enough for MVLA 09G?
GoldenGate
GOLD
Businesses don't "need to expand". History is littered with companies that failed relying on that trope. Most businesses do quite well as they are because they don't confuse business with a game of Risk. More importantly, you can't talk about this properly until you understand ECNL is just an association of its member clubs, so you need to look at the business interests of the members, not the league. Although they would certainly like to expand their own clubs if it means more profit, the last thing they want to do is help their competitors take their business to their detriment. Only when adding new clubs benefits existing ones does addition make sense. It is very simple.
Surf is a great case study and people who know what to look for could see the train wreck coming. Surf excluded other local clubs from ECNL because it didn't want to lose business, no matter how little or short term. That was the right decision for many years until it wasn't. Surf wasn't a "monopoly" in the legal sense, but it was kinda like that with elite girls soccer in SD. Go figure, it eventually suffered a similar fate to many monopolies. Specifically, although Surf's ECNL veto allowed it to establish impossible barriers to entry to competitors, its lack of innovation, the market inefficiencies it caused, and its failure to sufficiently consider the long term impacts of its decisions caused it to lose it's perch at the top, or nearly did but for sheer luck.
Fast forward to GDA. SD reached a point that too many customers existed for Surf to adequately serve enough of them. The area is too vast with too many people. It left a gap for other clubs to develop sufficient resources that, in turn, allowed them to provide consistent training and competition that was close enough to what Surf provided at reasonable prices, and often less of a time burden to get to practice and games. Time is money and unnecessary gas money is also money. when the 800-pound national gorilla US Soccer came to Surf's little fiefdom and threatened to crush ECNL like a grape, other clubs had their chance. Suddenly, all Surf's power and control over elite girls soccer vaporized, leaving Surf to panic and join GDA as a hedge against getting killed off completely. All this left Surf unable to control the commodity of elite girls soccer in SD, leaving it no choice but to do what it could to just to stay in the mix.
In hindsight, Surf and ECNL should have admitted a few clubs much earlier, which would have better allowed them to minimize the short term impact on customer loss. In fact, it might have helped business by relieving some of the financial burden on customers for travel and allowing them to charge the same price for a slightly better product. More importantly, GDA probably would have been over before it started because it would have lacked the leverage to make Surf (and Blues) bend the knee using other pretty good clubs as leverage for the hostile takeover. The funny thing is Surf and Blues were saved by US Soccer's utter incompetence, primarily its failure to understand this is all just a business, parents are customers, it is only works by keeping this in mind at all times. When a club like MLVA in NorCal told US Soccer to stick it, it was the best (or maybe luckiest) decision it ever made. Tophat, on the other hand, got what was coming to a bully that has never played nice with its neighbors but now relying on them for forgiveness. It's sad to see what is happening to them, but payback's a bitch.
When people like crushy poo lament that clubs have all the power, they have no idea what they're talking about. Parents collectively have all the power, but things move slowly. What people like him are really railing against, but too stupid to understand, is that they didn't get what they wanted regardless of how unreasonable and how little economic sense it made.
GoldenGate
GOLD
Why are we talking about 12 year olds again? What does that have to do with ECNL?
ECNL is putting those 12 year olds on planes to go play other 12 year olds.
Why? Damned if I know. The 12 year olds from Force are ranked 515. Rage 12 year olds are ranked 363. But for some reason ECNL thinks these super stars need airplanes to find a worthy opponent.
I agree it's pointless. But it's what ECNL is doing.