Recruiting / Ranking soccer websites

[WillJohn]

What's everyone's thoughts/experiences with all of these websites? TopDrawerSoccer, SoccerWire, Prepsoccer etc....

Is it just a money grab? Pay to see my kids potentially ranked on the website. Pay to play in their ID camp so that one of the writers can write good things about my kid. Or is there a legitimate reason to try to be ranked on these websites? Better exposure / better recruiting?

 

[Code]

All those websites are propaganda sites. Pay-to-Play at the finest. As for the accuracy of those ranking sites, complete BS. The Soccer Rankings App is the most accurate thing you will find. Even though it is not perfect, and some errors can throw off the ranking of a specific team, overall it is really close.

Many years ago, the Soccer Ranking App was a website called Youth Soccer Rankings. They had to move to a paid App because they were being aggressivly threatned with legal action by NBC Sports. NBC had a big problem with them showing cross league rankings between differnt teams. The data conflicted heavily with NBC's youth SportsEngine, and basically exposed them as a fraud. This all happened about the same time MLS Next was spooling up, and the Development Academy was falling apart. I always suspected NBC Sports was somehow connected to MLS Next, the DA, and GA at the time, but not sure who owned the rights at that time.

Recently Apple Inc. Purchased the rights to MLS Next. As of now, all the website/ ranking engines are extremely inaccurate. The Soccer Rankings App is good, not perfect; the West Coast states are very good, the East Coast teams don't seem to keep much of the data accurate, so...hard to compaire those teams.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

The Soccer Rankings App is good, not perfect; the West Coast states are very good, the East Coast teams don't seem to keep much of the data accurate, so...hard to compaire those teams.

The data doesn't bear this out. There is no bias showing higher predictivity for West Coast teams vs. East Coast teams. There is a noticeable difference in predictivity for teams in top 100 nationally (~75%) compared to the set of all teams (~83%), as near the pointy end the games tend to be closer and 1 goal can make an outcome difference more often. But as long as game results are posted online so SR can grab them, and there are enough of them, it will work as expected, regardless of geography.

 

[Code]

The data doesn't bear this out. There is no bias showing higher predictivity for West Coast teams vs. East Coast teams. There is a noticeable difference in predictivity for teams in top 100 nationally (~75%) compared to the set of all teams (~83%), as near the pointy end the games tend to be closer and 1 goal can make an outcome difference more often. But as long as game results are posted online so SR can grab them, and there are enough of them, it will work as expected, regardless of geography.

Okay