Anonymous wrote:And I still stand by my original statement that rankings are goofy. Yes, I do check a rival teams game history at a tournament. Most of us do. It’s useful for that. But when my kids team consistently beats the #1 team in PA, the #3 team in the nation.....so forth and so on....I know it’s BS.

Being the top team in a state doesn't necessarily mean all that much. What was the difference in ranking? I'm very surprised if your kid's team consistently beats the #3 team in the nation ranked by YSR (Gotsoccer is different). A team getting consistently beaten by anyone is not the #3 team in the nation. Even one loss would knock them off that spot.

For example I just picked U14 boys at random. Here are the top 6 teams last losses:

Rank Last loss
1 Nov 19
2 Oct 19
3 Oct 20 (and then Jan 19 before that)
4 Mar 21 (and then Mar 20 before that)
5 Nov 20 (and then Oct 19 before that)
6 Jan 20 (and Sep 19 before that)

None of them have more than one loss in an entire year and three of them haven't lost in over a year.

And I still stand by my original statement that rankings are goofy. Yes, I do check a rival teams game history at a tournament. Most of us do. It’s useful for that. But when my kids team consistently beats the #1 team in PA, the #3 team in the nation.....so forth and so on....I know it’s BS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

By the way, my kids participation trophy was a ride to a power 5. So save with the rah rah.

LOL, yet your still on a DCUM Youth Soccer forum. Got it.

Lol, yeah. Because sometimes people reproduce several offspring. Got it?

Anonymous wrote:Paying attention and really caring about youth soccer rankings is one of many reasons why we are so screwed up. It's all about being able to brag how your little one is on a #X ranked team in the state. Are they a good fit on the team and coach? Are they getting playing time and properly developing or barely hanging on and playing 10 minutes a game? Is the coach all about making sure they stay top 5 in the state and keeps players in the same position all game/all year at Ulittle (winning over development)? The drive to ensure wins and positive social media posts is usually done at the detriment of developing players.

I completely agree! People put their kids in tough spots at younger ages chasing the best team when it may be a bad fit for a number of reasons. They don't care though, they get something to brag about with others. We had two kids leave our team 3 years ago for a "top team" that was known to be pretty toxic. That team destroyed us for the next two years, but we kept developing and beat them twice in the fall, which was awesome. We are still friends with one of the parents that left and they told us it has been a nightmare, so be careful for what you chase.

Anonymous wrote:Paying attention and really caring about youth soccer rankings is one of many reasons why we are so screwed up. It's all about being able to brag how your little one is on a #X ranked team in the state. Are they a good fit on the team and coach? Are they getting playing time and properly developing or barely hanging on and playing 10 minutes a game? Is the coach all about making sure they stay top 5 in the state and keeps players in the same position all game/all year at Ulittle (winning over development)? The drive to ensure wins and positive social media posts is usually done at the detriment of developing players.

Only ones that really care are youngish. Later on, YSR is useful. With one easy click you can look at the game history of the team you are about to face and get some idea how competitive the match might be.

DW and I split up the soccer driving duties and I like to go watch the more competitive teams if possible.

Anonymous wrote:

By the way, my kids participation trophy was a ride to a power 5. So save with the rah rah.

LOL, yet your still on a DCUM Youth Soccer forum. Got it.

Paying attention and really caring about youth soccer rankings is one of many reasons why we are so screwed up. It's all about being able to brag how your little one is on a #X ranked team in the state. Are they a good fit on the team and coach? Are they getting playing time and properly developing or barely hanging on and playing 10 minutes a game? Is the coach all about making sure they stay top 5 in the state and keeps players in the same position all game/all year at Ulittle (winning over development)? The drive to ensure wins and positive social media posts is usually done at the detriment of developing players.

The top drawer stuff is behind a paywall, correct? if so, forget it. youth soccer has already drained my bank account enough! i will stick to YSR

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For older ages YSR needs more games to be more accurate because the demise of the GDA mixed up rosters and the with the pandemic cancellations, some teams in their new generations have not played that many competitive matches.
It may be better for younger ages.

But for rankings, YSR is generally a useful methodology and got soccer is not useful at all. Got soccer is only useful to look at some game history but that can be very incomplete.

Agree hat teams need 10+ games before the rankings start to approximate reality. So if a year like last year causes problems for any and all ranking systems. Still most teams in this area have played enough games by now.

What do you mean any and all? Are there others beyond got soccer and YSR? (nothing behind paywalls please)

For youth soccer - there's topdrawer (no better than got soccer though). But what I meant was that any algorithm would struggle to produce an accurate ranking system if the teams change signioficantly and then don't play many games. Under such circumstances, golf handicaps would not work either, nor would chess masters be ranked correctly, or tennis players, or bridge players etc. Basically - the situation you posited: teams change so all historical data is inaccurate and teams cannot play so no current data is generated, creates an insoluble problem for any ranking system imaginable.

But that is how YSR corrects itself. Yes, if last year's team X was amazing, then this year when they lose or don't be a team where by 2 or 3 when they are ranked 2 or 3 points higher, they go down (see red arrows). Over a few games, you'll see that red arrow often enough and their ranking goes down while others go up. It's take about 1/2 a season to generally correct itself. It is by far the best youth system, if a youth system was to have one at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For older ages YSR needs more games to be more accurate because the demise of the GDA mixed up rosters and the with the pandemic cancellations, some teams in their new generations have not played that many competitive matches.
It may be better for younger ages.

But for rankings, YSR is generally a useful methodology and got soccer is not useful at all. Got soccer is only useful to look at some game history but that can be very incomplete.

Agree hat teams need 10+ games before the rankings start to approximate reality. So if a year like last year causes problems for any and all ranking systems. Still most teams in this area have played enough games by now.

What do you mean any and all? Are there others beyond got soccer and YSR? (nothing behind paywalls please)

For youth soccer - there's topdrawer (no better than got soccer though). But what I meant was that any algorithm would struggle to produce an accurate ranking system if the teams change signioficantly and then don't play many games. Under such circumstances, golf handicaps would not work either, nor would chess masters be ranked correctly, or tennis players, or bridge players etc. Basically - the situation you posited: teams change so all historical data is inaccurate and teams cannot play so no current data is generated, creates an insoluble problem for any ranking system imaginable.

How are you people still posting? YSR is it. Stop arguing to argue.

OP: YSR. It'll allow best understanding of all games played. Period.

Rest: get back to bashing FCV and McLean on other posts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For older ages YSR needs more games to be more accurate because the demise of the GDA mixed up rosters and the with the pandemic cancellations, some teams in their new generations have not played that many competitive matches.
It may be better for younger ages.

But for rankings, YSR is generally a useful methodology and got soccer is not useful at all. Got soccer is only useful to look at some game history but that can be very incomplete.

Agree hat teams need 10+ games before the rankings start to approximate reality. So if a year like last year causes problems for any and all ranking systems. Still most teams in this area have played enough games by now.

What do you mean any and all? Are there others beyond got soccer and YSR? (nothing behind paywalls please)

Anonymous wrote:For older ages YSR needs more games to be more accurate because the demise of the GDA mixed up rosters and the with the pandemic cancellations, some teams in their new generations have not played that many competitive matches.
It may be better for younger ages.

But for rankings, YSR is generally a useful methodology and got soccer is not useful at all. Got soccer is only useful to look at some game history but that can be very incomplete.

Agree hat teams need 10+ games before the rankings start to approximate reality. So if a year like last year causes problems for any and all ranking systems. Still most teams in this area have played enough games by now.

For older ages YSR needs more games to be more accurate because the demise of the GDA mixed up rosters and the with the pandemic cancellations, some teams in their new generations have not played that many competitive matches.
It may be better for younger ages.

But for rankings, YSR is generally a useful methodology and got soccer is not useful at all. Got soccer is only useful to look at some game history but that can be very incomplete.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No
One
Should
Care
About
These
BS
Rankings

It
Get
You
Nothing

It’s
For
Ego

That's
Your
Opinion!

It's actually serves a purpose, like, making sure tournaments are fair. If not for rankings, kids egos would get hurt on top of parents egos because they lose every game 10-0. Quit being so narrow minded. Rankings have been around since the beginning of sports. The essence of sports is to compete, win and be #1.

I do hope you are enjoying your kids participation award though.

Narrow minded? Okay...fine....YOU tell me what rankings are used to determine your favorite tournament. I will then pull up the rankings and ask you how it compares to what you actually know. Fair?

So now I ask you. Give me a age group and tournament. Let’s do some imaginary seeding so I can show you it’s BS.

Time to put up or

Not the PP - but how can you show him it's BS? Let's take the Jefferson cup U16 tournament for example. What exactly are you going to show is BS?

I can’t speak on U16. I don’t know enough about it. Everything is age specific. However, I can tell you with my kids teams, from U9 and up, until this day, they were and are wrong. Gotsoccer being the worst.

You seem to know the U16 age group. Let’s discuss. Was it properly seeded? Did the teams live up to their rankings?

There were a lot of brackets and I really only bothered with the one my kid was in. I would say it was reasonably well seeded. I don't know what source they relied on to do the rankings though.

In my experience youthsoccerrankings is actually pretty good. When it predicts a blowout the game is usually a blowout. When it predicts a close game the game is usually close. I agree Gotsoccer and TopDrawerSoccer are useless.