The two best Academies in MLS have the best facilities for kids in MLS. And it’s not close.
2023 Roster and Transfer Discussion Thread
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The two best Academies in MLS have the best facilities for kids in MLS. And it’s not close.
high salary i assume as well. and i dont think he is gonna accept the bench.
true both philly and dallas have good facilities and are excelling at that since their main investment is academy. not all teams will invest like that in academy and prefer to invest in a first team with transfers. i dont think there is a team that does both? i want to say la galaxy but their first team spending has not been great. LAFC may do that, though not sure how good the academy is.
Not disagreeing with any of this but I'd like to mention that we're still sort of a new team. We built a relatively small/inexpensive facility where land was cheap (well, at least when compared to in the city). And that's fine. But when you think about the fact that we were a new club without a stadium or facilities of our own even for the pro team it's perhaps somewhat understandable. Ask me again in six years, when we have our own stadium near a subway that has room for both the pros and the academy. Might feel very different when that all comes together.
What is this, year 8 maybe? Or 9? Let's see where we are at year 20, once we've had a chance to build something real.
8 years in, we should JUST start seeing the fruits of the Academy. Where are the 12 year olds we stole from other programs 8 years ago?
There is a facilities problem and an identification problem.
Oh god this is giving me Yankees 09 flashbacks when the Steinbrenners decided to risk it all for a single season
I think we have more than one academy alum with the Deuce -- Carrizo, Rando and Benalcazar just off the top of my head. There may be a couple more.
Most of the other guys on NYCFC II played on other soccer clubs in the metropolitan area. Turnbull played with New York Soccer Club and Beachside SC, Jack Beer played for NYSC too, stuff like that. I have no idea if they were recruited, but it's not surprising young, talented guys in their pool (2015/16) opted for an established youth team instead of an academy just getting off the ground.
Anyway, there can definitely be some improvements. We should have a great academy, and arguably a better academy than what we have now, although it's really tough to assess where we truly are thanks to the Covid-19 disruption. That sort of punched a hole in the pipeline. We could have some really good U17 talent we just haven't heard much about.
I also wonder if our unsettled stadium situation has been a factor; with it now resolved maybe we can see more progress made with a new focus on Queens. Put our academy near our stadium location and look the hell out. We've also built all those mini-pitches throughout the city. I'm certain that's part of an even broader initiative. We just haven't seen the full contours yet.
I wouldn't mind seeing us steal an idea from the Union and create our own school, though. What an opportunity that could become for the city kids.
No, I don't think I can agree with much of that, either.
For one thing, it's always going to be hard for an MLS academy to retain talent from, say, U14 all the way up to the senior squad. The best players are going to quickly be on the radar of European clubs who can offer them the opportunity to make a lot more money. They're going to get poached somewhere along the line, like Gio getting snagged by Borussia Dortmund.
So, it's not necessarily true to say we don't develop them. We just can't keep 'em.
Nor can I agree on Gray. He's much better than a depth piece, and he proved it not only in our Cup run, but last year during the injury blitz, especially (he loved playing center back LOL). There's a reason he just got extended.
I think we have some good academy alum on the Deuce in Benalcazar and Rando, and Carrizo is greased lightning even though he's just a kid. If he goes to Argentina tomorrow, that has nothing to do with the academy. If McFarlane makes a move abroad, that's not a sign of the academy being a "disaster." It means it's doing pretty well.
Great post. But not sure you can rate our academy success on some rando
It is kind of rando.Great post. But not sure you can rate our academy success on some rando
I get it, it's tough sometimes to look around the world at all the association football clubs and see what they do and wonder why we're not doing it too. But the simple truth is, we can't. MLS is a single-entity league. It's built for competitive parity. The salaries are capped (for the most part) and structured.
If you're a parent with a promising kid and you have your choice of academies, you're going to look at the pipeline where your footy phenom is going to be making $6 million a year at a European club at 22 years of age, not $612,000 in MLS.
If you're CFG and the lead member of an MLS investor group, you're not going to invest heavily in an academy just to develop talent for other teams. You need something more to make a decent return more likely.
Which is where MLS Next Pro and MLS Next come in, I think. The league is building a complete structure, which should really help in developing academies across the board.
Maybe we should be retaining more of our academy
I would also like to add that even so, we have more MLS cups (and more cup-winning homegrowns) than both of the teams cited for their superior academies.
I started pretty much this exact post last night. But I put down the phone. So thanks for saving me the trouble. We have developed quite a bit of talent, much of which we haven’t retained.
I would also like to add that even so, we have more MLS cups (and more cup-winning homegrowns) than both of the teams cited for their superior academies.
I wonder if Johnson has bad feelings towards Atlanta since they traded for him from Chicago and it looked like he was lined up to be their starter (in his home town no less) then Guzan became available and they flipped him to NYCFC.
Maybe he’s seen what the turf in Atlanta does to their players and doesn’t want the same to happen to him.
New forum rule. Give your best summary in English of tweets in languages other than English!
“Alexander Callens dreams to be apart of Boca Juniors, when they asked the 30yr old. He has yet to receive an offer.
While Atlanta United made him a more serious offer to fight him leaving the MLS.
Callens is the most Coveted Free Agent in MLS.”
dallas are an OG club. they've had plenty of time to get it right.
philly has had a 7 year head start.
both have a lot more real estate to work with that are much easier to commute to. even here in NY, if you put an academy in queens, getting to it from any of the other boroughs, and even some parts of queens, it's not easy. it takes time.
do i think the club could do more for the academy? yea, absolutely. there's just too many kids in this city/metro for there not to be more talent to pick from. but i also think their priority has been with the 1st team, getting that right. getting a stadium. i would imagine the academy will get more focus in the coming years.
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