Arlington ex-DA Boys parents
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Anonymous
Big egos are suffering without the DA patch. |
Anonymous
For sure |
Anonymous
Arlington looking down on the ECNL, competition is strong and local |
Anonymous
Arlington was one of the stronger non-MLS DA clubs with three of the four DA teams reaching mid-season with very strong winning records, and even the weakest team being mid-table. There are many players on the various rosters who have aspirations to play professionally. Note that I'm not suggesting that these players will make it. I'm not even suggesting that any of these kids has a realistic chance of making it - I am simply not in a position to judge. Obviously the overwhelming majority of them almost certainly won't make it. My point is simply that this is their goal, and it is good for kids to have goals and reach for the stars. They know that they need a whole bunch of things to go right to achieve this goal. They need great coaching, masses of hard work, opportunity, visibility and probably also quite a bit of luck. And they also need to play against strong opposition in order to help their development. The coaching at Arlington is really strong, and it will not be changing. Opportunity and visibility will be lower in ECNL - but that can likely be worked around. Hard work is always down to the kid and so there's no change there. But the quality of opposition is outside our control. Either ECNL will provide an adequate level of competition, or it won't. We know that the DA for the most part (one or two clubs aside) did provide a good level of competition, and therefore we can reasonably assume that MLS league will continue to do so. At the very least ECNL is an unknown, but we have some data points suggesting that the standard is quite a bit lower. For example in the last year Loudoun played in the DA, Arlington 06 beat them three times running. Then Loudoun went to ECNL, lost (at least) seven of their best players to DC United (3), VDA (3) and Arlington (1), and still finished 4th in ECNL. In addition Arlington has played friendlies against another local ECNL club a couple of times over the last 18 months and all the games have been incredibly one sided. Obviously I didn't hang around to watch every age group, but I saw four games across different age groups with an aggregate score of 21-2, and heard that the other games were similar in outcome. Therefore the players (and their parents) are worried that the level of competition in ECNL will be substantially lower than we have been used to, and thus not provide enough of a challenge for the kids to push them to develop. Certainly based on the (admittedly very limited number of) friendly matches we have played against local ECNL clubs over the last year or two, there is some basis for this concern. Just so I'm clear - I am not suggesting that every game in the ECNL will be a walkover. I'm quite sure it won't. And I am sure that no Arlington team will run the table winning every game. I am suggesting however that I (and we if I may be so bold as to speak for other parents) are worried that the overall level of competition will be considerably lower than in the DA and that there will be too many games which don't provide a challenge. Hopefully we will turn out to be wrong, and the local ECNL teams will turn out to be stronger than we currently believe they are. In which case I think everyone both in Arlington and the other ECNL clubs will be happy. |
Anonymous
| ECNL is a step down in competition and a ridiculous amount of travel. Several MLS clubs are fielding team 2s in ECNL. Given a choice few ex-DA parents want their kid in a league the main professional teams don’t consider a challenge. |
Anonymous
| With a few players moving to DCU (which they would have done anyway), Arlington teams will be weaker. The question is whether most of the other players stay. If so, the teams will remain strong, and hopefully make a case for Arlington integrating the MLS league the following year, assuming that league (still) exists. |
Anonymous
| Not an Arlington boy parent, but curious about whether the club provided an explanation about the choice they made. |
Anonymous
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They just provided the different criteria that they took into account without explaining in detail how each contributed to the final decision.
This is what it is... |
Anonymous
There will have to first be an offer before there is an decision. And while I understand claims can be made, they don't mean a lot when they're just claims. Good time to wait and see. |
Anonymous
They really didn't say much, just that the ECNL was established and that they weren't closing the door on the MLS, just weren't going to do it this year. |
Anonymous
| Might be a step down, but I think the MLS youth league is a gamble for next year. If the 1st Team League doesn't get up and running soon, there will be no money for a youth league. ECNL give the best chance for higher league play this fall. |
Anonymous
Higher than what? What is your evidence that ECNL boys play will be better than other local options for U13-U16 this fall? |
Anonymous
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To Arlington parents, the goal should be for each of your respective teams to have the scorelines exceed the level of the team you are playing. This, combined with past performance, should get you to the top level of both ECNL and non-ECNL tournaments. Once there, Arlington should strive to take home some important tournament wins. This is your chance to establish your team as the dominant big fish in a little pond. If you cannot accomplish this, then you have no argument.
If you can accomplish this, being at the top of ECNL will get a lot more quick exposure for aspiring MLS players than being a mid-level team in Tier 2 MLSYA. If collectively the Arlington teams do well their first year in ECNL, it will empower the parents to show the club that the competition in ECNL is weak and give you the argument to switch to MLSYA. |
Anonymous
The tricky part is retaining the coaches and kids who make you a viable competitor in MLSYA. If you lose them, it will be more challenging to meet those objectives, but that does not mean any high-talent switchers cannot come back and do that in MLSYA. Seems awfully geographically thin in this area with only three teams. Wonder if they will throw the local teams with PA clubs next year. |
Anonymous
I agree that these things are good goals. However I'm not sure that the "argument" depends on achieving them and bringing trophies home. I think the concern that parents have is not that there won't be some competitive games. We know there will, and we know that some ECNL teams are very good. The concern is just that there will be too many uncompetitive games. And I think that argument will be based on - well - very simply - whether or not there are too many uncompetitive games. If you can accomplish this, being at the top of ECNL will get a lot more quick exposure for aspiring MLS players than being a mid-level team in Tier 2 MLSYA. If collectively the Arlington teams do well their first year in ECNL, it will empower the parents to show the club that the competition in ECNL is weak and give you the argument to switch to MLSYA. I don't think the board made the decision to switch to ECNL because they felt that the level of play would be equivalent to MLSYA, nor because they felt the MLSYA was too high a level of play. So proving that it isn't won't change their minds. They made the decision, as far as I can tell, because they felt that ECNL was a stable league which allowed them to provide a secure option to parents while MLSYA was still very much up in the air. MLSYA still can't define which teams are in which divsisions, what the relationship between MLS and non-MLS clubs will be, or even what age groups MLS clubs will have and how the league will work for non-MLS clubs in age groups which some ior all MLS clubs don't plan to have. It's entirely possible that MLSYA will fall apart, or even fail to launch, or that this region at least just doesn't have enough teams to be viable without horrifying travel requirements. And to some degree those things might have happened because Arlington, VDA and Richmond chose to jump ship - thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy I can't imagine Bethesda is ecstatic at this point. If they stay in the MLS league, instead of the current schedule with more than half their away games within an hour's drive, they will presumably be looking at 2-3 games within that distance against DC and Baltimore (with PA Classics a little further away), and the rest in northern PA or New York, and quite possibly several in New England or Ohio. I suspect the fact that VDA and Richmond had already defected played strongly into Arlington's decision to do the same. And if Bethesda were now to defect, then what does Baltimore do? Etc. |