Taking Soccer Back from the insanity of the ECNL, ENPL, DA, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just copy the germans. bundesliga has a town/city that rolls up to region then national.

My nephew was selected for bundesliga youth at age 11/12 and they traveled every week about 80 miles for practice...but that is an 80 mile Radius - so for DC that would frederick, MD to fredericksburg VA on two teams of the best talent in the area....talk about competitive.....

That would suck worst vs the current system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just copy the germans. bundesliga has a town/city that rolls up to region then national.

My nephew was selected for bundesliga youth at age 11/12 and they traveled every week about 80 miles for practice...but that is an 80 mile Radius - so for DC that would frederick, MD to fredericksburg VA on two teams of the best talent in the area....talk about competitive.....

Yeah, I heard they have multiple levels and there are not competing leagues like what we have. Instead, the leagues and clubs are interwoven to have an entire system built on relegation and promotion.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:The idea in Germany is that no child should be far from an academy or national training center, and some Bundesliga clubs don't want to take players from their locals too early. I'm surprised the player in question is driving so much, but if you're 12 and sought out by a Bundesliga club, maybe it makes sense.

Generally, though, you can be in "the system" without ridiculous drives or club-shopping, as I understand it. (If someone has a rebuttal to "Das Reboot" and other writing on the topic, please let me know.)

I think that's accurate. Das Reboot remains the authoritative source on German youth soccer IMO. Honigstein does great work. So thorough and always lets the facts drive the narrative, not the other way around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The best solution is to open up DA, making it the top division in the national system. Have each DA regional conference have promotion and relegation from a couple tiers of regional leagues. The rest should be local with an opportunity to earn a promotion to one of regional leagues. This way you benefit the top players and top coaches who get competitive games with real pressure and also benefit good players who might prefer to play in a local league.

That's the way it needs to be. These closed leagues that don't compete with teams from the outside take a presumption of talent when many of the teams aren't in reality that strong.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:The idea in Germany is that no child should be far from an academy or national training center, and some Bundesliga clubs don't want to take players from their locals too early. I'm surprised the player in question is driving so much, but if you're 12 and sought out by a Bundesliga club, maybe it makes sense.

Generally, though, you can be in "the system" without ridiculous drives or club-shopping, as I understand it. (If someone has a rebuttal to "Das Reboot" and other writing on the topic, please let me know.)

Top division academies in Europe will send minivans with drivers to pick up their older players from schools. I saw it in the Netherlands and I expect that German clubs would provide similar accommodations. Younger players generally finish school earlier and are normally dropped of at the training fields by their parents. Additionally, many younger players live within short distance of training fields and you see them biking to training while wearing cleats.

[Anonymous]

That's a smart approach. Some karate places do that actually and it taps into a huge market.