ECNL moving to school year not calendar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

So…what are you actually arguing? This is a thread about ECNL making a change, but you’re saying this is better for the non-elite kids. Ok…so…why are you arguing about it for ECNL?

If we’re talking about the 98% of youth soccer that isn’t MLSN, ECNL, GA and saying they do not need FIFA / International alignment at those levels, what does that say about our elite levels? Probably that they do need that alignment to be at the most competitive levels.

I do appreciate the casualness though of the “we can just throw together some birth year kids to compete internationally if we have to.” <Chef’s Kiss>

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

So…what are you actually arguing? This is a thread about ECNL making a change, but you’re saying this is better for the non-elite kids. Ok…so…why are you arguing about it for ECNL?

If we’re talking about the 98% of youth soccer that isn’t MLSN, ECNL, GA and saying they do not need FIFA / International alignment at those levels, what does that say about our elite levels? Probably that they do need that alignment to be at the most competitive levels.

I do appreciate the casualness though of the “we can just throw together some birth year kids to compete internationally if we have to.” <Chef’s Kiss>

Holy moly the logic leap in that second paragraph is epic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

Yes...And there are many rec teams, school teams, etc in the US that do not go by birth year too. "Thats for the national teams...oh and also the non-academy teams." Come-on dude...you're mixing around tiers and levels to suit your argument.

There are tons of tournaments in Europe for soccer. This is probably one of the better-known ones to the US. It features tons of teams from academies in Europe, South America, Asia, the US.... its U9-U14...but you know what it uses for age cutoffs? Birth year!

https://mundialito.org/mundialito_informacion_general.php

The desire to just dismiss the international aspect because it is inconvenient is revealing to how emotional and narrow this debate really is. Its like the PP showed in the podcast, they ask for just 1 good reason, and they get a fantastic one, and then just say "well that one doesn't count."

He called this reason "proverbial" because it is often repeated but the benefit is never actually explained. You're going to have to explain how it benefits youth soccer development or the experience if you want to call that reason "fantastic." For instance, start with how many US teams are playing in international tournaments? How often? Is it a key part of their development or experience? Is it a large part of their play, or rare enough that they could form special tournament teams for these? If this is a very small portion of youth players, how does that benefit translate to the larger portion who never play internationally?

ECNL is already a very small portion of players. I’m not what you’re trying to accomplish with your boundaries.

One huge benefit, and probably the most often sited for international play (friendlies included) is the ability to benchmark. When you’re out of alignment it is much harder to actually benchmark development.

Many clubs in ECNL take international trips. You don’t need a ton of international play in order to benchmark. BUT if your only comparative pool is your league play, as many teams can attest, they have a real eye-opening when they get to nationals, (or play internationally).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

So…what are you actually arguing? This is a thread about ECNL making a change, but you’re saying this is better for the non-elite kids. Ok…so…why are you arguing about it for ECNL?

If we’re talking about the 98% of youth soccer that isn’t MLSN, ECNL, GA and saying they do not need FIFA / International alignment at those levels, what does that say about our elite levels? Probably that they do need that alignment to be at the most competitive levels.

I do appreciate the casualness though of the “we can just throw together some birth year kids to compete internationally if we have to.” <Chef’s Kiss>

Holy moly the logic leap in that second paragraph is epic.

The logical leap was based off the bolded quote. Where that poster suggested that “you can’t just favor the 1%.” 😒 it’s that poster’s own logic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

Yes...And there are many rec teams, school teams, etc in the US that do not go by birth year too. "Thats for the national teams...oh and also the non-academy teams." Come-on dude...you're mixing around tiers and levels to suit your argument.

There are tons of tournaments in Europe for soccer. This is probably one of the better-known ones to the US. It features tons of teams from academies in Europe, South America, Asia, the US.... its U9-U14...but you know what it uses for age cutoffs? Birth year!

https://mundialito.org/mundialito_informacion_general.php

The desire to just dismiss the international aspect because it is inconvenient is revealing to how emotional and narrow this debate really is. Its like the PP showed in the podcast, they ask for just 1 good reason, and they get a fantastic one, and then just say "well that one doesn't count."

He called this reason "proverbial" because it is often repeated but the benefit is never actually explained. You're going to have to explain how it benefits youth soccer development or the experience if you want to call that reason "fantastic." For instance, start with how many US teams are playing in international tournaments? How often? Is it a key part of their development or experience? Is it a large part of their play, or rare enough that they could form special tournament teams for these? If this is a very small portion of youth players, how does that benefit translate to the larger portion who never play internationally?

ECNL is already a very small portion of players. I’m not what you’re trying to accomplish with your boundaries.

One huge benefit, and probably the most often sited for international play (friendlies included) is the ability to benchmark. When you’re out of alignment it is much harder to actually benchmark development.

Many clubs in ECNL take international trips. You don’t need a ton of international play in order to benchmark. BUT if your only comparative pool is your league play, as many teams can attest, they have a real eye-opening when they get to nationals, (or play internationally).

I'm not discounting potential value in benchmarking, but is this actually happening on the girls side? My ECNL club doesn't do international travel, and I haven't heard of the other couple nearest us doing it. Maybe SoCal teams are doing it? Are our youth national teams not giving us the benchmarks we need? Would this be impossible to achieve with a international tournament team composed of girls across age groups, and potentially include a couple RL girls if needed? We end up with subs across groups all the time as-is when people are hurt. Trying to figure out whether alignment is actually necessary to get good benchmarks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

Yes...And there are many rec teams, school teams, etc in the US that do not go by birth year too. "Thats for the national teams...oh and also the non-academy teams." Come-on dude...you're mixing around tiers and levels to suit your argument.

There are tons of tournaments in Europe for soccer. This is probably one of the better-known ones to the US. It features tons of teams from academies in Europe, South America, Asia, the US.... its U9-U14...but you know what it uses for age cutoffs? Birth year!

https://mundialito.org/mundialito_informacion_general.php

The desire to just dismiss the international aspect because it is inconvenient is revealing to how emotional and narrow this debate really is. Its like the PP showed in the podcast, they ask for just 1 good reason, and they get a fantastic one, and then just say "well that one doesn't count."

He called this reason "proverbial" because it is often repeated but the benefit is never actually explained. You're going to have to explain how it benefits youth soccer development or the experience if you want to call that reason "fantastic." For instance, start with how many US teams are playing in international tournaments? How often? Is it a key part of their development or experience? Is it a large part of their play, or rare enough that they could form special tournament teams for these? If this is a very small portion of youth players, how does that benefit translate to the larger portion who never play internationally?

ECNL is already a very small portion of players. I’m not what you’re trying to accomplish with your boundaries.

One huge benefit, and probably the most often sited for international play (friendlies included) is the ability to benchmark. When you’re out of alignment it is much harder to actually benchmark development.

Many clubs in ECNL take international trips. You don’t need a ton of international play in order to benchmark. BUT if your only comparative pool is your league play, as many teams can attest, they have a real eye-opening when they get to nationals, (or play internationally).

I'm not discounting potential value in benchmarking, but is this actually happening on the girls side? My ECNL club doesn't do international travel, and I haven't heard of the other couple nearest us doing it. Maybe SoCal teams are doing it? Are our youth national teams not giving us the benchmarks we need? Would this be impossible to achieve with an international tournament team composed of girls across age groups, and potentially include a couple RL girls if needed? We end up with subs across groups all the time as-is when people are hurt. Trying to figure out whether alignment is actually necessary to get good benchmarks.

YNT isn’t playing friendlies against your club. Your club coaches aren’t observing YNT practices and friendlies, neither are your non call-up kids. And your call-up kids aren’t bringing the YNT home (they got to YNT because of what they were doing individually anyway).

Yes, many many ECNL girls teams take internationally trips. Not just SoCal. Check out their feeds. Many clubs do annual trips during winter or spring break, a few during the summer.

But benchmarking is not YNT down, it’s very player / team / coach specific. They need to see it, experience it, learn about it. Otherwise, with YouTube and Peacock+ we’d just glue our kids to the TV and win World Cup every 4 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

Yes...And there are many rec teams, school teams, etc in the US that do not go by birth year too. "Thats for the national teams...oh and also the non-academy teams." Come-on dude...you're mixing around tiers and levels to suit your argument.

There are tons of tournaments in Europe for soccer. This is probably one of the better-known ones to the US. It features tons of teams from academies in Europe, South America, Asia, the US.... its U9-U14...but you know what it uses for age cutoffs? Birth year!

https://mundialito.org/mundialito_informacion_general.php

The desire to just dismiss the international aspect because it is inconvenient is revealing to how emotional and narrow this debate really is. Its like the PP showed in the podcast, they ask for just 1 good reason, and they get a fantastic one, and then just say "well that one doesn't count."

He called this reason "proverbial" because it is often repeated but the benefit is never actually explained. You're going to have to explain how it benefits youth soccer development or the experience if you want to call that reason "fantastic." For instance, start with how many US teams are playing in international tournaments? How often? Is it a key part of their development or experience? Is it a large part of their play, or rare enough that they could form special tournament teams for these? If this is a very small portion of youth players, how does that benefit translate to the larger portion who never play internationally?

ECNL is already a very small portion of players. I’m not what you’re trying to accomplish with your boundaries.

One huge benefit, and probably the most often sited for international play (friendlies included) is the ability to benchmark. When you’re out of alignment it is much harder to actually benchmark development.

Many clubs in ECNL take international trips. You don’t need a ton of international play in order to benchmark. BUT if your only comparative pool is your league play, as many teams can attest, they have a real eye-opening when they get to nationals, (or play internationally).

I'm not discounting potential value in benchmarking, but is this actually happening on the girls side? My ECNL club doesn't do international travel, and I haven't heard of the other couple nearest us doing it. Maybe SoCal teams are doing it? Are our youth national teams not giving us the benchmarks we need? Would this be impossible to achieve with an international tournament team composed of girls across age groups, and potentially include a couple RL girls if needed? We end up with subs across groups all the time as-is when people are hurt. Trying to figure out whether alignment is actually necessary to get good benchmarks.

YNT isn’t playing friendlies against your club. Your club coaches aren’t observing YNT practices and friendlies, neither are your non call-up kids. And your call-up kids aren’t bringing the YNT home (they got to YNT because of what they were doing individually anyway).

Yes, many many ECNL girls teams take internationally trips. Not just SoCal. Check out their feeds. Many clubs do annual trips during winter or spring break, a few during the summer.

But benchmarking is not YNT down, it’s very player / team / coach specific. They need to see it, experience it, learn about it. Otherwise, with YouTube and Peacock+ we’d just glue our kids to the TV and win World Cup every 4 years.

Again, not discounting this, and it sounds like you think there's enough value in it that more clubs should be doing it. But if the club directors see the value, and they believe they can't accomplish it as well with special tournament teams for those matches, I would think they'll be giving that feedback to ECNL leadership. The closest experience I have with this is actually from my daughter's futsal club. They travel internationally once a year for a tournament, but they have to ask who wants in because many players/parents don't want to bear the cost.

[Anonymous]

i love how DCUM threads always death spiral out of control

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

So…what are you actually arguing? This is a thread about ECNL making a change, but you’re saying this is better for the non-elite kids. Ok…so…why are you arguing about it for ECNL?

If we’re talking about the 98% of youth soccer that isn’t MLSN, ECNL, GA and saying they do not need FIFA / International alignment at those levels, what does that say about our elite levels? Probably that they do need that alignment to be at the most competitive levels.

I do appreciate the casualness though of the “we can just throw together some birth year kids to compete internationally if we have to.” <Chef’s Kiss>

That the rest of the world is birth year which isn’t true. That’s all not saying the majority don’t play birth year but also many international schools start at different ages and are very different in their start dates so birth year actually doesn’t have the same effect as it does her scholastically.

That was all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sense of entitlement is funny

All these people fighting to change everything except the work, sacrifice and discipline required by the kid to make it.

Funny to see an adult commenting without putting in the work to understand the issues

I understand that if my October kid wakes up tomorrow and is in the Q1 versus Q4 age group because ECNL changed to School Year, their game is still the same and college scouts still see what kinda player they are.

The issue is that your kid is ineligible for recruiting at the showcases the year the majority of the team is eligible and the following year, when they are eligible, the coaches don't show because most the kids are committed. I have no stake in the college recruiting bit but it is important to a lot of parents.

Here's a quote from way earlier in the thread

Anonymous wrote:
Here are the four bad deals for a trapped player. 1. In her 8th grade, her team is off during high school season, so there is no team practice or game for her for the next 3 or 4 months. 2. In her 12th grade, her team is gone, so have to find a new team. 3. When her team is in the recruiting process and goes to showcase, she is not eligible to be recruited. When she is in her recruiting window, her team is done recruiting. 4. She can never play in the same team as her classmates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

So…what are you actually arguing? This is a thread about ECNL making a change, but you’re saying this is better for the non-elite kids. Ok…so…why are you arguing about it for ECNL?

If we’re talking about the 98% of youth soccer that isn’t MLSN, ECNL, GA and saying they do not need FIFA / International alignment at those levels, what does that say about our elite levels? Probably that they do need that alignment to be at the most competitive levels.

I do appreciate the casualness though of the “we can just throw together some birth year kids to compete internationally if we have to.” <Chef’s Kiss>

Holy moly the logic leap in that second paragraph is epic.

The logical leap was based off the bolded quote. Where that poster suggested that “you can’t just favor the 1%.” 😒 it’s that poster’s own logic.

But the argument ECNL (US Club) is making is that this isn’t good for anyone outside the 1% of national team players or kids who go on vacation to play in Europe. Guess what if they change back you will still teams get formed and people will take their European vacations. Don’t worry your instagrams will be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sense of entitlement is funny

All these people fighting to change everything except the work, sacrifice and discipline required by the kid to make it.

Funny to see an adult commenting without putting in the work to understand the issues

I understand that if my October kid wakes up tomorrow and is in the Q1 versus Q4 age group because ECNL changed to School Year, their game is still the same and college scouts still see what kinda player they are.

The issue is that your kid is ineligible for recruiting at the showcases the year the majority of the team is eligible and the following year, when they are eligible, the coaches don't show because most the kids are committed. I have no stake in the college recruiting bit but it is important to a lot of parents.

Here's a quote from way earlier in the thread

Anonymous wrote:
Here are the four bad deals for a trapped player. 1. In her 8th grade, her team is off during high school season, so there is no team practice or game for her for the next 3 or 4 months. 2. In her 12th grade, her team is gone, so have to find a new team. 3. When her team is in the recruiting process and goes to showcase, she is not eligible to be recruited. When she is in her recruiting window, her team is done recruiting. 4. She can never play in the same team as her classmates.

In her senior year she plays on the U19 team. She doesn't need to go and find a new team.

Everything else is fine accurate but I always take exception to the dramatic "She can never play in the same team as her classmates." bit. These things are obviously said by people who's kids don't play in ECNL or other high level club soccer. NOBODY plays club soccer with their classmates. It is pretty rare to even have classmates on the same club team.

The arguments regarding recruitment are all fine but please stop with the classmates crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sense of entitlement is funny

All these people fighting to change everything except the work, sacrifice and discipline required by the kid to make it.

Funny to see an adult commenting without putting in the work to understand the issues

I understand that if my October kid wakes up tomorrow and is in the Q1 versus Q4 age group because ECNL changed to School Year, their game is still the same and college scouts still see what kinda player they are.

The issue is that your kid is ineligible for recruiting at the showcases the year the majority of the team is eligible and the following year, when they are eligible, the coaches don't show because most the kids are committed. I have no stake in the college recruiting bit but it is important to a lot of parents.

Here's a quote from way earlier in the thread

Anonymous wrote:
Here are the four bad deals for a trapped player. 1. In her 8th grade, her team is off during high school season, so there is no team practice or game for her for the next 3 or 4 months. 2. In her 12th grade, her team is gone, so have to find a new team. 3. When her team is in the recruiting process and goes to showcase, she is not eligible to be recruited. When she is in her recruiting window, her team is done recruiting. 4. She can never play in the same team as her classmates.

You mean to tell me that my kid hasn't been going to showcases since U13???? But ECNL said they were showcases! ::insert sarcasm if it wasn't caught before::

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sense of entitlement is funny

All these people fighting to change everything except the work, sacrifice and discipline required by the kid to make it.

Funny to see an adult commenting without putting in the work to understand the issues

I understand that if my October kid wakes up tomorrow and is in the Q1 versus Q4 age group because ECNL changed to School Year, their game is still the same and college scouts still see what kinda player they are.

The issue is that your kid is ineligible for recruiting at the showcases the year the majority of the team is eligible and the following year, when they are eligible, the coaches don't show because most the kids are committed. I have no stake in the college recruiting bit but it is important to a lot of parents.

Here's a quote from way earlier in the thread

Anonymous wrote:
Here are the four bad deals for a trapped player. 1. In her 8th grade, her team is off during high school season, so there is no team practice or game for her for the next 3 or 4 months. 2. In her 12th grade, her team is gone, so have to find a new team. 3. When her team is in the recruiting process and goes to showcase, she is not eligible to be recruited. When she is in her recruiting window, her team is done recruiting. 4. She can never play in the same team as her classmates.

Players are recruited. Not teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL said they don’t want to go alone (they can’t) because it would create a real mess. But ECNL wants everyone else to create chaos and align with them so that it’s less messy for ECNL. This whole thing is so dumb.

Then you get the fake “give me good reason not to change” thing, and then when they get a pretty darn good reason, they just dismiss it as “not good enough.”

From the Podcast:
“And it doesn't have to be everybody, but it's got to be the greater majority of organizations. I've challenged people and I said, come back with one positive reason for birth year in terms of player experience or player development. I'm still waiting for the one positive reason to support birth year beyond the proverbial other people in the world do it. So we keep falling back on that argument.”

This is just an entire movement, that is going to end in another mistake by US Soccer, because it’s all about a few loud parents who thing their kids are better than they are, and the birth month is holding them back at 17/18 years old…. Who could foresee consequences of getting out of alignment with the rest of the u15+ world? The rest of the world must be doing it all wrong…and emotionally reactive trap parents have it all figured out with their middling but poorly planned birth month kids….

The world is a big place and no not everyone goes off of birth year. That is only for national teams. Many countries in Europe for their non academy teams play school year. Also many have bio banding which is for everyone but often it’s the later born kids who are the smaller players.

If the change to grad year we can still put together a team and bring them to an International competition.

Also not many teams outside of mls next go play internationally again the system can’t just favor the 1% of team and players or even 25% if it’s that high which it isn’t when you think about every single team in the US Rec to Academy level.

Yes...And there are many rec teams, school teams, etc in the US that do not go by birth year too. "Thats for the national teams...oh and also the non-academy teams." Come-on dude...you're mixing around tiers and levels to suit your argument.

There are tons of tournaments in Europe for soccer. This is probably one of the better-known ones to the US. It features tons of teams from academies in Europe, South America, Asia, the US.... its U9-U14...but you know what it uses for age cutoffs? Birth year!

https://mundialito.org/mundialito_informacion_general.php

The desire to just dismiss the international aspect because it is inconvenient is revealing to how emotional and narrow this debate really is. Its like the PP showed in the podcast, they ask for just 1 good reason, and they get a fantastic one, and then just say "well that one doesn't count."

He called this reason "proverbial" because it is often repeated but the benefit is never actually explained. You're going to have to explain how it benefits youth soccer development or the experience if you want to call that reason "fantastic." For instance, start with how many US teams are playing in international tournaments? How often? Is it a key part of their development or experience? Is it a large part of their play, or rare enough that they could form special tournament teams for these? If this is a very small portion of youth players, how does that benefit translate to the larger portion who never play internationally?

ECNL is already a very small portion of players. I’m not what you’re trying to accomplish with your boundaries.

One huge benefit, and probably the most often sited for international play (friendlies included) is the ability to benchmark. When you’re out of alignment it is much harder to actually benchmark development.

Many clubs in ECNL take international trips. You don’t need a ton of international play in order to benchmark. BUT if your only comparative pool is your league play, as many teams can attest, they have a real eye-opening when they get to nationals, (or play internationally).

I'm not discounting potential value in benchmarking, but is this actually happening on the girls side? My ECNL club doesn't do international travel, and I haven't heard of the other couple nearest us doing it. Maybe SoCal teams are doing it? Are our youth national teams not giving us the benchmarks we need? Would this be impossible to achieve with an international tournament team composed of girls across age groups, and potentially include a couple RL girls if needed? We end up with subs across groups all the time as-is when people are hurt. Trying to figure out whether alignment is actually necessary to get good benchmarks.

YNT isn’t playing friendlies against your club. Your club coaches aren’t observing YNT practices and friendlies, neither are your non call-up kids. And your call-up kids aren’t bringing the YNT home (they got to YNT because of what they were doing individually anyway).

Yes, many many ECNL girls teams take internationally trips. Not just SoCal. Check out their feeds. Many clubs do annual trips during winter or spring break, a few during the summer.

But benchmarking is not YNT down, it’s very player / team / coach specific. They need to see it, experience it, learn about it. Otherwise, with YouTube and Peacock+ we’d just glue our kids to the TV and win World Cup every 4 years.

Some International Tournaments allow a certain number of older players. The Mic Cup allows 3 over-age kids per team, so a school-year team can play certain international games. My kid is in MLS Next. For the past 2 MLS seasons, they have not yet played international. The trip will cost 3,000 Euros per player, plus the parent cost. Air fair is not included.