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MLS academies ranked


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#1
PaintThisCityRed

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Good read. https://www.topdrawe...demies_aid41352


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#2
Komba

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Wow, is that Gloster kid really our best right now?



#3
PaintThisCityRed

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Wow, is that Gloster kid really our best right now?

I don't know. I don't follow our youth that much, but one look at Will Parchman's Twitter shows that he's absolutely obsessed. 


Fuck the right wing.


#4
MetroFanatic

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Dallas might be #1, but what team's 100% of offseason signings will come from the academy???

 

Exactly.


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#5
PaintThisCityRed

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Dallas might be #1, but what team's 100% of offseason signings will come from the academy???

 

Exactly.

We'll still have to wait and see if that'll be the case, and if it'll be a good thing or not. I still got my fingers crossed on Boyd and some more defenders.


Fuck the right wing.


#6
Brian.MLS

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Wow, is that Gloster kid really our best right now?

You can't argue against him for his age. There are a few older guys that are higher up there.

There are quite a few defenders. Noah Powder (possibly signing in France), Andrew Lombard (may have signed HGP with us), Marcelo Borges (may have signed HGP with us), Mason Deeds, Kevin O'Toole, Sean Teixeira, Kevin Politz, etc...
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#7
elf

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I disagree with the rankings... how can dallas be number 1 when they have not produced a national team player?

Winning youth tournaments is meaningless.

#8
RandomHero

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Atlanta United are taking this whole thing seriously aren't they?



#9
magicmoron

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I disagree with the rankings... how can dallas be number 1 when they have not produced a national team player?

Winning youth tournaments is meaningless.

Kellyn Acosta?

#10
Brian.MLS

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Dallas has a lot of good players in the pipeline. They screwed up by not having a USL team.

LA shouldn't be ranked above us. Other than their USL team, their academy is crap.
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#11
jamison

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Dallas has a lot of good players in the pipeline. They screwed up by not having a USL team.

LA shouldn't be ranked above us. Other than their USL team, their academy is crap.

Zardes came through their academy & was a homegrown, so going by the standard set 5 posts ago about developing a national team player, they've developed a national team player. Not sure I accept that as a metric, but anyway. The tricky thing about using the National Team as a rank is that you can develop mediocre talent who happens to be from Bermuda or something and they could be a national team player on a soft team, or you could develop a great player who plays a position your country is deep in who never plays.  (or, you have a crap MNT coach that never calls them, etc.)

 

I think the only realistic yardstick for an academy program is:

 

1) Do you develop players capable of playing on the first team? and

2) Do those players become impact players?

 

Winning an MLS cup is fickle since the playoffs are a bit of a crap shoot, but that would be what I look at when grading academies. Ideally, you develop a farm system good enough to either allow you to promote players rather than having to sign/pay for free agents, or develop guys that can be used as chips in trades that allow you to bring in other quality players. As we saw to our chagrin this week, having Davis & Adams allowed RB to trade a potential Best XI talent in Dax McCarty, which gives them allocation money and room under the cap to do other things. Whether they do or not isn't up to the academy, but the academy did its job in providing Curtis with flexibility.

 

By both measures 1 & 2 above, I'm very happy with our academy. The USL championship was a wonderful thing to see, and I'm very excited about the likes of Etienne. I think they still have a work to do, but guys like Agudelo, Miazga, Sean Davis, etc. all had/have a chance to become regular MLS starters and impact players, plus we actually have developed young players that we signed or drafted as teenagers, like Howard, Bradley, Altidore and others.  

 

If we keep on the track we're on, I think our academy will be producing quality players for years to come. NJ has a deep vein of talent, and I'm glad we're no longer letting it go to waste. In the first ten years of the franchise, I think a lot of us felt we weren't really capitalizing on local players like we are now. 


 


#12
JBigjake54

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the only realistic yardstick for an academy program is:
1) Do you develop players capable of playing on the first team? and
2) Do those players become impact players?  

Agreed. IIRC, a major English club fired its entire youth coaching staff, even though every team had won its league championship. The bottom line was that no youth players were moving up to the first team, and top management apparently felt that the youth coaches had lost sight of their actual purpose.
The USL championship & cup wins were enjoyed by much of our long-time & hard-core fan base, but that's no more than 20% of the total fans, and possibly a lower percentage of the FO.
The youth teams need to produce a regular starter every year. Not necessarily a star; those can be bought. If half of our 18-man squad is home grown, and 6 start >25 games, the program is a success.

We are good enough to beat the best teams, and bad enough to lose to the worst teams. 


#13
RedBullScouse

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Atlanta United are taking this whole thing seriously aren't they?

They really seem to be doing everything right


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#14
adam22

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They really seem to be doing everything right

Turf football stadium.

 

So, not everything



#15
JerseyFan

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At least it's temporary. Not like they will be playing in a crumbling cookie-cutter relic for 20+ years. Or a baseball stadium.


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