US soccer age change

[Guest]

How would that work? in 2025-26 u15 age group would be jan 1 2011 - july 31 2011? Aug 1 2011 - Dec 31 2011 stay down with U14? U15 age group would stink and many teams would fall apart. Am I missing something?

It’s just someone making stuff up. You’d end up with a 7 month age group of 2011s. Stupid.

[Guest]

It’s just someone making stuff up. You’d end up with a 7 month age group of 2011s. Stupid.

I think it depends on each governing body. I’ve also heard some leagues will implement this in over time and some leagues like ECNL will jump right into this next year.

Also it doesn’t sound like MLSN will be forced to change from birth year. They will just add additional bio banding players for local tournaments.

[Guest]

I think it depends on each governing body. I’ve also heard some leagues will implement this in over time and some leagues like ECNL will jump right into this next year.

Also it doesn’t sound like MLSN will be forced to change from birth year. They will just add additional bio banding players for local tournaments.

They don’t play any local tournaments, so that’s just something completely made up.

[Guest]

All of this is made up.

[Guest]

School age will only impact 14u and below. 15u and above will be by birth year with the formation on just 2 divisions. 15u-16u and 17u to 19u.

[Guest]

It’s just someone making stuff up. You’d end up with a 7 month age group of 2011s. Stupid.

Right, so instead of just ripping the band-aid off, we'll figure out how to make the switch as confusing as possible.

I suppose you could always do it this way, (eg, keep birth year for HS teams) but make eligible any players that are born after August 1 of the previous year.....

oh wait...

[Guest]

My guess is those really good teams will keep their rosters the same and maybe add young players from the age above to help their team

No club, especially ECNL or GA, will keep the teams together. They will move kids back to there new age groups and reform teams in an effort to keep as much money as possible in the club. Town teams and small clubs that don't have teams in every age may move up but even then you'll have parents that don't want their kid playing up the year.

[Guest]

No club, especially ECNL or GA, will keep the teams together. They will move kids back to there new age groups and reform teams in an effort to keep as much money as possible in the club. Town teams and small clubs that don't have teams in every age may move up but even then you'll have parents that don't want their kid playing up the year.

What is normal turnover year to year for an ECNL club? 10%? 20% at younger ages? so for one year, maybe that ticks up a little bit? No one will end up replacing half their roster unless they were planning on it anyway...

[Guest]

All of this is made up.

https://dpleague.org/birth-year/

Apparently DPL have been posting updates as to what is going on.

[Guest]

What is normal turnover year to year for an ECNL club? 10%? 20% at younger ages? so for one year, maybe that ticks up a little bit? No one will end up replacing half their roster unless they were planning on it anyway...

Turnover will be muted by players being switched from current team to the one an age lower. Think about it this way, if each team carries a minimum of 18 and potentially 1/2 (since you are now cutting the birth year in half for the new cut off ie Jan/Dec to a new Jan/July as Aug1st is cutoff) then each team could see up to half the team slide down a year. So your kids team could see half the current team an age above while losing half its own team. The ones sliding down will have an advantage as they have been playing against older players most of their lives and would have even started a year earlier. That has a huge impact on later development and numbers as has been pointed out, just look at the 08s since they were the ones effected the most by the last change having to incorporate players that had just come out of u-7 rec that now jumped into u-9 travel.

[Guest]

https://dpleague.org/birth-year/

Apparently DPL have been posting updates as to what is going on.

So add USSSA to the list of organizations contemplating this. Reading their post, sounds like they expect this to happen. This covers Girls Academy, DPL and EA. With US Club via ECNL already seeming to be beating the drum for this, that just leaves USYS.

[Guest]

An addition to that ... Now imagine that u-7 to u-9 in reverse. Younger teams will see an influx of players with more experience flood in across all ages. The ones being pushed down will be the ones who will benefit the most. This isn't going to help anything with US soccer and just like stupid things like school uniforms in public schools doesn't scrape the root of the problem. You will still have trapped players, Ds team has 6 players born Aug to Dec with all but 1 between Aug and Oct. So her current team would push down 5 players in the same grade, which will now become a nightmare for recruiting. There is "no the coach might" or "the club might", at the upper levels ie ECNL, RL, GA those teams will not have many if any players playing up.

The benefit of the current age change, while most likely unintentional, was the fact that college recruiting got better. Those a grade down had an advantage by being seen sooner and colleges knew exactly what ages they needed to see. If it shifts back that means the inclusion of a new age bracket which means less opportunity to be seen as the scouts will be spread thinner.

If US Soccer really wanted to fix the system they would be looking at a single league system with tiers, police corrupt clubs, and implement actual standards for every level.

[Guest]

https://dpleague.org/birth-year/

Apparently DPL have been posting updates as to what is going on.

What is DPL? MLS Next parent here and I’ve never heard of it.

[Guest]

Turnover will be muted by players being switched from current team to the one an age lower. Think about it this way, if each team carries a minimum of 18 and potentially 1/2 (since you are now cutting the birth year in half for the new cut off ie Jan/Dec to a new Jan/July as Aug1st is cutoff) then each team could see up to half the team slide down a year. So your kids team could see half the current team an age above while losing half its own team. The ones sliding down will have an advantage as they have been playing against older players most of their lives and would have even started a year earlier. That has a huge impact on later development and numbers as has been pointed out, just look at the 08s since they were the ones effected the most by the last change having to incorporate players that had just come out of u-7 rec that now jumped into u-9 travel.

thats not how most rosters are constructed. While it might be like 33% of eligible kids, its usually more like 15% of actual rosters. My kids team has 2 trapped kids out of 19. The B team has a lot more, but I don't see many (if any) of them making the A team the year below.

[Guest]

why make this change - doesn't ECNL's current trapped player program where a handful of trapped 8th graders play down for a couple of months take care of most of this issue in the middle years? all leagues should simply have a similar trapped player program and problem solved, right?