The environment is broken – let’s fix it

[beentheredonethat]

I can’t help but notice that my buddy Perspective has gotten back up on his conspiracy soapbox yet again and basically is trying to clog any meaningful discussion from taking place that he personally doesn’t agree with. Unfortunately I feel his antics are obscuring some important dialogue that really should be taking place. Let’s face it, this entire environment is broken and I do mean that statement to include my daughter’s club just as much as I mean it to include the Stars, Scorpions, or any other club out there. As someone how has been involved with club soccer for more than a decade and who has had children at both ends of the spectrum I believe that it is safe to say that the picture that gets painted here on TS is often so off the mark it is not even funny. The world of club soccer that gets portrayed here doesn't actually exist in the real world.

I'm winding into the home stretch with all of this now and within a very short time none of it is going to matter much at all to my family. I say that because I want to make clear that what I am going to try to do in this thread is offer a vantage point few people actually have access to so others in a similar position following behind may benefit from the experience I have gained. I don't expect everyone to agree or for comments to apply to everyone on this forum. My hope is that Perspective will restrain himself enough to recognize that while I am being critical of pieces at the top end of the club soccer world, I am not trying to specifically single out any one group. My criticisms are intended to be targeted at the bigger picture.

The truth be told, I don't actually think there is a perfect club out there. At the tree top level I really don't believe that any of these clubs have it correct, and that includes the one my daughter plays for. What I believe is the best we can strive for is a good individual fit.

I say all of that to make it clear that so much of the "agenda" Perspective has laid out as coming from me doesn't actually represent my personal point of view. Whether he accepts this or not doesn't matter, the truth is he basically has created a fictitious persona here on TS by linking some of the things I do believe in with a whole lot things I never wrote or believe in. I don't know who BTDT is at this point, that screen name stopped accurately representing my opinions a long time ago. That is a big reason why I never sign in on the rare occasions I now visit this site. The reason I am signing this post is I think I have something to offer and simply want to give my comments the context of my experience.

Because of the technical issue TS is currently experiencing and character limits per post I am just trying to get this thread started at this point and intend on posting several more comments later on once the thread gets approved by the moderator and appears. That way I can link what is about a 1800 character post together so it will make sense. Perspective I would appreciate it if you would wait until I get the whole thing published before you start jumping all over me.

[beentheredonethat]

From where I sit, there are three basic beliefs that have been more or less ingrained in youth soccer which more or less are driving a lot of the craziness out there. Unfortunately, the truth is they are actually erroneous beliefs and more like urban myths than guiding principles.

1-The best players get rewarded with “full rides” - One of the things about scholarships is you will never really know how much a player actually got and more important how much of what they got was tied athletic ability as opposed to academic ability or straight financial need. One thing to know is that financial aid doesn’t get counted against the program’s scholarship limit but academic money does. There are a lot of people who will quote their sideline buddies a percentage who actually got very little to show for their investment in club soccer. I am here to tell everyone that the athletic money is not nearly as great is often quoted on the sidelines. Full rides are actually pretty rare. No matter what anyone tells you, the top level programs really don’t have a lot of money to spread around. Usually they will spread 2-4 scholarships amongst an entire recruiting class which translates into small athletic grants for everyone (including national team players). Unless you don’t have a pot to piss in, if you need a lot of athletic money to fund a college education then what you do is drop down the rankings to programs where they project your child to be a superstar relative to their level of competition. One thing that is absolutely clear, the amount of money any of us spend on club soccer is not going to impact the amount of scholarship money our children earn. The real variable is the level of talent relative to the competitive level and spending doesn’t really impact that much at all.

2-You need exposure to get recruited –. Recruiting is no different than sales. Coaches need to know about the player before they recruit them and they are only going to be interested if there is some compelling reason for them to be interested. One thing should be absolutely clear, it doesn’t happen randomly, the player’s have to work to get recruited and that means more than showing up at college showcases. A player’s resume MAY be part of the reason a coach is compelled to recruit a player but truthfully even players with great resume’s find that they have to go out and sell themselves to those coaches to start the process. The big thing is the coaches need to know your child is sincerely interested which is why you have stories of freshman spending 30 minutes a day working the college coaches. Personally, we have not found the need to be that aggressive, that early, but there is an element of those stories that are absolutely 100% on the mark. The thing about the showcases is you are wasting your money if your daughter is showing up without first spending time getting a very specific list of coaches interested in seeing them play. You need to know very specifically who you want to want come to see her play and then actually get through to them and sell them on coming. You also need to know where in the cycle those specific coaches are at. If you are either too early or too late they are not likely to come. Since there is a cascading effect to recruiting that all comes down to pegging the talent level to competitive level correctly. My observation has been that the people like in the Times article who are aggressively jumping all over college coaches early tend to burn bridges because they get painted as whack jobs. My advice is to know your product and target it to the right customer in a professional and respectful manner. That will get you further than travelling all over the country. If you have a compelling reason (like wanting to play in a different region) then by all means go but I would simply recommend going with a well planned out purpose.

3- You need to play and train at the highest levels possible in order to move to the college level – Player development and what it takes to be a real high level player is probably the most misunderstood aspect of youth sports. Yes, talented players need to train in competitive environments to maximize their potential. The problem is our current aged based, multi-pathed environment doesn’t actually accomplish that for very many players. From my point of view the current environment is so dumbed down at this point the only players that actually benefit from being on a so called “top level” team are the bottom of the roster ones because they are the only ones actually being challenged by their teammates and the competitions. The top of the roster kids are basically all bored out of their minds and end up playing down to the assembled talent level not elevating it. To make matters worse the pressure this environment puts on the top kids is obscene because it is all about winning so the clubs can sell roster spots. It doesn’t make any difference whether you are with an NEFC Elite team or Stars ECNL team or any other team in any other club, the same thing is happening everywhere. The top level players on all of the top level teams at all of the clubs are generally being held back to strengthen individual teams more for marketing reasons than player development. If all of this craziness really was about player development you would see many more players playing up in older age groups. That is where top of the roster kids are going to find their challenge not in some over hyped league game playing against watered down competition. The problem with that is, players playing up will cost games and tend to ruffle the noses of the paying customers at the end of that roster. Anyone who would try and sell that this mess we have in place right now works for developing players is nothing more than the club equivalent of a used car salesperson.

[beentheredonethat]

The Solution

I don’t think we need to necessarily recreate the world to fix all of this. There are a lot of existing components out there that if you pulled them together into one competitive environment would go a long way towards fixing things.

The first is component is promo-relegation. MAPLE had it right, we need promo-relegation to keep the clubs pushing hard to develop/recruit players and to ensure the highest competitive level possible. There should be multiple divisions that you must prove you are competitive in, in order to stay in one. In order to move up you must beat everyone but if you can’t do that consistently enough you move down and at some point you get thrown out.

Next, no more county club leagues where you can buy admission. USYS had it right. Everything should be proved on the field and not because of strategic partnerships. A great team from a small mom and pop club should have just as much access to the highest level of competition as the mega clubs do. There should be a very rigid and transparent application process that dovetails with the promo-relegation process.

Next, divide the country into reasonable groupings to make the logistics of running the league more sensible than our current national league offering. Somewhere in between the large fixed structure that USYS has for its regions and what DAP or USCS (ECNL/NPL) have for their regions is a sensible synergy that would facilitate strong intra regional competition without breaking the banks of the families involved.

The last thing is we need to do is get rid of the age groups. We need to create something like DAP but with only 1 possible age group. A true open level. A club would be allowed to enter only 1 team which could be comprised of any players capable of making the roster so long as they are still in high school.

I believe that once you fix the top tier of club soccer by making it so that there is a clearly definable merit based path for the “top” players to aspire to that the other levels will begin to make more sense as all of the talent seeks its highest and most competitive level. Right now that highest level is strictly a beauty contest where the “value” is wholly dependent on perception shaped by marketing hype. The truth is that value is largely homogenized for the benefit of the masses. I think if we can fix that everyone will benefit.

[perspective]

btdt, bravo to you for finally signing in, even if it is was partly due to frustration over waiting for your posts to be posted.

You sure had a lot to say for someone who has little interest and rarely even visits here. I would have been more impressed if you would have just owned up to your level of activity over the past couple of years. I just don't see the point in minimizing your participation level, unless it is purely to save face.

At any rate, I was agreeing with you almost entirely through your first post, and wondering what the big deal was because hardly anyone has written much of anything over the past two years in disagreement with your major points in post #1. Very few here think they are getting full rides or anything close to that and MANY posters have tried to explain that's not why their kids are in this.

As you continued, it is clear that you are mostly or most likely only interested in the very top level superstars and what the soccer "system" should do in terms of training them. You said it doesn't matter about playing on the "best" teams (that was one of your myths) and then you go on to say that what you really mean is that the best teams aren't good enough....that we/you need something even better....an open age group competition...so that, presumably, a star 13 year old could be playing with a star 17 year old. That only works if there are regular, bad in your view, teams at the upper age groups so that a few underage kids can benefit. If it applies to all I assume you would agree that extremely few 13 year old superstars could compete adequately with true 16, 17, and 18 year old superstars? Or would the older teenage superstars already be in Europe in your model?

And what you don't address, or maybe you do indirectly, is what all the other merely good to very good players should do? Stop playing? Just play town? Realize that playing D3 soccer is a waste of time?

[Unregistered]

I don’t think we need to necessarily recreate the world to fix all of this. There are a lot of existing components out there that if you pulled them together into one competitive environment would go a long way towards fixing things.

The first is component is promo-relegation. MAPLE had it right, we need promo-relegation to keep the clubs pushing hard to develop/recruit players and to ensure the highest competitive level possible. There should be multiple divisions that you must prove you are competitive in, in order to stay in one. In order to move up you must beat everyone but if you can’t do that consistently enough you move down and at some point you get thrown out.

Next, no more county club leagues where you can buy admission. USYS had it right. Everything should be proved on the field and not because of strategic partnerships. A great team from a small mom and pop club should have just as much access to the highest level of competition as the mega clubs do. There should be a very rigid and transparent application process that dovetails with the promo-relegation process.

Next, divide the country into reasonable groupings to make the logistics of running the league more sensible than our current national league offering. Somewhere in between the large fixed structure that USYS has for its regions and what DAP or USCS (ECNL/NPL) have for their regions is a sensible synergy that would facilitate strong intra regional competition without breaking the banks of the families involved.

The last thing is we need to do is get rid of the age groups. We need to create something like DAP but with only 1 possible age group. A true open level. A club would be allowed to enter only 1 team which could be comprised of any players capable of making the roster so long as they are still in high school.

I believe that once you fix the top tier of club soccer by making it so that there is a clearly definable merit based path for the “top” players to aspire to that the other levels will begin to make more sense as all of the talent seeks its highest and most competitive level. Right now that highest level is strictly a beauty contest where the “value” is wholly dependent on perception shaped by marketing hype. The truth is that value is largely homogenized for the benefit of the masses. I think if we can fix that everyone will benefit.

Respectfully, I suspect that many of us don't share nearly your sense of the depth of the supposed problems. Many of us with kids on top local teams seem mostly satisfied with our club experience--and when we're not, we have solid options for moving.

Many of us also might believe that you are greatly exaggerating the quality of high or high-ish level soccer for girls at virtually any level. We've seen U-littles, U-teens, and a range of college and even professional teams. There are some very good and even excellent soccer players on the female side. But, for the most part, there aren't many extraordinary girls/women in the game: mainly, they're more productive, more consistent, or more athletic, which can amount to being better enough in a game where the margins get small at the most competitive levels.

More specifically, there are very, very few girls (at least field players) with a development need to play more than a year up on a top local team. The no age group approach frankly sounds like a disaster for all concerned--and even more susceptible to randomness and politics, to say nothing of the social challenges of having fairly young girls of non-trivial age differences on the same team. Generally, you seem preoccupied with maximizing development opportunities for extreme outliers and/or specialty players. But it's far from clear that there is a larger problem even for girls tracking to play at high D1 level.

Just my p.o.v., based on actual experience, observation, and thought.

[perspective]

A few odds and ends in response....

1) I haven't tried to stop any legit discussion. I've called you when you are ugly and unfair. And btw, it's a lot harder to trash FM like you did today, and your usual targets in the way you usually do, when you're signed in, correct? You should sign in just because your posts will be better, and you will generate far more good discussion that you say you believe is so important instead of spending so much time cracking on specific clubs and specific people.

2) I absolutely believe NEFC should have been invited to join ECNL at some point within the past 2 years. I don't profess to know the politics or the alleged arguments against doing so, but I give bad marks to the powers that be for failing to bring NEFC in.

3) Your epiphany about $$$$ is largely YOUR epiphany. Most of the rest of us knew all along (and told you so...not just me but many, many posters) that we would not break even or make "a profit." You were the person who INSISTED that playing club and spending money with club ONLY was indicated if doing so led to a payout. That goes back to your massive posting in your first go round, our Williams discussion, your very opinionated views about D3 being a waste of time and distraction from studies, etc, etc. Going by your prior proclamations, you would need to get out now, even with a national level player. But of course you will not not should you, and I and everyone else with a player like yours would obviously do whatever we possibly could do to support our child in those types of endeavors.

4) I don't have a definite position on your promo-relegation thesis, but the DAP, long before ECNL, was started to get more "development" oriented and away from "winning at all costs." Many posters here and many experts suggest that that winning at all costs mentality has been the biggest impediment to development.

5) You contradicted yourself pretty blatantly by stating that playing for the best available club is absolutely not necessary and then stating that something even absolutely even better IS necessary. I personally don't see how promo-relegation would lead to better teams, because in general the better players already drift towards the better teams. Your complaint seems to be that the talent is too spread out and too non-existent. Kids like yours should probably be in a national residential setting where they go to school and train.

6) The Stars actually are a club that at least used to have a few select players who "played up."

[perspective]

I say all of that to make it clear that so much of the "agenda" Perspective has laid out as coming from me doesn't actually represent my personal point of view. Whether he accepts this or not doesn't matter, the truth is he basically has created a fictitious persona here on TS by linking some of the things I do believe in with a whole lot things I never wrote or believe in. I don't know who BTDT is at this point, that screen name stopped accurately representing my opinions a long time ago. That is a big reason why I never sign in on the rare occasions I now visit this site. The reason I am signing this post is I think I have something to offer and simply want to give my comments the context of my experience.

So, maybe this post approval process for the rest of you is a good thing and will get more folks to sign in.

While we wait for you all to get your posts approved, I wanted to come back to this paragraph above. As far as I can all 3 of these signed in btdt posts are entirely consistent with everything that has been said about his opinions and posts (in response to his thousands of anonymous posts). What is fictitious? What statements have been made about your views that do not represent what you actually feel and believe? It seems quite coincidental that your sanitized posts above impress as completely consistent with everything attributed to you in the past 2 years. What exactly would you like to disown?

BTW, some of the rest of us have been around for a long time too. What makes you think you have something truly exceptional to offer? What points that you've made hundreds of times do you feel really need to be hammered home now....to the point that you were even moved to sign in to express them? What are you really trying to say? For example, almost everyone agrees that exposure by itself isn't the key to recruiting and have agreed that targeting and contacting coaches where there may be a good fit is the way to go. Nothing new there. And many people have told you that play for certain teams because of the balance between convenience and right-size challenge and relatively good training (and not because of exposure/travel). So nothing new there either. I'm straining to see what it is in your views that you consider groundbreaking and important enough to sound off an continuous alarm.

[Unregistered]

the two of you are priceless. I for one don't claim to know the answers but you two claim to know everything. I believe some of us are adults and can make a mistake or two. You made mistakes, let us make our own.

[Unregistered]

Saw this posted on Facebook and immediately thought of these two. Haha, just picturing these actors reenacting the BTDT/Perspective posts would be hilarious if you ask me!

http://blog.foxsoccer.com/post/75605...scom:FOXSoccer

[perspective]

the two of you are priceless. I for one don't claim to know the answers but you two claim to know everything. I believe some of us are adults and can make a mistake or two. You made mistakes, let us make our own.

Fair enough I suppose, although I'm not sure where you think I suggested I know everything.

[Unregistered]

Fair enough I suppose, although I'm not sure where you think I suggested I know everything.

Do you read what you post ? Like the commercial says "it's in there"

[Unregistered]

Fair enough I suppose, although I'm not sure where you think I suggested I know everything.

It's not that you suggest you know everything, it's that you suggest anything at all, as if it matters beyond your direct sphere of influence.

I hope this thread keeps you both contained for a while. It would be best for the forum as a whole.

[Unregistered]

Fair enough I suppose, although I'm not sure where you think I suggested I know everything.

Suggestions and guidance are often appreciated but the discussion about "club soccer" is really no different than other sports, hobbies, or other activities performed at an elite level. Everyone (parents and players) will make mistakes, all business are looking to make money first and foremost so it has to be buyer beware. Keep your eyes and ears open and go with your gut. Trust no one and if they are not... well you have decisions to make.

[beentheredonethat]

Respectfully, I suspect that many of us don't share nearly your sense of the depth of the supposed problems. Many of us with kids on top local teams seem mostly satisfied with our club experience--and when we're not, we have solid options for moving.

Many of us also might believe that you are greatly exaggerating the quality of high or high-ish level soccer for girls at virtually any level. We've seen U-littles, U-teens, and a range of college and even professional teams. There are some very good and even excellent soccer players on the female side. But, for the most part, there aren't many extraordinary girls/women in the game: mainly, they're more productive, more consistent, or more athletic, which can amount to being better enough in a game where the margins get small at the most competitive levels.

More specifically, there are very, very few girls (at least field players) with a development need to play more than a year up on a top local team. The no age group approach frankly sounds like a disaster for all concerned--and even more susceptible to randomness and politics, to say nothing of the social challenges of having fairly young girls of non-trivial age differences on the same team. Generally, you seem preoccupied with maximizing development opportunities for extreme outliers and/or specialty players. But it's far from clear that there is a larger problem even for girls tracking to play at high D1 level.

Just my p.o.v., based on actual experience, observation, and thought.

I think you seriously underestimate in your last paragraph what it takes to a prepare a capable and desirous player for moving from the youth level to a scholarship level in college. Your thinking there sort of sums up a lot what I think is wrong with this environment, the expectations are way out of whack and your first sentence basically says it all. I’m sorry, you don’t just pop on to a top level team for two years and then waltz on over to the next line for a college scholarship. There is actually a whole lot of seriously hard work involved in all of this if you want to make that jump and what I am seeing is very few of the players involved at the supposed “top end” of club soccer are actually doing a fraction of what is really necessary to do it.

In prior generations everyone knew that you had to be consumed by your goal if you even wanted a chance to make a run at playing at the college level. When most of us were kids, the ones that wanted to be the top athletes were out in their back yard spending hours, upon hours, honing their skills. We all know that doesn’t happen any longer but unfortunately along with that, kids today have lost that single-minded work ethic that used to propel their development. Now it seems like everyone thinks that it is more a matter of being in the right place at the right time and paying dues. Ask any current coach, now you get a whole lot of supposed top level players that show up and just go through the motions. They have absolutely no idea what it means to dig in and do something over and over until they get it right. They don’t have the mental discipline to challenge themselves do that. In their world parents like you are teaching them that the politics of the situation are far more important than actually doing the work and all of you are just dumbing the whole environment down so your kids get their medal.

Perspective, I have always thought that because you have been removed from this for a couple of years, that you are not aware of just how prevalent this mindset has become and the impact that it has on this environment. I can’t tell you how many practices I watch of supposed top level teams where kids don’t even break a sweat much less push themselves to a point of fatigue based surrender. I don’t think you need to be crazy about that but you certainly do need push yourself. The thing I see is half the kids are not even in shape yet everyone is patting themselves on the back saying how good their teams are and talking about where all of the players are going to get recruited by. It’s a joke how far off the mark expectations have gotten and when I consider how much money is being thrown at all of this, I find it obscene. It really has nothing to do with the amount of money people spend as much as the expectations that are driving people to spend whatever they are spending. I feel that there is a huge disconnect between where people think they are going and what it is going to take to get there, never mind whether they have a real shot of getting where they are headed.

For example, my daughter works out at a gym where a former teammate also trains. This kid’s mom was one of the worst soccer moms I have ever run across (and I have seen more than a few off the deep end over the years). Over the years I have watched the kid play on other fields and I would consider that she is a decent club level player. Now I am far from a good soccer talent evaluator but based upon what I have seen over the years, while she is a decent soccer player, in my opinion she not one that a whole lot of college coaches are going to take notice of. The mother has this kid working out with a private trainer at the gym and I have watched her workout on more than a few occasions. She barely even breaks a sweat and I know the trainer is thinking the same thing I am, why is this kid even here? Clearly the parent has some reason for pushing the kid to be there but it is not real obvious what that is. There is no above average, let alone high end, athleticism there that is being developed and the kid certainly doesn’t appear to be particularly consumed with working out, yet she is there twice a week paying for private workouts.

Now in a gym setting, this sort of situation has absolutely no impact what so ever on anyone else but in a team setting they are actually quite harmful to the group as a whole. When you have kids going through the motions like that in a team practice you end up with all sorts of developmental issues because they produce a lot of bad practice reps. I am a believer that for every one bad practice rep it takes roughly three good ones to compensate so I see these types of personalities as seriously harming the whole environment . The fact that these sorts of stories are not all that isolated on the top level teams I think should be a pretty big concern because what it has resulted in is a very watered down environment .That impacts everyone on the team, not just the top of the roster players.

[beentheredonethat]

A few odds and ends in response....

1) I haven't tried to stop any legit discussion. I've called you when you are ugly and unfair. And btw, it's a lot harder to trash FM like you did today, and your usual targets in the way you usually do, when you're signed in, correct? You should sign in just because your posts will be better, and you will generate far more good discussion that you say you believe is so important instead of spending so much time cracking on specific clubs and specific people.

2) I absolutely believe NEFC should have been invited to join ECNL at some point within the past 2 years. I don't profess to know the politics or the alleged arguments against doing so, but I give bad marks to the powers that be for failing to bring NEFC in.

3) Your epiphany about $$$$ is largely YOUR epiphany. Most of the rest of us knew all along (and told you so...not just me but many, many posters) that we would not break even or make "a profit." You were the person who INSISTED that playing club and spending money with club ONLY was indicated if doing so led to a payout. That goes back to your massive posting in your first go round, our Williams discussion, your very opinionated views about D3 being a waste of time and distraction from studies, etc, etc. Going by your prior proclamations, you would need to get out now, even with a national level player. But of course you will not not should you, and I and everyone else with a player like yours would obviously do whatever we possibly could do to support our child in those types of endeavors.

4) I don't have a definite position on your promo-relegation thesis, but the DAP, long before ECNL, was started to get more "development" oriented and away from "winning at all costs." Many posters here and many experts suggest that that winning at all costs mentality has been the biggest impediment to development.

5) You contradicted yourself pretty blatantly by stating that playing for the best available club is absolutely not necessary and then stating that something even absolutely even better IS necessary. I personally don't see how promo-relegation would lead to better teams, because in general the better players already drift towards the better teams. Your complaint seems to be that the talent is too spread out and too non-existent. Kids like yours should probably be in a national residential setting where they go to school and train.

6) The Stars actually are a club that at least used to have a few select players who "played up."

Perspective I know that I have never been able to convince you that my opinions have never been about one club versus another but honestly whether or not NEFC was accepted into the ECNL or not would not have made any difference in how I view this environment. I just don’t believe that it would have made any difference for either of my daughters. For the older one it would have been overkill and for the younger one it would have just been a lateral move for the sake of making a move.

Quite frankly, I think this environment holds more players back than it helps. At the top level I think everything is so watered down now that you just can’t get the benefits that ALL of the clubs are out there hyping. I think what ALL of the clubs are out there selling are nothing more than false promises. I know kids on the Stars get opportunities to play up, that is not the point I was trying to make. It never has been. What I see actually happening is because the entire system is based on grouping players by age versus talent we end up lumping players together for a whole bunch of reasons other than what is best for the player. I will tell you that if the ECNL really was a Girl’s DAP with combined age groups I would have had a much different opinion of it. It isn’t so, basically I don’t see where it has anything special to offer. The thing that you need to know is that I actually do apply my same arguments to those that blatantly support the NPL just as much as those that support the ECNL. As far as I am concerned neither have anything special to offer because both of them are equally watered down. I think all of the arguing back and forth about which league is better or who is more competitive is actually stupid.

The problem I see with this entire environment is nothing is based upon merit any longer, it is all based upon marketing hype. I put the blame more on US Club soccer than any one particular club. As far as I am concerned they are the ones that have turned youth soccer into the big business that all of these clubs are trying to profit from. If you digest what I am proposing in my solution I am suggesting that we combining a bunch of tried and true concepts from yesteryear together to form a tough merit based league where you have to produce to stay in it. It is exactly the type of environment clubs like the Stars and Scorpions once flourished in. What I have in mind is something akin to the WPSL for high school aged players. The reason I think this would benefit everyone is that it would firmly identify without a doubt what the top level of youth soccer is and the competitive nature of it would functionally prevent the watering down we have seen with the USCS leagues. I firmly believe that you need that produce or perish environment at the top of the pyramid to set expectations correctly. In that sort of environment Mommy and Daddies money might still buy a kid a spot on the roster but unless the team wins it is not going to make a difference. As they say, it rolls down hill. I think once people get a glimpse of just how extreme the top end really is you won’t have parents thinking that all they have to do is just join a team with the word elite in the name for a year or two in order to end up playing in college. I think once that happens then the rest of this will calm down and everyone will be able to peg the level that will best meet their expectations.