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A look at the MLS Homegrown Player myth

GyasiZardesLAGalaxy1-NewEnglandRevolution2014MLS (USATodaySportsImages)

 

By IVES GALARCEP

If you follow Major League Soccer with any regularity, there is a good chance you have been bombarded with references to top young stars being “Homegrown Players”.  Whether it is DeAndre Yedlin or Gyasi Zardes, the talk of how they came up with their MLS team’s academies is a narrative being spun across multiple media platforms.

The reality is much different than the spin. In my latest Goal.com column, I lay out the argument for putting an end to a myth being perpetuated about the league’s role in developing young stars like Zardes, Yedlin and Diego Fagundez. I also discuss the topic in the latest episode of The SBI Show.

In short, MLS fans are being fed a false narrative that the league is doing a good job of producing top young talent, when the reality is many of the very players being promoted the most were not truly developed in MLS academies.

Give my column a read and let me know what you think of the topic. Think MLS academies are doing a good job? Is the idea if MLS Homegrown Players not being all that homegrown something you hadn’t heard of before?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. This just in:
    MLS acquire Torrance CA based AYSO so they can claim to be a grass roots organization. The good news is ‘Everyone Plays’.

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  2. Is it really all of MLS that is failing? What constitutes MLS “Believing it’s own hype?” Are teams investing millions in development and hiring bad coaches? If teams think you can gain a competetive advantage running a strong academy, why wouldn’t they?

    I suspect some academies are doing a better job than others. Is it really MLS as a whole that is failing, or (more likely) specific clubs?

    The funny thing is Yedlin played at at least 3 different Seattle youth clubs – so who gets credit for developing Yedlin? Many of these top youth clubs themselves are “aggregators of talent.” Shouldn’t Crossfire credit NW Nationals, etc,etc?

    It”s pretty cynical to suggest that MLS teams arent trying their best to develeop players given the investment. Where’s the actual evidence?

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  3. The danger with academy teams is that they tend to propogate the bigger and stronger kids with money who will win them games at that moment. The developement seems to be incidental to having a winning team. The players of smaller stature will not get picked. One always hears of a “terrific athlete with nice size.” The smaller players with a late birthdate relative to the cutoff, will rarely get a chance on the academy teams, thus player developement in these cases is incidental. Out of thousands of players to have so few names shows that this is a random sample. It is not working yet. The feature here is not developement but performance at this moment. Give me big strong fast at U 13 or U15 and I will win.

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  4. Also if you want improvement it will happen with the USL teams. LA has one and other teams will follow. Players going from academy u18 team will have a big advantage over players going to college.

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  5. The bigger reason we should care is that these players avoid the draft. The teams that have been good claiming or developing talent are running away with the league right now.

    Yedlin was assumed to be a top 5 pick going into the draft.

    Never really liked the idea of HGP. Hate it even more now. Hot bed cities have a big advantage.
    Whatever city doesn’t have deep youth program should cause the MLS team to struggle ?

    I wanna hear trolls whine over the parity !!!

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    • What’s the alternative to HGP*? What incentive does a team have to invest in player development? Especially smaller markets: if you’re Colorado or Philly, why would you invest in player development if you knew that your young talent could easily leave and go to one of the “hot bed cities”?

      *I’m specifically asking about the first-refusal option, not the current definition MLS uses for “homegrown.”

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      • I see what you are saying. You are right from your viewpoint.

        I just don’t care that much about pro teams developing players.

        Every Olympic sport develops the top talent in the world just fine through college.
        Every pro sport does too, just not in the rest of the world.

        Diversity is key for me. Many like the uniformity of one training system. I don’t.

  6. MLS academies were only created in 2007. Obviously there aren’t any players who trained from the time they were little kids and have graduated to the first team. Plus, as far as I know, there aren’t any academies with teams below U-12 level. I may be wrong about that but I don’t think there are any MLS teams with say, U-6 academy teams, which is common in Europe. Eventually I guess there will be.

    I think the article is too focused on semantics.

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    • I didn’t get the impression that Ives was chastising MLS for having virtually no success at producing top talent from its academies. That would be unfair, for the reasons you cited: you can’t build something new and expect immediate success.

      Rather, I think his point was that MLS seems to be trying to claim that it has been more successful than it really has.

      Don’t rag on the young guy just because he hasn’t accomplished much, but also don’t take credit for that which you did not do.

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    • I don’t know how these things work. All I know is my team demolished some Barcelona “sponsored” (?) team at the u-8 level. As in quit scoring on them please.

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  7. I usually give Ives and most of the US soccer media grief for not being critical enough of MLS and US Soccer. I applaud Ives for having the guts to call MLS out on their BS. More journalists who cover the sport in the US should do the same when they see stuff like this.

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      • Ok King I will be more specific but only because *you* asked ,you elegant b@stard ….

        What I mean is, would it solve the whole problem if the term “Homegrown Player” were changed to something more palatable to those who find it absurd?

      • Diego’s MD,

        I aim to serve. To rule, and to serve.

        Would changing the term make it more palatable? Well…yeah. If MLS started using different terms then they would no longer claim credit for that which they did not do. That’s the point.

        If US Soccer wants to call these guys “homegrown,” then that’s fine. But MLS is like, “I bought these tomatoes at the store and they weren’t quite ripe yet, so I put them in a bowl next to some apples for a week. Anyway, how do you like my homegrown apples?”

        You can see from my first comment that I don’t demand something extreme: e.g., that “homegrown” players spend all of their training years in MLS academies or that MLS execs personally give birth to each of these guys. If you buy a tomato plant instead of growing it from seed, then I’d still consider your fruit “homegrown.”

        All that said, I’m not sure what term they should use. “Partially homegrown” doesn’t have a great ring to it. “Academy-experienced” is just unwieldy. There may not be a good term for what MLS has actually accomplished. The solution to that is to either a) knowingly use an incorrect term or, b) work harder so that you can finally achieve whatever goals are necessary to use the term you really want to use. (e.g., Philly Union don’t call themselves Open Cup Champions just because they got really close.)

  8. Lets also not forget Andy Najar who played with DC Academy from 14-17 then signed a pro contract. Najar eventually got sold for 3 million which is enough to cover the academy expenses for 6 years.

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  9. This article is incorrect about Deandre Yedlin. He spent his youth playing for Seattle Sounders USL Youth Team called the Crossfire Sounders. It had an unofficial affiliation with the Sounders for decades as many current and former Sounders coaches and players volunteer/work for this youth soccer organization. In 2009, when Seattle became an MLS team, he started playing for their youth academy. He was 16 or 17 at the time. Of course, he only spent less than two years as a part of the MLS branded Seattle Sounders Academy. In total he spent most of his youth playing for Sounders Youth Teams. On contrary to what was written in this article, he did get developed by Seattle.

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  10. I’m glad Ives has called MLS out on this.
    Another important point to make is that most of these MLS academies RECRUIT players and do not DEVELOP them. If a team can find a player that plays better now than someone already on the team, then that latter player is unceremoniously discarded. So they improve the team by recruiting, not by making all the players better.
    Also, perhaps the academies should have coaches that have professional playing experience (indoor doesn’t count) so the coaches actually know what it takes to play professionally.
    And finally, another reason that the academies aren’t delivering is that the coaches aren’t very good at discerning who is going to make the pros down the line. They only select the players who are the best “at the moment.” And we’ve all seen a large number of examples of players who are the best U13 or U14 players that are then out of the game at 22 when they should be at their peak.
    Add these three points up, and it’s no wonder the academies are failing at their mission.

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    • I don’t think academies should take the full blame. There are a lot of things that need to improve in the American system. College system – I could be wrong, but don’t division 1 schools still squeeze in a lot of games in one fall season rather than a full academic year? Don’t division 1 schools still use a clock that counts down? These and many other factors don’t help future professionals.

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    • The problem with your statement is it is completely wrong.
      They are NOT failing at their mission, they are failing at what you want their mission to be.

      Their mission is to keep players out of the draft by calling them homegrown with using as little money ( that they don’t really have to spend ) as possible.

      They have been EXTREMELY successful at that.

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  11. MLS likes to exaggerate and contrive alot of things, no doubt. I agree with parts of Ives article. However, I think the article is a litttle harsh. First off many of these academies have only been around for around 5 years so its diffucult in that time to take a 10 year old and develop him into a pro. To say Barca and Ajax academies are effective and MLS is unfair. Both Ajax and Barca purge players from other academies just like MLS. Also to say MLS academies must do better is a little unfair. The USSF academy system has around 80 teams across the country. All of them practice 4-5 times a week, have a weekly game and run for 10 months. So its not like the MLS academies are doing anything significantly different( other than being free or letting the academy players play with Pros sometime).

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  12. I agree with the premise of this article but two things bother me:
    1. It needs better proofreading.
    2. Zardes only played three years of college soccer, not four.

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  13. Really liked the article, Ives, but what’s the alternative? It’s a marketing campaign, not a player statistic.

    Should MLS make a time limit on when or when not to call a player “homegrown”? (The term itself is not arbitrary – once a player plays in an academy, no matter how long, they are homegrown.) Who will enforce the time limit? MLS? No, because it’s detrimental. No matter how you spin it, once a player is in an academy, that MLS franchise has at least SOMETHING to do with their development, even if the player was primarily developed at their respective college. Are colleges going to start complaining to MLS academies for taking credit? Are we going to tell the MLS marketing department to OMG STAHP USING HOMEGROWN OMG. No, there are bigger fish to fry than this marketing term.

    I just have a problem with “homegrown player” when it starts becoming detrimental to the MLS academy system as a whole.

    I would like to see colleges and youth teams stand up and use “homegrown player” as marketing tools. Why can’t they do that? Let’s have Harrison Shipp in a Chicago Fire uniform be in a brochure for Notre Dame. Let’s have Yedlin do a photo op for the Director of Sports at Akron University. Let’s have Zardes decked out in his CSU-Bakersfield soccer uniform in brochures. Colleges – step up your marketing game.

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    • This is MLS’s definition of homegrown:
      (F) HOMEGROWN PLAYER SIGNINGS

      A club may sign a player to his first professional contract without subjecting him to the MLS SuperDraft if the player has trained for at least one year in the club’s youth development program and has trained 80 days with the academy during that year. Players joining MLS through this mechanism are known as Homegrown Players.

      It’s just a mechanism for teams to be able to sign a player they have invested some time in, without losing them to the draft. It makes sense to me.

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      • Right, it’s clearly stated for draft purposes so there are no discrepancies. So MLS Homegrown Player is defined. My problem is that it’s not a “myth” – let the MLS franchises take credit for it in their commercials. College should do the same as well.

  14. I think the confusion comes, in part, from trying to apply a professional soccer term to an American sports infrastructure. The reality is that in most other sports that have professional leagues in America, pro teams don’t work with kids on an on-going basis from a young age. “Player development” usually refers to what happens after a player signs his first pro contract and begins training/practicing with either the team that signed him or its minor league affiliate. So most casual American sports fans would consider players like Zardes and Yedlin to have been “developed” by Galaxy and Sounders (regardless of whether the league affirmatively applies the “homegrown” label to them), even though both spent their formative years elsewhere and played college soccer.

    The specific term “homegrown player” doesn’t really exist in other American professional sports leagues, but given the broader context of American sports, I’ve always treated it as meaning that a player was developed in the United States (rather than abroad), and specifically, in the region of the country where the team that ultimately signed him is located. I’ve always thought of the homegrown player designation as analogous to, for example, the “territorial pick” system that used to exist in the NBA that funneled players who spent parts of their amateur careers in certain regions of the country to be drafted by “local” pro teams.

    Is the broader definition of “homegrown” misleading? I suppose, in a way, it is, and I can see Ives’ point about it minimizing the work of franchises that are sinking lots of money and resources into their academies. On the other hand, it’s hard to see it as being a big deal. As I said, I think casual fans would consider players like Zardes, Yedlin, and Fagundez to be homegrown regardless, while more die-hard fans, know what player development in MLS really looks like.

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    • Right, and some of these “casual American sports fans” could be future MLS prospects, or even USL or NASL or college prospects. Lil’ Johnny sees Zardes and Fagundez and, oh hey, he’s an MLS Homegrown player. He will strive to be part of these MLS academies, knowing that he could play in Europe or in MLS one day. “Homegrown player” is just a marketing term. Whether or not if it’s an effective marketing term…I guess we’ll see.

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    • His voice sounds like he’s 14 (he has a local ad for an auto care company here in LA and he sounds a bit like Urkel). Maybe he is a space alien.

      But I’ll go easy on the guy… any dude who has made it through Hawthorne AND Bakersfield is a bad@ss, and his game is rapidly becoming berzerk

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  15. I don’t mind them taking credit for players who spend time in academies, leave for college, and then return to MLS. There’s not a great system of reserve teams in place yet, so sending developing players to college makes sense (for now).

    But players who spend the majority of their youth academy training outside MLS should not be considered “homegrown.”

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  16. Who cares?
    The league are trying to do something to stimulate academies etc. is it perfect? No of course not but its a start. To try and compare what they are doing to what happens in Europe is ridiculous, that system evolved over time, MLS cannot force 100+ years of evolution into what, ten years? As long as there is a college system in this country academies will not function like they do in Europe. At least here a player will likely have a degree when their career is over. Gyasi Zardes is having a breakout year at 23 years old. if he was in a European academy he would have started playing at 16 or 17 and have no education to fall back on.
    Move on Ives there’s no story to break or conspiracy to uncover here.

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    • I care.

      I even cared enough to read the article, which heads off your rhetorical questions about comparisons to Europe, etc.

      P.S. Not every blog post needs to be a “breaking story.” I found Ives’ article informative; i.e., I learned something. That’s a successful article, imo.

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      • I read the article, and I didn’t ask any rhetorical questions about Europe or anything else. It’s obvious that ‘Homegrown’ means different things to different people. I think the program serves a purpose in bringing in players whether they are ‘developed’ here or not. A bunch of teams are about to start competing for a ‘World’ Series when not even all of North America is included in the completion. Homegrown, World Series they’re just labels, I mean really who cares?

      • Limey, you have now asked, “who cares?” twice. And you can see from the comments that several people care. Thus, I still believe that you’re asking such questions rhetorically.

        That, or you just don’t like the answer because it doesn’t conform to your idea of what’s right and so you’re ignoring it. Which, now that I think about it, is more likely than the rhetorical explanation: you also don’t see how Ives’ article already addressed the concerns you brought up.

      • Well your Googley Eye and comments make me smile anyway. But seriously I don’t see how the article address’ what you term my concerns when it’s no more than an opinion. This is ultimately a semantics discussion, you and Ives want ‘Homegrown’ to mean something different to what MLS defines it as. But wait let me check…no I still don’t care.

      • Okay, Limey. I was going to bit by bit show how Ives’ article addresses* your concerns, but since you don’t care then I won’t bother.

        *Note I did not write “solves” your concerns. One could recognize that Ives addressed the issues, yet still disagree with his reasoning.

    • This is why people should care. It leads to players going to MLS Academies instead of to the clubs that have actually developed good players for years. They think they are going to the club that developed Yedlin and they aren’t. It could actually hurt player development in this country. The clubs that developed our best players are the clubs that should get credit for it, not the nearest MLS Academy. If an MLS academy develops a kid from 10 yrs old then they should get credit for it, but otherwise no.

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      • I think Wood Chip zip has hit the nail on the head. One of the many reasons MLS may be pushing this flawed narrative is to try to drive traffic not just at the ticket offices of the various clubs, but to help attract youth prospects to those MLS academies and away from some of the non-MLS traditional powerhouse youth clubs (who’s system isn’t flawless either). Because while MLS does care about developing talent for the US, it cares more about snagging talent any way it can to make MLS better and thus hopefully more profitable (or finally profitable in some cases)

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