Someone explain the new Loudoun, Valor, GF thing to me?

[Manodedios]

VDA added Herndon about a year ago, maybe not even a full year ago, and I think this is ‘turf’ protection from the other 3 clubs. I know Herndon was offering some RL players the opportunity to PT play/practice with VDA, which GFR and Valor couldn’t match. Loudoun pulls players from Western Fairfax, so they probably want to limit Herndon and VDA as much as possible. I don’t think there is a lot of love between those two (Loudoun and VDA).

Ultimately, though, all of these partnerships are about protecting the salaries of a handful of directors and do zero to improve player development.

[awesomepossum]

Blutarski wrote:

awesomepossum wrote:ECNL told McLean and BRYC to merge to become Union and Brave and if you look at the branding for Alliance I assume they told Loudoun to do this merger. They’ve voiced they don’t want to add new teams in Northern Virginia and the Mid Atlantic conference is huge. It does allow them to get more Clubs involved in ECNL in some form. It might help Loudoun a little but mostly it makes Great Falls and Valor part of the ECNL umbrella in some form. That’s my take…

Nonsense.
1. ECNL has no interest in directing club mergers. Alliance or no alliance, the best female players gravitate to ECNL anyway. It's been that way as long as ECNL has been around.
2. Neither Valor nor GFR were even close to qualifying for ECNL membership. For them, this is a weak attempt to claim they are keeping their best girls in the system, however based on the way that similar alliances work, they will not have much of a part in running the ECNL teams.
3. VA Union is an alliance between McLean and SYC. BRYC is not involved. There are/were different/additional motivations for this alliance than the Loudoun alliance.
4. For all 3 clubs, this may allows control of more field space and leverage with county resources.

But this isn't a Club merger, it's forming a new ECNL only organization of 12 teams. On the girls side ECNL is the top, but not on the boys. With the alphabet soup of Leagues this allows ECNL to keep 2 other clubs top talent in the ECNL pipeline. Of course everyone can develop somewhere else and try out for any ECNL team, but this gives the illusion of an easier path and certainly the Alliance coaches will know the top younger players at all three clubs to try to funnel them in.
I agree each alliance is different but I believe it's an ECNL model to keep the talent in the League without adding new slots in Northern Virginia.

[Mannschaft]

Blutarski wrote:

Ihatedumbsoccerparents wrote:Anyone on this board have first hand experience on any other umbrella situations…VDA, Brave, Union? I’m new to NOVA and don’t know the history of those clubs. Obviously Loudoun is the stronger club of the 3 for NVA no offense meant to any club. Did any other situation have a similar feel of the power/rankings dynamic as these 3?

4. In the Union alliance, a handful of SYC girls make the ECNL ranks, but the teams are run by McLean for the most part.

I realize you said “for the most part”, but the 2010 girls are mostly SYC.

[novasoccer15324]

Loudon isn't doing well enough apparently so trying to vacuum up more talent around them.

[personanongrata]

Manodedios wrote:VDA added Herndon about a year ago, maybe not even a full year ago, and I think this is ‘turf’ protection from the other 3 clubs. I know Herndon was offering some RL players the opportunity to PT play/practice with VDA, which GFR and Valor couldn’t match. Loudoun pulls players from Western Fairfax, so they probably want to limit Herndon and VDA as much as possible. I don’t think there is a lot of love between those two (Loudoun and VDA).

Ultimately, though, all of these partnerships are about protecting the salaries of a handful of directors and do zero to improve player development.

ECNL would be better with a pro/rel system than this mega merger BS. The 07 boys GFR team could play in ECNL today if there was promotion. How many lifelong Loudoun players will get cut to make room on a combined team ?

[Blutarski]

ECNL would be better with a pro/rel system than this mega merger BS. The 07 boys GFR team could play in ECNL today if there was promotion. How many lifelong Loudoun players will get cut to make room on a combined team ?

It would be hard to see how that would be better for ECNL. ECNL has a form of pro/rel already, just not the one you want. It's implemented at the club level vs the team level. Mostly it's been promotion in the last few years as they pick off decent GDA teams, but with RL, they're already set up to do a pro/rel system. I'm not sure it's happened yet, but at some point, they could decide to promote an RL club to ECNL or relegate an ECNL club that performs poorly across all age groups over a period of years to RL. This would retain the club centric ECNL model that relies on the inertia present in member clubs to foster development across age groups.

A pro/rel arrangement at the team level would require a complete rework of ECNL to implement. To keep costs under control, they would have to move towards more of a regionalized model since teams would lose the economies of traveling/coaching as a club. It would require significantly more management and would drive costs significantly for players. It would be great for allowing good teams from smaller clubs on the outside in, at the expense of current ECNL clubs to some extent.

So... pros and cons I think, but definitely not in the best interests of ECNL and their member clubs. For them, it's working great. What they could do easily is open up their showcases to invite in single teams on an invitation only basis but I haven't seen any of that going on.

[TedLasso]

personanongrata wrote:

Manodedios wrote:VDA added Herndon about a year ago, maybe not even a full year ago, and I think this is ‘turf’ protection from the other 3 clubs. I know Herndon was offering some RL players the opportunity to PT play/practice with VDA, which GFR and Valor couldn’t match. Loudoun pulls players from Western Fairfax, so they probably want to limit Herndon and VDA as much as possible. I don’t think there is a lot of love between those two (Loudoun and VDA).

Ultimately, though, all of these partnerships are about protecting the salaries of a handful of directors and do zero to improve player development.

ECNL would be better with a pro/rel system than this mega merger BS. The 07 boys GFR team could play in ECNL today if there was promotion. How many lifelong Loudoun players will get cut to make room on a combined team ?

Youth soccer would be so much better if there was pro/rel throughout but there's way too many different leagues/clubs currently to pull that off.

[Pepe]

Beyond necessary. DMV area was so concentrated with clubs. Clubs from Dallas, LA, and NY to name a few have fewer clubs that our area did. Working well for VDA, others followed. Clubs get more players, higher quality, better training in long run. There is no con to any of this for the players and clubs.

[realdmv]

personanongrata wrote:

Manodedios wrote:VDA added Herndon about a year ago, maybe not even a full year ago, and I think this is ‘turf’ protection from the other 3 clubs. I know Herndon was offering some RL players the opportunity to PT play/practice with VDA, which GFR and Valor couldn’t match. Loudoun pulls players from Western Fairfax, so they probably want to limit Herndon and VDA as much as possible. I don’t think there is a lot of love between those two (Loudoun and VDA).

Ultimately, though, all of these partnerships are about protecting the salaries of a handful of directors and do zero to improve player development.

ECNL would be better with a pro/rel system than this mega merger BS. The 07 boys GFR team could play in ECNL today if there was promotion. How many lifelong Loudoun players will get cut to make room on a combined team ?

The best Loudoun players leave for Arlington or Alexandria. The boys are continuing to lose players.

[Blutarski]

TedLasso wrote:
Youth soccer would be so much better if there was pro/rel throughout but there's way too many different leagues/clubs currently to pull that off.

TedLasso, why would youth soccer be so much better with pro/rel ?

[soccerNOVA]

Pepe wrote:Beyond necessary. DMV area was so concentrated with clubs. Clubs from Dallas, LA, and NY to name a few have fewer clubs that our area did. Working well for VDA, others followed. Clubs get more players, higher quality, better training in long run. There is no con to any of this for the players and clubs.

We’re still in a soccer hotbed. Just a couple of teams would make NOVA teams great, but travel to practice would be a nightmare for some families. I like the consolidation, but it’s not necessary to go that far. Consider that on the girls side all 5 NOVA teams are in the top 6 teams in ECNL at the U13 age group. That’s the first year things have been settled with the semi-recent promotion of Loudoun to ECNL, and the more recent consolidations leading to Union and Brave.

Things are more uneven in the boys side, but that’s because MLS Next has two teams that attract players in addition to the 5 ECNL clubs - and Alexandria and Springfield happen to be right next to each other.

If NOVA youth soccer was starting from scratch and I could align teams however I wanted, I’d make 4 top league county teams for both boys and girls. Those would go in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William. And they would all start at U13 and not be affiliated with youth programs whose missions should be different.

[soccermum79]

personanongrata wrote:

Manodedios wrote:VDA added Herndon about a year ago, maybe not even a full year ago, and I think this is ‘turf’ protection from the other 3 clubs. I know Herndon was offering some RL players the opportunity to PT play/practice with VDA, which GFR and Valor couldn’t match. Loudoun pulls players from Western Fairfax, so they probably want to limit Herndon and VDA as much as possible. I don’t think there is a lot of love between those two (Loudoun and VDA).

Ultimately, though, all of these partnerships are about protecting the salaries of a handful of directors and do zero to improve player development.

ECNL would be better with a pro/rel system than this mega merger BS. The 07 boys GFR team could play in ECNL today if there was promotion. How many lifelong Loudoun players will get cut to make room on a combined team ?

Precisely. So would the 08 and 06 GFR girls. Why is that? Because they focus heavily on player development. Review game tape. Go over tactical skills. Condition off season year round. Have technical trainers at their games along with their coaches.

Jury is still out on Valor, we don't hear much about them. If GotSoccer is correct, they don't have very strong teams according to their record (at least on the girls side). Boys look to have slightly better win records.

[soccermum79]

SDC wrote:

Ihatedumbsoccerparents wrote:

SDC wrote:So it was FOMO?

How does this help Loudoun? I see how it can help Valor and GF....

Simple, Loudoun is a powerhouse now they have players from 2 other clubs to help them be even stronger. Plus starting a new club it’s easier to trim the fat and add more muscle to the line up

My 2 cents

The other clubs would need to have the talent to displace existing for that to happen. And Loudoun already has a huge pipeline so I don't see this helping in any way....

Quantity over quality. Their pipeline might be large, but they certainly are not turning out very strong players in the older ECNL brackets. This move was in the advantage of GFRSC and Valor over LS.

[SDC]

soccermum79 wrote:

SDC wrote:

Ihatedumbsoccerparents wrote:

SDC wrote:So it was FOMO?

How does this help Loudoun? I see how it can help Valor and GF....

Simple, Loudoun is a powerhouse now they have players from 2 other clubs to help them be even stronger. Plus starting a new club it’s easier to trim the fat and add more muscle to the line up

My 2 cents

The other clubs would need to have the talent to displace existing for that to happen. And Loudoun already has a huge pipeline so I don't see this helping in any way....

Quantity over quality. Their pipeline might be large, but they certainly are not turning out very strong players in the older ECNL brackets. This move was in the advantage of GFRSC and Valor over LS.

This is due to the fact that the good, younger players left Loudoun prior to aging up/out of Loudoun at graduation. It happened in the past (and to a lessor extent still now) for a variety of reasons, such as no path (didn't get ECNL until recently, but has been fixed), poor coaching on girls side (still an issue), terrible administration (still an issue) lack of higher end college connections (still an issue), etc. They didn't merge with GFRSC and Valor to get/keep older players.....

[soccermum79]

SDC wrote:

soccermum79 wrote:

SDC wrote:

Ihatedumbsoccerparents wrote:

SDC wrote:So it was FOMO?

How does this help Loudoun? I see how it can help Valor and GF....

Simple, Loudoun is a powerhouse now they have players from 2 other clubs to help them be even stronger. Plus starting a new club it’s easier to trim the fat and add more muscle to the line up

My 2 cents

The other clubs would need to have the talent to displace existing for that to happen. And Loudoun already has a huge pipeline so I don't see this helping in any way....

Quantity over quality. Their pipeline might be large, but they certainly are not turning out very strong players in the older ECNL brackets. This move was in the advantage of GFRSC and Valor over LS.

This is due to the fact that the good, younger players left Loudoun prior to aging up/out of Loudoun at graduation. It happened in the past (and to a lessor extent still now) for a variety of reasons, such as no path (didn't get ECNL until recently, but has been fixed), poor coaching on girls side (still an issue), terrible administration (still an issue) lack of higher end college connections (still an issue), etc. They didn't merge with GFRSC and Valor to get/keep older players.....