Birthyear Grouping

[Guest]

What you may not realize is that US Soccer doesn't really care about the NCAA or NAIA teams. College is becoming more and more irrelevant at the professional and National Team landscape. So US Soccer made the decision to align with the rest of the world, just like they do with the international playing calendar (even though our MLS season just keeps trucking). We aren't going back to school year - also, whose school year almost every State has a slightly different cutoff.

Except it’s not aligned with the rest of the world. While it is unclear what conceivable benefit there would be to that kind of alignment, it turns out that much of the rest of the world actually has most of their youth players playing on school year teams, just as we did for decades with an Aug 1 cutoff that had 90%+ of kids playing with their school year peers. US soccer came up with this silly mandate, rolled out DA, and then walked away after creating their mess. The professional and international landscape are irrelevant to 99%+ of players, and don’t need everyone playing on mixed school year teams to identify the handful of talents they need, so why should that drive anything? You’re right that it probably won’t go back, but that’s because the people supposedly in charge can’t figure out what they got wrong and are too disorganized to fix it.

[Guest]

Except it’s not aligned with the rest of the world. While it is unclear what conceivable benefit there would be to that kind of alignment, it turns out that much of the rest of the world actually has most of their youth players playing on school year teams, just as we did for decades with an Aug 1 cutoff that had 90%+ of kids playing with their school year peers. US soccer came up with this silly mandate, rolled out DA, and then walked away after creating their mess. The professional and international landscape are irrelevant to 99%+ of players, and don’t need everyone playing on mixed school year teams to identify the handful of talents they need, so why should that drive anything? You’re right that it probably won’t go back, but that’s because the people supposedly in charge can’t figure out what they got wrong and are too disorganized to fix it.

As just one example, the England FA organizes youth football with a Sept 1 age cutoff to align roughly with the school year. https://www.juniorgrassroots.uk/age-group-formats/

[Guest]

As just one example, the England FA organizes youth football with a Sept 1 age cutoff to align roughly with the school year. https://www.juniorgrassroots.uk/age-group-formats/

The Dutch use birth year, but also have two year age groups from the jump, routinely have the best girls play on boys teams until u17, and tell everyone to play a 4-3-3, so we aren’t aligned with that either.

http://dutch-football.weebly.com/basic-information.html

[Guest]

It’s equally bad at the higher end of the age and competitiveness spectrum. Under the calendar year system, a college coach scouting any given grad year now needs to consider a pool consisting of twice as many teams (or really 4x+ as many thanks to the various league splits and expansions), whereas previously they could look at the top teams and players in any grad year at once. No wonder colleges increasingly rely on internationals and the transfer portal.

That's a really good point. There are '23, '24, and even some '25 players on the oldest, combined age girls teams right now. What a headache for recruiting purposes. SO STUPID.

[Guest]

For high school it already has gone back!

[Guest]

The Dutch use birth year, but also have two year age groups from the jump, routinely have the best girls play on boys teams until u17, and tell everyone to play a 4-3-3, so we aren’t aligned with that either.

http://dutch-football.weebly.com/basic-information.html

Other European countries like Portugal and Spain also use the 2 year age groups. Like the Dutch they don't rush to determine future stars young ages as they seem to value different qualities than the US. Let the cream rise. It's worth remembering that they've been doing this for a while and historically have some pretty good minds and players to study from. Maybe we need to keep studying and rethinking things.

[Guest]

Many countries (including UK) do, at least outside of youth national teams and top academy teams (which have a lot of play ups so aren’t really age based anyway). US soccer created a myth that they didn’t and that switching to birth year would somehow make us better rather than driving a lot of players to quit earlier and creating unnecessary challenges for the oldest teams and the teams split between 8th and 9th graders. And then after mandating that switch and trying to make their DA the top youth league they basically got out of the youth soccer business altogether. Not sure if there’s any chance we’ll ever go back but it would be better if we did.

Lacrosse groups by grade & is soaking up all the players while soccer popularity plummets. The change was solely in hopes to make the USMNT better. End for most of the best in the USA is college. College recruits by grade, not birth year. Baseball went to birth year and then back because it flopped.

[Guest]

Except it’s not aligned with the rest of the world. While it is unclear what conceivable benefit there would be to that kind of alignment, it turns out that much of the rest of the world actually has most of their youth players playing on school year teams, just as we did for decades with an Aug 1 cutoff that had 90%+ of kids playing with their school year peers. US soccer came up with this silly mandate, rolled out DA, and then walked away after creating their mess. The professional and international landscape are irrelevant to 99%+ of players, and don’t need everyone playing on mixed school year teams to identify the handful of talents they need, so why should that drive anything? You’re right that it probably won’t go back, but that’s because the people supposedly in charge can’t figure out what they got wrong and are too disorganized to fix it.

This!

[Guest]

What you may not realize is that US Soccer doesn't really care about the NCAA or NAIA teams. College is becoming more and more irrelevant at the professional and National Team landscape. So US Soccer made the decision to align with the rest of the world, just like they do with the international playing calendar (even though our MLS season just keeps trucking). We aren't going back to school year - also, who's school year almost every State has a slightly different cutoff.

For Recreational Level Soccer it is terrible... and Recreational Soccer is the base of the pyramid.