youth to pro
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
retiredref
Member Offline
Member Offline
| In other countries clubs usually span all ages and kids often grow up playing and rooting for the same local club. Do any local DMV youth clubs also have lower level adult pro (or semipro) teams for their players to aspire to reach other than that CCL 23 league which isn't really aspirational? Obviously DC United has a pro team but who else. Does the NOVA FC USL team have a youth club? NISA Bobcats? Women's teams? |
Nova2Euro
Member Offline
Member Offline
| The Richmond clubs have these structures. Other than DCU, I'm not aware of any in the DMV. |
DMVParent
Member Offline
Member Offline
|
Northern Virginia United Football Club (NVUFC) are in NPSL and UPSL.
https://www.nvufc.com/ |
mocoathlete0288
Member Offline
Member Offline
| Look for teams in UPSL or NPSL in the DMV area. |
DCUdad
Member Offline
Member Offline
|
The short answer is "no." To my knowledge there isn't anything like that around here. Even the barely-semi-pro teams aren't connected to a large youth club/academy. There are a couple exceptions around the country. For example, FC United in suburban Chicago is a large youth club and has a team in USL 2 (the 4th tier of US soccer; played over the summer, mostly by college players). But it's not like kids are growing up fans of the FC United USL2 team. And for the most part, top youth players in FC United are looking to either: a) play d1 college soccer; or b) move to an MLS academy like Chicago Fire to have a shot at being a pro.
There are some MLS clubs that have very large local "clubs". LA Galaxy and FC Dallas come to mind. But in both cases, I believe, they have essentially licensed their name/brand to a large local youth soccer club. It's not really that connected to their actual academy and is pay-to-play -- not that different than a Bethesda Soccer or Arlington Soccer around here; just with the MLS club's name. There are a lot of reasons for this. Among them: pro soccer is just a much newer sport here than in Europe; it is much "thinner," meaning we are a huge country, almost as large as all of the EU, with maybe a tenth of the professional soccer teams/opportunities; the lack of opportunity at the top means it is generally a bad investment to pay for an academy designed to build players to sell; so we are left overwhelmingly with pay-to-play (with some scholarships), with a relative handful of pro (MLS) academies investing in players more like European clubs. It will take a long time, and a lot of growth of pro soccer in the US for us to look anything like Europe in this regard. |
clt-dad
Member Offline
Member Offline
|
In North Carolina* there are a few of these programs that have youth programs and USL teams. I don't think they have near the levels of support and engagement that you'd see in Europe for a 2nd and 3rd tier teams.
I've been to a few NISA Stumptown games waiting on MLS to show up and that team has affiliations only with youth teams and is stand alone. * Charlotte Independence goes up through to USL 1 * NC Fusion USL 2 |