I think that is an interesting comment from your friend. I have always thought that was the case because of what I read on this board, but was surprised to see that 16 coaches 9 of which were D1 college coaches and 5 D2 college coaches at our games this weekend and we have a couple of years until graduation. I know that doesn't compare to ECNL, but it certainly isn't the doomsday that is presented on this board. I started looking at some Instagram pages of certain clubs and noted several ECRL player commitments to D1 colleges recently. There definitely seems to be an increase in recruits from ECRL from last year.
What age group are you referring to?
I agree that this is the way things are now but if only 2-3 clubs always win every year eventually the rest of the clubs will get fed up with being shut out of the finals and move on. Add in MLS Next on the boys side and GA doesn't seems that bad. On the Boys side ECNL is a distant 2nd to MLS Next.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there aren't any D1 colleges watching ECRL games. The college I was referring to just doesn't spend their time there. There are a lot of D1 womens programs out there all over the country, and I am sure you are right that some recruit ECRL.
I didn't take it that you were implying that at all. I am sure it depends on the number of recruits they can get with the low hanging fruit of ECNL games. Shoot...UCLA or Stanford doesn't even need to attend games (funny their name is always included on ID camps). They can just look at the list of YNTs and reach out to players via email.
Were those the MLS Club associated MLS Next teams or Youth Club associated MLS Next teams? From what I understand the MLS Club associated Next teams are higher level than the other teams.
Quickly looking at the Surf results, I'm not so sure a midrange ECNL club would automatically run the league in GA.
Albion 06 was best 06 GA team in the country and they managed ties. Not sure that's the best example. That being said, that 06 team is still a legacy DA team, which still makes GA a decent league in the 05-07 age groups. Looking after DA, 08-10, GA is a significantly inferior league. That will most likely be borne out this weekend.
His point was about the mid-tier ECNL teams. I don't hear anyone arguing GA is on par with ECNL.
For the “pre” ECNL/GA ages, you will still see the non ECNL clubs do very well. However once you hit that ECNL age range there tends to be a lot of player migration to the ECNL clubs. The real barometer is do players choose to move to ECNL clubs or GA clubs within similar geographic regions.
Dont worry, I understand his point, which was in response to another poster saying an ECNL team will leave and run GA. He made a counter argument and I answered saying you need to look at the younger ages to see the trend, not focus on established teams that originated in DA.
