Reply to New League: National Academy League

Forum Index » Soccer

Reply to "New League: National Academy League"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=TedLasso][quote=CleansheetDad][quote=westsidesoccer]

Thank you.  This is very interesting.  I am shocked to see almost no difference between ECNL and National PRO on the boys side relative to MLS Next.  Though not too surprised.  As a player parent, I don't see any point in discussing leagues across genders, or, more generally, across pretty diverse regions and all age groups.  The fact that ECNL offers top play for young women is completely irrelevant to my son.
[/quote]

You may think it is irrelevant to your son that ECNL allows for top play for both girls and boys, but you would by wrong. Clubs must have both their boys and girls teams in the ECNL National league to be a member. This is one reason why Arlington is in ECNL and not in MLSNext. This allows ECNL to give a more sustainable model for clubs to market themselves and to make money. Boys and girls teams support each other. They allow clubs to pay coaches and give more scholarships to both sides. If you have a club that can only REALLY market itself for high level play to the boy segment of the population, then the club will need to have a large number of lower level teams with players that pay full amounts to support the MLSNext team expenses, along with the scholarships for that team. And I do feel sorry for those parents who have been sold on development for their children, when in fact all they are is a paying parent.

As a player parent, who has seen alphabet leagues rise and fall, or come and go (the old DA league comes to mind), I think MLSNext is just the old DA league with a new name. This affects the boys on the second teams when a league folds and then your club is trying to find a league to play in the next season. Many of these teams that are going into the National Academy League are currently in EDP, before that they were in CCL, and before that they were in NCLS. There really isn't much difference and ultimately, in a couple of years these same teams will be in another league so the MLSNext clubs can try to market themselves.

Go Luck to the teams that are joining the new league. Don't get too comfortable or buy anything with NAL on it as it will be obsolete in about 2 years time.[/quote]

I thought the same thing and then discovered Baltimore Celtic fields a GA team and a boys ECNL national team.  So is it really in their rules or what happened with that club?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics