Quote:


You mention "college" twice in your post. Academy is not about preparing players to play college soccer, it's about preparing them to become professionals. No secret that European clubs want kids when they are young. It's been stated many times that 15 or 16 is the age that separates "the men from the boys". In a perfect world, if all academy kids found a professional home by age 18, the colleges would be left with only recruiting RPL and classic/challenge players.

Would it be a terrible thing if the quality of American college soccer was suddenly "downgraded"?



That's great, I hope that comes to fruition. However, the role Academy serves was not the point of my post. My point was two-fold. First, a player, and his father, views Academy as a way to play in college. Second, and more significantly, he had been told a college coach signed a player the coach had never seen play, but made an offer simply because his commit was on an Academy team roster. I thought that was interesting.