After looking at a reader's comments to me on Twitter, I have to say that I have failed in answering my own question the first time. I will leave my first entry up so all of you can look at it. Also, I have failed to analyze the issue more fully and come to grips with all of the problems that US soccer has, and how pro-rel can fix some (if not all) of those problems. Here are the problems, and how pro-rel can help fix them:
- Development of young players
Pro-rel can aid the development of young players by allowing those players to be loaned out to smaller clubs in lower divisions to gain play time and to allow them to develop. Clubs all over the world do this, and MLS is trying to do this with their MLS-USL agreement, but those teams with affiliations at the bottom of the USL table have nothing to play for, so they tank. This IMO does nothing up help the young loanee develop because none of his minutes would be meaningful to the success (or failure) of that club. Obviously, the big counterexample would be Dom Dwyer, who last season led Orlando City to a USL Pro Championship. However, for every Dem Dwyer, there are countless others who, for one reason or another, do not work out with their parent club or their loan club, and are therefore cast out of the system entirely. The major case here is Danny Szetela. He has fought through injury to get his career back on track. In 2013, he was playing for Icon FC. In 2014, he's playing for the New York Cosmos in the NASL. This is his first year of playing pro soccer since before his major injuries. Another good example for young kids to follow is the Rickie Lambert story: cut from the Liverpool academy at age 17, worked in a factory and playing non-league soccer, then was discovered again by Southampton, and now he's back at Liverpool FC playing in the first team. He only got back into it through hard work and determination.
Part 2 of the youth development problem is the inconsistent coaching issue at the ODP level. As Gary Kleiban has noted lots of times, he play a Barcelona-style formation and tactics with his U12s, and they seem to pick up the style despite retractors saying that it's impossible (this according to his Twitter page). Often times, coaches pick the best athletes, not necessarily the best soccer players, and drill them into a style of play similar to that of Stoke City under Tony Pulis. Others pick the best soccer players, and they develop those players by focusing not on winning, but on the development of each player.
The next issue is the development gap from 18-21 years old. Most Americans want to go to college, and parents believe that college is not just the best option, but the option. My cousin currently plays soccer for an U14 team (he's 12), and his parents both want him to seek out a soccer career if and only if he goes to college first. While that may not be a bad thing for their personal lives, players like my cousin who have potential to turn pro should have the opportunity at a young age to go to an academy and be able to accomplish everything they wish to accomplish in soccer. MLS has attempted to solve that problem by having their teams affiliate with USL Pro teams or having teams start their own USL Pro teams. While that may work for those clubs, why can't clubs just promote their players and deal with them without using a quasi-loan system?
- Tanking
Currently, especially in MLS, there is a massive problem with tanking, the process where you lose games on purpose to gain the highest draft pick. In a pro/rel system, if you "tank", you get punished by going own to the division below. Relegation is a massive punishment as it would require the club to start over again paying people half of what they're paying them now. As we see today, DC United have gone from worst to first in the MLS Eastern Conference by using their parachute payment of finishing last the year before. However, how many times does that happen in leagues where a lack of pro-rel exists?
- Not adhering to the FIFA dates
This is more of a league issue than a US soccer issue, but MLS has not followed the FIFA calendar since its inception (with the exception of taking a two-week break for the World Cup Group Stages).This leads to Jurgen Klinsmann being falsely forced to compromise with MLS to take their players when they have important league games to play in to determine playoff seeding. (In a previous blog entry, I mention that Klinsmann doesn't have to do that at all, per USSF guidelines.) While this may be my weakest point to make, if a new D1 arises, it must adhere to the FIFA dates in order for it to be a serious league IMO.
Those are the three points I wanted to make for now, I'll come out with more later about the State of US Soccer under the current system.
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