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Yesterday's most active threads returned to a more familiar situation in which several were threads that I've already discussed and will skip today. That included the most active thread of the day, which was about the school shooting in Wisconsin. The next most active thread was titled, "GA & MLS NEXT Form Strategic Alliance" and posted in the "Soccer" forum. This thread was a bit of a challenge for me to decode due to the alphabet soup employed throughout the thread to identify various soccer-related entities. For those, like me, who do not speak "soccerese", I can translate the thread's title thusly: "Girls Academy and Major League Soccer NEXT Form Strategic Alliance". "Girls Academy" is a girls’ soccer league consisting of a nationwide network of girls’ travel soccer teams. "MLS NEXT" is a boys’ league that is associated with Major League Soccer that, if I understand correctly, is aimed at developing talent for the professional league. Based on my very rudimentary research into these two leagues, this does not appear to be the first time the two groups have announced an alliance. As such, many of the first responses were that this is not a big deal and is nothing new. You really have to have pretty arcane youth soccer knowledge — something that I lack —  to understand this thread. But what I think is behind the interest in the thread is the potential impact of this alliance on another soccer league. That league, Elite Clubs National League or ECNL, is currently the home of many Girls Academy clubs. Many of these same clubs apparently have MLS NEXT boys’ teams. As such, they may be caught between ECNL and MLS NEXT. There may also be clubs in the opposite situation who have Girls Academy teams and ECNL boys’ teams. The concern seems to be that ECNL may suffer as clubs switch to MLS NEXT. While many posters believe that this is a realistic concern, other posters scoff at the idea. One argument that I thought made sense — though, again, I really know nothing about this topic — is that Girls Academy and ECNL are focused on a development path that leads to college soccer teams, while MLS NEXT aims to develop professional talent. Right now, women's professional soccer is not all that attractive — at least according to some posters in this thread — and the emphasis on college is more appealing to girls. A thread about ECNL's plans to change the age cut-off for which teams players should join has been among the most active threads for months. That issue also comes up in this thread with some posters arguing that Girls Academy will not adopt the same changes and, therefore, will be more compatible with MLS Next. Or, maybe the opposite is true. I was repeatedly confused by the discussion in this thread, so I could very easily have things backwards. The bottom line appears to be that, in many cases, this announcement will change nothing. But, in other cases, clubs may have to make a tough decision, and there are strong arguments in favor of multiple choices for that decision.