Does team quality get diulted as roster size expands?

[Anonymous]

I was wondering, does the quality of a club's teams get worse in the years that the roster size expands (e.g. 7 a side to 9 a side to 11 a side)? The club either needs to pull better kids from the team below, or find entirely new players (which either means pulling from other clubs, which can only happen to a degree, or taking new kids that have not played travel before). Doesn't that necessarily make each level of team somewhat worse than it was before?

[Anonymous]

Depends on the team. My DD team is stacked from top to bottom. They can sub in players 12-18 with a hiccup.

[Anonymous]

DDs team kept getting better with the bottom of the roster moving on to another sport or figured out they can't compete at the higher levels. Add on some B players or rec players that want more and the team is better. Also as they get older there are way more injuries so you need the bigger rosters.

[Anonymous]

Of course it does. Some teams already have a hard time getting the best players for all of the positions in 9v9.

Hence, lots of teams know this so they add to their roster at U11 or U12 in anticipation of U13 roster expansion.

[Anonymous]

Seems pretty obvious that if you add more players you are going to dilute the level of talent. However you cannot play 11v11 with only your 9 top players. Also some of those new players they take in next season may be better than existing players whether they came from a lower team or outside the club.

[Anonymous]

no, 8 amazing players will come out of nowhere to join your team.

[Anonymous]

This is where big clubs have an advantage. As the kids get older, the best players filter to the A Team, plus they get more of a pool of incoming players to pull to that team.

[Anonymous]

So you are encountering what others have talked about in the past in regards to kids playing on A/B/C teams. A few observations with clubs that have an actual plan:

- Developing players to understand the fundamentals of soccer and focus on development vs W/L from U8-U12.
- If done correctly, your top A team is now comprised of your A team + top half of B and your B team is now your remaining B + C teams.
- If you have competed well over the the 9v9 years, you would have attracted some attention from kids outside the club.
- Your players should be trained well and punt+run is not in their DNA which means the field isn't as big as it is for others.

[Anonymous]

There is no dilution compared to other teams since everyone faces the same issue.