The American sports system that develops world-class football, baseball and basketball players isn’t working as well for soccer.
While high schools and colleges across the United States provide a steady stream of professional-ready talent for the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball, soccer develops its players through a mish-mash of school and club training with the respective sides often at odds with each other.
Now, Major League Soccer has decided to take matters into its own hands by mandating that all of its franchises – including 2009 expansion entry Seattle Sounders FC – establish academies for elite high school-age players with the potential to develop into pros.
“The youth system in the United States is mainly based around the youth clubs that receive fees from parents, and the way that they sell themselves to parents is by showing the parents their trophy cabinet,” said Ivan Gazidis, MLS deputy commissioner.
“The implications of that are very far-reaching. It means that there is tremendous pressure in those clubs to participate in tournaments and to win trophies. And that means two things: One, it means the training-to-games ratio is low. They play a lot of games – too many games, and many games of questionable quality – and don’t do enough training. And secondly, the emphasis on winning means there is less emphasis on individual technical development.”
The implied failure of the current system could sound like a shot across the bow of soccer clubs such as the Tacoma area’s Washington Premier FC or the Seattle area’s Crossfire Premier FC.
However, as newcomers to the community, Sounders FC’s stated preference is to make allies, not enemies.
“What we wanted to do to begin with was partner with Washington Youth Soccer,” said Adrian Hanauer, Sounders FC general manager. “As opposed to choosing one particular club, we wanted to start at the state level and say, ‘Look, we want to be as agnostic as possible and we want to be partners with everyone.’ So, our intention is not to build a club that competes with other clubs around the state. The one area where there probably ultimately will be a little bit of crunchiness is we are required by MLS to run two academy teams: the U-18s and the U-16s, and the two clubs that have those teams are Crossfire and Washington Premier. We’re in conversations with them. We’re trying to work through that issue with the state, to step on as few toes as possible, collaborate as much as possible, do what’s best for the kids as much as possible, and ultimately do what’s best for our franchise in developing the best possible players.”
Those are a lot of currents to negotiate in the shallow waters of Puget Sound’s elite soccer talent pool. And for better or worse, the MLS youth-development mandates are vague. Beyond a demand for U-16 and U-18 premier teams, individual clubs are free to tailor their plans to their own situations.
“Looking at existing MLS youth systems – how they have affected their communities – may or may not be a good way of looking at it,” said Darren Sawatzky, director of youth development for Sounders FC. “We’re planning on doing it at a much bigger level. We developed a relationship with Washington State Soccer. … We want to work with everybody. All these clubs compete with each other, so if you choose to be aligned with one of them, you have the same problem you have in these other cities. … If we’re going to run teams in the (U.S. Soccer) academy, then we want the very best 20 players in those age groups. Will we go into Washington Premier and Crossfire and say, ‘We’re with you’? No. We’ll go to every single PDL club and say, ‘We’re with you.’ ”
Washington Premier, which sprouted from the combined resources of the South Sound’s F.C. Royals and F.C. United, is watching and listening with interest. An 800-pound gorilla may have just entered the room, so Washington Premier is waiting to see if he’s friendly.
“I can tell you that we’ve been cooperating or at least communicating with Lake Washington Crossfire, and we’ve also been communicating with Sounders FC,” said Reece Olney, Washington Premier FC’s director of soccer development. “You ask are we enemies or combatants or working together? I think the answer is we’d like to find a way to work cooperatively to service all of the elite players within the greater Puget Sound area.”
Olney said WPFC tries to balance the twin goals of winning as a club while developing players as individuals.
A primary goal is to create players who can go on to play in college, although some players have gone further. Olney cites Nik Besagno, who was the No. 1 draft pick in the 2005 MLS college draft; Ciaran O’Brien, the fifth overall pick in this year’s draft; and Elliot Morton, who has moved on to the national academy program and Seattle Pacific University.
The MLS academies also figure to improve players’ college stock, but the aim is higher: stocking this country’s professional league and its national team.
Under the league’s new rules, Sounders FC has incentive to develop players within its own youth system because they will hold first MLS signing rights to the players they develop.
That direct link to a professional future could give the Sounders’ academy an advantage over other premier clubs in the area.
However, another difference may prove to be even more significant: While clubs such as Washington Premier are ongoing businesses that can charge their participants thousands of dollars for training, the Sounders academy exists to serve the MLS team. Therefore, it will subsidize the players’ development as its own business expense – but carefully, so as not to risk players’ NCAA eligibility.
The combination of free soccer training plus a direct ladder to a professional club seems to give the MLS system advantages the existing local clubs cannot match. However that hasn’t been the proven case in some league cities, where long-established clubs have continued to lure their area’s best players.
No one yet knows how the system will play out in Western Washington, especially at this stage when Sounders FC is still working out details of how its academy will function.
However, the club knows it wants to team with the area’s best U-16 and U-18 players. And MLS hopes that similar academies in all of its markets will combine to lift not only the league but also this country’s position in the world community of soccer.
“I believe that there are a thousand players across the country – or perhaps hundreds of players, at least – that have as much potential as most of the 35 players that are (at the ultra-elite IMG Soccer Academy in Florida),” Gazidis said. “And our objective is to give opportunities to all of those players and to encourage and foster competition because we believe that it’s very difficult at the age of 17, 16, 15, to identify who is going to be the best player at age 24, 25, 26. The more we can open our doors, the wider we can cast our net, the better Major League Soccer will be; and ultimately, the better our U.S. national team will be.”
Don Ruiz: 253-597-8808
blogs.thenewstribune.com/soccer
