Day 30 – Academies and recruiting

Topic Point: The route to professional soccer in most of the world is primarilythrough youth academies managed by professional clubs. After academies, playerscan sign with lower-tier teams. These teams are heavily scouted by higherdivisions to sign new talent. Finally, there are showcases and privatedevelopment academies.

While European universities have soccerteams, this is not the typical track toward professional soccer in Europe.

Ted Lasso: InS1E5, Roy Kent’s youth development story is brought up twice, having beenscouted by Sunderland and recruited to their youth academy. We also learn alittle about Roy’s early professional days in S3E9 when he played for theSunderland senior professional team.

IN S2E8, there is a very subtle and briefreference to recruiting and signing a young promising player from Brazil.

Soccer-related note: In the United States, steps have been taken to model a path forplayer development after the rest of the world, particularly Europe and SouthAmerica. There are MLS academies around the country where players train withMLS coaches. The goal is to develop talent similar to other countries that havea proven success record in international competition. These academies partnerwith local school districts or online education programs for players tocomplete their schooling.

Given the limited numbers of professionalopportunities, many players go on to play collegiate soccer. NCAA soccer isstill a track toward professional soccer, though more collegiate athletesfollow career paths that do not include being a professional athlete in theirsport. Many of our US National team players are developing through youthacademies and skipping college enroute to professional ranks.

American Sports comparison: There appears to be a divergence in our traditional American sportsdevelopment. For football, the track to the NFL leads through college. ForMajor League Baseball, the track may lead through college but often deviatestoward the minor leagues. For the NBA, there is a minimum age requirement (19)to enter the NBA draft and players need to be one year removed from high schoolgraduation. Many players go to college for one year (one-and-done) to satisfythis requirement. In 2001, the NBA created a development league (now called theG-league) which offers another path to the NBA. Basketball players may alsoplay professionally overseas initially.

‍Interactive Day 30

Today for US Youth Soccer, the goal is to develop a more competitive regional and national system to foster talent more proactively, mimicking the systems around the world that are traditionally successful. While it can be debated whether our system is working, and whether it is reasonable for our kids to be hyper focused on one sport, there is quite a bit of opportunity for kids at the elite level.

For boys soccer, there are two elite options – The Elite Clubs National League (ECNL) and the MLS Next. ECNL has their National League which is broken into conferences. There is also a second tier regional league.

https://usclubsoccer.org/ecnl/

https://theecnl.com/index.aspx

MLS Next has three categories of teams.

• MLS Academies – youth academies directly affiliated with MLS clubs

• MLS Next Pro Academies – youth academies with MLS affiliate clubs or independent Tier 2/Tier 3 professional clubs

• Independent Elite Clubs – independent youth clubs around the country that have developed into top level clubs but have no affiliation to a higher organization

https://www.mlsnextpro.com/clubs/

https://www.mlssoccer.com/mlsnext/academy-division/members

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