Second girls DA expansion worrying for ECNL
Article Written by Will Parchman
Published: July 12, 2016
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There was never much of a chance the ECNL would be able to throw a velvet rope of exclusivity around its biggest, most prestigious clubs. As the girls Development Academy elbowed itself into the discussion about who develops the best and brightest in the country, there would always be some bleed-over.
For the ECNL, the task was always about limiting the damage and continuing to prop up the tenets of development that got them here. The latter is unassailable, buttressed by a massive number of U.S. YNT players and a seven-year history that’s given them unique perspective. Whatever U.S. Soccer does with its academy, it will never be able to usurp those hard-won lessons.
But the former is suddenly on shaky ground. Damage limitation in the form of defecting clubs is suddenly more untenable than ever.
The U.S. Soccer-led girls Development Academy made waves in early July by announcing 25 clubs had agreed to join for the 2017 season. It was the first wave of additions, and while it was an important stepping stone it didn’t tell us everything. PDA led the charge, and 60 percent of the NWSL was represented, but there were still some huge clubs left out of the mix. Were they abstaining, or were they simply biding their time?
After the first jab, U.S. Soccer came across with a haymaker on July 9. It
announced it added 28 more clubs for the 2017-18 season, bringing the total to 53. And it emphatically answered the question as to whether the ECNL had something to worry about in its new club competition.
After this second wave of additions, the answer, emphatically, is yes. The ECNL has something to worry about. Here’s what we learned after the girls DA’s second significant round of expansion.
— PDA was the clu
b the DA needed in its first round of expansion to cement the league as a going concern for the ECNL. The NWSL clubs were nice, as were a few of the other heavy hitters, but PDA made it all very real. Even if PDA keeps teams in the ECNL, there’s a significant chance their most prestigious teams and their best players are shuttled off to U.S. Soccer’s league. The ECNL simply couldn’t afford to lose another major pillar.
The second round of expansion was another crushing body blow. Not only did the girls DA add another NWSL team (the Washington Spirit), but it folded in the Dallas Sting, Dallas Texans and Eclipse Select, three of the 10 biggest girls soccer development operations in the country. All three routinely pump out national team-quality players, and the fact that both are headed for the DA does not bode particularly well for the ECNL.
Of course that doesn’t mean all three are abandoning the ECNL. It’s unclear how teams will partition their players in the future, and whether some go all-in on the DA or opt to split time between the two. But the writing is on the wall that the new thing is gathering steam as big club after big club signs up for its ranks. As one joins after another, the ECNL is left wondering how many exclusive clubs it’ll have at the end of the 2016-17 season.
— Speaking of 2016-17, the upcoming season is a big one for the ECNL. It’s the league’s last as a lone wolf atop the girls development apparatus in this country, and they’ll have to make good use of it if they hope to stave off the charge of the DA. What that means is still up the air. Does the ECNL opt to use its brief bit of leverage to attempt to sway its clubs to keep their more muscled half in the league? It has the unique advantage over the DA for the next 12 months of having these clubs’ collective ear while they still have their best players stashed in the league. They could well pull off a coup in that time.
But it’s clear U.S. Soccer has newness on its side, and that’s an intriguing prospect for much of the league. For clubs dissatisfied with the ECNL’s more relaxed standards as opposed to what’s being offered by U.S. Soccer, this could be the opportunity they’ve been awaiting for years.
— Of course some clubs don’t agree. Not long after the first round of expansion went live, Ohio Elite, an ECNL member club since the league arrived in 2009, went public with its pledge to stay in the ECNL. Among their gripes with the DA, they simply stated that they had no real reason to jump for the new league. How many clubs follow their lead is uncertain, but they increasingly look like outliers after this recent 28-club announcement. The DA is now at 53 clubs with a year left to get to the boys benchmark of around 80, which is also generally where the ECNL settles. It looks like they should have little trouble adding big names too, another trend that has to be somewhat dissatisfying for the ECNL.
— The ECNL long hung its hat on its fully national organizational model. It has clubs all over the country in every major market and in a bunch of minor ones too, and it has long said that each of those needs to be dealt with differently. That drove the ECNL’s more hands-off approach with its requirements, allowing each clu
b to determine what was best for them in the confines of their unique market. If the ECNL couldn’t determine what was best for those clubs, they reasoned, the boots on the ground certainly could.
The ECNL’s best chance at avoiding a mass exodus to the DA was essentially hoping its clubs agreed. After years of allowing them to make their own big decisions, it had to hope they appreciated that approach and didn’t buy into U.S. Soccer’s more heavy-handed view toward development.
But it appears that hasn’t happened. Even if the Ohio Elites opted to not leave the ECNL in any form, the nation’s biggest clubs - the PDAs, the Dallas Stings, the So Cal Blues’ - were of more interest in that they likely felt (and feel) as if they have as good a grasp on how to produce players as anyone based on their track record. Big clubs tend to be more intractable in how they view development, and convincing them they needed more help was always going to be a difficult sell.
Credit U.S. Soccer. They’ve already brought many of the country’s biggest girls clubs on board, and at least one more round of significant expansion should tell us even more about how far the girls DA has already come in such a short period of time. But either way, if the ECNL wasn’t worried before, it should be now.
