Just For Fun - US Youth Soccer Promotion and Relegation Model

[Unregistered]

Ummm, your not supposed to think that way dude. It’s about college, the pathway, and exposure. Why would you have your daughter play soccer otherwise? Take her to an ecnl team and ask to practice with them.

Same. Just wants to be very good hs player and play on a top club team and go to college on academics. Everyone’s different. I’m glad she thinks that way though so I can laugh at this website. Lol! Good luck to all the girls though.

[Unregistered]

What???

Ummm, your not supposed to think that way dude. It’s about college, the pathway, and exposure. Why would you have your daughter play soccer otherwise? Take her to an ecnl team and ask to practice with them.

[Unregistered]

He’s right. Even if she only plays D2 or D3 our ecnl club gets credit for that. There should be an ecnl club near you now. What club does she play for?

What???

[Unregistered]

Zlatan Ibrahimović 🗣:

"Sports in the US are too expensive. My children play in a good team and I paid $3,500 per child. I don't like that because not everybody has the money and sport should be for everyone because it unites people regardless of their origins."

[Unregistered]

NWSL...HAHAHA...They won't even pick up the tab for WNT players and skimp on facilities as it is. Plus they have all of 10 teams across the country. At least MLS has 27, most with full time academies.

Here you go, you want a new system. Here it is.

1. Only 1 organization allowed to oversee the entire sport so bye-bye US Club Soccer
2. Break country down into at least 8 regions with regions
3. Create league divisions inside region limiting travel to no more then 2hrs
4. Form team divisions by strength with equal amount of teams in each
5. Allow for teams to play a minimum of 2 matches outside their league division with same team division level teams
6. Create ranking system for region level for clubs based on teams performance (because clubs and parents love to compare things)
7. Mandatory that all teams in state must compete in state cup with 1st and 2nd as automatic qualifiers to regional tournament
8. Create a regional tournament with state cup 1st and 2nd qualifiers as well as 1st and 2nd in each league division and no more than 32 teams.
A. First round will be round robin style with 4 teams per group and top 2 moving on
B. Second round will be round robin style with top 2 moving on
C. Third round will be round robin style with top 2 moving on
D. Semi finals 1 plays 2 and 2 plays 1 from last round - best of 2 matches
E. Finals - Winners play for 1st and losers play for 3rd - best of 2 matches
9. Create a nationals where top 3 teams from each region advance
A. First round (seeding is by drawing) 6 teams per group splint into 2 round robin (2
matches) with final of 1 playing 2 and 2 playing 1. Top 2 move on
B. Second round (seeding by drawing) 8 team bracket best of 2 matches winner moves
on
C. Semi finals (matches by drawing) best of two
D. Finals - Winners play for 1st and losers play for 3rd - best of 2 matches
10. Create a national club ranking structure based on results of year (because clubs and parents love that ****)

With this system no one can cry over who's team is better as it removes the 1 game on any given day can win garbage. With the top 2 teams in lower brackets it allows for mistakes or missing players to not be as much a factor and with best of 2 allows for bad games to be corrected.

Is this feasible? Maybe not as the top 4 teams will have played 21 matches to reach that spot. But it would ensure only the best make it.

Sir, you have way too much free time on your hands please step away from the keyboard and go read a book. So you want to create an over-egeineered convoluted system so you can prove to the world that your little town small budget team can beat the big expensive academies. You are looking for validation and ranking and none of that has anything to do with development. 21 games is way too many for the season unless you mean 21 games for the year. If you really wanted to improve the game you should be focused on training and having standard curriculum for youth soccer instead of every coach knows better and completely ignore teaching basic skills. The system is not broken it just doesn't work the way you want it to.

[Unregistered]

Sir, you have way too much free time on your hands please step away from the keyboard and go read a book. So you want to create an over-egeineered convoluted system so you can prove to the world that your little town small budget team can beat the big expensive academies. You are looking for validation and ranking and none of that has anything to do with development. 21 games is way too many for the season unless you mean 21 games for the year. If you really wanted to improve the game you should be focused on training and having standard curriculum for youth soccer instead of every coach knows better and completely ignore teaching basic skills. The system is not broken it just doesn't work the way you want it to.

Not that person, but the system is broken and it doesn't work the way people want it to. However, you're 100% correct that there should be a standard curriculum for development. The emphasis will then be on recruiting great coaches who can develop great players

[Unregistered]

Sir, you have way too much free time on your hands please step away from the keyboard and go read a book. So you want to create an over-egeineered convoluted system so you can prove to the world that your little town small budget team can beat the big expensive academies. You are looking for validation and ranking and none of that has anything to do with development. 21 games is way too many for the season unless you mean 21 games for the year. If you really wanted to improve the game you should be focused on training and having standard curriculum for youth soccer instead of every coach knows better and completely ignore teaching basic skills. The system is not broken it just doesn't work the way you want it to.

Probably a small and insignificant club parent or coach, basically if one wants better options they are out there. The town teams like Real, Wall , Lower Merion, Twin Co etc can compete but they are stuck in an inferior platform and if their players want to take a step up in exposure or competition they have no choice to move to GA, the best platform for girls in the nation.

[Unregistered]

Some areas that cause some contention.

1: Not all clubs are afforded the same opportunities to compete in same leagues. What is process and cost for clubs to apply for ECNL, GA, MLS next? Are all clubs treated the same?

2: The clubs who are part of these leagues use this to grow their business. I have no issues with them recruiting because they have great training, facilities, or history of success but using a badge to recruit players at the younger ages with the hope they can play in these more competitive leagues is misleading.

3: Parents believing the above and feed the machine that drives everything. Ie. Moving them to an academy just to play at an academy.

There is probably a reason that so many kids stop playing by U13. They just get tired of driving hours to training, away from friends, and overwhelmed with the pressure that is put on them.

[Unregistered]

Not that person, but the system is broken and it doesn't work the way people want it to. However, you're 100% correct that there should be a standard curriculum for development. The emphasis will then be on recruiting great coaches who can develop great players

Absolutely right about the coaching Iceland is the perfect example the ratio of A licensed coaches to population is very high and that has been attributed to their success in recent competition.

[Unregistered]

I would like to propose a different criteria for “club” relegation:
- no fields
- cancelled games
- bad generators and light conditions
- crappy practices that consist of scrimmaging
- roster violations
- overweight coaches

This could work in any league.

[Unregistered]

Sir, you have way too much free time on your hands please step away from the keyboard and go read a book. So you want to create an over-egeineered convoluted system so you can prove to the world that your little town small budget team can beat the big expensive academies. You are looking for validation and ranking and none of that has anything to do with development. 21 games is way too many for the season unless you mean 21 games for the year. If you really wanted to improve the game you should be focused on training and having standard curriculum for youth soccer instead of every coach knows better and completely ignore teaching basic skills. The system is not broken it just doesn't work the way you want it to.

21 would be to many but if you want 1 system then thats the way it has to be since we have thousands of clubs and teams. People piss and moan about ECNL, GA, USYS, EDP, my club, my team garbage that you would need to stripe it all away and build a system that has already proven to work (European Tournaments).

If you think 21 games a season is to much wow are you over paying. ECNL and GA have about 15-16 games and USYS should have about 8-12. Toss in 2 tournaments and you are already between 14-24 games not including state cup or edp youth cup type single elimination tournament. 13 of the 21 matches are in the regional stage and would be necessary as you would be taking 16 from the 8 state cup winners and runner ups and the other 16 from the division winners, runner ups and filled in with wildcards. You want it to be competitive while keeping travel down don't you?

[Unregistered]

Not that person, but the system is broken and it doesn't work the way people want it to. However, you're 100% correct that there should be a standard curriculum for development. The emphasis will then be on recruiting great coaches who can develop great players

Standard curriculum for soccer? Because that worked so well for the US education system.

You want development then you need a carrot for these clubs. No more private leagues with a convoluted application process that excludes clubs based on geography and market area. Even if ECNL and GA could get their **** together and work together for an A and B league with clear relegations and promotions for entire clubs or even teams with in the system. Carrot meet stick....Clubs/teams want to be A then they need to innovate training to make what they have better. All of this drive an hour or 2 to get to one of these clubs is bull****. People talk about diluted pools....my left nut....no way you can say there are only a handful of true athletes in any given area. You don't need a team full of the next D1 superstars to have a winning team or even a great team. Give me a team full of athletic players willing to learn and practice and they can be molded into something great.

[Unregistered]

I would like to propose a different criteria for “club” relegation:
- no fields
- cancelled games
- bad generators and light conditions
- crappy practices that consist of scrimmaging
- roster violations
- overweight coaches

This could work in any league.

So, MF then

[Unregistered]

Absolutely right about the coaching Iceland is the perfect example the ratio of A licensed coaches to population is very high and that has been attributed to their success in recent competition.

You are talking about a country with the population of Newark. Of course they can have a high A licensed coaches to population as it doesn't take many to achieve that.

[Unregistered]

You are talking about a country with the population of Newark. Of course they can have a high A licensed coaches to population as it doesn't take many to achieve that.

That's why I'm using a ratio and not total number. My point is that US soccer doesn't do enough to encourage coaches to up their license and it cost money on top of that.