Reply to Landon Donovan was right

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[quote=Anonymous]Fund the top-level academies, as MLS clubs are doing now. Solicit sponsors to fund clubs in non-MLS areas. Turn ODP into a program that ensures kids in Idaho and Wyoming have a chance to make it.

(No, promotion/relegation won't magically mean a bunch of clubs pop up out of nowhere in the hopes that they'll produce three Christian Pulisics so they can pay the bills in an effort to advance from USL League Two to play MLS games in their crap high school stadium.)

Slash senior national team salaries, which are higher than our peer countries, to fund academies.

Keep rec soccer cheap.

Cut out everything else.

NCSL? EDP? Go completely rec. Don't pay coaches to prance around on the sidelines, looking to hop to another club as soon as they get the opportunity.

Hire *trainers* within clubs, sure. Let them work with as many kids as possible. Assemble All-Star teams twice a season to play in tournaments that are currently populated by "travel" teams. Other than that, let parents coach.

That's how you get rid of "pay to play."

That's how you avoid cutting kids at age 8 because their parents can't pay $3,000/year or because they hit a growth spurt just in time to look clumsy at a cattle-call U9 tryout. (I know a kid who had a growth spurt like that and didn't make "travel" at a big club at U9. He's signed to play D1 now. So what was the point of that tryout?)

Otherwise, Landon's just spitting into the wind. I don't blame him -- he's just now getting a first-hand view of the system from a parent's perspective. But it's going to take a major structural change to make anything happen.[/quote]

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