prettyricky: What I would really say is that you can't compare any youth soccer club to any other without a whole lot of effort to normalize the clubs...just as I can't compare Merck and Amgen without thoroughly understanding first their goals and secondly their different operational models. And neither Merck nor Amgen are going to give you any of their competitive advantage in terms of the operational financial strategy or even tactics.
That sounded very fancy; so let me put it another way. The way I judge clubs is first by looking at what they say they want to achieve and then by comparing it to what they actually achieve. Some clubs want to provide great classic teams; so I look at how they do in classic competition. Some clubs want to compete regionally and nationally; so I look at how they do in region and national competition. Some clubs want to feed high schools; so I look at how the high school teams they feed do.
Bringing this full circle: any club that wants to be the best in SC now is competing with multiple clubs that want to be regionally and nationally competitive. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do that; but there are a whole set of priorities that are then forced upon you. To use an analogy: you can't walk into Baskin Robbins, have someone ask you what flavor you want, and you say "yes" -- your priorities will be constrained by what you want to achieve.
