Reply to ECNL moving to school year part 2

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would never recommend an MLS Next Academy to any player that genuinely wants to play professionally at a very high level (eg, La Liga, EPL, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, etc.).

I would focus 100% on developing your game individually and attending as many ID sessions (for Europe) and elite camps led and owned by the European clubs.

The coaches are bad, the evaluators are poor, and the way they play is horrific.  Plain and simple: our system is littered mostly with people that don’t know anything about the sport (or at least not at a high level).

If your focus is playing division 1 maybe that is okay.[/quote]

If you are posting stuff like this, why don’t you specify how to develop individually and which Euro ID sessions are authentic and not trying to make money off gullible US parents? It’s so unhelpful to say all coaching sucks in the U.S. without providing concrete, realistic advice. All the more unhelpful when you need dual passports to even make euro a possibility.

I don’t disagree that many clubs don’t know how to develop or coach but there are certainly a few clubs that can and have had success sending players off abroad or at least made them competitive once there.[/quote]

I am saying the vast majority of then are poor.  There are outstanding coaches and clubs, but they are a small minority, unfortunately.

There are several European clubs that host ID camps that seem to be good.  The best ones provide written feedback and evaluation to go along with a virtual session to go over the evaluation.  Some even have virtual sessions before the camps where they specifically tell the players what they’re looking for.

A very easy way to see if an ID camp is good is its track record of placing players in professional academies or first or second divisions.

I am familiar with one (Serie A Elite) that has placed multiple players at the professional level, but this only happened after the [b]players moved to Italy and spent a year or more training and playing matches there.  They offer full scholarships (inclusive of housing) to the top players, so the expenses the players have to cover is relatively low.[/quote[/b]]

And what would be even more helpful is sharing where these players who moved to Italy trained and played in the US.[/quote]

I only know these details of one player.  He was a goalkeeper that didn’t play ECNL or MLS Next.  Maybe the other good league for boys.  I really don’t know.

My son actually got a full scholarship offer to this Serie A program. He was supposed to start this coming January after he turns 15.  The education is poor in our opinion, so we declined it.

At his ID camp there were a lot of MLS Next players.  The MLS Next players we know did not get scholarship offers.[/quote]

Congrats for your kid for that offer. But again, more helpful if you shared the sort of training and development your child did.

[/quote]

I would say a few things:

1. Absolutely 100% ball mastery training until technique becomes second nature.

When he was 9-11 years old he would train at home (no socks, inside the house) in small spaces and get 1,500 to 2,500 touches per session.  Each session maybe 45 - 60 minutes.  Nothing but basic ball manipulation.  Lots of resources on YouTube.

We used to play a game called “how’s your touch?” where I would kick the ball hard at him and his job was to control it in front of him.  He developed a superb touch.

We used to have him do one or two touch passes of 15-20 meters a few hundred times per training session.  We would measure his accuracy (first it was how many were to to my feet, then how many were to my right foot or left foot, etc).  Both legs.

Passing against the wall with both legs.  One touch passing eventually, but started with two touches.

Juggling, juggling, and more juggling.  Once he could get to 500 reps in a row, he started focusing on doing tricks.  His control of long balls became absolutely outstanding.  The last time he tried to max out his juggling reps he got to around 800.

2.  “Street ball” and futsal.  When he was little, he played futsal once per week for a couple of years.  Made his speed of play very fast. He played 5 v 5 or 6 v 6 during lunch and recess at school - maybe 20 minutes per day.  No fouls.  Just play.  Made him unpredictable.  Also made him better protect the ball with his body.

3.  Watching matches on television.  He is a big Barca fan.  Watches every game.  His decision making and vision has improved significantly since he started watching lots of games a couple of years ago.

I just got back from his training.  Absolutely cooked his teammates with his dribbling and passing (vision).

It all comes from his ball mastery.  He can make the ball do what he wants.[/quote]

So where does he play now?[/quote]

ECNL RL at one of the top clubs in Texas.  Born December 2010.

Next month he is going to train for one week at the academy of one of the top clubs in Europe.  He was identified via one of their summer camps in the U.S.

Going back to what I was saying earlier about coaches and organizations in the US not being good at evaluating players, his back up just went to MLS Next.[/quote]

Good for him. There are MLSNext and other non-MLSNext clubs who have reputations for development, mostly due to certain coaches. So I generally don’t like generalizing the abilities of players based on the league they play. And I find the MLSNext v ECNL debate so annoying.

The reality is the best players find the environment and training that suits what they need to get ahead, and I would say the best places to do this is where you are getting both the attention/support and the training/development (regardless of what league the kids play).

You sound like you work a lot with your kids development and that’s not something many families have the time or knowledge to do so for those who are not on the traditional environment, that is a huge factor.

[/quote]

I agree 100%.  Leagues (and even levels within leagues) don’t necessarily tell you a whole lot about an individual player.  When I hear a kid is MLS Next and ECNL NL, I don’t necessarily assume they’re better than a kid in a different league.  The evaluation should be individual.

The ECNL vs MLSN debate is meaningless.  Individual clubs matter more, and individual coaches matter even more.  And the thing that matters even more than both of those things is a kid’s hunger, work ethic, and character.

My kid developed A LOT technically during the pandemic.  Just spent a lot of time with the ball for a year and a half to two years.

The other thing that I believe has helped him were the additional team trainings with his school.  He would train 1.5 hours with his school team and then go train another 1.5 hours with his club on the same day.  A lot of boys skipped one or the other - they couldn’t train twice in one day.  He did this 6th to 8th grade and is now doing it on his varsity team as a freshman.  These extra team training sessions help a lot.

One other really important thing is he has played all over the pitch.  Full back (both sides), center mid, CAM, winger (both sides), and a little bit left center back (he is left footed).  Started in each of those positions and done well in all of them.  I believe this has helped him develop game intelligence.[/quote]

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