equalizersoccer.com Several top coaches sound the alarm: The U.S. youth system is broken

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read it, wanting to hear real ideas. All I heard was it's US soccer's fault because we had ECNL and didn't need GDA. That's a waste of a read. If they truly care about dilution and it is youth and not power or money they seek, then either merge with the GDA or agree to be its feeder.

All these dilution problems, beyond ECNL and DA: who will make it stop? Who is willing to work for league mergers? Let's stop having 10 elite leagues. But to do that, why do we have 3 national organizations all wanting to control youth soccer? All advancing leagues to attract the top players?

And possibly it's worth discussing paying feeder clubs and/or some sort of promotion/relegation.

Do things that change the environment. Sh** or get off the pot. All this whining is nauseating.

The market wants youth soccer to look like this. This set up maximizes the amount of dollars that can be extracted from parents wallets and that is what drives the bus.

Yes indeed. If you want to change the structure of youth soccer, you will have to take it out of the hands of the free market. It's just not going to happen. The last ten years has been a constant cycle of leagues rising and falling. I give ECNL credit for sustaining. They know how their market well.

The article is correct in that having all these choices is good for growing the size of the market, but it will eventually hurt the quality at the top because of the dilution that is occurring. GDA shows no signs of fixing this, they seem to prefer to compete with ECNL at their own game. If I were looking to make GDA into an NT feeder, I would collapse it down to fewer teams centered around NTC locations and focus my resources on those elite players. This would let the truly elite play together. They just haven't shown the aptitude to run a truly national program that does anything significantly different than ECNL.

Doing so still puts ECNL as the feeder league. ECNL will not accept that.

I don't agree. The ECNL is a college feeder and a business. If you leave the bulk of the college pipeline (and the revenue that goes with that) to ECNL my guess is they will happily provide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL coaches complain about the state of US Soccer in an article behind a paywall. The irony.

The one featured in the free part of the article runs a gda club.

Maybe they will kick him out for complaining but he coaches the top pro womens soccer team so maybe he doesn't care.

No one cares anymore. This bickering is tiresome and youth soccer is mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL coaches complain about the state of US Soccer in an article behind a paywall. The irony.

The one featured in the free part of the article runs a gda club.

He is the head coach of an NWSL. He doesn't coach in the DA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL coaches complain about the state of US Soccer in an article behind a paywall. The irony.

The one featured in the free part of the article runs a gda club.

He is the head coach of an NWSL. He doesn't coach in the DA.

He is the doc of a gda club in NY. And he coaches a North Carolina pro team. Sounds odd but that is how it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL coaches complain about the state of US Soccer in an article behind a paywall. The irony.

The one featured in the free part of the article runs a gda club.

He is the head coach of an NWSL. He doesn't coach in the DA.

He is the doc of a gda club in NY. And he coaches a North Carolina pro team. Sounds odd but that is how it is.

Right, but as DOC, he's not actually coaching anyone. It's a title and probably a means to justify his pay. That's pretty typical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ECNL coaches complain about the state of US Soccer in an article behind a paywall. The irony.

The one featured in the free part of the article runs a gda club.

He is the head coach of an NWSL. He doesn't coach in the DA.

He is the doc of a gda club in NY. And he coaches a North Carolina pro team. Sounds odd but that is how it is.

Right, but as DOC, he's not actually coaching anyone. It's a title and probably a means to justify his pay. That's pretty typical.

Someone said he was an ecnl coach and I corrected the poster that he is not. I could care less either way. Doesn't really matter who is pointing out the sorry state of affairs of youth soccer....they just state the obvious. Although typically, you find folks defending where their bread is buttered so that maybe makes these comment a little more interesting.