ECNL moving to school year not calendar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was hoping for the cutoff change. The ECNL podcast and imcollegesoccer twitter had me convinced.

Now, ECNL looks stupid. And weak. ECNL aligns under US Club. US Club put out their statement with the other associations that they would move in solidarity. They’re not going to now let ECNL go it alone now. And who cares if they do? MLS/GA won.

Imcollegesoccer proved to be a fraud too. Fake sources were tell them that it was a done deal. Oops.

Yep. ECNL looks very weak. They had people go to every Forum and convince folks that this was happening.

Had Joint statements saying this was a done deal… it was all just a big let down.

All the while, GA and MLS walked light and carried a big stick.

This is clearly a pissing match, not a chess match.

ECNL does look weak and has to feel neutered if they don't have some counter response. As the girls soccer lead and number 2 in boys soccer, expect them to throw their weight around at least a little.

Guessing playing down waivers for something like 3-4 Aug-Dec kids per team even though they said they were against waivers, in general. Essentially expanding their current trapped player rules a bit was always was the simplest solution in from the beginning and probably the nudge needed to break the damn pushing all of youth towards school year in a few years down the road anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait so is it happening fall 2025 or not??

Can you all make it clear?

Nope. It’s not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I proposed gives everyone what they want.

What I like about it is the 2nd half of the year players playing down would be on parents and clubs to decide. In the end nobody would choose this option because of ego. But the RAE argument would go away.

On a related development, it's interesting that ODP has broken up it's CY into older/younger age groups. Cynics call this a cash-grab to increase participation but at least in theory it should help player development. The reality as I've witnessed: There are just 2 teams and all the most offensive-minded players are on the "older" team. Still, great for a kid to play with top players BUT if they like defense, not so much.

[Anonymous]

Posted on another forum from someone at ECNL. No change for anyone for fall 25.

Once these minutes are released by US Soccer we will go ahead and share, I’m sure US Soccer will also be sending correspondence shortly.

Right now from what we are aware, no mandate will be placed/removed for the 25/26 season.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To grab at a share of parents pay to play money, US Soccer pulls in about $10 million from youth soccer registrations and overinflated coach license fees. And US Soccer has the expense of running major pro tournaments in the near future, the cost of moving their headquarters and couldn't even afford to pay there men's national team coach without a donation.

If US Soccer continually sides with a few years youth national teams (say 100 kids) trying to get a couple of relatively meaningless wins at the expense of grass roots soccer plus what I will call mainstream travel soccer plus the youth soccer pathway into the college game (millions of kids), I just can't see a scenario where youth soccer, AYSO, USYS and USCS, doesn't tell US Soccer to pound sand and start their own governance.

Not arguing whether youth soccer should be SY or CY but US Soccer is completely responsible for blindly allowing RAE to thrive and not coming up with any tangible solutions. The crazy thing is that it is in US Soccer's best interest to grow the game and allow the younger half of an age group to be on something close to equal footing with the older half in opportunity but US Soccer has been wholly negligent.

US Soccer would have better senior national teams if they were able to make a dent in RAE as they could have the opportunity to pull from a pool of players up to double the current pool to pick the best players.

The billions of dollars in the youth soccer economy waiting for orders from US Soccer who only pulls in about $150 million a year is too imbalanced to continue. I can't see a scenario where youth soccer doesn't splinter at this point.

So to be clear, US Soccer's failure isn't centered on not listening to youth soccer who want to adjust their age dates, it is on not being a leader in fixing RAE.

I don't think many people realize this as they've focused on arguing over whose kids are good or suck at soccer here. The change to BY was a steamroll over youth soccer interests to marginally help the youth national teams. Youth soccer orgs choose to be members of US Soccer. To go against them again, in light of the joint statement, risks USSF losing control over youth soccer completely.

[Anonymous]

Just spoke with the ECNL director at Surf (the real one). Fall 25 felt liked a rushed decision for many. The compromise was no change for next fall but this would be revisited next month and early next year and will be implemented in Fall 26.

We will get an announcement once a final decision for fall 26 has been made. Should hear something by end of the year or early next year.

[Anonymous]

ECNL leadership dropped the ball here. Let’s hope they put out a statement. They caused this mess, they can help clean it up. Lots of angry parents now because they told their kids they would be able to play with their schoolmates!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just spoke with the ECNL director at Surf (the real one). Fall 25 felt liked a rushed decision for many. The compromise was no change for next fall but this would be revisited next month and early next year and will be implemented in Fall 26.

We will get an announcement once a final decision for fall 26 has been made. Should hear something by end of the year or early next year.

What a mess. If this is true, they're just choosing between versions of chaos now. Yes, changing for Fall 25 right now was very late in the game for the Dec tryout people (which is insanely early). But it's so far from Fall 26 that it makes for a super awkward year for everyone. There will probably be some temptation for pro-SY people to change their tune and just say it's not worth dealing with such a bumbling transition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just spoke with the ECNL director at Surf (the real one). Fall 25 felt liked a rushed decision for many. The compromise was no change for next fall but this would be revisited next month and early next year and will be implemented in Fall 26.

We will get an announcement once a final decision for fall 26 has been made. Should hear something by end of the year or early next year.

What a mess. If this is true, they're just choosing between versions of chaos now. Yes, changing for Fall 25 right now was very late in the game for the Dec tryout people (which is insanely early). But it's so far from Fall 26 that it makes for a super awkward year for everyone. There will probably be some temptation for pro-SY people to change their tune and just say it's not worth dealing with such a bumbling transition.

All true but that’s not how bureaucracy works. This is a huge change for the soccer landscape and they did not want to make what they felt was going to be a rushed decision.

They are working on phase in approaches we will get more details next month or so. But just to be clear definitely no change for ECNL next fall 25.

[Anonymous]

No change in Mandate for 25. Will ECNL allow trapped players to play down in league games is the question....

Waiting on the mins from the meeting to know how stupid US soccer really is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just spoke with the ECNL director at Surf (the real one). Fall 25 felt liked a rushed decision for many. The compromise was no change for next fall but this would be revisited next month and early next year and will be implemented in Fall 26.

We will get an announcement once a final decision for fall 26 has been made. Should hear something by end of the year or early next year.

Highly doubt Deza said that to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No change in Mandate for 25. Will ECNL allow trapped players to play down in league games is the question....

Waiting on the mins from the meeting to know how stupid US soccer really is.

There’s not going to be any minutes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No change in Mandate for 25. Will ECNL allow trapped players to play down in league games is the question....

Waiting on the mins from the meeting to know how stupid US soccer really is.

There’s not going to be any minutes

I dont doubt that at all!! Rats hate daylight!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To grab at a share of parents pay to play money, US Soccer pulls in about $10 million from youth soccer registrations and overinflated coach license fees. And US Soccer has the expense of running major pro tournaments in the near future, the cost of moving their headquarters and couldn't even afford to pay there men's national team coach without a donation.

If US Soccer continually sides with a few years youth national teams (say 100 kids) trying to get a couple of relatively meaningless wins at the expense of grass roots soccer plus what I will call mainstream travel soccer plus the youth soccer pathway into the college game (millions of kids), I just can't see a scenario where youth soccer, AYSO, USYS and USCS, doesn't tell US Soccer to pound sand and start their own governance.

Not arguing whether youth soccer should be SY or CY but US Soccer is completely responsible for blindly allowing RAE to thrive and not coming up with any tangible solutions. The crazy thing is that it is in US Soccer's best interest to grow the game and allow the younger half of an age group to be on something close to equal footing with the older half in opportunity but US Soccer has been wholly negligent.

US Soccer would have better senior national teams if they were able to make a dent in RAE as they could have the opportunity to pull from a pool of players up to double the current pool to pick the best players.

The billions of dollars in the youth soccer economy waiting for orders from US Soccer who only pulls in about $150 million a year is too imbalanced to continue. I can't see a scenario where youth soccer doesn't splinter at this point.

So to be clear, US Soccer's failure isn't centered on not listening to youth soccer who want to adjust their age dates, it is on not being a leader in fixing RAE.

I don't think many people realize this as they've focused on arguing over whose kids are good or suck at soccer here. The change to BY was a steamroll over youth soccer interests to marginally help the youth national teams. Youth soccer orgs choose to be members of US Soccer. To go against them again, in light of the joint statement, risks USSF losing control over youth soccer completely.

Some would say hiring a wife beater as the coach of the mens team would strongly indicate the character of the people running the show.

I will remind them of this next time they ask me to fund the senior teams travel.

[Anonymous]

We are coming up on an entire 24 hours with only the one Michigan league posting anything