Socal named as Operator for National 1 League

[shankbone]

Shankbone, your post highlights what's wrong with the "club based" system; teams don't play one another, nor do they play teams from outside their "closed" league. You are guessing at who the best teams are. Club based teams fear playing teams in open leagues like CSL because losing brings down the curtain that they are often charging too much. The ecosystem needs reimagining to allow the opportunity to identify the best players, teams, coaches, and clubs, not just to guess.

Well ranking 8U age to 12U is hilarious to me also! I can understand ranking starting in HS as a serious thing - you have to have something to go by. But the rankings start at 8U! U15-U19 lets check it all out and goof on it.

Girls in socal the orange county clubs have a huge talent pool to draw from and ambitious parents will drive. That is the ecosystem currently. Not guessing about the very best teams!

 

[Scrub It Kook]

Anyone classifying SR rankings as "guessing" at how a particular US youth soccer team performs, doesn't have the first clue about how to judge the relative strength of soccer teams - strength being defined as a higher-ranked team expected to beat a lower-ranked team in a game.

60% of the time, SR works every time.

 

[RandomSoccerFan]

It will pick the correct winner, between two rated teams, (if the game results in a winner) ~85% of the time currently across all games. (A higher-ranked team is expected to beat a lower-ranked team). For the very youngest, it is running well over 90% accuracy. Meaning it's going to pick the wrong winner about 1 in 6 times, or for the youngest teams - 1 in 10 times. It is least accurate (sometimes down to 75%), for the very top teams in the country, whose games tend to have both fewer goals, closer scores, and more of a relative effect of randomness in each game.

If you shoot them a note, they are pretty open about sharing all of the detailed predictivity results, and will even run simulations on their actual data if you do have a specific question.

IMO, from a spectator's perspective, the most interesting games to watch are often the ones that defy the prediction, and the underdog comes out on top. Every player certainly hopes to win their upcoming match, regardless of what anyone's prediction may be.