Post-DA future - Boys

[Anonymous]

Bethesda lost several key players from their '06 team. The rankings are usually 12-month so their play in 18-19 affects their rankings for 20-21.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Agreed with all you said. But to be clear, the rankings above your post are from youth soccer, not gotsoccer, and include DA teams at appropriate ages. Gotsoccer is absurd. Smaller club first teams may definitely be better for kids under the conditions you described above. We started small and went bigger as our kids talent permitted. It’s quite possible we will go small again when my kid waits for his genetically late growth spurt.

Think youth soccer rankings suffer from similar sorts of problems.

1. The teams just don't play enough games for the algorithm to work properly. It would literally take several years to climb from 200 to 10 in those rankings. But in practice teams change in performance far quicker than that. They get/lose new players and/or a new coach every year. Based on a model with similar flaws, Man United might still be ranked as the world's best soccer team .

2. As with got soccer, clubs swim in separate pools which rarely or never play games between pools. This is a problem for all ranking systems which basically makes it impossible to provide any kind of meaningful comparison between the different pools.

With your kid I would suggest you try and find a coach who values skill over size. It's not a bad thing for a small kid to learn how to play against bigger/faster/stronger players. Then, when the growth catches up, they have more tools in their toolbox. But you need to have a coach who is willing to play kids in that situation and knows how to coach them to be successful.

Thought I would give an example of youth soccer rankings based on the Arlington 06 boys DA team. Last year they weren't especially good, in my view largely because of the coaching which was truly poor (that coach is no longer with the club).

In the fall 2019 season, with a really good coach, they went 9-2-2 and finished with the best record in the DA of the local clubs. Here are the records alphabetically:

Club Record Youthsoccer rank
Arlington 9-2-2 224
Baltimore 7-2-6 290
Bethesda 4-2-9 94
DC United 7-6-5 147
PA Classics 3-6-7 641
Richmond 4-3-8 283
VDA 4-6-6 438

If I had to rank these clubs based on watching them play this year, I would have put them into four tiers
Tier 1: Arlington and DC United
Tier 2: Baltimore
Tier 3: VDA, Richmond
Tier 4: Bethesda, PA Classics

But the youth soccer rankings don't reflect this at all. Bethesda - arguably the worst team in the group - has the highest ranking. Arlington - arguably the best - has a middling ranking.

Was there much player changeover at Arlington (and other clubs)?

Loudoun cancelling DA meant several players moving to VDA and DC United and I would say both those clubs improved quite a bit from that. Arlington added 4 players (1 from Loudoun) and lost four players including its leading goalscorer. All in all I think Arlington improved a bit in terms of talent - but there wasn't a huge change. I would assume Richmond and PA Classics didn't change much and I don't know about Bethesda or Baltimore.

The most signficant change for Arlington by far was the coaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Agreed with all you said. But to be clear, the rankings above your post are from youth soccer, not gotsoccer, and include DA teams at appropriate ages. Gotsoccer is absurd. Smaller club first teams may definitely be better for kids under the conditions you described above. We started small and went bigger as our kids talent permitted. It’s quite possible we will go small again when my kid waits for his genetically late growth spurt.

Think youth soccer rankings suffer from similar sorts of problems.

1. The teams just don't play enough games for the algorithm to work properly. It would literally take several years to climb from 200 to 10 in those rankings. But in practice teams change in performance far quicker than that. They get/lose new players and/or a new coach every year. Based on a model with similar flaws, Man United might still be ranked as the world's best soccer team .

2. As with got soccer, clubs swim in separate pools which rarely or never play games between pools. This is a problem for all ranking systems which basically makes it impossible to provide any kind of meaningful comparison between the different pools.

With your kid I would suggest you try and find a coach who values skill over size. It's not a bad thing for a small kid to learn how to play against bigger/faster/stronger players. Then, when the growth catches up, they have more tools in their toolbox. But you need to have a coach who is willing to play kids in that situation and knows how to coach them to be successful.

Thought I would give an example of youth soccer rankings based on the Arlington 06 boys DA team. Last year they weren't especially good, in my view largely because of the coaching which was truly poor (that coach is no longer with the club).

In the fall 2019 season, with a really good coach, they went 9-2-2 and finished with the best record in the DA of the local clubs. Here are the records alphabetically:

Club Record Youthsoccer rank
Arlington 9-2-2 224
Baltimore 7-2-6 290
Bethesda 4-2-9 94
DC United 7-6-5 147
PA Classics 3-6-7 641
Richmond 4-3-8 283
VDA 4-6-6 438

If I had to rank these clubs based on watching them play this year, I would have put them into four tiers
Tier 1: Arlington and DC United
Tier 2: Baltimore
Tier 3: VDA, Richmond
Tier 4: Bethesda, PA Classics

But the youth soccer rankings don't reflect this at all. Bethesda - arguably the worst team in the group - has the highest ranking. Arlington - arguably the best - has a middling ranking.

This is a common error that you've spotted for teams that report under different names. Bethesda's DA scores are reported for a team that is ranked 531 (https://youthsoccerrankings.us/team.html?teamId=2343765), so if you combine their results, Bethesda's ranking would tumble. And Batimore just lost to PA classics at beginning of March and VDA at the end of fall so I would not think they are substantially above the fourth tier teams. So the rankings don't look that far off to me based on what you say above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bethesda lost several key players from their '06 team. The rankings are usually 12-month so their play in 18-19 affects their rankings for 20-21.

Well that's exactly my point. Although I would suggest that the rankings are actually based on more than 12 months. They seem to work by a win and move up a bit (depending on strength of opponent) and lose and move down a bit. On occasion winning can even result in a fall if your opponent is bad enough (e.g. see Arlington's 5-2 win over Lehigh Valley where their youthsoccer ranking fell). The result is that it actually takes multiple years to move a long way up or down the table.

Basically the algorithm isn't nearly responsive enough in en environemtn where
- the kids' abilities change rapidly
- the teams don't play all that many games (and DA teams especially don't)
- the rosters change rapidly
- the coaching changes every year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Agreed with all you said. But to be clear, the rankings above your post are from youth soccer, not gotsoccer, and include DA teams at appropriate ages. Gotsoccer is absurd. Smaller club first teams may definitely be better for kids under the conditions you described above. We started small and went bigger as our kids talent permitted. It’s quite possible we will go small again when my kid waits for his genetically late growth spurt.

Think youth soccer rankings suffer from similar sorts of problems.

1. The teams just don't play enough games for the algorithm to work properly. It would literally take several years to climb from 200 to 10 in those rankings. But in practice teams change in performance far quicker than that. They get/lose new players and/or a new coach every year. Based on a model with similar flaws, Man United might still be ranked as the world's best soccer team .

2. As with got soccer, clubs swim in separate pools which rarely or never play games between pools. This is a problem for all ranking systems which basically makes it impossible to provide any kind of meaningful comparison between the different pools.

With your kid I would suggest you try and find a coach who values skill over size. It's not a bad thing for a small kid to learn how to play against bigger/faster/stronger players. Then, when the growth catches up, they have more tools in their toolbox. But you need to have a coach who is willing to play kids in that situation and knows how to coach them to be successful.

Thought I would give an example of youth soccer rankings based on the Arlington 06 boys DA team. Last year they weren't especially good, in my view largely because of the coaching which was truly poor (that coach is no longer with the club).

In the fall 2019 season, with a really good coach, they went 9-2-2 and finished with the best record in the DA of the local clubs. Here are the records alphabetically:

Club Record Youthsoccer rank
Arlington 9-2-2 224
Baltimore 7-2-6 290
Bethesda 4-2-9 94
DC United 7-6-5 147
PA Classics 3-6-7 641
Richmond 4-3-8 283
VDA 4-6-6 438

If I had to rank these clubs based on watching them play this year, I would have put them into four tiers
Tier 1: Arlington and DC United
Tier 2: Baltimore
Tier 3: VDA, Richmond
Tier 4: Bethesda, PA Classics

But the youth soccer rankings don't reflect this at all. Bethesda - arguably the worst team in the group - has the highest ranking. Arlington - arguably the best - has a middling ranking.

This is a common error that you've spotted for teams that report under different names. Bethesda's DA scores are reported for a team that is ranked 531 (https://youthsoccerrankings.us/team.html?teamId=2343765), so if you combine their results, Bethesda's ranking would tumble. And Batimore just lost to PA classics at beginning of March and VDA at the end of fall so I would not think they are substantially above the fourth tier teams. So the rankings don't look that far off to me based on what you say above.



I agree Baltimore may not be as good as I have ranked them - certainly their results tailed off dramatically in their last few games. But I ranked them based on the way they played soccer when I saw them playing.

Also - the VDA game shouldn't count in your evaluation. Baltimore had one goalkeeper injured and the other one getting sent off - so they played most of the game with ten men and an outfield player in goal

[Anonymous]

So for boys DA teams in the DC area, at the moment:

VDA--ECNL
Richmond--ECNL
Arlington-TBA, leaning MLS
Bethesda-TBA, leaning MLS
Baltimore Armor - TBA

Does that match with what people are hearing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So for boys DA teams in the DC area, at the moment:

VDA--ECNL
Richmond--ECNL
Arlington-TBA, leaning MLS
Bethesda-TBA, leaning MLS
Baltimore Armor - TBA

Does that match with what people are hearing?

Baltimore Armour says MLS.

[Anonymous]

Is the MLS league the same as the PDA league floating around earlier this week? If so, Baltimore, Arlington, and Bethesda were not included. Only DCU included for this area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the MLS league the same as the PDA league floating around earlier this week? If so, Baltimore, Arlington, and Bethesda were not included. Only DCU included for this area.

That PDA league is for U23 male. Irrelevant for U19s and below. None outside MLS and their feeder clubs in it. That league will run in parallel to a large part of the MLS season, which makes perfect sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the MLS league the same as the PDA league floating around earlier this week? If so, Baltimore, Arlington, and Bethesda were not included. Only DCU included for this area.

No