| a lot of coach turf wars are going to happen |
^D1? |
Misrepresentation and here's why: the MYS ECNL players aren't going down, they're being moved to a new ECNL team. There between a few and a handful of SYC girls that could make the rostering, not saying they're full-time ECNL players but we'll see. Especially with so many Springfield-based players currently at Arlington, VDA, and BRYC. MYS ECNL just got a lot stronger. |
| Why do you think the Springfield players at the other ECNL clubs are now going to run to McLean? |
Reality check: where are most of these boys or girls really going to go? There is not room for the entire roster of their current SYC or McLean team at another club? At best, a couple may make another team. The rest will have to stay. Grin and bear it. SYC and McLean know they have the leverage over most players. |
| It will be interesting to see how many McLean ECNL girls wind up demoted to Green or hybrid positions. |
| Not many I expect |
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Unfortunately, SYC doesn't present information on their website about college commitments. MYS does a great job and you can see how many players - dating back four or five years - committed to playing in college. When you look at the MYS list, what is absolutely clear is their girls have done very well. Just looking between 2019 and 2021, 58 girls committed to playing in college. On the boys side, it's only 21, with 16 of them coming in 2019.
For SYC, it's not really clear how many players have come through in the last three years because the club doesn't track that information. I know there is one or two 02 boys and a larger number of the 03 boys (12+) who've all committed. The girls side is less clear. I haven't seen any social media posts about girls from SYC committing. The SYC/MYS alliance is very keen to this imbalance. SYC needs MYS' strength on the girls side to keep SYC as an attractive option and pathway and MYS needs SYC's strength on the boys' side. The logic is that stronger players not selected for the "ECNL Alliance" teams will opt to stay with their home clubs - thus strengthening the next level of teams. I guess only time will tell if this actually happens. As an aside, before US Soccer shut down DA, ECNL wasn't that big of a deal on the boys' side but was picking up steam on the girls' side. Once the DA dissolved, all of a sudden non-DA clubs saw an opportunity to jump on the ECNL opportunity or decided to give MLSNext a try. Just look at the DMV landscape and you can see the different directions clubs went: Arlington ECNL, Bethesda MLS, Alexandria & SYC MLS, Loudoun ECNL, VDA ECNL. Of course, GA is the the logical option for clubs playing MLSnext. Interestingly enough, Arlington announced they're joining ECNL on the girls' side. I'm not convinced MLSNext is a long term solution. With the growth of ECNL, I don't see the competition level being their amongst a much smaller group of clubs participating in the full MLSNext slate. I see value for younger teams - up to U13 or U14 - and then shifting to ECNL around U14. |
This was the way DA was supposed to work. But my guess is that this was/is not the point of MLSNEXT. DA was run for US soccer and its goal was to create the best soccer environment for developing talent nationally. MLSNext is run by and for MLS clubs, and I think DCU wants feeder teams for its U15 roster and nothing else. I suspect for example that one reason Arlington went to ECNL instead of MLS Next was that DCU vetoed Arlington's older teams which DA had just awarded them (I don't know this for certain but I'm trying to make sense of a couple of off the cuff remarks I heard). So - if that's true and they said no to Arlington who already had those teams which were, or had previously, performed well in DA - why would they grant those age groups to SYC/Alexandria/Achilles? |
You are clearly happy at Arlington, so I am wondering why you care? |
I'm neither happy nor unhappy, nor at Arlington, and I'm not quite sure what you mean by "care". I'm ruminating on a discussion board about why certain soccer-related decisions may have been made and therefore, perhaps, what might happen in future. I don't have any personal stake, or special emotional attachment, to one outcome or another wrt to how MLSNext develops over the next few years. |
jumping into this conversation; did you seriously just say you're "not quite sure what you mean by 'care'" and then go on to say you have no personal stake? you sound smart; how have you not realized the best way to elicit the info you're seeking is to watch the situation over time as opposed to seeking responses from an anonymous board that doesn't have the best reputation? |
I simply don’t believe you. My apologies for saying so. You seem upset with the notion that the mls next teams would get an expansion that Arlington did not receive under the old DA system. Things change. Regardless of whether you are at Arlington, my question remains: why do you care whether other clubs get an expansion that Arlington did not? If you were simply curious, you would wait and see what happens. Why would you begrudge expansion for other clubs? Or why would your question relate back to an old Arlington grievance about not getting more age groups? |
I wasn't eliciting info, nor am I seeking anything. These matters simply don't affect me, and I don't care how they turn out beyond a very abstract and hypothetical concern that some decisions would make the world a better place for all. My question "why would they grant those age groups....?" was purely rhetorical. Someone else started a thread - I just provided my take on what had happened and what might happen in future - simply throwng 2c into the discussion is all. I was also very clear that I had no certain knowledge - just a guess - so no-one would rely on or misinterpret my speculation as anything other than that. In other words I'm just a guy sitting round a fire shooting shit. And somehow I have raised the ire of one private detective who wants to know why I care, and one moral crusader who believes that I should not be posting here on this board of ill repute, while himself posting on the same board. Jeez... |
No grievance (in any case I believe Arlington was awarded additional age groups by DA - it was McLean and Loudoun who did not get them). I will actually be happy if SYC/Achilles/Alexandria all get additional age groups. I don't know Achilles but I think SYC and Alexandria are both well run clubs. That said I don't think it really matters who gets extra age groups or whether no-one does. We will have the same coaches and the same kids in this area - and irrespective of leagues and names, the two will self-sort so that most of the best kids end up with a good coach on a good team somewhere. My point is purely that I suspect (although I don't know for sure) that DC United did not want Arlington to receive those age groups in MLS Next and that's why Arlington ended up joining ECNL. My understanding is that that is not what Arlingotn told parents and so I may well be wrong in which case Arlington chose ECNL for some other reason. My interest is merely that of a casual observer who wonders whether he has read the signs, and solved a puzzle, correctly. And if I am wrong and DCU did not veto Arlington then of course there would be no reason to believe that they would not award additional age groups to other local clubs. But if I am right, and DCU did not want Arlington to have those age groups, then I suspect that whatever reason they had for vetoing Arlington will also apply to the current MLSNext clubs. So my interest is akin to someone watching a murder mystery who thinks he knows who did it. No more than that. And I will be perfectly happy to be proven wrong. |