I could not agree with this more. I'm so fed up with all of the "elite" leagues marketing to the big club C teams. My child has gotten tired of the amount of travel required for a B team and it's amazing how difficult it is to find a halfway decent team that still competes locally. I'm seeing C teams from big clubs and top teams from small clubs announcing that they are playing ECRL or EA2 next year. Parents and players may be excited in the moment for the fancy patch on the sleeve, but this is ultimately a real disservice to the families and players who are now going to be required to drive 2+ hours for league games against other average teams, when they could be playing simiilar teams locally. Keep only the truly top top teams playing in ECNL or MLS Next and let's just let everyone else play locally! We have plenty of good local competition. I keep hoping that at some point this trend will cease and folks will wake up and rebel against the lost time and money for the so-called "elite" leagues and put teams back in SoCal or some other local league.
Socal Soccer League ECRL Division?
- Thread starter toucan
- Start date
soccermax2
BRONZE
Agreed, it has gotten out of control. Continually diluting the competition & leaving few places for kids to play that don’t want to be consumed with a life of just soccer.
There is nothing elite if everyone is playing in the league, but I guess if you’re willing to pay the “elite price.”
B and C team parents pay for the A team players full ride or partial scholarships. A, B and C team players in Socal have no reason to travel outside of Socal. Maybe one or two trips to AZ or Vegas for a fun tournament a year. FYI, the B team players in Socal are A team players in other states. Socal needs its own league.
No one is creating a viable alternative yet. GA and EA are just recreating the same broken systems as MLS Next and ECNL. You'd think that MLS would be mature enough to realize that the more they can foster local clubs near their facilities, the easier (and cheaper!) it is for them to scout and develop a larger pool players. They can still have their weekends where they meet up at a remote location with 3-4 other MLS academies if they want that level of competition, but why are LAFC and LA Galaxy even traveling to San Diego to beat teams 9-0, 13-0, 10-0, 11-2 etc. They'd be better off staying home and having an intrasquad scrimmage or play 2 years up against a local club.
The travel these leagues require hinders development and it's bad business for the professional clubs (but great business for the mega clubs!)
I tried so hard to tell the higher ups, but they squashed me like a bug. I was accused of being a bad parent for pulling my child in 2018-2019 GDA Travel league. This league also told us no high school soccer allowed and you must play soccer 11 months out of the year, 4 days a week and not complain. In the old days of youth soccer when the top teams stayed local, scores were 2-1, 2-0, 3-2 and very close and the girls played high school with their friends and played other sports. When GDA expanded and forced us all to travel, the scores were 14-0, 12-1 and so on. Top scorers from SoCal were getting 2 hat tricks a game. It was not unheard-of players scoring 4 goals a game to pad their stats. The parents accused me of being a club hopper and a medal chaser, all because I pulled my child. We were bad for the travel business because we had no travel bucks to travel. Seriously, parents have confessed to spending over $120,000 playing travel ball. This is not healthy for the girls, trust me.
Leagues like EA2 and ECRL Socal should not even exist, but people are blinded by the labels and can't see them for what they are...money grabs. But as long as parents are willing to dish out the $$ and drive all over the place I suppose these leagues will continue to exist. There is just no reason for C team players to have to drive more than an hour for league games. Our family been doing it for a few years now, because that's what the kid wanted to do, but it takes such a toll on the family. Unless your player is truly at the top and vying for a career in the sport I see no reason for it. The problem is that because there are so many "top" leagues (ECNL, MLSNext, E64...) if you kid is a reasonably good player it's really really challenging to find a team that is a decent level that does not play in one of those leagues. Even the small local clubs without ECNL/MLS Next are now putting teams in EA2, etc. I hope that if parents put pressure on the clubs to keep teams playing in local leagues that the quality of the local leagues will improve as more and more players and teams come to their senses and play local!
Soccerjunkie24
BRONZE
We are a short step away from all these leagues becoming more local anyway with everyone getting involved in them.
Good point there...but guessing the price tag for them is considerably higher than SoCal or Coast leagues...so eventually we'll get the same product at a higher price point.
I dunno, so far it's the same geographic spread, just tiered. NPL at least created divisions based on geography, but my guess is half the teams will leave for RL2 with a larger geo spread.
ECNL/RL/RL2 and NPL are 2 separate entities. I cannot see RL2 and NPL playing in the same league due to the costs involved. Why would anyone pay ECNL/RL money to play NPL teams. Schools/scouts hardly attend ECRL games anyways, so why would they attend a division that's even lower.
soccermax2
BRONZE
Unfortunately nothing has changed. I pulled mine this year & got the same treatment. I have zero regrets as I know I did what was best for my daughter.
There are a lot of parents who feel the same but will not speak out. There will not be meaningful change until parents are willing to stop playing the game.
I wonder how the addition of EA2 and RL2 will affect NPL...you're probably right that many of the teams will leave NPL for the other leagues. Hopefully there will still be enough NPL teams to at least be able to divide the league into SD/OC/LA divisions. Fingers crossed there.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
It's really geography-dependent. ECNL-RL *is* the top division of NPL in other parts of the country, including Norcal. There is pro/rel between RL and the next NPL division.
Code
GOLD
The only change I expect to see is the SoCal NPL teams from last season will have a name change and be called ECRL2 teams. The same teams from last seasons NPL will be playing each other in the same places from the same clubs. Maybe the NPL league regions of North, West, South, etc..expand or go away.
SurfSupDude
SILVER
I’m not sure if it means anything yet, but the list of pre-qualified NPL teams is posted on socalsoccerleague.org. It includes G2010 teams like CitySC San Marcos, Chula Vista FC, Fury, and TFA, which are not ECNL clubs and were all very good teams last year. It also includes the two Blues NPL teams and the two Legends NPL teams, which of course are ECNL clubs.
Code
GOLD
Got to be careful with the tricky club names. Just because a team has the name Surf, Sporting, Legends, Albion, City, etc. doesn't mean they are the same club. A lot of the names are just franchise marketing, and are completely different clubs all together. Sometimes the team is actually an affiliate satellite team of the main "Club Hub." You can tell the difference by going to the "Clubs List" on SoCal Soccer League website and see if the teams are listed under the Clubs teams, or under a different club with the same/similar name.
SurfSupDude
SILVER
I understand. But here are a few examples in the G10 group.
First photo is from socalsoccerleague. Second is from sports ranking app.
These don’t seem like different teams. They seem to be exactly the same teams. Interestingly enough, one of the Legends teams is now listed as E64 in Sports Ranking app, but you can see that they played NPL in 23-24.
Attachments
Code
GOLD
I may not understand what exactly you are saying, so hopefully we are talking about the same thing.
The pre-qualified NPL teams list is based on the results of last seasons (23-24) league results. No guarantee that any of those teams will play again next season, although I expect they all will. No guarantee of what league any of them play in, they could choose to switch. Looks like Legends San Diego is getting into E64. Will they have a dedicated team for that, or make a pool play?? I can't answer for them. Looks like they are dedicating the stronger one of their two NPL G10 teams from last year to it.
Legends SD is not the same club as Legends FC, or Legends SCV; at least for league play purposes as they all have different Registrars. With two pre-qualified NPL Legends SD G10 teams, they have some options. My guess is they are going to put one in E64 and keep the other in NPL (or maybe ECRL2 is there is an option. No one is sure what's happening).
The Blues are obviously an ECNL club, I don't think they have any franchise clubs. Those two teams are listed as separate teams in the club directory, and if ypu look at the league play results in the Soccer Ranking App you can see they each played differnt opponents on the same day in the same league. Pretty sure they are not the same teams. Maybe one team goes ECRL2 and another stays NPL. Or maybe both will be able to play ECRL2. Just a lot of speculation based on how ECNL/NPL is working in other regions.
The Club Directory on the SoCal Soccer League site is still showing the teams from the 23-24 season, so we won't know what the team/club landscape looks like for the 24-25 season until it is updated. This usually happens at the same time the fall season schedule is published (Aug?). But it gives us a good clue about who has what teams.
On a side note, Legends SD is in a great place to make a push for ECRL acceptance if the ECRL2 league goes as expected. They have strong teams in each age group. Supposedly the club with the best overall results from all thier ECRL2 teams will get promoted to ECRL, which provides a path to ECNL. If I was Legends SD, I wouldn't waste any time with E64 next season, I would lock up that ECRL ticket to the dance (assuming this is the way it gets put into place). Not many clubs have NPL teams across all the age groups; they have a strong potential to make it happen.
Attachments
semi_water
BRONZE
The Socal League will be destroyed after EA2 and RL2 get all the C teams from their member clubs. Small clubs will disband their old-age teams and possibly fold. The tournaments hosted by the small clubs are already much smaller due to those B/C teams' letter leagues. So most soccer parents' money will flow into those big exclusive letter league member clubs.