What strong independant team would do this team-based league rather than reaching out to a GA/MSL or ECNL club with a struggling team in their age group?
Socal named as Operator for National 1 League
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ECRL used to be equal to or even above GA, but now GA has moved ahead as the second-tier league. ECRL is 3rd now, and I don't want to disparage it because there are strong teams there, but it's pretty clear. We had some epic debates about this in years past!
superfly10
BRONZE
So from what has been relayed to clubs on this:
NPL teams who were bottom 3 can be relegated to Flight 1, all other NPL teams are in.
National League teams are NOT guaranteed entry, specifically those teams that have lackluster records and goal differentials.
SDSoccerMom13
SILVER
Good to know. My son has decided to join the Sporting u15 second team which is suppose to be N1. They had a third place 2011 NPL last year so hopefully they are accepted.
luzsoccermom
BRONZE
Sporting told their families the girls playing NPL last year would all be in N1. They also said N1 is higher than DPL and it's the same as aspire and ECRL? I am confused. 
East County Soccer Dad
SILVER ELITE
Some teams are equal, but ecrl on the whole is better.Sporting told their families the girls playing NPL last year would all be in N1. They also said N1 is higher than DPL and it's the same as aspire and ECRL? I am confused.
Aspire maybe the top teams are equal.
DPL, no idea
Agree with this. I am sure there is some variation from year to year but my opinion on the Girls 2013 last season.
Order in general is:
ECNL
Academy
ECRL
NPL/Aspire
NL/DPL/ECNL-Socal
DPLO/Flight 1
But it is not a clear cut heirarchy.
In every division the top couple teams seamed better than at least half the teams in the one above.
There was an Aspire team (or two) that would challenge for the ECRL top spot. Same with an NPL team or two.
A few NPL/Aspire teams could beat lower level Academy and even ECNL teams.
The very best NL/ECNL-Socal teams could compete well in ECRL.
I saw allot of unevenness across most of the divisions. Most seemed to have a couple dominant teams that should clearly be playing at a higher level and a couple bottom feeders that have no business in that league.
I think it is good to see NPL and NL combined. Hopefully that cuts down on the travel. There is no good reason for LA based NPL teams to travel to SD for league games. Same with Aspire or ECRL leaving the state. Stupid. It is just a dilution of too many leagues.
No team in Southern Californa needs to travel more than an hour to get their butts kicked.
Aye it could be worse - I have a buddy with a daughter on an entry-level club volleyball team and they have no less than 5 out of state tournaments on the season. Total racket.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
We need @RandomSoccerFan to chime in on the relative strength of all these leagues. You can't just say "this league is better than this league" because you feel like it. Let's see the data behind it.
This is absolutely true. The artificial segmentation of teams into various leagues causes parents to needlessly drive hours away for games, where if everyone played in the same leagues (or could play cross-leagues trivially), all games could be significantly more local. I'd trade pointless letter designations and meaningless rankings for more local games without a second thought.
Add to that the disparity in levels within the siloed leagues, and it gets even more ridiculous, stupid, and infuriating. The system forces parents to drive hours more, to play in games that are significantly more imbalanced. And all of this garbage is just so that clubs can try to chase exclusivity and "elite level" designations for their team, to be allowed "in" to the higher level competitions. I agree with various luminaries who have expressed similar: the current system of siloed leagues and gatekeeping is very broken (and I'm including the recent N1L ECNL path lock-in in that condemnation).
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
I appreciate the request, but I think even with data that relatively objectively measures the strength of any one individual team, rating any of these secondary/tertiary leagues against each other is never clearcut. You can take all the teams, get an average SR, and rank the leagues/brackets/geography by that average, but the average difference between these leagues is going to be way smaller (1, maybe 2 goals at most) than the difference between a very strong team in that one league and very weak team in that league. (5 to 6, or even more goals). It comes down to a philosophical decision, in whether you rank a league by the strength of their strongest teams, or by their average teams (or even by their weakest teams). That's why attaching too much weight only to the league a team plays in, is sharing less information than the specific capability of that particular team.
The ranking proposed by WS13 for 2013G seems reasonable, but once you get down past ECRL, it all seems to run together - and a strong team in any of the lower leagues listed will be strong in any of them, and a weak team in any of the lower leagues, will be weak in any of them.
aong cangkol
SILVER ELITE
Letter leagues strategies are all the same, maintaining exclusivity but expanding membership at the same time.
So far it works. MLS Next start by mixing the "high level free academy" and the "regular" clubs, then keep expanding roster size. Another brilliant idea is MLSNext Flight 2 but calling it "MLSNext Academy" (most of my friends and family believe that this MLSNext academy is the highest level thus fulfilling the bragging rights).
Combining NPL with E64 could achieve this strategy, especially by throwing "ECNL" in the announcement. I think it would be more effective if they call them ECNL, ECNL Homegrown, ECNL Academy, ECNL Next.
They tried with ECNL-RL but people somehow keep misspelling it to ECRL thus reducing the brand value.
Does ECNL-RL-Socal still exist?
So far it works. MLS Next start by mixing the "high level free academy" and the "regular" clubs, then keep expanding roster size. Another brilliant idea is MLSNext Flight 2 but calling it "MLSNext Academy" (most of my friends and family believe that this MLSNext academy is the highest level thus fulfilling the bragging rights).
Combining NPL with E64 could achieve this strategy, especially by throwing "ECNL" in the announcement. I think it would be more effective if they call them ECNL, ECNL Homegrown, ECNL Academy, ECNL Next.
They tried with ECNL-RL but people somehow keep misspelling it to ECRL thus reducing the brand value.
Does ECNL-RL-Socal still exist?
Karlton Athletic
SILVER ELITE
I noticed the MLSNext Homegrown standings now have separate "Pro Player Pathway" divisions for U16+, which is where all the true academies reside, so MLSNext Academy is really the third division.
Gunners > Spurs
BRONZE
Exactly. And many of those playing U16 are really U15. Pro Academies play their teams up an age group which distorts the rankings.
Yeah sorry - this wasn't meant to be a declaration of fact. I know this age group pretty well and this is just my anecdotal feel for one particular sex, year and season.
Point was more about the leagues blending into each other - the top teams from mid leagues can easily compete in a league (or two) above.
And that there is massive disparity within the leagues leading to uneven play. Who wants to to drive two hours for a 10-0 (or 0-10) game?
The disparity is pretty bad, Just looking at the ECNL silo:
The top 2013 Girls ECNL-RL team is around +50 GD vs worst at -90(!) (16 games)
NPL has teams ranging from +70 to -50 in GD across 18 games.
ECNL RL Socal from +70 to -80 (18 games).
Yes, this is the best and worst team in each league. But there are clearly many teams in each league playing in the wrong level of competition and they really should have some form of relegation/promotion.
My son's team is playing EA2 next year (BU16). Per the rankings app, the top team in EA2 for that age group is currently #11 in the state. The bottom team is #742. That is the widest disparity in team strength for any nominal "elite" league that I have seen (not sure if those two would play each other, but I'm pretty sure the top team plays teams ranked 600+ in the state, in the regular season).
The hard part about that situation is you'll likely need to beat the terrible team by 6 goals to maintain your ranking. Not that winning by that many goals would be a challenge. The problem is you're forced to do it vs use the game as a way to give the 2nd string playing time.
Scrub It Kook
SILVER ELITE
This is the problem with EA2; the vast majority of teams are awful. With the lack of exposure and amount of travel involved, there's really no reason to play EA2. Even EA is questionable in terms of whether the minimal exposure and high travel are worth it. Currently, on the boy's side, MLS HD/AD and ECNL/RL are the only tiers with any sort of reasonable travel/exposure ratio (Although AD & RL could be viewed as borderline).
Not my choice, certainly. The club views EA/EA2 as the only pathway to get MLSN, which is their goal (according to the staff, smaller clubs cannot get higher than ECNL-RL on the "other path", because ECNL proper is jealously gated by the larger/founding clubs as their money maker, since players must move to those clubs to advance past a certain level on that path). The club sees MLSN as viable over time, as it's less "old boys club" than ECNL apparently, and the only way to advance to that is through EA/EA2.
... which sucks for the current players, since they have to suffer the real negative impacts of the messed up league situation. It is what it is, though, for the players who are not good enough to (or have other motivations not to) make the leap up and to a big-name club now.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
For the girls side it should just be ECNL, ECRL, GA and then get rid of this alphabet soup nonsense and put everything else into regional/local flight 1, 2 and 3. Have flight 1 stretch geographically (e.g., SD to Ventura county) so that you have the best former NPL, E64, N1L, ECRL So-Cal, Aspire, DPL teams playing each other. Flight 2 and 3 would be local.
A better way to do things is to have.
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
All letter leagues do is funnel money to themselves, make players commute farther for equivalent level of competition, and force parents to pay more for their kids to kick a ball on a field.
Scrub It Kook
SILVER ELITE
Good luck to the club, hope they do well. MLSN has it's own politics to navigate.