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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Bethesda MLSNext teams are filled with giants but I think it's because they have so many to choose from. They are not clumsy giants. The kids we know are really smart, have amazing technical skills, and they are big and athletic.

Blue has any kids who are just as smart and skilled as those on the top teams but the kids are smaller. It's really noticeable if you ever see the teams practicing next to each other. It looks like two different age groups.[/quote]

Well, Bethesda Blue coach (who is arguably the best in region) won’t coach MLSNext - apparently doesn’t like all the travel - so is likely selecting those kids who don’t fit mould of what-works-for-American-football-will-work-for-American-soccer. (Ie big, fast, dumb) The best kept secret is Bethesda blue for development.

Biological marking - picking large kids and largely focusing on their development- is a problem in other countries but smaller countries like Israel account for it by allowing later blooming people to play down.  Quelle horrible.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7739788/[/quote]

MLS Next allows biobanding as well.  The UK popularized it; Oxlade-Chamberlain was biobanded when younger before going to Arsenal.[/quote]

What is "bio-banding" -- just extending the birth ranges a month or two in either direction so kids at the fringes of the age range could chose to play up/down? [/quote]

From US Soccer:

"Bio-banding is a method by which players are grouped together based on their maturity and biological age rather than their birth year. During the fall of 2019, U.S. Soccer’s Youth National Team sport scientists visited each of the participating clubs. There they measured the height and weight of each player alongside the biological height of their parents. This information was put into an algorithm that calculates the biological and maturational age of each player, allowing coaches to construct their rosters accordingly."

Some kids develop early, some are late bloomers. Birth year doesn't always correlate with this and you end up with a situation where the 'best' players, the players that get the most playing time, coaching, additional resources tend to be those born in the earlier months of the year.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-athletes-birthdays-affect-who-goes-pro-and-who-becomes-a-star/

"In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in the first quarter of their selection year — the cutoff for which age-group teams are picked, which is normally the school year — are overrepresented both in youth and professional sports. In soccer, players born in the first quarter of their selection year are overrepresented throughout major leagues in Europe and South America."
[/quote]

Interesting - thanks! Happy to know that more thought and effort are put into it behind just adding some wiggle room around the fringes based on birthday. It’s quite possible that a kid who wasn’t born late in the year is still late at maturing, and it sound like they’ve taken that into account.[/quote]

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