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[quote=Anonymous]Great thread this. A few random thoughts, responding to various earlier messages. Bethesda 04 DA had the best record among the U14s in this area in the DA league last season, with Loudoun following slightly behind. Both these teams had terrific games against the Red Bulls and Union. Only 2 Bethesda players occasionally played "up" for the 03s, to fill gaps in certain positions in that team, which means that the 04s mostly played together, and almost of them will return to U15 so that the core of the team will be essentially unchanged this year. Noone has jumped to DC United, partly because of the driving to Loudon factor and because this is a good group of kids at Bethesda.

DC United U14 had an up-and-down season, but had the most call-ups to sub-regional and national camps. They had 6 to the eastern sub-regional camp that preceded the last YNT pool. Bethesda sent 2 to the sub-regional camp, Arlington, Baltimore, VDA sent 1 or 2 each, Loudon had none! No call-ups to the U15 national team pools for any team other than United. Maybe the scouts see something different, but most of who have seen these teams through the year would agree that DC United seems to have a disproportionate advantage in terms of player call-ups. This may have partly to do with the MLS teams "showing" more as they get to play MLS academy-only tournaments (MLS combine, the recent ICC Futures cup) where other academies aren't invited.

That said, several non-MLS DA players do make it to various YNT pools (e.g. PDA and Bethesda in the east, Sockers in Chicago). The U15 YNT pool is quite large and rotates among many players, which is a good practice. In the sub-Regional camp, there were a few non-DA players from clubs like Virginia Beach (an area where the nearest DA club is in Richmond). The regional training centers (the first layer of national player ID efforts) usually call players from several local non-DA clubs as well. So there seems to be some attempt to improve the reach of scouting. The MLS-preference, even though it's not total, is quite strange though and easy to fix. In a country as big as the US, it is silly to not cast the net for talent as widely as possible at age 14/15, through a player ID process that is fair and also smart (i.e. trying to identify raw talent and late bloomers). After all, Chicago Sockers were one of the best (if not the best) U14 DA teams in the country last year, and that's a non-MLS team.[/quote]

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