easydoesit
BRONZE
There are many ranking systems but it seemed like people like YSR so I’m taking a stab at remaking it. I took all the feedback in the thread about YSR. Email me at poolpartybellyflop@gmail.com if you want to weigh in on it.
Youth Soccer Ratings - Remaking it.
- Thread starter easydoesit
- Start date
If the goal is to identify has many potential players as possible there needs to be some kind of diminishing returns for high level teams that only play each other.
This is the benefit (if youre on the inside) and annoyance (if youre on the outside looking in) of closed leagues. It creates a system where it doesnt matter if players are good or poor the only thing that matters is playing on the right team in the right league. (which is what clubs want)
easydoesit
BRONZE
Help me understand this more. My personal exposure to this is limited my son is too young. It sounds like clubs want to play in the league or event that will give them the best record. Which is ultimately for marketing.
easydoesit
BRONZE
Would tournaments be a better judge of team quality?
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
One of the main goals of any league has to start with attracting the best players. Valid opinions can vary on what exactly "best" means, but there's much more agreement than disagreement in most cases. Better players attract additional better players, which causes the teams to continue to improve against peers, who are also doing many of the same things to attract better players. The better the league can be perceived, the stronger it gets in local, regional, and national recognition - which feeds in to college recruiting. The more attractive it continues to get by parents/kids who are angling to join. Ultimately, it translates in to more dollars for the league and its member clubs. To see an example of what competitive branding can do MLS N snapped their fingers and had 40,000 parents lining up to pay for their "newly offered" second tier - made up of teams that a short while ago would have a hard time competing well in any of the other secondary/tertiary leagues.
From a club/team standpoint, having a decent winning record is part of it, but it's certainly not the primary goal. The record doesn't matter if the competition is hopeless.
The unfortunate (to some) reality is that over and over again this set of incentives has resulted in closed leagues obtaining and maintaining superiority. It seems to be unavoidable.
From a club/team standpoint, having a decent winning record is part of it, but it's certainly not the primary goal. The record doesn't matter if the competition is hopeless.
The unfortunate (to some) reality is that over and over again this set of incentives has resulted in closed leagues obtaining and maintaining superiority. It seems to be unavoidable.
easydoesit
BRONZE
What you'll find the longer you kid plays is higher level competition becomes more and more gated. Either you're on the teams that play the best teams or you're not. Which is unfortunate if your kid plays on a team thats looking to get noticed. But, also justified if your kid is on a really good team. You dont want to risk getting hurt playing against a team that "doesnt matter".
This is what Im describing. There needs to be some kind of justification to bring up deserving clubs/teams. At least thats my opinion. I understand both sides of the coin. But, if the end goal is to identify talent there needs to be viable pathways outside of the chosen clubs.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Every one of the top ones, on both the boys and girls side. (MLS N, ECNL, GA, and a whole pile of leagues that sit lower however someone draws the hierarchy). "Open" would generally mean that a group of kids could put a team together at age 10 in a rec league somewhere, and as they improved over time, that team would be able to join harder / more competitive leagues all the way up as long as they continued to succeed. But many of the upper leagues, and all of them near the top, don't really work like that. They can be considered "closed". The league has to decide to accept new clubs, and it's not all about how talented the proposed entry may be, it has everything to do with the health and $ of the league (not putting too many teams in same geography, a handful of people deciding the future for many, and other pitfalls that can be imagined). You can't just win your way in.
socalgoalkeeperdad
BRONZE
I'll give you an overview of San Diego teams from a boys perspective. Fight 1/NPL is roughly the same across the board in San Diego. ECRL So cal and ECRL are one level above that. Now, depending on the team that you are in, their is a drastic difference. San Diego Surf ECRL teams are usually just as good as most ECNL teams. Legends ECRL team plays like flight 1. The difference between coaching, talent level differs greatly from club to club. ECNL teams have top tier (their are only 5-6 good teams), the rest would most likely be competitive with the best ECRL teams. MLS is a different animal. The MLS teams in south west are good. Their are about 5 teams that are head and above better than everyone else except 1-2 ECNL teams. The other MLS teams ranging from 6-12 are good teams that would compete with all ECNL teams. The bottom MLS tier is ECRL level competition. The ideal situation would be to take the TOP ECNL teams (5-6), top MLS teams (6-10) and 4 other teams and play against each other without too much travel. Southern California has about 20 teams that would play each other and be very competitive. That should be Tier 1. After that, ECRL/NPL/Flight 1 teams should have a relegation as the other 4 teams who can enter Tier 1 on a yearly basis.
Combine MLS/ECNL to create top 20 to lessen travel and have more competition. 2 teams should have relegation.
Combine ECRL/NPL/Flight 1 to create top 20 teams with 2 teams able to move up at end of the year.
This would save money, time, travel while creating a more competitive environment in southern california (Greater Los angeles, temecula, San Diego)
Combine MLS/ECNL to create top 20 to lessen travel and have more competition. 2 teams should have relegation.
Combine ECRL/NPL/Flight 1 to create top 20 teams with 2 teams able to move up at end of the year.
This would save money, time, travel while creating a more competitive environment in southern california (Greater Los angeles, temecula, San Diego)
I can break it down way more simply than that. Before last summer I hadn't been at a littles combined boys/girls tournament in over 6 years. The differences I noticed for boys teams between then and now was black and white. Clubs with MLS had 3-4 boys teams at what seemed like every age group. Clubs with ECNL had 1-2 boys teams at each age group. No need to get into the details because its not needed. Bigger funnels when younger means more players to choose from and better teams when older.
SurfSupDude
SILVER
Not sure I’m following any of this discussion. Why are you remaking the YSR app?
And what do closed or open leagues have to do with the YSR app? Are some suggesting that the YSR is not accurate?
And what do closed or open leagues have to do with the YSR app? Are some suggesting that the YSR is not accurate?
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
Someone posted that they have decided to rebuild YSR, for reasons unknown. They don't seem to have a particularly deep understanding of the youth soccer environment. Another poster here hopes that whatever new ranking system is built, it can do something to prevent the best teams in the best leagues from appearing as strong compared to teams that never get to those leagues, and can never appear as strong - regardless of the fact that SR has zero to do with any leagues at all, and relies only on which team entity faces another team entity for each recorded game. You're right - the discussion then seemed to take a turn to describe the various leagues in the US.
Keeping in mind that some teams are different, what teams primarily want to do is get into the league with the highest competition level. Teams very much do NOT want to smash of a bunch of inferior teams in a weak league and go 12-0-0. That statement holds true for U13 and up more than the younger ages, but even for the younger ages it is pretty much true. At the youngest ages some coaches will "sandbag" their team and play in a weak division because parents of those kids don't understand how things work yet, so they can feel like their kid is really improving and having fun because the team is playing against the weakest teams in the area and winning big.
The "closed" leagues don't start until U11 for boys and U13 for girls, but all the money people figured out that their clubs could benefit by pooling together into closed leagues to crowd out the smaller clubs from their "elite" leagues.
So what happens is that you could be a fantastic coach, work hard to recruit a bunch of superstar kids, who are having the time of their lives, but once those kids get to U11 they (and their parents) will have learned about how all the best players play in the Closed leagues so they will leave the great coach who developed them and never look back. They sometimes give coach a gift card.... : )
So the fantastic coach typically will see the writing on the wall and take a job with the big club in his/her area rather than fight the system. Some fight it out with more success than others, but it must be tough.
Yes, but you need to be aware that some teams will bring "ringers" to tournaments that are not really on the team. That's like the marketing you mentioned, so parents think that team they played is so strong their kid should move over to that team. Then they get there and the good players aren't actually on the team. But yes, the teams/clubs who get left out of the closed league system love tourney time, so they can measure themselves against the teams from the "elite" leagues.
If you are in southern california, the open leagues are SoCal, Coast Soccer League, PSSLU, AYSO, SWSL, and probably lots of other small ones
LOL! Yes, this thread immediately and permanently shifted to other topics. It happens.
But the original poster did ask for thoughts to be emailed to him, so maybe that's happening back channel.
For what it's worth, I'm a believer in YSR and don't think there is much need to improve it.
There was no shift. It all depends on whats important to you.
If you believe the closed league format is the way to identify the best possible levels of talent, great. I personally dont think the current p2p closed league format is the best way to identify talent. I think that there are players, teams, and clubs that are overlooked with the way things are currently accounted for.
Does it really matter? Maybe yes maybe no. But I do know that talent currently needs to cough up $$$ to make it happen. For better or worse this this can be a limitation for talent.
I have known a lot of players who got scholarships. A lot of them are 90 percentile players and some are not even the top 5 players on the team. The bar to get scholarship is not very high. I would not necessarily say P2P keeps anyone out. Some of the players who came from a lower socioeconomic backgrounds simply aren’t good enough to make the team and it may appear they are kept out but in reality they just don’t make the already low bar for getting a scholarship.
SurfSupDude
SILVER
So…let’s acknowledge the imperfection in the modeling due to the limited matchups between leagues. And also acknowledge that tournaments aren’t necessarily the best indicators of teams for reasons mentioned above and others. And while we are at it, let’s also acknowledge that the rankings can be way off for many teams this time of year when there can be material roster changes. Oh…add an age bracket change and, well, I think we can all agree that the rankings won’t be reasonably accurate until later this year. Maybe late Sep/Oct?
Seems to me that YSR works fundamentally very well for ranking and predicting scores for teams within same platforms. Perhaps it isn’t quite as precise for cross-league rankings, but I’ve also found it to be decently accurate for those games too (ie tournaments). Is it 100% bullet-proof? Of course not. But it seems pretty damn good to me.
Back to the OP, though, is the YSR being rebuilt? If so, what’s the driver(s) for doing so?
Seems to me that YSR works fundamentally very well for ranking and predicting scores for teams within same platforms. Perhaps it isn’t quite as precise for cross-league rankings, but I’ve also found it to be decently accurate for those games too (ie tournaments). Is it 100% bullet-proof? Of course not. But it seems pretty damn good to me.
Back to the OP, though, is the YSR being rebuilt? If so, what’s the driver(s) for doing so?
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
People believe that all of those things should have a significant negative effect on the predictivity of the system - but they greatly overestimate the actual issues. Given all of the above - it still runs at a very high predictivity, picking the correct winning team over 5 of 6 times. Of course all of those factors catalog things that make any model less accurate than it would be if the factors didn't exist - but in actuality, predicting how a rated team entity will perform against another rated team entity remains quite high. People downplaying the results for league vs. league, or tournament roster vs. regular roster, or unique weather conditions, or anything else, should really look in to their own team histories that they are familiar with and see for themselves how few games it chose the wrong winner. Youth soccer tends to be very, very predictable.
The problem to be solved is how to gather more data than just game scores. SR has spent years optimizing predicting future game results from existing game scores, I'm skeptical that anyone else can find a way to transform that same data into different/better predictions. If someone found ways to incorporate additional objective data that could be used to predict performance, it sure seems that it would be able to make better predictions. The current ranking systems that rely so heavily on subjective opinions (to differentiate themselves from SR) are pretty terrible.