SoccerLoony wants D.A. players to be exposed to 10 months of training not interupted by H.S.( whose training he calls largly unstructured) Is this gentleman considered qualified to visit a typical practice and label H.S training in this fashion--just wrong.
When the Elite status arose several years back, Bridge and CESA seemed to emerge as frontrunners . Now Bridge has waned and DA is activly recruiting CESA's elite and so the feeding frenzy ensues. And by several posters own admission, some of the states best players are staying away.
I'll tell you what none of the above has--longevity, a proven track record and it will be interesting to see where this all is in a few years.
The DA leadership is interseting but admittadly employs some quality coaches who curiously list their HS Coaching experience and accomplishments in their profiles before any club affiliations.Are these the same HS coaches you say will tell their DA players they can't play their senior year in HS? Yeah, good luck with that.
Back to the leadership--does anyone wonder why things didn't work out at SSC or Bridge? Yup--someone should have researched that.
I am like everyone else--I want to see a competitive national side do well and in the past decade, I think we have gotten better but there are times I want to question the Academy model alot of the world seems to have adopted.
You have to have team oriented tactics to win--I get that, but a system that does not encourage any "taking a man on" until the final third has IMO hurt creative individuality.
Messi(who is truly a great creative player) might be the world's last without baggage(Rooney--too inconsistant, Ronaldo--too soft)I am not positive why, but today's adopted systems have to be part of it and as Coach Robinson said, when players are identified, the clubs only care about quality--not technical background.
Pele, Best, Cruyff, Eusabio and a few others all played at the same time and gave the game more flair. Messi IMO today stands alone.
And SoccerLoony(since you insist on pointing out my non error) read the Dempsey profile again--he was not recruited by the Texans but rather was at his older brother(Ryan's) tryout when he was noticed juggling on the sideline.
All of this said--I am for anything that helps develop our best state players into hopefully national ones, just not ready to jump onto this bandwagon yet until a reputation is established and attempting to force quality players to not play for quality HS teams their senior years is not getting off to a very good start