Socal named as Operator for National 1 League

[chipmonk]

I wish we could focus on whether pro/rel being intentionally dropped for the 3 top leagues is a good thing or a bad thing, and not keep talking about pro/rel pros/cons in general and whether it should be used. It's used all over the place, easily in the majority of youth soccer. It has been used for many, many years. It's only weird that the top leagues don't use it (for some of the reasons listed over and over again in this thread).

I'm game. It's a bad thing. It prevents competition at the business model level and at the sporting level. It has proliferated from the top 2 tiers of the pyramid to the top 4 tiers of the pyramid and watered down each of the tiers in the process.

It creates incredibly high barriers to start a new competitive club or experiment/innovate with new models of development. It enables the 'big' clubs to bait and switch players when recruiting them. I haven't seen any less pressure to prioritize wins over losses. We see the bottom clubs of these leagues merging to replace their underperforming teams with teams from other hubs, or see them turn over their rosters year after year in search of wins.

Again, the only positive thing I see is with simplifying logistics for coaching staffs and ref crews. Maybe it's a good thing for college recruiters that the playoffs are all in one location before nationals instead of having regional playoffs before nationals, but this aspect is oversold and diminishing. The actual top clubs/academies are never in danger of being relegated anyway. On the boys side, the competition in their age groups is too weak (see the watering down/dilution above) so the academies play a year up.

 

[Grace T.]

See this why we need pro/rel so teams aren’t hiding behind “we have better things to do”. The whole point of pro/rel is to earn your reputation.

They do have better things to do: sell players. The deficiencies in the us aren’t at the academy level: it’s that when they age out the academy players have no where professionally to play. If you honestly think some team in the Val for some local club (even if the coach is going out of pocket to scholarship players and practicing 4 days a week) will be able to compete with an la galaxy team giving its players free rides, the badge, pro looks, and training 5 days a week plus class, conditioning and specialty training, I have a bridge to sell you. . It’s night and day, not even close. The division between the academies and regular mlsn isn’t coaching or players…it’s practice time… and it’s why sometimes residentials like barsca and img can mount a fight….its also why with some exception like strikers or delco the playoffs are dominated by the few academies not the masses of pay to play teams.