Huge ECNL News coming 7/1/2024

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bias around the birthday happens no matter where you draw the line. The advantage to moving the line is keeping kids together with their school friends and not having trapped players.

I am obviously the parent of a trapped player, as all the Q1 birth parents just come in and shout and yell about how its a bad idea and we should get over it.

What are the actual advantages?
Trapped in what?

Doesn't it just mean the Q4 player has both school friends and club friends?
(as they all do)

[Anonymous]

My child was raised for the first 13 years in a country that had a school year soccer schedule. He was born in November. He was placed on the highest teams, got the best opportunities for traveling overseas and the most playing time. When we moved to the US, he was basically benched on the highest team because kids had already grown and he was still small. It took him a few years (moving down a team and a lot of hard work) before he got back to the level he was playing at overseas. The difference is real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bias around the birthday happens no matter where you draw the line. The advantage to moving the line is keeping kids together with their school friends and not having trapped players.

I am obviously the parent of a trapped player, as all the Q1 birth parents just come in and shout and yell about how its a bad idea and we should get over it.

What are the actual advantages?
Trapped in what?

Doesn't it just mean the Q4 player has both school friends and club friends?
(as they all do)

Read the other thread. Trapped players are called trapped because they play with kids in a higher grade than them, when they are in 8th grade but the rest of their team is in 9th grade when high school soccer starts they have a season without a team to play for. So ECNL created rules that allows 2 trapped players to play down with a team during that time. It's really complicated and disruptive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bias around the birthday happens no matter where you draw the line. The advantage to moving the line is keeping kids together with their school friends and not having trapped players.

I am obviously the parent of a trapped player, as all the Q1 birth parents just come in and shout and yell about how its a bad idea and we should get over it.

What are the actual advantages?
Trapped in what?

Doesn't it just mean the Q4 player has both school friends and club friends?
(as they all do)

It’s called relative age effect and it exists in all youth sports
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect

This doesn’t solve the relative age effect. It just shifts who it affects. But it does at least solve the trapped player problem.

[Anonymous]

Would ECNL RL follow this as well or just ECNL?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would ECNL RL follow this as well or just ECNL?

Yes. It would be a ECNL rule for all leagues, teams, ages

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How can ECNL be different than US Youth Soccer and MLS Next?

Must be new.

[Anonymous]

If ECNL does this its to show US Soccer (and GA) that they own the youth to college pipeline of players.

If ECNL really wanted to show US Soccer who's boss this should adopt college unlimited subs rules. They'll never do this because it's lower level soccer and would kiill their top clubs ability to dominate the league.

[Anonymous]

Unlimited subs is terrible in college and they should get rid of it. It eliminates resource management both for players and for the coach as a strategy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If ECNL does this its to show US Soccer (and GA) that they own the youth to college pipeline of players.

If ECNL really wanted to show US Soccer who's boss this should adopt college unlimited subs rules. They'll never do this because it's lower level soccer and would kiill their top clubs ability to dominate the league.

Womens college soccer is such a bait and switch from the soccer many of the higher level youth clubs practice.

It's like someone begging you to follow them for several miles because they've got something really cool to show you. When you finally get to where they're taking you they point at a big turd.

[Anonymous]

State cup. ECNL and USYS clubs will play together in state cups.

[Anonymous]

If GA diesnt follow suit this change will make cross league play in tournaments impossible unless ECNL or GA clubs choose to play up an age group.

It will also make soccer rankings between leagues near impossible unless some kind of magic league "power rankings" dynamic was added. Unfortunately this would end up just being something everyone fights about.

Regarding playing professionally it doesn't really matter. Acadamies are all about players playing up so calender year vs grade grouping is irrelevant. However, internationally teams are grouped by year. If you want to play against teams in other countries teams will need to be calender year based.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:However, internationally teams are grouped by year. If you want to play against teams in other countries teams will need to be calender year based.

I get that this could be a concern, for example my club is talking about going to Sweden next summer, but for what % of teams does this ever come up?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If GA diesnt follow suit this change will make cross league play in tournaments impossible unless ECNL or GA clubs choose to play up an age group.

It will also make soccer rankings between leagues near impossible unless some kind of magic league "power rankings" dynamic was added. Unfortunately this would end up just being something everyone fights about.

Regarding playing professionally it doesn't really matter. Acadamies are all about players playing up so calender year vs grade grouping is irrelevant. However, internationally teams are grouped by year. If you want to play against teams in other countries teams will need to be calender year based.

Cross league play can still happen. Just a few players would have shifted to different teams. Rankings? who cares

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unlimited subs is terrible in college and they should get rid of it. It eliminates resource management both for players and for the coach as a strategy.

They did for mens soccer but not womens.