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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It may not be in the Academy setting.  If any scenario were on the table, I'd ship my 06B overseas in a heartbeat.  But my job is here and I'm not going to uproot my other kids to chase football glory in England or Portugal. We like our life here in the States even though it blows from a football perspective.  So we'll take our chances with the DA system and see where it gets him.[/quote]

The notion that things are so much better in "Europe" is incredibly overblown. The streets of every European city are littered with people brought in from Africa and elsewhere into an academy system in which only a handful of people actually make it.

It's simple math. A professional club may have 25-30 players on its first team. Its academy graduates maybe 20 players each year.

The really good academies will manage to sell most of those players to other professional clubs, usually farther down the ladder. You can spend six years at Chelsea and end up playing for MK Dons making less than you'd make in MLS. If you're in the MK Dons academy and don't make the first team (because all those Chelsea washouts took all the spots), you're hosed.

And actually, a considerable number of Euro academy grads see the writing on the wall and come over here ... to play college soccer!

Some countries are better than others at making sure academy players also go to school. Germany is traditionally very good. England is not. So if you wash out of your local pro club, you've got limited options going forward.

I wouldn't send an 06 kid to Europe unless he was going to Ajax or a similar academy with (A) a good track record of placing its players elsewhere if they don't make the senior roster AND (B) a good partnership with a local school. (Which, incidentally, a few MLS clubs are developing. See Philadelphia.)[/quote]

At U9, unless the coach is abusive I would just ride it out. Unless you have had other kids go through the process your expectations might be a tad on the naive side. I'm not saying there isn't a problem but a mid season change without knowing how you really hope to improve the situation is more disruptive. Instead, use the spring season to explore other clubs and contact coaches directly and have your son join practices. See how he likes the kids and coach. See if you like the coaching as well. This is also a better way to view a program before tryouts. Tryouts are about the worst way to evaluate a potential team as you don't really know what the team makeup actually is or how the coach actually coaches. [/quote]

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