SoccerQs wrote:Well, the concern is coming from a Sports Medicine specialist, so I feel like I have to take it seriously.

The injury is to his wrist, he's a GK so his wrists are probably more at risk than for players who play other positions.

(Parent of two GKs here...) There is nothing wrong with taking a chunk of the summer off from handling the ball. You won't "lose it" that fast, and everyone is a little rusty when they come back in August. However, this may be the perfect time for him to work on his feet. If he wants to play at a high level, he needs to be good with his distribution and touch (both feet). And most GKs under-train this aspect of their game. So use the summer for that. (And work on some hand-eye coordination stuff -- learn to juggle tennis balls or something low impact on his hands/wrists.)

When he comes back, make sure to tape his wrists every time he trains with his hands. Use pre-wrap and athletic tape (J&J Coach tape tears well) just like a wristband right below his hand (there are YouTube videos or ask a trainer or your sports medicine dude).

I would argue strongly for staying with the "better" team on the bigger club. The most important driver of progress for young players is *who you train with* not how much playing time you get in games. Training with better players makes you better, and makes you want to get better still -- a virtuous cycle. Training is better and more focused with better players; so everyone gets better faster.

All of these cycles work in reverse with lesser players. It's not that fun to be the best player on a not-as-good team. You get frustrated with your teammates -- should I pass that guy the ball, or will he fumble it out of bounds? So you develop bad habits like over-dribbling that won't fly on better teams later on.

This advice is even more true for younger players (like U10/11) because they can improve so much so quickly. At these ages the point is to get better, not play the most minutes. So I say play on the best team that will have you and then work to keep up with and maybe eventually pass your teammates.

bdubmd wrote:This is all super helpful. My son wants to be a professional soccer player and at the very least play in college.

If this is true, you need to take action ASAP. He's not remotely on a track for doing either of those things, but there is still time. You need to move to a larger club that has spectrum of teams, so he has the ability to move up over a season or two (e.g. Bethesda, Arlington). He probably won't make the top team the first year, but that's ok. Next, he needs to supplement official practices with ball work on his own (or with an outside coach). Juggling, dribbling, first touch, both feet -- it almost doesn't matter what it is if he's got the ball on his feet. Also, watch real soccer: watch Premier League, but also college soccer or your club's top U15 team. He needs to see the level required to get where he wants to go (and learn some tactical stuff by watching better players who are already good technicians). To reiterate, technical skills on the ball is 80% of what will determine his path over the next few years. Focus relentlessly on that.

By U12, or at least U13, he needs to be playing for the top ("academy") team on one of those bigger clubs. After that, it's harder and harder to break in to the top teams; but at U12-U13 there's still a lot of movement. Ultimately, only that top team is sending anyone to D1 soccer, probably even D3. And only the top 2-3 players on that top team have a shot at becoming a pro, probably by switching to a professional academy by U15.

Obviously, his priorities might change over time, which is fine. But if he wants to be a pro or play in college, you've got to change the trajectory right away. I didn't know a lot of this stuff for my older son, but my younger son has benefitted as we learned from our mistakes.

bdubmd wrote:My 10 year old son's MSI Classic team almost exclusively scrimmage during practice. Virtually no drills, no instruction. He loves his friends on the team and loves to play but he's definitely not learning anything new. I'm not sure if we should supplement with individual coaching or find a new team.

Is this normal? What are your kids doing in practice?

It maybe normal, but it is not good for development. Scrimmages, or more likely scrimmage-like drills, have a place. But especially for younger age groups, and especially if they practice only a couple times a week, most of their time should be on technical development. That doesn't just mean solo dribbling and touch, but passing, moving, receiving, defending, etc. As they get older, this can expand to more tactical development; but a lot of that is just more complex drills (which may increasingly look more like scrimmages).

But if your son's practices are mostly just unstructured scrimmages, that's really just recess or recreation -- which are fine if that's what you want. But it's not soccer training. And it's a sign that the coach either doesn't know what they are doing, or doesn't care that much.

Size5Balls wrote:Fixed that for you. Ever see the starting 11 on an MLS team? Not many Americans.

This is silly. If anything, the trend is toward more American players in MLS as the sport gets more popular and the academy system more mature.

I just looked at one game -- DC United's most recent game against NE Revolution -- to sanity check this. For DCU, 6 of 11 starters, and 3 of 5 subs, are American (including several homegrown from the DCU academy). For New England, it was 8 of 11 starters and all 4 subs. So that's 21 Americans out of the 31 players in the game. That's a lot!

Now, maybe this is an anomaly, but my impression is that the academy system is producing more and more (American) MLS players, and the new MLS Next Pro league will only increase this. So don't tell your kids it is impossible! Becoming a pro in the US is more viable now than ever before if you're good enough.

Cruzado wrote:
Sure, playing for one of the MLS academy teams (e.g. DC United) is the best place to be in order to make it to the MLS / Next Pro.

I would guess, however, that playing for one of the non-MLS academy teams in the MLS Next youth league (e.g. Bethesda or Alexandria) is the next best place to be---it's where a non-MLS academy player will get the most visibility to the MLS academy.

You'd think, but not really. With the current schedule, DC United's U15 and U17 academy teams play Bethesda and Alexandria exactly once each in a 10-month season. Yes, that is more than zero times, but not what you were probably thinking. No one from Alexandria's team is going to get an MLS Next Pro offer based on that one game a year.

anonimouswon wrote:MLSNext is mainly for players looking to go pro especially with MLS creating the MLSNext Pro league which provides a full path to MLS. This doesn't mean colleges don't recruit from MLS Next teams, they do, but traditionally Academy (now MLS Next) is where you want to be to play at the highest level.

This is not really true. Non-MLS academies that play in the MLS Next youth league (think Bethesda or Armour) don't put you any closer to playing in the new MLS Next Pro league, which is essentially a league made up of the reserve teams of full MLS teams. The similar names of the leagues, and their marketing, make it seem this way; but it is not so. If you want to make the reserve team of an MLS side, you need to be on the MLS team's academy (think DC United or Phil Union), not a different academy in the same league. There may be a tiny handful of exceptions, but they are just that.

If you want to play at a D1 school, play for a club that sends a lot of boys to D1 schools, and be one of the better players on that team. Some of these are in MLS Next (again, Bethesda or Armour) and some are in ECNL (Arlington, Celtic). Other clubs in each league don't have the same track record of sending kids to D1 programs. Look at their web sites or social media. It's more about the clubs than the league.

SoccerCzar wrote:This is how I see it. The top Clubs are the MLS Academies ... Under them are the MLS Next teams ... Right under them is ECNL ... The next level is EDP D1...

This is basically correct, although there are significant variations within those levels, and some overlap. Bethesda and Armour are generally better MLSNext clubs than the other DMV options at this point. Arlington is a better ECNL club than many others, etc; and Arlington might be better than some of the MLSNext clubs nearby. You can look at which clubs are sending players along to MLS academies like DC United, and which are sending players on to D1 schools to tease this difference out.

In general, "better competition" is the gravity that attracts better players and better coaches, which creates a virtuous cycle over time. So expect the gap between MLSNext and ECNL to grow, not shrink, as time goes on.

The short answer is "no." To my knowledge there isn't anything like that around here. Even the barely-semi-pro teams aren't connected to a large youth club/academy. There are a couple exceptions around the country. For example, FC United in suburban Chicago is a large youth club and has a team in USL 2 (the 4th tier of US soccer; played over the summer, mostly by college players). But it's not like kids are growing up fans of the FC United USL2 team. And for the most part, top youth players in FC United are looking to either: a) play d1 college soccer; or b) move to an MLS academy like Chicago Fire to have a shot at being a pro.

There are some MLS clubs that have very large local "clubs". LA Galaxy and FC Dallas come to mind. But in both cases, I believe, they have essentially licensed their name/brand to a large local youth soccer club. It's not really that connected to their actual academy and is pay-to-play -- not that different than a Bethesda Soccer or Arlington Soccer around here; just with the MLS club's name.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Among them: pro soccer is just a much newer sport here than in Europe; it is much "thinner," meaning we are a huge country, almost as large as all of the EU, with maybe a tenth of the professional soccer teams/opportunities; the lack of opportunity at the top means it is generally a bad investment to pay for an academy designed to build players to sell; so we are left overwhelmingly with pay-to-play (with some scholarships), with a relative handful of pro (MLS) academies investing in players more like European clubs.

It will take a long time, and a lot of growth of pro soccer in the US for us to look anything like Europe in this regard.