ECNL moving to school year not calendar

[Anonymous]

If families can sue ECNL for no allowing their kids to play for another league, then can MLSN families sue for not allowing high school soccer ?

In corporate world, often employees have to sign agreements to not work for competitors at the same time.

[Anonymous]

Pretty obvious that crazytown aka ECNL super homer went to sleep. (Or passed out)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Actually there was probably more 3 years ago before those teams left GA for ECNL.

And now some teams are leaving ECNL for GA and GA is picking up some rising USYS clubs (who just because they are in USYS won't do much in the app even if they actually have beaten teams from both ECNL and GA).

Literally one team left and they were not very good when you’re talking about ECNL standards, but I’m sure they are going to be a great GA team.

ECNL-RL took 5 GA teams this year.

Not even the top league.

The one club you are referring was a lot better than many within ECNL. Also, there was a lot different movement than you describe, especially in the DMV. You should explore the ECNL-GA thread that explains it all.

Kings Hamner has a solid 2011 team the rest are all mediocre teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Actually there was probably more 3 years ago before those teams left GA for ECNL.

And now some teams are leaving ECNL for GA and GA is picking up some rising USYS clubs (who just because they are in USYS won't do much in the app even if they actually have beaten teams from both ECNL and GA).

Literally one team left and they were not very good when you’re talking about ECNL standards, but I’m sure they are going to be a great GA team.

ECNL-RL took 5 GA teams this year.

Not even the top league.

The one club you are referring was a lot better than many within ECNL. Also, there was a lot different movement than you describe, especially in the DMV. You should explore the ECNL-GA thread that explains it all.

Name the ECNL teams that left for GA?
I can bet they are terrible. But watch they will do decent in GA because that’s the league for average players.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Actually there was probably more 3 years ago before those teams left GA for ECNL.

And now some teams are leaving ECNL for GA and GA is picking up some rising USYS clubs (who just because they are in USYS won't do much in the app even if they actually have beaten teams from both ECNL and GA).

Literally one team left and they were not very good when you’re talking about ECNL standards, but I’m sure they are going to be a great GA team.

ECNL-RL took 5 GA teams this year.

Not even the top league.

The one club you are referring was a lot better than many within ECNL. Also, there was a lot different movement than you describe, especially in the DMV. You should explore the ECNL-GA thread that explains it all.

Name the ECNL teams that left for GA?
I can bet they are terrible. But watch they will do decent in GA because that’s the league for average players.

Looks like he woke up again.

Time for nigh nigh you can kick and scream tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Here's what you're describing...

""How are the team rankings calculated?

A: We pull from over 400 official sources in order to provide the most comprehensive results. We look at the goal difference in the last 20 game played in the last 12 months, including games against older teams. There is a line below the last result that counts towards your ranking. More recent games and games against a similar team are given higher weight. To improve your rating, you have to do better than predicted. Your rating will go down if you do worse than predicted."

Please don’t start this debate. Rankings app is crap. It’s just less crappy than the alternatives. It is literally made to make parents feel like they have control / pride.

I like the rankings app. Its better than all the alternatives. But they need to stop giving a higher weight to similar ranked teams playing each other. If leagues didnt exist and all kids played in was tournamants and the tournament directors grouped all teams by similar ability then it would make sense. But since this isnt reality the ranking app gives a bonus to leagues with all participants at the same level and it hurts teams that play in leagues with teams all over the place. Since this is a variable teams cant control it shouldn't be included.

All of these algorithms, because they’re comparing too many different teams, ages, tiers, geographies, leagues to try to create a unified ranking make odd data decisions that are “good enough” and when stacking tens of “good enough” data decisions on top of one another, it ends up being reverse engineered from a baseline standard that was chosen by the developers. Ie. “Crossfire 2008 (etc) is imo too 10 in the country, our algorithm can’t be right unless it’s giving us results that confirm our hypothesis”

So the developers create a series of bias pools. Competitive groups (league, geography, age, etc), and when a starting error or bias is placed in these groups, (ie SoCal is better than NorCal on average) it becomes sticky and effects the entire competitive pool, regardless of volume and recency biases. Same is true for leagues (ie MLSN is better than ECNL). In the league bias it means that the ECNL team has to work significantly hard, including increased play outside of its competitive pool against a higher biased pool, in order to gain ranking outside of its base competitive pool - and the benefit of one team doing this, pulls along all the other teams in its competitive pool, regardless of their results (principle of progression and regression).

Every year we spend countless gallons of ink debating the injustices of the BCS or college football ranks and bowl decisions - where because of the league structure, large age groupings, and (formerly) stable rosters, there was significantly more accuracy in the rankings than in youth soccer. But somehow, because rankings confirms our own biases (because of our geography and competitive populations) our rankings are better, we have faith in an app that has way too many variables to be even close to accurate.

I know this will get lots of pushback because soccer rankings confirms people’s biases, but it is a marketing gimmick dressed up as analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Here's what you're describing...

""How are the team rankings calculated?

A: We pull from over 400 official sources in order to provide the most comprehensive results. We look at the goal difference in the last 20 game played in the last 12 months, including games against older teams. There is a line below the last result that counts towards your ranking. More recent games and games against a similar team are given higher weight. To improve your rating, you have to do better than predicted. Your rating will go down if you do worse than predicted."

Please don’t start this debate. Rankings app is crap. It’s just less crappy than the alternatives. It is literally made to make parents feel like they have control / pride.

I like the rankings app. Its better than all the alternatives. But they need to stop giving a higher weight to similar ranked teams playing each other. If leagues didnt exist and all kids played in was tournamants and the tournament directors grouped all teams by similar ability then it would make sense. But since this isnt reality the ranking app gives a bonus to leagues with all participants at the same level and it hurts teams that play in leagues with teams all over the place. Since this is a variable teams cant control it shouldn't be included.

All of these algorithms, because they’re comparing too many different teams, ages, tiers, geographies, leagues to try to create a unified ranking make odd data decisions that are “good enough” and when stacking tens of “good enough” data decisions on top of one another, it ends up being reverse engineered from a baseline standard that was chosen by the developers. Ie. “Crossfire 2008 (etc) is imo too 10 in the country, our algorithm can’t be right unless it’s giving us results that confirm our hypothesis”

So the developers create a series of bias pools. Competitive groups (league, geography, age, etc), and when a starting error or bias is placed in these groups, (ie SoCal is better than NorCal on average) it becomes sticky and effects the entire competitive pool, regardless of volume and recency biases. Same is true for leagues (ie MLSN is better than ECNL). In the league bias it means that the ECNL team has to work significantly hard, including increased play outside of its competitive pool against a higher biased pool, in order to gain ranking outside of its base competitive pool - and the benefit of one team doing this, pulls along all the other teams in its competitive pool, regardless of their results (principle of progression and regression).

Every year we spend countless gallons of ink debating the injustices of the BCS or college football ranks and bowl decisions - where because of the league structure, large age groupings, and (formerly) stable rosters, there was significantly more accuracy in the rankings than in youth soccer. But somehow, because rankings confirms our own biases (because of our geography and competitive populations) our rankings are better, we have faith in an app that has way too many variables to be even close to accurate.

I know this will get lots of pushback because soccer rankings confirms people’s biases, but it is a marketing gimmick dressed up as analysis.

Spot on. The app is nothing more than a way to generate discussion among parents on a topic that doesn’t matter at all, and that no one other than yourself cares about. I.e. what your kid’s youth soccer team is “ranked”. 🤣

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Actually there was probably more 3 years ago before those teams left GA for ECNL.

And now some teams are leaving ECNL for GA and GA is picking up some rising USYS clubs (who just because they are in USYS won't do much in the app even if they actually have beaten teams from both ECNL and GA).

Literally one team left and they were not very good when you’re talking about ECNL standards, but I’m sure they are going to be a great GA team.

ECNL-RL took 5 GA teams this year.

Not even the top league.

The one club you are referring was a lot better than many within ECNL. Also, there was a lot different movement than you describe, especially in the DMV. You should explore the ECNL-GA thread that explains it all.

Name the ECNL teams that left for GA?
I can bet they are terrible. But watch they will do decent in GA because that’s the league for average players.

You can find them all here -- along with plenty of cheerleading/trash talk on both sides: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1235441.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Here's what you're describing...

""How are the team rankings calculated?

A: We pull from over 400 official sources in order to provide the most comprehensive results. We look at the goal difference in the last 20 game played in the last 12 months, including games against older teams. There is a line below the last result that counts towards your ranking. More recent games and games against a similar team are given higher weight. To improve your rating, you have to do better than predicted. Your rating will go down if you do worse than predicted."

Please don’t start this debate. Rankings app is crap. It’s just less crappy than the alternatives. It is literally made to make parents feel like they have control / pride.

I like the rankings app. Its better than all the alternatives. But they need to stop giving a higher weight to similar ranked teams playing each other. If leagues didnt exist and all kids played in was tournamants and the tournament directors grouped all teams by similar ability then it would make sense. But since this isnt reality the ranking app gives a bonus to leagues with all participants at the same level and it hurts teams that play in leagues with teams all over the place. Since this is a variable teams cant control it shouldn't be included.

All of these algorithms, because they’re comparing too many different teams, ages, tiers, geographies, leagues to try to create a unified ranking make odd data decisions that are “good enough” and when stacking tens of “good enough” data decisions on top of one another, it ends up being reverse engineered from a baseline standard that was chosen by the developers. Ie. “Crossfire 2008 (etc) is imo too 10 in the country, our algorithm can’t be right unless it’s giving us results that confirm our hypothesis”

So the developers create a series of bias pools. Competitive groups (league, geography, age, etc), and when a starting error or bias is placed in these groups, (ie SoCal is better than NorCal on average) it becomes sticky and effects the entire competitive pool, regardless of volume and recency biases. Same is true for leagues (ie MLSN is better than ECNL). In the league bias it means that the ECNL team has to work significantly hard, including increased play outside of its competitive pool against a higher biased pool, in order to gain ranking outside of its base competitive pool - and the benefit of one team doing this, pulls along all the other teams in its competitive pool, regardless of their results (principle of progression and regression).

Every year we spend countless gallons of ink debating the injustices of the BCS or college football ranks and bowl decisions - where because of the league structure, large age groupings, and (formerly) stable rosters, there was significantly more accuracy in the rankings than in youth soccer. But somehow, because rankings confirms our own biases (because of our geography and competitive populations) our rankings are better, we have faith in an app that has way too many variables to be even close to accurate.

I know this will get lots of pushback because soccer rankings confirms people’s biases, but it is a marketing gimmick dressed up as analysis.

Thats a lot of words to.string together while saying nothing then dumping on the ranking with gobbly goop reasoning.

Learn math and your statements will carry more weight. The ranking app doesnt care about any specific group all it cares about is a teams ability to score more of less than an expected amount. The expected amount is based on the last 20 games played in the last 12 months. This is why you can compare 2 different from different age groups, or league, or whatever.

Where things go sideways for the ranking app is that they add weight to games from teams with similar rankings that play each other. This is a bonus given to teams that mostly play against teams with very similar ranking. If teams always played in tournament style events where equivalent ranked teams were seeded against each other this would make sense. But, this is not how things work. Most teams play in some sort of local regional league. Then they have some kind of national event. Most of the time the local leagues have a huge variance in team ranking. Really good teams in this situation get screwed because they win but they dont get the bonus for playing against similar ranked teams. Socal girls ECNL is the opposite. Their regional league has a lot of very similar ranked high level teams. What this means is they get the bonus for playing similar ranked teams in all their league games which happen throughout the year. Because all these teams are highly ranked all they need to do is tie or win/lose by one goal to maintain a high ranking. Add in that they rarely play teams outside of ECNL and you can see why its hard for teams from other leagues to go up in ranking as long as the bonus for playing similar ranked teams is employed by the ranking app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Here's what you're describing...

""How are the team rankings calculated?

A: We pull from over 400 official sources in order to provide the most comprehensive results. We look at the goal difference in the last 20 game played in the last 12 months, including games against older teams. There is a line below the last result that counts towards your ranking. More recent games and games against a similar team are given higher weight. To improve your rating, you have to do better than predicted. Your rating will go down if you do worse than predicted."

Please don’t start this debate. Rankings app is crap. It’s just less crappy than the alternatives. It is literally made to make parents feel like they have control / pride.

I like the rankings app. Its better than all the alternatives. But they need to stop giving a higher weight to similar ranked teams playing each other. If leagues didnt exist and all kids played in was tournamants and the tournament directors grouped all teams by similar ability then it would make sense. But since this isnt reality the ranking app gives a bonus to leagues with all participants at the same level and it hurts teams that play in leagues with teams all over the place. Since this is a variable teams cant control it shouldn't be included.

All of these algorithms, because they’re comparing too many different teams, ages, tiers, geographies, leagues to try to create a unified ranking make odd data decisions that are “good enough” and when stacking tens of “good enough” data decisions on top of one another, it ends up being reverse engineered from a baseline standard that was chosen by the developers. Ie. “Crossfire 2008 (etc) is imo too 10 in the country, our algorithm can’t be right unless it’s giving us results that confirm our hypothesis”

So the developers create a series of bias pools. Competitive groups (league, geography, age, etc), and when a starting error or bias is placed in these groups, (ie SoCal is better than NorCal on average) it becomes sticky and effects the entire competitive pool, regardless of volume and recency biases. Same is true for leagues (ie MLSN is better than ECNL). In the league bias it means that the ECNL team has to work significantly hard, including increased play outside of its competitive pool against a higher biased pool, in order to gain ranking outside of its base competitive pool - and the benefit of one team doing this, pulls along all the other teams in its competitive pool, regardless of their results (principle of progression and regression).

Every year we spend countless gallons of ink debating the injustices of the BCS or college football ranks and bowl decisions - where because of the league structure, large age groupings, and (formerly) stable rosters, there was significantly more accuracy in the rankings than in youth soccer. But somehow, because rankings confirms our own biases (because of our geography and competitive populations) our rankings are better, we have faith in an app that has way too many variables to be even close to accurate.

I know this will get lots of pushback because soccer rankings confirms people’s biases, but it is a marketing gimmick dressed up as analysis.

Thats a lot of words to.string together while saying nothing then dumping on the ranking with gobbly goop reasoning.

Learn math and your statements will carry more weight. The ranking app doesnt care about any specific group all it cares about is a teams ability to score more of less than an expected amount. The expected amount is based on the last 20 games played in the last 12 months. This is why you can compare 2 different from different age groups, or league, or whatever.

Where things go sideways for the ranking app is that they add weight to games from teams with similar rankings that play each other. This is a bonus given to teams that mostly play against teams with very similar ranking. If teams always played in tournament style events where equivalent ranked teams were seeded against each other this would make sense. But, this is not how things work. Most teams play in some sort of local regional league. Then they have some kind of national event. Most of the time the local leagues have a huge variance in team ranking. Really good teams in this situation get screwed because they win but they dont get the bonus for playing against similar ranked teams. Socal girls ECNL is the opposite. Their regional league has a lot of very similar ranked high level teams. What this means is they get the bonus for playing similar ranked teams in all their league games which happen throughout the year. Because all these teams are highly ranked all they need to do is tie or win/lose by one goal to maintain a high ranking. Add in that they rarely play teams outside of ECNL and you can see why its hard for teams from other leagues to go up in ranking as long as the bonus for playing similar ranked teams is employed by the ranking app.

This is why g2010 Hawks was able to run through all other ECNL teams in playoffs and finals this year and nobody saw it coming. Its also why City SC (a GA team) was able to beat Legends (ECNL league runner up) a couple of weeks before ECNL playoffs/finals.

What will happen next is teams like Hawks and City SC will retreat into their regional leagues and their ranking will go down. This is because their regional league games arent always against similar ranked teams. To compensate for this they could beat teams 10-0 but most coaches start holding back and trying players in different positions at 5-0. Socal ECNL regional league is different they'll go up in ranking because theyre all similar ranked and they get a bonus for playing each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Here's what you're describing...

""How are the team rankings calculated?

A: We pull from over 400 official sources in order to provide the most comprehensive results. We look at the goal difference in the last 20 game played in the last 12 months, including games against older teams. There is a line below the last result that counts towards your ranking. More recent games and games against a similar team are given higher weight. To improve your rating, you have to do better than predicted. Your rating will go down if you do worse than predicted."

Please don’t start this debate. Rankings app is crap. It’s just less crappy than the alternatives. It is literally made to make parents feel like they have control / pride.

I like the rankings app. Its better than all the alternatives. But they need to stop giving a higher weight to similar ranked teams playing each other. If leagues didnt exist and all kids played in was tournamants and the tournament directors grouped all teams by similar ability then it would make sense. But since this isnt reality the ranking app gives a bonus to leagues with all participants at the same level and it hurts teams that play in leagues with teams all over the place. Since this is a variable teams cant control it shouldn't be included.

All of these algorithms, because they’re comparing too many different teams, ages, tiers, geographies, leagues to try to create a unified ranking make odd data decisions that are “good enough” and when stacking tens of “good enough” data decisions on top of one another, it ends up being reverse engineered from a baseline standard that was chosen by the developers. Ie. “Crossfire 2008 (etc) is imo too 10 in the country, our algorithm can’t be right unless it’s giving us results that confirm our hypothesis”

So the developers create a series of bias pools. Competitive groups (league, geography, age, etc), and when a starting error or bias is placed in these groups, (ie SoCal is better than NorCal on average) it becomes sticky and effects the entire competitive pool, regardless of volume and recency biases. Same is true for leagues (ie MLSN is better than ECNL). In the league bias it means that the ECNL team has to work significantly hard, including increased play outside of its competitive pool against a higher biased pool, in order to gain ranking outside of its base competitive pool - and the benefit of one team doing this, pulls along all the other teams in its competitive pool, regardless of their results (principle of progression and regression).

Every year we spend countless gallons of ink debating the injustices of the BCS or college football ranks and bowl decisions - where because of the league structure, large age groupings, and (formerly) stable rosters, there was significantly more accuracy in the rankings than in youth soccer. But somehow, because rankings confirms our own biases (because of our geography and competitive populations) our rankings are better, we have faith in an app that has way too many variables to be even close to accurate.

I know this will get lots of pushback because soccer rankings confirms people’s biases, but it is a marketing gimmick dressed up as analysis.

Thats a lot of words to.string together while saying nothing then dumping on the ranking with gobbly goop reasoning.

Learn math and your statements will carry more weight. The ranking app doesnt care about any specific group all it cares about is a teams ability to score more of less than an expected amount. The expected amount is based on the last 20 games played in the last 12 months. This is why you can compare 2 different from different age groups, or league, or whatever.

Where things go sideways for the ranking app is that they add weight to games from teams with similar rankings that play each other. This is a bonus given to teams that mostly play against teams with very similar ranking. If teams always played in tournament style events where equivalent ranked teams were seeded against each other this would make sense. But, this is not how things work. Most teams play in some sort of local regional league. Then they have some kind of national event. Most of the time the local leagues have a huge variance in team ranking. Really good teams in this situation get screwed because they win but they dont get the bonus for playing against similar ranked teams. Socal girls ECNL is the opposite. Their regional league has a lot of very similar ranked high level teams. What this means is they get the bonus for playing similar ranked teams in all their league games which happen throughout the year. Because all these teams are highly ranked all they need to do is tie or win/lose by one goal to maintain a high ranking. Add in that they rarely play teams outside of ECNL and you can see why its hard for teams from other leagues to go up in ranking as long as the bonus for playing similar ranked teams is employed by the ranking app.

This is why g2010 Hawks was able to run through all other ECNL teams in playoffs and finals this year and nobody saw it coming. Its also why City SC (a GA team) was able to beat Legends (ECNL league runner up) a couple of weeks before ECNL playoffs/finals.

What will happen next is teams like Hawks and City SC will retreat into their regional leagues and their ranking will go down. This is because their regional league games arent always against similar ranked teams. To compensate for this they could beat teams 10-0 but most coaches start holding back and trying players in different positions at 5-0. Socal ECNL regional league is different they'll go up in ranking because theyre all similar ranked and they get a bonus for playing each other.

The real problem is you have teams from some clubs in age groups that have no business playing the top teams in their leagues. A big problem with these "elite" leagues is that many clubs aren't "elite" at all age groups -- even though they sell themselves that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Has anyone ever explained in these 1170+ pages why MLSN academies would want to stay BY? Just to maintain status quo? I’ve never seen anyone connect the dots for how BY is creating better professional players. “International alignment” isn’t itself a good reason unless it can be connected to a better result for MLS (not youth national teams). Otherwise it’s just logically the same as mandating all clubs stop using “SC” in their name and start using “FC” because more foreign clubs use that.

Its because MLSN is owned by MLS.

MLS is a professional league and because of this SY has no meaning.

Right… a professional league where all of its kids are school aged…you aren’t dodging the question or anything

Yes, a youth league run by pro clubs. This is why SY doesnt make sense. It doesnt apply and creates unwanted associations with school grade.

“Unwanted associations”… you are slicing the bologna pretty thin.

Unwanted associations simply means that clubs dont want players grouped by somthing artificial like grade in school. If a player has the physical ability to play professionally at 15 years old this is what they want to occur. They dont want that player being grouped with and called a freshman in HS. See how it works? Playing ability is completely separate from grade in school.

Sounds like you're saying MLSN should get rid of artificial BY groupings and just go with first team through fifth. Pure ability-based. And the rest of youth soccer should go SY.

Yes, if kids werent still growing what you described is exactly how pro teams would want to group players. But because this isnt reality they group by ability and age ie BY.

Or any other arbitrary year cutoff. There is nothing magical about Jan st.

Not a BY-stan. But way to really move the parameters.

Seasonal year is arbitrary and fluid, and inconsistent nationwide based on state school admission ages.

Birth year is uniform and universal. And largely global.

“Magical” is neither, but if you’re looking for a benchmark, BY is clearly a better one for cohort creation. SY is better for 8th grade and 12th grade “customer experience.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the ECNL hat is just a troll pushing buttons.

What's unfortunate is people that are new to all this might believe the nonsense.

That ECNL is the best girls platform and sends the most girls to college and has the most coaches at showcases? That’s true so good thing they believe us.

Not saying GA is bad… they are just second best and why play in the second league if your kid can play in the best league.

Actually, it's a 2-way street. ECNL teams look for GA players to help THEM out (also try to recruit -- just because ECNL might have the best current girls platform, doesn't mean it has all the talent. Far from it and why they remain vulnerable, especially if their marketing ever collapses).

It has the majority of the talent. Which is why it’s the best girls platform.
GA has some good players and teams just not even close to equal standing with ECNL.
ECNL teams/players top to bottom is substantial higher level.

Ranking app says different and the younger the team the more even GA and ECNL are.

The trend is in GAs favor

You’re a fool.
2012 top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA
2011 girls top 25
22-ECNL
3-GA

Theres more high level GA teams today then there was 3 years ago. This is called a positive trend. ECNL is roughly the same.

One of the issues with the ranking app is that it gives a slight "power ranking" to two teams that play each other that are roughly the same level. If you're a top ECNL team in a league stacked with top ECNL teams you get a small boost for wins. If you are a top GA team playing in a league with not so good teams you're forced to blow everyone out to maintain a high ranking. The ranking app does this to not incentivize top teams going up in ranking by looking for teams they can blow out by 10+ goals a game. Unfortunately it penalizes leagues with a variance in team levels.

Here's what you're describing...

""How are the team rankings calculated?

A: We pull from over 400 official sources in order to provide the most comprehensive results. We look at the goal difference in the last 20 game played in the last 12 months, including games against older teams. There is a line below the last result that counts towards your ranking. More recent games and games against a similar team are given higher weight. To improve your rating, you have to do better than predicted. Your rating will go down if you do worse than predicted."

Please don’t start this debate. Rankings app is crap. It’s just less crappy than the alternatives. It is literally made to make parents feel like they have control / pride.

I like the rankings app. Its better than all the alternatives. But they need to stop giving a higher weight to similar ranked teams playing each other. If leagues didnt exist and all kids played in was tournamants and the tournament directors grouped all teams by similar ability then it would make sense. But since this isnt reality the ranking app gives a bonus to leagues with all participants at the same level and it hurts teams that play in leagues with teams all over the place. Since this is a variable teams cant control it shouldn't be included.

All of these algorithms, because they’re comparing too many different teams, ages, tiers, geographies, leagues to try to create a unified ranking make odd data decisions that are “good enough” and when stacking tens of “good enough” data decisions on top of one another, it ends up being reverse engineered from a baseline standard that was chosen by the developers. Ie. “Crossfire 2008 (etc) is imo too 10 in the country, our algorithm can’t be right unless it’s giving us results that confirm our hypothesis”

So the developers create a series of bias pools. Competitive groups (league, geography, age, etc), and when a starting error or bias is placed in these groups, (ie SoCal is better than NorCal on average) it becomes sticky and effects the entire competitive pool, regardless of volume and recency biases. Same is true for leagues (ie MLSN is better than ECNL). In the league bias it means that the ECNL team has to work significantly hard, including increased play outside of its competitive pool against a higher biased pool, in order to gain ranking outside of its base competitive pool - and the benefit of one team doing this, pulls along all the other teams in its competitive pool, regardless of their results (principle of progression and regression).

Every year we spend countless gallons of ink debating the injustices of the BCS or college football ranks and bowl decisions - where because of the league structure, large age groupings, and (formerly) stable rosters, there was significantly more accuracy in the rankings than in youth soccer. But somehow, because rankings confirms our own biases (because of our geography and competitive populations) our rankings are better, we have faith in an app that has way too many variables to be even close to accurate.

I know this will get lots of pushback because soccer rankings confirms people’s biases, but it is a marketing gimmick dressed up as analysis.

Thats a lot of words to.string together while saying nothing then dumping on the ranking with gobbly goop reasoning.

Learn math and your statements will carry more weight. The ranking app doesnt care about any specific group all it cares about is a teams ability to score more of less than an expected amount. The expected amount is based on the last 20 games played in the last 12 months. This is why you can compare 2 different from different age groups, or league, or whatever.

Where things go sideways for the ranking app is that they add weight to games from teams with similar rankings that play each other. This is a bonus given to teams that mostly play against teams with very similar ranking. If teams always played in tournament style events where equivalent ranked teams were seeded against each other this would make sense. But, this is not how things work. Most teams play in some sort of local regional league. Then they have some kind of national event. Most of the time the local leagues have a huge variance in team ranking. Really good teams in this situation get screwed because they win but they dont get the bonus for playing against similar ranked teams. Socal girls ECNL is the opposite. Their regional league has a lot of very similar ranked high level teams. What this means is they get the bonus for playing similar ranked teams in all their league games which happen throughout the year. Because all these teams are highly ranked all they need to do is tie or win/lose by one goal to maintain a high ranking. Add in that they rarely play teams outside of ECNL and you can see why its hard for teams from other leagues to go up in ranking as long as the bonus for playing similar ranked teams is employed by the ranking app.

This is why g2010 Hawks was able to run through all other ECNL teams in playoffs and finals this year and nobody saw it coming. Its also why City SC (a GA team) was able to beat Legends (ECNL league runner up) a couple of weeks before ECNL playoffs/finals.

What will happen next is teams like Hawks and City SC will retreat into their regional leagues and their ranking will go down. This is because their regional league games arent always against similar ranked teams. To compensate for this they could beat teams 10-0 but most coaches start holding back and trying players in different positions at 5-0. Socal ECNL regional league is different they'll go up in ranking because theyre all similar ranked and they get a bonus for playing each other.

The real problem is you have teams from some clubs in age groups that have no business playing the top teams in their leagues. A big problem with these "elite" leagues is that many clubs aren't "elite" at all age groups -- even though they sell themselves that way.

Giving a bonus to games where similar ranked teams play each other isnt just about high ranked teams playing other high ranked teams. It could be any level. But the only place people will notice it is at the highest level. I dont understand why the bonus is needed. I assume its so teams cant manipulate rankings by looking for blowouts but theres other ways to address this that dont penalize clubs in leagues with a large variance of teams.

[jsteele]

This thread has gotten so long that reading it puts a huge load on the server. Therefore, I am going to lock it. Feel free to start a "Part 2" of the thread.