Surf 2008 has a couple players who reclassified, too. They'd be listed with the 2025s.
Girls Academy 2 Finally Coming!
- Thread starter soccerpalace
- Start date
That's impressive and glad to see different clubs putting players in college. IMO, the more clubs putting players through the better. It doesn't matter if it's a ECNL club, GA club, ABC club...any club having success elevating players is good for the sport. I'm not sure why we get so caught up with ECNL vs GA. I'd rather have two platforms succeed vs one as competition is good for the consumers.
I'm just glad that the truth is starting to come out and a single league doesn't have a chokehold on high level play.
Let on field performance decide winners and losers.
Think how much better things would be if every club played in the same league. Travel would be reduced significantly and there would be no question about who is the best of the best.
Things are getting crazy. I don't even know if this has all the most recent updates. I'm hearing that some of the recent boys ECNL promotions in the Pacific NW are decommiting for MLS 2.
Tracker:
ECRL B&G:
Added new conference - Golden State
Added new RL Conference - Gulf Coast
Added Gulf Coast United
Added Hattiesburg FC
Added LA Fire SC
Added LA Krewe Rush
Added Mandeville SC
Added Union 10 FC
Added Eastside Timbers
ENCL-G:
- Promoted ECRL clubs
Missouri Rush
Westside Alliance
ECNL-B:
- Added new conference (Far West), promoted an entire ECRL conference to ECNL
- Promoted ECRL clubs
Doral SC
Highland FC
Kansas Rush
Missouri Rush
Theee Rivers SC
ECRL-B
Added South Shore Select (SSS)
Added Central Washington Sounders
GA:
- Formed Alliance with MLSN
- Created GA Aspire (GA2) with DPL
Added McLean Youth Soccer ECNL
Added Midwest United ECNL
Added NVA ECNL
Added Western Washington Surf
Added Loudon SC
Added SF Glens
GA ASPIRE:
Added The ACDMY/Houston Rangers (partnership)
MLSN:
Added NVA ECNL
Added Chattanooga FC
Added Albion SC Colorado
Huntsville SC
Michigan Futbol Academy
The Football Academy
Tulsa Greenwood FC
MLSN Tier II:
Tracker:
ECRL B&G:
Added new conference - Golden State
Added new RL Conference - Gulf Coast
Added Gulf Coast United
Added Hattiesburg FC
Added LA Fire SC
Added LA Krewe Rush
Added Mandeville SC
Added Union 10 FC
Added Eastside Timbers
ENCL-G:
- Promoted ECRL clubs
Missouri Rush
Westside Alliance
ECNL-B:
- Added new conference (Far West), promoted an entire ECRL conference to ECNL
- Promoted ECRL clubs
Doral SC
Highland FC
Kansas Rush
Missouri Rush
Theee Rivers SC
ECRL-B
Added South Shore Select (SSS)
Added Central Washington Sounders
GA:
- Formed Alliance with MLSN
- Created GA Aspire (GA2) with DPL
Added McLean Youth Soccer ECNL
Added Midwest United ECNL
Added NVA ECNL
Added Western Washington Surf
Added Loudon SC
Added SF Glens
GA ASPIRE:
Added The ACDMY/Houston Rangers (partnership)
MLSN:
Added NVA ECNL
Added Chattanooga FC
Added Albion SC Colorado
Huntsville SC
Michigan Futbol Academy
The Football Academy
Tulsa Greenwood FC
MLSN Tier II:
In your view, how many GA teams are actually at the level of the average ECNL team?
Depends on the geography.
I'm not going to get into a back and forth on which teams are better or worse than others. If you want that kind of detail review the rankings app.
I will say (because my kid has played in both GA and ECNL) that from a league perspective they're nearly identical. League Games are the same, events are the same, playoffs are the same etc. The differences are the clubs involved and ECNL has an official 2nd tier called ECRL.
WatchthemPlay
SILVER
Agree with this. SD is lucky to have a great option in GA and a couple of great options for ECNL. This isn’t the case in every region. I agree it isn’t about “ECNL” or “GA” unless you just are focused on bragging about a league. If your kid’s goal really is college, it’s about researching the club and their historic success with getting kids into college. Coaches watch top ranked teams in both leagues equally and the leagues have the same basic structure. History matters…college coaches have more trust in programs that consistently produce college players.
Pick the GA or ECNL with the best history of college recruitment success where your kid also has the opportunity to play a lot, likes the team and likes the coach. A kid can get recruited on a less competitive GA or ECNL club, but it require being more proactive and maybe flexible about options. It is also harder to get recruited if they aren’t getting much play time even on a team that gets more exposure. Don’t downplay the value of a coach as it is critical they are promoting your kid to college coaches. It will be more difficult if they don’t have relationships with college coaches or aren’t willing to be an advocate. Talk to the coach about what they do in the college process and talk to athletes who are already recruited in the club to get a better idea.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
That would require either ECNL or GA to completely go away
The YSR app will give you an idea of who's the best of the best. Not perfect, but the best objective tool out there.
Im ok
The rankings app is better than nothing. It shows an expected win/lose for cross league teams. The problem is because of the different leagues splitting things out some teams will never get the opportunity to play other teams. Parents react to this by seeking out teams for their kid to play on that only play top clubs. Which perpetuates the "my league is better than your league mentality".
The real issue is with the crazy expensive youth leagues is talent is often overlooked by ability to pay.
Im ok with all the current youth leagues going away. All they do is take their cut + reinforce things that don't matter. (Goals over development)
The rankings app is better than nothing. It shows an expected win/lose for cross league teams. The problem is because of the different leagues splitting things out some teams will never get the opportunity to play other teams. Parents react to this by seeking out teams for their kid to play on that only play top clubs. Which perpetuates the "my league is better than your league mentality".
The real issue is with the crazy expensive youth leagues is talent is often overlooked by ability to pay.
It’s not just the parents. If you ask them, the kids at top teams don’t want to play the weaker teams. They want to play each other.
And they have a point. Playing blowouts isn’t much fun, but it does risk injuries and chew up your limited game time.
So they try to avoid teams which seem like they are weaker.
I've never seen a kid that isn't happy after a blowout. Unless they've gone though multiple, 5+ blowouts and playing is getting boring. (Been in both situations.)
At least blowouts silence the competition if they're questioning the top teams position/ranking.
You hit the nail on the head there.
For a top team, multiple 5 point wins is normal. Solar had 6 last year. MVLA had 12. Surf had 13. Recurring blowouts are a thing.
There's teams in other leagues that go through the same thing. Obviously limiting who you play against isn't the answer if you're already getting blowouts in the current league.
It's almost like having a single league with multiple levels of play all defined by pro/rel is the way to go. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that before.
The annoying thing about curated leagues is that coaches/clubs that aren't very good get into positions of power + blame players when they don't win. These are the teams that get blown out when they're playing in a high level league.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
Yes, pro/rel for youth leagues has been talked about before and is generally frowned upon since that would go directly against development for youth players.
My point is more that any top team is going to be selective about who they play. No matter how it is organized, the #1 team in socal isn’t going to want to play team #20.
Pro-rel would make it clearer who is #1 and who is #20. But you’d still have #20 saying “play us” and #1 saying “prove yourself first”.
That's not the reason clubs don't want to do pro/rel.
The reason youth clubs don't want to do pro/rel is because they have teams at every age group. Doing pro/rel on team by team basis would mix clubs up and not allow coaches to coach multiple teams. (Increases the cost for clubs) You could do pro/rel at the club level but this just encourages clubs to join different leagues if they get relegated.
Also, the real reason clubs are against pro/rel is if there's multiple leagues there's multiple kings/queens of the world at the end of the season. Clubs want their paying customers to be happy with the product so more winners = more customers. It's the same thing as when tournaments hide the levels teams play. It allows more players, parents, and clubs to be a winner. Which is what people are paying for.
Clubs on the inside like the letter leagues because it guarantees them a top flight team in every age group. Clubs on the outside hate it, for a similar reason.
The development argument is that top teams act as regional all star teams. If you want to develop top players, then those players need to find each other. “everyone go to DA” or “everyone go to ECNL” sounds like an easy way to make that happen.
And it works, until it becomes “half of you go to DA and half of you go to ECNL”. Then it’s a mess.
Just hope we don’t go there again.
soccermax2
BRONZE
Not a fan of blowouts with older teams. The lesser team tends to get overly frustrated and resort to fouls. If there isn’t a good referee it quickly get out of hand. And injuries always follow.