Reply to MLS announces expansion to its Elite Youth Development Platform

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[quote=Anonymous]Follow up article says not all clubs will participate in all age groups, and there is an emphasis on clubs who are focused on the pre-high school years.  https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020/08/04/what-mls-elite-youth-development-platforms-first-wave-expansion-means-charles-boehm.

As I understand it, are two tiers in the MLS Academy League: "Professional Development Platform" with all the MLS teams, and the "Elite Youth Development Platform" for everyone else.      The PDP will only have U15, U17, U19 age groups, while the EYDP will have all age groups from U13-U19 (including U16 & U18).  The plan was for the MLS teams to mostly play each other, with a few local games sprinkled in, but I'm sure that's been modified in the short term to cut down on travel.

One thing's for sure is that none of the local clubs could have gotten in without DCU's approval.  Alexandria makes sense b/c several of their players have moved on to DCU teams over the years, and there has always been a good relationship between the coaching staffs.   DCU likes the way ASA trains at the younger ages, and even more so the fact that they encourage and support their players to move to DCU if that's an option, rather than trying to hold on to them.  The same was not true of all of the clubs in DCU's  former "P2P" program.    Achilles is a bit of head scratcher for me b/c that's the club a bunch of DCU's former '07s jumped ship to when they got all pissed off during their U12 year.  My only guess is DC wanted at least some sort of recruiting base on the MD side and none of the other clubs with decent boys teams were up for it.  As for SYC, that seems surprising too at first but I guess if you are looking for a team in NoVA with reasonably strong boys teams that is not already committed to the ECNL, they're a logical choice.        [/quote]

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