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[quote=Anonymous][quote=RantingSoccerDad]It's impossible, even for individual teams, much less clubs as a whole.

Youth Soccer Rankings does a tremendous job gathering data, which isn't easy when a team may be listed as ELITE FC PANTHERS 2002 BOYS COACH NAME in its league and PANTHERS ELITE B02 in a tournament. But there are limitations. Youth Soccer Rankings does a far better job than GotSoccer at compiling non-GotSoccer events, but there's only so far you can go.

For one thing, it's not as if everyone plays each other. I started digging into the data and found that a rec team from Georgia had worked its way into the top 100 nationally because it clobbered all the other rec teams. (This was basically Georgia's equivalent of SFL, except that its standings and scores are compiled at the same site that compiles the state travel leagues.)

The value of Youth Soccer Rankings to me is simply research. I like to find out who plays in what leagues and what tournaments. (I'm thinking of offering a prize for the most ridiculous travel schedule in the country.) The rankings themselves should be taken with a grain of salt.

But again -- this is simply *teams*. And there's an inherent inaccuracy built into that. Good clubs are *supposed* to be moving players between teams on a regular basis. So when that ECNL team loses to an EDP team, is it because the EDP team was "better," or was the ECNL team giving some B-team players a shot? There's no way to find out unless you go calling coaches about every single relevant game. Good luck with that.

And *club* rankings are much more difficult. What are you ranking, anyway? How many games they win? How many players they develop? The latter is an interesting question, but then how many of those players did they develop from elementary school and onto college? Or how many did they simply recruit from a neighboring club so they could win a State Cup or compete in the latest elite tournament?

Loudoun and Arlington usually have very good A-teams. They're giant clubs with big talent pools and resources, and then top players gravitate toward them at later ages under the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy. Braddock Road impressively does more with less, in part because they just have that history. McLean has had a lot of success over the years. Across the river, Bethesda is a giant.

But those clubs also have teams all the way down through NCSL and sometimes ODSL. Do you include those teams in your rankings? Do you fault a club for offering a wide range of travel teams?

So to sum up -- it's pretty much impossible.

(And yet, I'm working on something in which I try to collect data on which clubs have developed the most pro players. In this area, it's really not that many, aside from the occasional Andi Sullivan or Olney Rangers.)[/quote]

Good post.  I'd be interested in seeing the data on pro players, though, as you note, it will be hard in many cases to say which club is mostly responsible for developing a particular player since many don't spend their entire career in one club.

There are interesting outside factors at play as well.  If, for example, you see that a boy has committed to play at Harvard instead of trying to go pro after HS or heading to a college program that has a history of producing pros (Maryland, Virginia, UNC, etc.).  Do you assume that player wasn't good enough to go pro since Harvard's teams are typically not strong and sports come second in most Ivy league schools?   In families that highly value education and/or college status (and I know a whole lot of people in that category), the parents may not encourage the pro dreams of someone who can instead parlay his talent into a top school acceptance.  And what about all the great talent in various Baltimore area clubs?  Maybe more would go pro if the kids didn't all (seemingly) want to stay as close to the Baltimore city limits as physically possible.[/quote]

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