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80% of Boys Academy players are privately trained by academy staff...

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    Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
    Exactly the problem, they should care and look to develop local talent- the 05 age group has a big enough group of talent that they could compete on a national level if politics were left out of it...
    How should the team be chosen, then?

    * By Academy staff
    * By Academy staff, subject to strict performance expectations ("win/develop players, or you're fired!")
    * By Academy staff, with a strict prohibition on staff offering personal training to prospects?
    * By a committee of local club coaches?

    Politics are always going to be involved, but "politics" also often means "it's not fair, my snowflake wasn't chosen".

    And if kids who should go aren't signing up, it's hard to blame them for picking who is left. Gotta form a team...

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      Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
      How should the team be chosen, then?

      * By Academy staff
      * By Academy staff, subject to strict performance expectations ("win/develop players, or you're fired!")
      * By Academy staff, with a strict prohibition on staff offering personal training to prospects?
      * By a committee of local club coaches?

      Politics are always going to be involved, but "politics" also often means "it's not fair, my snowflake wasn't chosen".

      And if kids who should go aren't signing up, it's hard to blame them for picking who is left. Gotta form a team...
      If they want to strive to truly make this the top team in the state the player pool should consist of nominees from local club coaches, and where academy coaches can be invited out to evaluate players in their regular club settings and in regular club season games. They could also offer a two or three day camp with day one including an open tryout. Kids nominated by coaches should have to show up at open tryout day as well (unlike this current year where preselected kids were told not to attend the open tryout). Open tryouts are critical for any outliers that were not preselected and they should be assessed on the field alongside top players.
      Timbers need to eliminate conflicts of interest regarding personal training of potential players by academy staff. Additionally parents should not be allowed to subsidize the coaching salaries in any way. No more buying your kid a spot on the team. That poisons the well.

      Comment


        The poster who commented about all the clubs pushing to get their best players into the academy has it right. The clubs don't have an incentive to move someone on because that might be losing a fee. Even if the clubs pushed to move players on there's not enough turnover in the academy primarily because it's treated just like making another club team. Once in, you're in. It was that way with ODP too back when ODP used to matter. Rather than having tryouts as yet another money grab, the DA staff should be talking to club coaches, watching players, having those players come in for training for a week or two. It's usually fairly evident when a top player comes in to train. The parents might not know, but the other players do and the good coaches do as well.

        Comment


          Even if all politics were 100% eliminated, the TA would still be lucky to retain the top 5 players in each age group. They may keep them early when they are younger for a bit when the excitement is still there for child and parents. But it is simply too much of a grind. The top players can play college ball without the academy, and also have a normal teenage life. As it stands right now, there are club teams in the metro area that can hang with, even beat the academy teams. There's just not enough incentive to stay for most. That's been my experience. And I'm not sure quite how to fix it. I think we might have stayed if we could have found a happy medium with soccer life balance. But that is not possible. And like I said, top boys can play college soccer anyway through other means that have the soccer life balance.

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