Analysis
How MLS Can Attract and Develop Better U.S. Players
First there was Project 40, a joint effort between MLS, U.S. Soccer, and Nike. When that sputtered, Generation Adidas came along. But Brooke Tunstall argues that the league can, and should, do much more.
BY
Brooke Tunstall
Posted
July 30, 2014
10:18 AM
AT WHAT POINT does Major League Soccer recognize what it’s doing isn’t working—at least not well enough?
In 1997, less than two years into its existence, MLS began an ambitious program designed to get the top American players into a professional environment at an earlier age.
They called it Project 40 and it was co-funded by U.S. Soccer and Nike, at the time a major MLS sponsor. The idea was to pluck the best high school and collegiate underclassmen players and get them signed to pro deals instead of playing four years of college soccer. They were extremely ambitious too: the "40" in Project 40 indicates how many top prospects were expected to sign on for the program each year.
The thinking, of course, was that with its short season and restrictions on training hours that college soccer wasn’t a good enough model to allow MLS and the U.S. national team to develop world class talent. Getting top players into a pro environment at an earlier age would enhance their skills at a key developmental stage.
July 30, 2014
10:18 AM
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Today too many of the top American players are still spending too much time in college soccer. In our most recent list of the top 100 American soccer players—the ASN 100—24 athletes spent four seasons in college soccer and 13 more played three seasons. All told, 55 played at least one season of college soccer. We at ASN aren’t arrogant enough to think our list is definitive but we’re also confident it offers a fair and accurate look at the general state of the current U.S. soccer player pool—and 37 percent of the list is spending at least three seasons in a system that limits them to about 20 games or so crammed into a three-month season.
This isn’t how a powerful national team in international soccer is developed.
There’s more. Of the 45 players on the ASN list who never played college soccer, 29, basically two-thirds, of them began their pro careers abroad. Granted, a handful of them, like Jermaine Jones and Fabian Johnson, spent their entire lives living abroad but for players like Will Packwood and Michael Orozco, born-and-raised in the U-S-of-A, they went abroad because it offered the best, and sometimes only, chance to sign professionally as a teenager.
ASN 100 College Experience Breakdown
* undrafted after senior year of college soccer
^ was a pro before the start of MLS—is really old!
players in bold began their pro careers outside MLS
While some might view it as a positive to have foreign clubs do the heavy lifting for many of the top American players, consider this: Of the 92 players on the roster of the four teams that made the semifinals of the World Cup in Brazil, the only player to have been developed outside of the country he played for was Lionel Messi, who famously ended up at Barcelona only after Newell’s Old Boys, the club in his native Argentina, refused to pay for hormone therapy for the undersized Messi. Clearly, the way to become a world power in soccer is not to have another country do the work. None of this is to suggest there haven’t been success stories from Project 40 and Generation Adidas. Tim Howard, Michael Bradley, and DaMarcus Beasley—last seen starring for the U.S. at the World Cup in Brazil—all signed with MLS as teenagers. And Clint Dempsey, Brad Guzan, and Omar Gonzalez were among the players on the U.S. roster who were coaxed out of college early with Generation Adidas deals. College soccer is the red-headed stepchild of American soccer: It receives too much blame for the ills of the American game and not enough of the credit for what it does to help. Graham Zusi, for instance, was unknown on the national stage in high school but after four seasons at the University of Maryland he developed into a World Cup starter and an MLS Designated Player. But there’s little argument that the American collegiate system is the optimal way to develop world class talent. We know this because A) there have been no world class players developed via the NCAA and B) the free market says so. After all, the development of soccer players is a billion-dollar international business; if spending four seasons in college was the best way to develop players, you can bet the farm that it would have been implemented by clubs around the world. It hasn’t, and that’s a big reason Jurgen Klinsmann and U.S. under-20 boss Tab Ramos haven’t been shy about criticizing college soccer as a means of player development.
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But few teams are following the Galaxy’s lead: As of today only four other MLS teams have confirmed plans for a USL Pro team, and MLS needs to mandate that each of their clubs has a club in USL Pro; otherwise too many of the top prospects won’t get enough games to properly develop. CLEARLY, WHAT MLS is doing now isn’t getting enough players out of school early, which means the league needs to admit what it’s currently doing isn’t enough. It also needs to recognize the solutions to these problems require MLS to do things it has been historically reluctant to do—give players more control and spend more money. Right now the league office gets to decide which, and how many, underclassmen can be drafted. Several prominent agents who deal with MLS told ASN the league is reluctant to have underclassmen who haven’t signed with MLS declare for fear of them trying to leverage either returning to school or signing elsewhere in an attempt to get a higher salary. That’s being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Most players who declare want to be pros, and while some might turn down MLS offers for Europe or Mexico, there won’t be enough to force MLS teams to break the bank or risk losing prospects. It also takes money. Not just salaries, though that’s part of it. It takes owners who are willing to spend more on academies and on reserve teams in the USL, as well as bigger scouting budgets that heretofore most MLS owners have been reluctant to spend. The league needs to remind its owners that an improved U.S. national team is good for the fiscal health of the individual clubs and that the investment in player development will pay off with improved performances by the U.S. And if they can’t do this by cajoling them, then U.S. Soccer and MLS need to mandate it, something the federation has the power to do as the governing, and sanctioning, body of the sport in this country. Further, MLS should trump scholarship offers by paying for tuition for any player who turns pro before earning a bachelor’s degree. The lure of a college education is a big reason why many players pass on MLS entry-level salaries, but if there was a standing offer to pay for school, either during or after their careers, then it provides more incentive to the players to leave early—especially since so few college players are actually on full-rides. Division I programs are limited to 9.9 scholarships and most players, even elite ones who are pro prospects, are only getting partial scholarships. By offering to pay for tuition, MLS could be offering many players more scholarship money than they’re already getting. Again, the status quo isn’t working. But to take the next steps toward Don Garber’s stated goal of making MLS one of the world’s elite soccer leagues by 2020, more needs to be done at the player development level. Is the league serious about becoming an elite league? If so, changes are essential.
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