So what was "sports recruitment route" about?
Wynalda Perspective on US Soccer
- Thread starter watfly
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Recruited for sports, as opposed to placement through academics. The sports and arts recruitments are considered separately based on the recommendations from the applicable program.
Ps at least soccer is not as bad as say getting a job. Some of the Ivy League school eval forms used to recommend kids that got jobs be assigned the lowest score for extracurriculars (and then they clarified unless there’s some kind of familial hardship in which case only the rich kids get the low score for working). Working for $ was considered the biggest waste of time when you could be doing more productive things like saving the world. The kiss of death was writing about your experiences as a camp counselor or something similar.
That didn't help.
I think this is a dated misconception. The current view of admissions is not what a person does in high school, but how well they do it. Admissions is very aware of the false information being used to puff up applications by rich kids. Whether a student is a soccer player, flute player, scientist, saving the world, it does not matter. It matters how well they are doing it. So a student who does 10 things will not get credit unless the student does 1 thing really well.
A job that pays in the tech industry at a tech company is highly regarded for tech students, while a job at McDonald's will be just another activity.
Coocoo.
Agree but what the 1 thing is is important in how it fits the general marketing plan. If you say you want a music major but you have that tech industry job to look good on your resume because daddy works in tech and got you that it won’t help. If your essay is how you want to be the next Elon musk it will. Similarly if you aren’t in the athletic recruitment pool and your main thing is soccer, and you want to be that tech kid and write your essay about being the next musk, you aren’t going to do as well as the kid who got the tech job if you are spending all your time doing travel soccer. It’s why there’s the final drop off in kids playing elite sports around age 15-16….many kids come to the realization they won’t get the college they want via the sports route and care more about the college or program than continuing to play the sport (eg the kid wants to go to ucla but realizes if they get recruited they’ll play soccer in Ohio or St. Louis)
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Its a pay to play system in the US. Too many kids get overlooked for their parents empty pockets.
In my fleeting experience with club soccer, I know of one coach and three parents who financed all or part of a player's fees and travel expenses because their parents could not. From my naive viewpoint, I had thought this was widespread behavior, but maybe my exposure is not typical.
On top of that, our small local club had a scholarship policy that was funded by our tournament and camp fees and by an endowment given to the club as a share in a legal settlement with a failed property development in the city (the developer had to put up a $1 million bond to get the project started, and when he abandoned it the City Council parceled out the bond money to various local non-profits). The basic rules were that anyone could get a scholarship for our recreational program automatically upon request and that if any family wanted help with competitive fees they would have to show financial paperwork to justify it. There was a small committee (club Treasurer, administrator/registrar (the club's only non-coaching employee), and one member selected by the Board) to review the submissions in confidence and make recommendations to the whole Board. I can only recall one being denied in my time on the Board.
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I believe this is more a problem of player identification and a perceived barrier to entry by lower income families. Clubs are arrogant and they expect players to come to them. How many clubs actively go out and look for kids in the Mexican leagues and rec leagues?? A few coaches here and there do this but no club that I'm aware of has a formal program. Clubs would rather just recruit known commodities from other ECNL and MLS Next teams. The money is there for scholarships, one DA team my son was on had nearly half the players on scholarship despite the fact that some of the families could afford to pay. The main reason clubs have teams at an age group 3+ deep is to scholarship players on the tier 1 team regardless of financial need.
I'll add that often the biggest obstacle for lower income families is transportation to practices.
Particular since La traffic makes everywhere an hour + commute and the letter leagues can have quite a dispersal of coverage. For example, in MLS Next while downtown has some pretty good coverage, IIRC there still isn't a Valley team or lower Oxnard/Camarillo team, both areas with large working class Hispanic populations that have latino leagues.
I've never understood this practice. The NY Yankees have a rookie this year, Anthony Volpe, who was born in NY and has wanted nothing but to play for the Yankees his entire life. He has only played two games and had one hit, but is easily the most popular player on the team right now after Aaron Judge. The fans _love_ it when one of their own makes it to the big leagues. If the Galaxy or LAFC were to play some of their home-grown players, by which I mean kids from LA who have been at the academies for years, not just shipped in for half a season from overseas, they would create a tremendous buzz. It would put more butts in seats (and clicks on TV) than some mild-level star from... somewhere far away.
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Transportation and access to professional quality training. Remember pay to play doesn't just stop with club fees.
I was watching a documentary on YouTube about whats happening in nba basketball. Europe has a rising number of star players in the nba, despite it being the second third or fourth sport in most European countries, the players are far less athletic than the Americans, the players don’t play as much pickup ball as the us and the academy system is late and not as developed as for soccer. Part of the answer is that Europe has relied on an academy ball system built up after the us dream teams performance, while the us relies on club ball followed by college ball. But the documentary also pointed out the training is very different. The us relies primarily on individual achievement including taking players on 1v1 and shooting. Europe relies on tactical training including off ball movement and a heavy emphasis on passing skills. Sounds familiar.
Soccer and basketball rely on individual player decision making in a dynamic environment. We always talk about the best athletes and rarely about decision making/soccer IQ. You can have all the speed, strength and skills in the world, but they won't be effective if you don't know when to use them.
For those of us who complain about pay to play, how much time do you spend watching MLS and/or NWSL? How many jerseys do you or your kids own? How many games have you attended?
There is no economic way for truly fully funded academies if there is no revenue.
There is no economic way for truly fully funded academies if there is no revenue.
I own several LAFC jerseys + my kid played on a MLS supported club when they were doing that for a couple of years with youth clubs.
I still think MLS teams stopping support for local youth soccer clubs + letting them use their image (for a fee) was the dumbest move ever. Talk about free advertising with the people most likely to become your customers in a couple of years.
MLS from a competition perspective sucks. It's like watching a watered down version of something Europe is doing with a couple of over the hill veterans of other leagues mixed in. MLS needs to play more international friendlies to make it more exciting + somehow make the friendlies count in league points.
Makes some great points and is spot on on several of his observations.
Some will say "Top Tier" youth soccer like ECNL or MLS next is not top tier at all for but a small % of players. Boot ball is still the normal, ball control, movement without the ball teams struggle with, 1V1 defending not so much.
When the ball is in the air for 20-30 minutes a game, when a team can't connect 10 passes, when a team gives away possession 40x in a game, when they can't pass complete over 30% that's not elite soccer rather a lack of fundamentals that need to be addressed. Every youth player and team needs to master the fundamentals before they can even be considered elite or anything.
We have a huge problem is scouting and selection. We tend to select from a narrow pool of players and basically recycle players in/out that don't cut many players or give others ones a chance most of the time.
Some will say "Top Tier" youth soccer like ECNL or MLS next is not top tier at all for but a small % of players. Boot ball is still the normal, ball control, movement without the ball teams struggle with, 1V1 defending not so much.
When the ball is in the air for 20-30 minutes a game, when a team can't connect 10 passes, when a team gives away possession 40x in a game, when they can't pass complete over 30% that's not elite soccer rather a lack of fundamentals that need to be addressed. Every youth player and team needs to master the fundamentals before they can even be considered elite or anything.
We have a huge problem is scouting and selection. We tend to select from a narrow pool of players and basically recycle players in/out that don't cut many players or give others ones a chance most of the time.
10 passes seems to me to be a pretty high bar.