Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Timbers Academy Rated One of MLS's Worst

Collapse
X
  •  
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
    Culture matters. It starts with brand building across your team, your parents and your community.
    Spot on. Academies are a chance to show what you stand for. Globally, academies can be important vehicles for ingraining your culture into a community. They can help define what it means to be a "club".

    Too often I think Timbers looks at the player pool in Oregon and say "this isn't worth investing in". I think that's incredibly shortsighted. If your Timbers are going to be around for another 40+ years, the way you make change is to start building a culture of excellence from the ground up.

    Comment


      Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
      Hiring international players is an option, but only one of many to secure a strong first team. The point of this discussion is to ascertain why the Timbers Academy is not developing more talented players? It is clear they have a road block at the top of their marketing team preventing the basics of building two brands side by side, the Timbers and the Timbers Academy, same issue for Thorns and Thorns Academy. Culture matters. It starts with brand building across your team, your parents and your community.

      The TA organization, presumably they are fearful of brand confusion, is 10000000% missing the boat on building the brand and culture of their academies. This in turn affects everything about those academies from opportunities appearing for the kids, to parent, kids, coach pride, to kids wanting to put in those “famed” extra training hours you mention above, to performance for the organization. A well thought out brand, makes goal setting more clear and public and accountable.

      Check out other academies across the US for girls or boys. They have a strong social media presence with Academy, parent and kid user created content being added much more frequently. The culture is clear through day to day posts about their goals that week, that month. There is much more pride seeping out of their organizations and they are leading strong with their club and Academy brand having their own website celebrating successes, offering training videos for their kids, interviews with their older successful kids who may have been invited to national team camps or some other soccer leadership experiences, so they can role model for younger kids in the academy.

      The TA’s approach to embedding anything Academy into a link on the first team’s website is not building a brand. It is unbelievably embarrassing. For a marketing team that is clearly strong for their first teams, the fact that they are building no brand or culture for their academies is also shocking. The Thorns Academy links on google can still take you to a page that says Tobin Heath is helping the academy girls program and yet I heard from a friend who has a girl on the team that in two years they have never seen her. Nothing is up to date, no brand is being built, no pride to drive Academy directors or academy coaches. This stuff matters.

      I know there are committed academy coaches, but even they feel they are a bastard step child to the first teams. **** or get off the pot TA and stay building well thought out academy club brands. Every one affiliated will feel the affects and this will drive accountability to perform.
      Really? So the problem with the Timbers DA is branding? And building the right soccer culture is about social media? And they can fix all of this with a better website?

      Ha ha ha!

      Comment


        Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
        Hiring international players is an option, but only one of many to secure a strong first team. The point of this discussion is to ascertain why the Timbers Academy is not developing more talented players? It is clear they have a road block at the top of their marketing team preventing the basics of building two brands side by side, the Timbers and the Timbers Academy, same issue for Thorns and Thorns Academy. Culture matters. It starts with brand building across your team, your parents and your community.

        The TA organization, presumably they are fearful of brand confusion, is 10000000% missing the boat on building the brand and culture of their academies. This in turn affects everything about those academies from opportunities appearing for the kids, to parent, kids, coach pride, to kids wanting to put in those “famed” extra training hours you mention above, to performance for the organization. A well thought out brand, makes goal setting more clear and public and accountable.

        Check out other academies across the US for girls or boys. They have a strong social media presence with Academy, parent and kid user created content being added much more frequently. The culture is clear through day to day posts about their goals that week, that month. There is much more pride seeping out of their organizations and they are leading strong with their club and Academy brand having their own website celebrating successes, offering training videos for their kids, interviews with their older successful kids who may have been invited to national team camps or some other soccer leadership experiences, so they can role model for younger kids in the academy.

        The TA’s approach to embedding anything Academy into a link on the first team’s website is not building a brand. It is unbelievably embarrassing. For a marketing team that is clearly strong for their first teams, the fact that they are building no brand or culture for their academies is also shocking. The Thorns Academy links on google can still take you to a page that says Tobin Heath is helping the academy girls program and yet I heard from a friend who has a girl on the team that in two years they have never seen her. Nothing is up to date, no brand is being built, no pride to drive Academy directors or academy coaches. This stuff matters.

        I know there are committed academy coaches, but even they feel they are a bastard step child to the first teams. **** or get off the pot TA and stay building well thought out academy club brands. Every one affiliated will feel the affects and this will drive accountability to perform.
        All of what you mentioned would be great but lets not look past all the failures of the current co Directors. THey are unaproachable, unaware, and uninterested. They are the reason the academy is a current failure! They need to go! Nothing can be fixed with them in place. Dont let them convince you the issues are further up the ladder. THe teams are not well coached and unprepared almost everyweek. THey lose to teams that are far less talented and far more organised. That should never happen

        Comment


          Season so far

          Proof is in the pudding

          Girls DA U-15 through the U19 age group

          6-19-6

          Boys DA U-15 through the U19 age group

          4-16-2

          Combined

          10-35-8

          Records are not everything, that is for sure but it is a measurement. Probably the best measurement is actual local home grown players, that would be the best measurement and goal.

          Comment


            The TA is not producing players because the TA is nothing but the same coaches under a different name..... oh and with a fancy patch.

            Comment


              As expected...the Timber Way is not good enough

              MLS Timbers looked like their Academy teams tonight. Ask for more....expect more.

              Comment


                maybe

                maybe tonight the MLS Timbers were not good enough to beat Atlanta United but overall the season was a great success making it all the way to the MLS finals.

                Nice job.

                Comment


                  Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                  maybe tonight the MLS Timbers were not good enough to beat Atlanta United but overall the season was a great success making it all the way to the MLS finals.

                  Nice job.
                  Tonight showed the difference between what is considered good soccer in PDX, and the rest of the world. Oof.

                  Comment


                    Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                    Tonight showed the difference between what is considered good soccer in PDX, and the rest of the world. Oof.
                    Come now. Any team in the Prem, and half of the teams in the Championship, would smoke Atlanta United. They aren't exempt from the sorry state of American soccer.

                    And neither team's academy had an impact on the game, though Atlanta had some impressive prospects in the pipe (Carleton, Bello). https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&sour...44418885717405

                    Comment


                      THe difference between the First Team and the Academy is the first team coach did a great job in his first year getting the most out of what he had to work with.

                      While the co Directors at the Academy get nothing from all the players they have. None of the players would choose to play for these two men if there was another choice in town. Players from out of state quit and an incredible rate. THese two coaches need to go. THe Academy would be far better off with anyone other then these tow. Hey are uninterested, unapproachable, and have shown they dont care. Get rid of them.

                      Comment


                        Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                        THe difference between the First Team and the Academy is the first team coach did a great job in his first year getting the most out of what he had to work with.

                        While the co Directors at the Academy get nothing from all the players they have. None of the players would choose to play for these two men if there was another choice in town. Players from out of state quit and an incredible rate. THese two coaches need to go. THe Academy would be far better off with anyone other then these tow. Hey are uninterested, unapproachable, and have shown they dont care. Get rid of them.
                        Will be interesting to see how Gio Savarese does things in his first full off-season as Timbers head coach. Last year he came in too late to worry about anything other then getting the first team ready, and Caleb (who?) Porter kinda left a mess.

                        The other interesting thing will be if MP changes his (financial) attitude to the academy. Arthur Blank, the owner of both Atlanta's football teams (pointy and round), has spent a lot of $$$ building FC Atlanta quickly, both in terms of importing top talent and in terms of building up a top-notch soccer academy. Of course, he has a large market, a 70,000 seat stadium that he can sell out, and a talent-rich area from which to draw players, so he can do so and not go out of business. On the other hand, the Timbers could vastly improve the quality of operations in ways that won't cost MP a lot of money.

                        As for "uninterested and unapproachable"--the former is a problem if true, but anyone complaining about the latter doesn't understand the nature of a pro sports academy. TA is not a neighborhood youth club that needs to stay in the good graces of mom and dad. They answer to the team (not sure if Mike Smith reports to Gio or to Gavin directly). Perhaps the team is not providing them with suitable instructions or supervision--but again, Gio now has an entire offseason to build the team he wants, and that certainly ought to include the youth academy. Given that he was with the Cosmos, and in the shadow of the Red Bulls, he certainly has seen a top youth academy up close and personal.

                        Comment


                          Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                          Will be interesting to see how Gio Savarese does things in his first full off-season as Timbers head coach. Last year he came in too late to worry about anything other then getting the first team ready, and Caleb (who?) Porter kinda left a mess.

                          The other interesting thing will be if MP changes his (financial) attitude to the academy. Arthur Blank, the owner of both Atlanta's football teams (pointy and round), has spent a lot of $$$ building FC Atlanta quickly, both in terms of importing top talent and in terms of building up a top-notch soccer academy. Of course, he has a large market, a 70,000 seat stadium that he can sell out, and a talent-rich area from which to draw players, so he can do so and not go out of business. On the other hand, the Timbers could vastly improve the quality of operations in ways that won't cost MP a lot of money.

                          As for "uninterested and unapproachable"--the former is a problem if true, but anyone complaining about the latter doesn't understand the nature of a pro sports academy. TA is not a neighborhood youth club that needs to stay in the good graces of mom and dad. They answer to the team (not sure if Mike Smith reports to Gio or to Gavin directly). Perhaps the team is not providing them with suitable instructions or supervision--but again, Gio now has an entire offseason to build the team he wants, and that certainly ought to include the youth academy. Given that he was with the Cosmos, and in the shadow of the Red Bulls, he certainly has seen a top youth academy up close and personal.
                          When I refer to unappraochable that is not by parents. At this level it is player to coach. THese Directors are unapproachable dor the players and the Directors want it that way. THey are not accoutable to anyone. They dont want to have conversations with players. THey dont care to spend time with the players. They want to do the bare minimum and go home. THey are terrible. Dont let them off the hook. They need to go NOW!

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                            When I refer to unappraochable that is not by parents. At this level it is player to coach. THese Directors are unapproachable dor the players and the Directors want it that way. THey are not accoutable to anyone. They dont want to have conversations with players. THey dont care to spend time with the players. They want to do the bare minimum and go home. THey are terrible. Dont let them off the hook. They need to go NOW!
                            And you know this how?

                            Comment


                              Not the original commenter, but this isn't exactly news.

                              Comment


                                I can almost assure you the owner and head coach don’t give any thought at all to the kiddie soccer programs. Yes they are required to have an acad but nobody cares. They have real business to take care of. The kiddie daycare programs are of no concern.

                                Comment

                                Previously entered content was automatically saved. Restore or Discard.
                                Auto-Saved
                                x
                                Insert: Thumbnail Small Medium Large Fullsize Remove  
                                x
                                Working...
                                X