Sounds suspiciously like you're starting to buy into the idea that only the top 5%-10% of whatever league matter. ;-)
Socal Soccer League ECRL Division?
- Thread starter toucan
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RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
Not at all - it's always been an open question whether it is a good idea to play on a "bad" team in a "good" league, vs. a "good" team in a "bad" league. Certainly depends on whatever folks prioritize as important to them.
It's just not accurate when someone says "My xyz team beats up on teams from this better abc league", and extrapolates it to the strength of either league, even if that first statement is true.
I'm fixated on how closed all the leagues are, nothing to do with trust or allegiance. In the earlier days of ecnl, the teams still also played in the 'open' state and national cups until they hit critical mass. That doesn't happen anymore. Obviously I make more comments about ECNL because it is the best in terms of competition.
I question the value of 2 hour round trip commutes during the week that a lot of kids and parents have to choose if the kid is good enough to play on an ECNL or MLS Next team, that's why I want more opportunities for local, more independent clubs. Most of the girls are good at both academics and athletics. What's best for her at 14, an extra 8 hours in the car per week to do only soccer or sticking with a really good local team and using that 8 hours for a robotics club? Won't go pro, but good enough to play at a good college, but would have to choose the extra commute over other interests (or even just hanging out with non-soccer friends). While I think that describes the majority of ECNL players, in the current landscape, that means NPL is the best option unless you happen to live close enough to one of the ECNL teams. NPL just got further diluted in favor of another closed league.
(IMO, traveling on weekends for games is less of an issue. Spending a weekend in Vegas once a year can be fun, but most people aren't at private helicopter tier to get to those trainings. I don't think going outside a 30 minute radius for weekly training is worth it.)
I don't think the national leagues are worth it at any youth level. Playoffs/Finals for 16 top teams across the country, sure.
I'd probably let it go if it was just one closed league and everything else was open, but everything is turning into a closed league and the actual true regional leagues are getting destroyed.
The closed leagues are worse than you can imagine.
Here's an example just using the girls to illustrate. Top ECNL, and GA teams 95% of the season will only play against teams in their league. The 5% of the time they play outside of their league it will be in an ECNL or GA club sponsored tournament. In general ECNL clubs tend to only play in their own clubs tournaments, GA is exactly the same. The 1% of the time a top GA team will play in an ECNL tournament or vice versa you might see the top teams bracketed to play each other in the top tier. NPL, DPL, ECRL, etc etc etc teams will won't get an opportunity to play the top teams from either league. *
* Blues Cup this year was fun because there were unexpected matchups. I don't think any ended up being upsets but at least there were opportunities for NPL ECRL, etc teams.
This is exactly what I am talking about. According to the prior post by code that I was responding to the only good league is ECNL and only they should be National. That is not the case. There are tons of good teams in all sorts of leagues. The other thing is this also shows the limitations of the data in soccer rankings. Most teams only play local clubs, local tournaments and local leagues. You take a team ranked a 47 in Michigan and put them against a 47 in Utah.. you honestly don't know what will happen. The data is all you can really get but.. it truly has its limits.
The way it was done here was NPL is the local/regional league that feeds ECRL and ECNL. So they tried to replace the local state league with NPL. While positioning the ECRL then ECNL as "elite" leaguesI don't know that both ECNL and NPL using US Club Soccer for sanctioning means they're in "lock step".
What I see is 2 different leagues that are completely independent from US Soccer. Because they are independent from US Soccer they sanction through US Club Soccer.
BTW NPL (and technically ECNL) could sanction through GA not US Club Soccer if they wanted to. This is what US Soccer enabled earlier this year.
Girls Academy Achieves U.S. Soccer Federation Membership | Girls Academy League
girlsacademyleague.com
Code
GOLD
What is happening on the East Coast is irrelevant to any kids playing in SoCal. Your kidding youself if you think MLS Next vs ECNL has a bigger gap than the GA vs ECNL situation.
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I did a little research on NPL and I think I've found the disconnect. First NPL has been around longer than ECNL so that should say a lot. Also NPL is a finals (in Colorado) that's grafted on top of different local leagues across the country.
The disconnect is that different local leagues may or may not be working closely with ECNL. As an example NORCAL premier league is very closely aligned with ECRL. People see the Norcal NPL + ECRL press releases and extrapolate it to all the different NPL member leagues across the country which may or may not be correct.
I would suspect that since ECNL and the different NPL regional leagues are all sanctioned through US Club Soccer that it's just easy for players to move between the different leagues. But this doesn't specifically mean that ECNL and NPL are in lock step alignment. They just happen to each offer something the other values.
Since GA can sanction it's own players and other leagues players the benefit of both NPL and ECNL sanctioning through US Club Soccer is minimal.
General FYI US Club Soccer is a member of US Soccer (just like GA). In the end US Soccer gets a portion of all registrations.
Code
GOLD
I didn't say it was the only good league, I said it was the best league, because,..well it is. And I was also explaining how we should be viewing the league hierachy as of today, because, that is how the stack up in rankings that are accurate enough to compair one league of teams against another league of teams. No reason any team at the vottom of ECRL or GA should be driving to Vegas or Phoneix for a league game. They could find numerous good DPL, NPL. E64 teams to play right here in SoCal. And vice versa. No way a bottom DPL team or E64 team should be traveling out of their county for league games. They literally would be a good match for any NPL or Flight 1 team. Yet here we all are pretending all these leagues need to travel to find "good" competition.
RandomSoccerFan
GOLD
And that's where what you believe, and what is true, diverge.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
If the top league was "open" then it would not be the top league anymore. If we had open leagues then eventually a few clubs will figure out that some families with good players want to play against other good players and create a closed league. This is the nature of competitive sports in America (just not soccer). There will inevitably be a process to filter out the good players from the bad so that players can play with others at a similar level. That process will include teams that band together good players, and leagues that band together good teams.
ECNL and its membership clubs create a monopoly business together. Like any other business, the goal is to crush competitors and increase their moat against all competitions that threaten their business. Unfortunately, their business is youth soccer. Their business practice will hurt all non-ECNL soccer development. ECNL players and their families involuntarily participate in this vicious cycle to destroy the local soccer league.
It should be an open promote/relegate system based on an individual team's performance, not a club's politics and connections. La Jolla Impact and East County Surf are two perfect examples. They have very good teams until U12. Because they are locked out of those closed leagues, they lose most of their players to the clubs in those leagues. You are talking about $$$ revenue switching from local clubs to those close league clubs.
rainbow_unicorn
PREMIER
I'm not sure if promotion/relegation is a good idea for youth soccer. That will emphasize winning over all else and goes against player development. If a player from La Jolla or East County is good enough to play ECNL/GA then they have plenty of options in the SD area.
I'm genuinely curious now that we have so many leagues with no pro/rel, has anyone seen winning deemphasized? I haven't seen it. Everyone still wants to be in the higher brackets at showcases/tournaments and make it to playoffs. Anecdotally, I've seen an increase in recruiting and kids still leave teams if theirs is near the bottom, so it just seems like a wash on that point.
Not interested in rehashing the pros/cons of each system. I think are multiple ways to make youth soccer more open even without pro/rel.
aong cangkol
SILVER
More question even if you are in a "good" league, is it better to be a star player for a "bad" team? or an average player in a "good" team?
There's a couple more questions you need to ask.
- How far does the team practice from my house
- How far do I need to travel for league games
- Is the coach "good"
- Does the DOC support their coaches?
- Does the Club support their DOC?
- Does your kid want to play professionally if yes Does the club have the resources to support it
- Does your kid want to play in college if yes does your club have connections with recruiters
On top of the "good" or "bad" club questions you should be considering above.
Some people suffer from extreme FOMO and some parents like to chase whatever people around them consider "the best".
I've seen multiple kids stop playing because they washed out of a super team and their parents + the kid was too embarrassed to play on what they consider a lesser team. I've also seen players have much more fun playing on a smaller club team with friends from school. BTW these are the teams coaches recruit from as the players get older.
My general rule of thumb is that you want the team your kid is playing on to be in the top 10%ish of the league you're playing in. This is because top 10%ish of teams will mostly be winning which is a by product of everything I listed above and you'll get the most opportunities for things like college, pro, usynt etc. The teams that aren't in the top 10%ish are mostly interchangeable between leagues.
SurfSupDude
SILVER
*raises hand*
To be sure, it seems to be incredibly rare. But when you find it, you don’t let go!