Opinions?
- Thread starter so cal
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He was with PA Classics, a DA club, from 2008-2015. He did get selected for the NIKE ID2 in 2012 but he was definitely with PA Classics during the time period he was selected. My opinion is NOT that DA is the only place to be seen and noticed or developed, but it has helped and we are seeing some results - Not as fast as I'd like because I'm impatient but I see some twinkle of hope.
outside!
DA
I watched every WWC game. I did not see any teams that were clearly better than the US. I did see some very good teams.I saw better woman teams this year but we got lucky on PKs, that's the only reason we won this year. The System is a mess to the core and that's why it will never work until we clean house
Justus
GOLD
I didn't say "clearly." I saw "better teams" for what that's worth. I didn't see really good soccer from our team Outside, but that's just my take. We won and that's what matters
@End of the Line, based on these statements:
Short answer is: No to both. Your understanding of how solidarity and training fees work is flawed because neither of your assumptions are correct. Under FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players (“RSTP”), a club is compensated when a player, prior to the end of the season of his 23rd birthday, signs his first contract to play professionally in another country (called “Training Compensation”), and when a player is subsequently transferred – at any age – between clubs in different countries before the expiration of his current contract in exchange for a transfer fee (called a “Solidarity Payment”).
The system does not prevent any player from signing a contract and the Training Compensation and Solidarity Payment is the sole obligation of the Club signing the player. This system is what continents of Europe, Asia, South/Central America and Africa all adhere too. Its what enables "clubs" to eliminate Pay-To-Play at the academy levels.
Prior to age 16, youth players are free to do just about anything they want. Depending on the country and employment laws in that country, most players cannot sign a professional contract until 16 to 18. Transfers of players aged 16 and older can occur, but under 15 the rules are very rigid giving the 12-15 year olds significant freedom.
With regard to your analogies:
- Medical School: many medical school students that opt out of going into debt by 100's of thousands of dollars, commit to various programs that pay for their school in exchange for X amounts of years of service. For example, future doctors can have their medical school bills paid by serving in undeserved communities through programs operated by Indian Health Services, National Health Services Corp. My brother went the military route and exchanged 6 years of service for a $750k, Ivy League dental and periodontics education. So, in fact we do it with doctors currently, and any 12 year old is free to try assuming they have the maturity, knowledge and grades to attend medical school.
With regard to a "cut of their salary" going to the 6th grade teacher (or school), this does not occur because that education was paid for by the tax payers (public) or the parents (private). If a private school were to operate a program where they would provide a private education for middle school kids through medical school in exchange for a cut of that doctors salary, there very likely would be many parents/kids willing to sign up. The problem is the ultimate salaries doctors make in comparison to top level professional athletes pale in comparison, so the economics may not be viable. - Philharmonic: the reason again is the schooling was paid for by the parents or publicly, the analogy is flawed.
BTW, the MLS has officially changed course and is now stating its intent and the need for RSTP: https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/04/18/faqs-about-training-compensation-and-solidarity-payments
El Clasico
GOLD
I think that the problem with your argument and why everyone is calling BS on your position is it is pretty clear to those of us who have been around for those 10 (11 now) years since DA came onto the scene for boys (yes, had a son play DA, graduated long ago), we have yet to see a true product of the DA. Where you go wrong using Pulisic and Weston is that they only played DA on Wikipedia which allows for some people to come in, copy and paste selected information and for those unenlightened, believe what they see. Take Pulisic, you say that he was with a "DA club" from 2008 to 2015 implying that he played DA all those years and was developed. Problem is that DA was just being rolled out around that time and like on the girls side, it was new and were using existing teams and coaches and just renaming them the DA team. Additionally, since Pulisic was only like 9 years old at that time, he was not playing DA. Now if you actually followed him and read and watched the interviews with him and, more importantly, his father, you would know that his dad didn't think much of DA, which is why he took him to train with a nearby "pro" team when he was a bit older. He found that even that was not development so they moved him to Germany. To give DA credit for him just tells me that you are trying to fool people or you just don't know. Weston is an even better story (just doesn't help your sales pitch). The TD of FC Dallas is the guy that actually sent him off to Europe. He took a rash of shit from US Soccer that wanted him to stay in the US but ultimately, FC Dallas convinced him to pack up and go. Said that DA could do nothing for him. In other words, the guys at FC Dallas DA club chose to do the right thing for his development and sent him off to Europe rather than ruin him here in the DA system. But I am sure you won't find this info in Wikipedia.
So for the record Pulisic may have been at a DA club and may have played for a DA post NIKE ID2 but reading those requirements you can not be a DA player and be part of NIKE ID2. US Club Soccer v. US Soccer. El Classico is absolutely correct. Do we know when PA Classics received the coveted DA Badge?
Dortmund developed Pulisic not DA.
Dortmund developed Pulisic not DA.
We all know Pulisic or McKennie (along with many others recently) left DA and we agree, DA was no longer sufficient to continue developing their skill sets further after 14 or 15. At one point DA was though and it was for a significant number of years. What you refuse to do here is give some credit where it might be due. We all agree that individuals and families are the 2 primary reasons why any of the star athletes rise to the top. However, there must be vehicles set up that assist along the way. One of those vehicles is the DA. For anyone to argue that DA has not been of any assistant to these individuals and families is to ignore the hard fact that we have no men's international talent between age 36 and 21.
DA was put in place to find these talent because we were struggling with the resources available and now we are seeing some results. Whether or not MLS or DA is able to develop talent after 15 is a whole different story and I think too many people confuse the two just like you are above.
What DA brings to the table is a clear indication that a program is collecting players who want to play at a high level, are willing to work 4 days a week and would like to be challenged by other players. For most soccer parents or players, they will not have the time or resource to go to different 40 soccer teams and research which teams would offer this. The DA label helps identify it. There are other teams outside of the DA that are doing this too but most people don't know who they are and it's hard to do the research with limited individual time and resources. The easier you make it for your consumer to find a product that helps, the more likely consumers are able to utilize it and help themselves.
There's no denying that the DA label has made it easier to find a bunch of hard working kids who want to play at a high level and have coaches with more coaching education (some probably need a lot more).
What I don't understand is the refusal to give some credit. I don't have the delusion that the DA label will turn any child into that special player. However, I do see that it has made it easier for that "special player" to find a hard working team to practice with and flourish at the younger ages.
@Emma's perspective is absolutely correct. The DA is just a league, let's not forget that the DA exists because US Soccer saw the professional teams (MLS and USL) were not stepping up to the plate with viable youth development programs and their professional development programs were substandard. 10 to 11 years ago the professional path of a US soccer player was play in a high level youth soccer program, go to college and have the best development years stagnate with substandard coaching and NCAA rules that prevented development, enter the MLS draft and play in a league filled with players that would never see the field in high level international play. We sucked because we are missing multiple pieces of development for the U17-U23 ages.
To blame the DA for the lack quality international level players misses a critical development level, which is the post youth professional academy (16-22 year olds), where players enter full-time dedicated training in the rest of the world. We just have not had that in the US at the level we need. Sure, the Galaxy has their Galaxy II team that mucks around playing games in the USL-Champions League (2nd Division in the US), which would be the equivalent of 5th Division (or worse) in England.
My point is US Soccer is taking credit for Pulisic. They had little influence. If a player moves to DA and U16/17 or U18/U19 and then moves into Youth National Team pools is that US Soccer's success or the success of the preceding club. There are players blessed with talent all over US Soccer just makes it a closed system to where you must move or travel to be DA. This is not just a boys issue. The closed system is what is not working.
The DA is not inherently bad, nor is it inherently better than what we had previously. It has not increased the quality of national team players or produced more world class players. Since that's its stated goal it has been a failure in that regard. Spare me the argument that its only been in existence for 10 years. If it was effective we would at least be seeing some sign of incremental improvement, which we have not. DA has not made a difference because it is just another league with the same coaches that coached flight 1 pre DA. USSoccer has very little tangible involvement in the training and development of players as far as I can tell. My son has played for a couple DA clubs. One club focused primarily on 1v1 and individual skills. The other focuses more on movement, decision making and passing.
So the answer is more internationally trained players, right? Some heralded our recent lineups with predominately international playing players as a turning point for US Soccer. How did that work out? Our worse loss to Mexico in 10 years and our first loss to Canada in over 3 decades. Granted this is only a very small sample size with two games, but that fact is were not showing any signs of improvement, but regression instead. The hole we need to get out of just keeps getting deeper and deeper. We used to beat minnows easily, now we're losing to them.
Are Training Compensation and Solidarity Payments the answer? I don't know. Are clubs and coaches saying were not going to give our players the best training because were not going to get Training Compensation? Are they just giving the bare minimum because they only receive Pay to Play money? Pay to Play money is guaranteed, Training Compensation is not...its higher return, but higher risk. Throwing money at a problem doesn't work without accountability (see US Government).
To me one of the biggest problems with our American soccer system is the lack of accountability from bottom to top and across the board...parents, coaches, refs, DOC's administrators. Unfortunately, the biggest offenders are the executives that run US Soccer. (I don't have the patience to type the laundry list of examples).
So what's the answer? I don't know, I guess its much easier to be a critic than a creator. I believe that some of it is cultural and it will just take time and has to occur organically; however, I'm concerned that some of the things that are being done structurally are hindering the cultural evolution. What happened to Double Pass revolutionizing US development? Personally, the first thing I would start with is making coaching education more affordable and more readily available. Second, the soccer leaders need to humble themselves and drop the arrogance. https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/cla...r-too-arrogant-far/1w9vcdubu5yhf1vj9c89qmxyib
So the answer is more internationally trained players, right? Some heralded our recent lineups with predominately international playing players as a turning point for US Soccer. How did that work out? Our worse loss to Mexico in 10 years and our first loss to Canada in over 3 decades. Granted this is only a very small sample size with two games, but that fact is were not showing any signs of improvement, but regression instead. The hole we need to get out of just keeps getting deeper and deeper. We used to beat minnows easily, now we're losing to them.
Are Training Compensation and Solidarity Payments the answer? I don't know. Are clubs and coaches saying were not going to give our players the best training because were not going to get Training Compensation? Are they just giving the bare minimum because they only receive Pay to Play money? Pay to Play money is guaranteed, Training Compensation is not...its higher return, but higher risk. Throwing money at a problem doesn't work without accountability (see US Government).
To me one of the biggest problems with our American soccer system is the lack of accountability from bottom to top and across the board...parents, coaches, refs, DOC's administrators. Unfortunately, the biggest offenders are the executives that run US Soccer. (I don't have the patience to type the laundry list of examples).
So what's the answer? I don't know, I guess its much easier to be a critic than a creator. I believe that some of it is cultural and it will just take time and has to occur organically; however, I'm concerned that some of the things that are being done structurally are hindering the cultural evolution. What happened to Double Pass revolutionizing US development? Personally, the first thing I would start with is making coaching education more affordable and more readily available. Second, the soccer leaders need to humble themselves and drop the arrogance. https://www.goal.com/en-us/news/cla...r-too-arrogant-far/1w9vcdubu5yhf1vj9c89qmxyib
Our supposedly best player is struggling at Chelsea right now and hasn't received a significant amount of minutes. We've had to rely heavily on Bradley, an MLS player who is also now older. And up top we don't have a dangerous, internationally trained striker. Our keeper is young and has been asked to play a specific role at his home club, which is almost the opposite of what's being required of him for the USMNT.
We can argue if playing internationally helps. But we have only 7 international players on roster, with only 1 being at a top tier club. Excluding injuries the Canadians have 15 playing on international rosters outside the MLS.
And those 7 international players are very young in terms of the experience relied on to win games in international competition even in concacaf which is why we still have to rely on Bradley and zardes and those never have beens. I think results some have been speaking about on here is the talent of the young kids pulisic and co.
By the way this is a great thread every one making good points lots of informed people on here unlike myself
By the way this is a great thread every one making good points lots of informed people on here unlike myself
And those 7 international players are very young in terms of the experience relied on to win games in international competition even in concacaf which is why we still have to rely on Bradley and zardes and those never have beens to show us to way to suck. I think results some have been speaking about on here is the talent of the young kids pulisic and co.
By the way this is a great thread every one making good points lots of informed people on here unlike myself
By the way this is a great thread every one making good points lots of informed people on here unlike myself
OCsoccerdad7777
SILVER ELITE
Just my opinion but I personally like having non-mls academies in there like Crossfire who had pretty good records in the past against mls academies. It keeps the mls teams more accountable by the embarrassment of getting smashed by non mls academies who are doing a good job developing. If there is another way to hold them accountable I'm all for it but so far I like having both.
Note the date of this post. I suspect with Saturday's performance, this is about to change.
Not_that_Serious
GOLD
These articles pick the low hanging fruit. There have been a few of these Articles the last few years. Then you get the FB post about how racist it all is. Not a race thing - usually. it’s a money thing. USSF enjoys money in but no money out. This topic has been posted a few times. Very few coaches care about the race of the player - but sure care if the kid can knock it in the net or are aggressive athletic mids/defenders. Most of us would take the tallest, fastest kid at certain spots - good coaches always think they can teach kids how to hold a ball or work on their touch. As mentioned before minority communities(if you look closely you’ll notice a lot more black players playing high level soccer in D1 and locally) get plucked of talent by clubs. Clubs literally raid leagues in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Garden Grove, East Los, Riverside. The clubs don’t donate money, time or other resources to help these leagues. I have reviewed team rosters at many clubs and I would see entire rosters of North OC kids playing in South County. Kids coming from Riverside to play in South County. East LA kids going to Westside. Never just a couple players, always same coaches, done at majority of clubs (Even “small” ones) and just about every kid playing free. I think they should be playing for free but that’s a double edged sword on how most parents act as soon as coach leaves - but that’s for another topic. The truth is kids can be targeted due to the inability to pay and someone coming around offering higher level competion at no cost. Some coaches truly offering good opportunity to improve players, some just using them for wins in the short term. You can see certain clubs have taken entire Sunday league teams - another topic discussed on other posts. The disconnect, or lack of moving up the Soccer path, usually happens in HS. Sometimes due to parenting, cultural issues (earning income before schooling), hanging around wrong kids, becoming pregnant, getting someone pregnant and other things.
The biggest Problem is systemic. USSF should be integrating the leagues and coaches via free training. This kids are less likely to leave if they are playing in same leagues as everyone else. Actually implementing FIFA rules would help as well. The lack of resources hurts the girls side the most - have to keep National teams paid first I guess. Clubs love this system since they can get kids technically trained better than rev kids and can help their teams right away. Again, save clubs money, makes club money by attracting paying parents.
Can search the forum, been long discussion on the topic and ways to fix it. First USSF has to want to fix it. Journalists also have to be stop being lazy on the topic and actually do some real investigating -not just call a couple folks on the phone.
The biggest Problem is systemic. USSF should be integrating the leagues and coaches via free training. This kids are less likely to leave if they are playing in same leagues as everyone else. Actually implementing FIFA rules would help as well. The lack of resources hurts the girls side the most - have to keep National teams paid first I guess. Clubs love this system since they can get kids technically trained better than rev kids and can help their teams right away. Again, save clubs money, makes club money by attracting paying parents.
Can search the forum, been long discussion on the topic and ways to fix it. First USSF has to want to fix it. Journalists also have to be stop being lazy on the topic and actually do some real investigating -not just call a couple folks on the phone.
Short term the fortunes of the team rise and fall with pulisic. If he becomes a top talent he’ll attract other talent who’ll want to play with him and at least disasters like Canada won’t happen as much
but even messi can’t right Argentina. The coaching has got to be there and the defensive and striker problems also have to be solved, and that’s assuming pulisic stays healthy and develops consistency. Never good to have all your eggs in one basket and that’s what we have right now.
long term there are other issues, all of which have been touched upon here