¶ Introduction to Youth-to-Pro Realities
This is the May 28 edition of Breaking the Line , the ECNL podcast , featuring ECNL President and CEO , christian Labors , and ECNL Vice President and Chief of Staff , doug Bracken . The ECNL podcast is about you and for you , so if you have questions , please submit them to info at theecnlcom .
With assistance from our podcast production lead , jacob Bourne , and our videographer , reed Sellers , who brings the podcast to YouTube I am Dean Linke , the podcast editor , and Colin Thrash puts the final touches on the production .
Today , christian and Doug talk about the youth to pro player progression , including the fact that it is extremely difficult to make it to the professional ranks , with the reality that only 1% of all youth athletes will play pro . They look at Euro Academy to pro rates as well as MLS Academy to pro rates , and share some success stories within the ECNL .
This week's ECNL podcast once again hits the topic of quote winning matters , end quote and , with the help of Jacob Bourne and some well-sourced data , christian and Doug break down some 2024 analytics leader versus actual champion , information from major sports leagues like the NFL , the MLB , the NHL , the NBA and MLS .
And since we covered so many sports , doug Bracken's brain buster , which will include Reed , jacob , christian , doug and myself will ask us about our number one favorite sports team any sport at all . So it's another fun , yet topical show and it begins right now with ECNL President and CEO , christian Labors . Thank you , dean Doug , good to see you again .
You too . It's been two long weeks . I think everything feels like long weeks . When you get into late May , early June , end of the year , end of school year , vacation time , playoff time , event time , crazy time Everything feels like it's longer .
That was kind of a joke , because I see you pretty much every day .
That is true .
It doesn't mean it goes fast , for better or for worse , if you will , but yes , I agree with you . This time of year , school's wrapping up , getting ready to get into the summer , exciting stuff for us , obviously , with the playoffs and the culmination of the season Warm weather , which you always experience because you live in San Diego , beautiful place .
End of the season this time of year also because today we're going to talk about a lot of things around this pro pathway , pro soccer thing and obviously last weekend had a promotion match with uh sunderland coming back and earning promotion and a game that was worth up to uh I see numbers saying 300 million dollars worth of value in winning promotion into the
premiership , so that's a pretty valuable set of goals they scored in the last 20 minutes or whatever it was , to get promoted .
That's a lot of money 300 million . If that's the value , that's a good day at the office .
According to Gemini , I think it was 170 to 300 million . That's a nice wide range , but the point is hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue associated with that win . So we have the pro , you know , the Liverpool winning the Premier League . I think Napoli won Serie A . All sorts of fun stuff Got Champions League final coming up next this coming weekend .
It should be pretty exciting .
Don't forget about the Conference League final on Wednesday . That is Real Betis and Chelsea .
Yeah , I'm less excited about that one .
People don't care about that as much . How many levels ? Will PSG finally win the Champions League ?
I don't know , but I do have a question of how many different levels of European football can you play in before people don't care , because the Conference League is the third level . Correct , it is the third level .
I don't hear a lot of people talking about the Conference League final . Let's say so . Maybe people don't . I'll watch the game because I do that . I watch the game because it's interesting to me .
It's a trophy Speaking of Crystal Palace , first trophy , a major trophy in club history .
I believe that was awesome when you talk about the FA Cup , and I guess to some degree the Carabao Cup was similar , because Newcastle hadn't won a trophy in quite a long time . To me those are like the most fun where it's yeah and Jacob rightly just said in the chat here Tottenham winning the Europa League .
How about that ? The Europa League final ? Which correct me if ? Which correct me if my numbers ? But it's something like the 16th versus 17th spot in the Premier League it .
Well , yes they . They were in fact in 16th and 17th place at the time .
That is competing competing for a Champions League spot by winning the the Europa league . I didn't didn't think it was a great game , to be honest , but yeah , uh .
No , it was not a game for uh , for the soccer aficionado , but for the neutral , it wasn't . It wasn't that exciting for the neutral if you're a tottenham fan , you're ecstatic , do you think ? Because they did , tottenham did finish 17th , just above the relegation crew Does Ange their Tottenham coach . Does he keep his job ?
Seems like he's got things and he does win things in his second year . I would be curious what he says about his third year , because it seems pretty prophetic .
All of this talk and we randomly walk around all these pro leagues because that is a segue to the discussion today , at least the first discussion of youth to pro pathways , because it is something that people talk about with much emotion , much excitement , I think much misinformation about those pathways .
We wanted to dive into a little bit about the actual realities of becoming a pro soccer player and some of the information that we do have on that and you know there's probably a lot of information we don't have , but we have good information on how hard that path is from very credible sources . So let's talk about this .
I think , jacob , you had said a couple of podcasts ago , based on a survey , that you had found that 75% of parents think their kid will move on to play professional . Is that professional sports or professional soccer ?
That is professional sports and it comes from a Stephen Borelli column in USA Today that was published in April .
Let's just stop at that for a second Doug . And the absolute lunacy of that statistic is mind boggling to me .
I mean 75% is a lot of people . I think I was pretty sure that I could be a pro until I was maybe 20 .
You're Uncle Rico , Doug . You probably would have been if coach would have put you into the state championship game , but he didn't .
Now living it as a parent , as you are as well . Your kids are younger than my kids . You realize that that's , you know that's a long shot , like a long , long shot , because actually the actual number is that is something like below 1% .
Right , yes , and we're going to unpack that here a little bit based on some of the data that we do have .
But so if you start with three out of four parents and at least that survey I don't know if there was a uniquely diluted group of parents that was involved in that survey but three out of four think their kid is going to play pro sport when the reality is less than one in a hundred are going to move on .
That's a pretty big disconnect , and if there's that big of a disconnect , unfortunately that means it's ripe for misuse in terms of people selling dreams , and I think let's start at the top domestically and then we can maybe look at some numbers in Europe as well . But Jacob had pulled up again some numbers from October of 2024 .
And this was talking about the number of players that have moved on to MLS , from MLS Next Pro , correct , jacob ? Am I citing that correctly ?
That's fine . It's the number of first team signings .
First team signings in MLS from MLS Next Pro . So MLS Next Pro , in theory , is the supposed to be the second division of MLS or the developmental pipeline .
And again , this is as of October 2024 , 120 players from MLS Next Pro had signed first team contracts since 2020 , which is approximately , if we do the math , 120 divided by four , it's about 30 players a year , which averages out to about one player per team going from the second division of MLS and their pipeline into the top .
And , by the way , then we start there , because you got to be pretty good to get just to that point . I mean , you're one step away in theory by their own pyramid , one step away from MLS if you are an MLS Next Pro . You agree with that logic , doug ?
Yeah , I mean , I think that is in line with what we just said . It's a very , very low percentage .
You probably have a wide range of ages of people that are playing in MLS Next Pro . You might have some late teens . You're going to have some probably early 20s in there . I'm a little bit getting ahead of my skis on that , but my sense is that there's a range there .
But then if we back it up and you say if that's what's happening at MLS Next Pro and that number may increase , I think we had just seen before going on here that as of April of this year that number may increase . I think we had just seen before going on here that as of April of this year that number was somewhere around 160 .
So a few more , you know , which actually is not . If you go from 24 to 25 , the average of 30 per year going from 120 to 160 is 40 more . So it's somewhat in line of that , you know , average of the previous four years .
If we take that as saying generally , you're at your older teenage years at a minimum if you're at MLS Next Pro and Jacob , maybe , if you can find some info while we're talking about what the average age of MLS Next Pro is , that would be interesting .
But then you go down and you say okay , if that's the older teenage group and then you go down to let's talk about where does the pro pathway and I put that in quotes start ? And
¶ Pro Soccer Pathway Success Rates
you have U13 , u14 . You have pro academy teams and we'll talk a little bit about what goes on in those age groups in a little bit . And I think it is our statement that the younger you go and you feel you're on a pro pathway , the higher the chances of you becoming a pro , the closer they are to zero .
We have some data here and I'm going to shift now to data from Europe , from the European Club Association , in a report they published a few years ago and it was talking about the percentage of minutes played in the first team by club-trained players , and so the intent here is , you know , players that were considered to be in that club's academy , and the
interesting part for this and this was an analysis done from 2021 to 2023 , is they considered players in the club from the ages of 15 to 21 .
And before we talk about the numbers , if I came to christian lavers fc pro club when I was 20 and you would be considered a player okay , because ?
assuming you didn't sign directly and play in the first team , right , you were in the reserve team or whatever . But so before we talk about what these minutes and the percentages say , the minimum age , the lowest age that they even consider in determining these percentages , is age 15 , and they go all the way to age 21 .
Actually , I'm going to pause here because jacob just sent some information , so we'll tie it back up . Average age of starting 11 in MLS , next Pro , the average is 21.8 . Youngest average age is 18.2 . I think that's Houston Dynamo . Oldest 25 , chattanooga . Let's just use that as a range kind of what we thought there may be some teens in there .
There's not a lot of teens in there well , and there , yeah , there's different priorities between chattanooga fc and houston dynamo , correct ?
houston's probably trying to develop younger players . Chattanooga may be trying to win or yeah yeah . So well , we look at that and say , okay , again , that is , you are a pro in theory and mls next pro , but that is older teen years at a lowest number .
And then we go to this European data that doesn't even consider a kid at age 13 or 14 as being relevant . And I asked the question well , if they don't include those in the percentages , there's only one reason why you don't include those in those percentages is because if you include 13 and 14 , the percentages will drop precipitously .
Now at the other end , you look and it says it goes all the way up to age 21 . If you're 21 here , I believe most people graduate college somewhere around 22, .
Right , yeah 21 , 22 .
21 , 22 . So you're a senior in college ? Yeah Right . And they consider that in this report as club trained . And you know , here in the US , I mean club soccer is basically considered done , or at least the youth side of it . The operations we all think about is at age 18 . So there's three more years of players included in this .
So if you look at those two things and say you eliminate 13 and 14 , because the the odds of you signing as a uh in a pro pathway at age 13 or 14 and becoming a pro , the odds of that happening , are about as close to zero as you can get , and there's always an exception , but that exception doesn't change the odds .
And then if you add in players of age 19 , 20 and 21 , you have a significantly higher number of those players because they're older , they're more mature , their performance is more proven , they're more experienced . A much higher percentage of them are likely to make it . But even when you skew your data this is from the report and it ranges dramatically .
Here they picked one club per country that they chose to share . So highest , athletic Bilbao in Spain . And we know to play for Athletic Bilbao you must be Bosque . So they limit their player pool dramatically .
To begin with Athletic Bilbao , by far the highest 50% of their first team minutes were players that trained in the Athletic Bilbao Academy between the ages of 15 and 21 . It's pretty good .
Yep .
Right the lowest . Inter Milan was at 0.1% .
Yep .
We don't need to know much . No , that's not very high . The average of the clubs that , and there were 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 .
Average of the clubs that and there were one , two , three , four , five , six , seven , eight , nine , ten , eleven , eleven clubs here that I put together from Ajax , athletic Bilbao , inter Milan , olympic Lien , a , rangers Sporting , anderlecht , fenerbahce , malmo , rebel , salzburg , h&k Rydjeka , out of Croatia .
The average was 23% of their first team minutes from club trained players based on the ages of 15 to 21 . Our concept on that is if you had a sliding scale basically the younger you sign , the closer to zero you are in terms of a chance of being a pro , and if you extend that all the way up to the age of 21 , it gets much , much higher .
But that is not the perception that I think most people have .
I do think that we want to consider , or have to consider , that I think there are clubs that have different priorities , that I think there are clubs that have different priorities . So if you look at that European model , you would say anyone who watches Inter Milan or knows Inter Milan , their perception would be they're not a developmental kind of club .
They have a lot of older folks , a lot of older players . You know that they have not been totally known , I don't think from for developing players from their youth system into the first team , whereas you look at a club like IACs , iacs has been really known to do that , so there could be some priority bits to it .
I also think it could be translatable to any league , mls being one of them . What's the club that you would say an MLS has a perception that players that they really put a lot of stock into developing younger players ? Historically , fc Dallas .
Yeah , fc Dallas and Philly Union , probably the two yeah right .
So some of it is about club priority . I think the point we're trying to make , or you're trying to make , is that to try to think about a 13 or 14 year old and project their success or whatever at a potential as a pro is is a failed . Well it's , it's to be honest it's crazy yeah and the data shows that objectively .
It shows that . And again , you reference IACs and they're in here and according to this report , it was the 36.5% of IACs minutes , first team from 21 to 23 . That's pretty good . You could have been in the IACs Academy and not made it to IACs and you may be playing pro soccer somewhere else .
Correct , ultimately , if you're good enough that's the whole point in theory of having these academies is if you're good enough , they want to sign you and keep you in your first team .
Or sell you and make good profit . Keep you in your first team , right and so , or sell you and make good profit . Yeah , and I think again you look at winning and playing . Young players are not synonymous with each other , right ? So so there's , there's some of that like what , what ?
You know what you're dealing with there , so what and what your priority is , and maybe ix's priority was to develop the younger players and sell them , and we don't even need to venture a guess on priority .
Yeah , what we can say is that it is incredibly difficult that they don't even use age 13 or 14 in the european club association . In making this report , it would be very interesting to see what the numbers are here . And the point is here where is this dream of pro ? Probably most prevalent right now in American soccer is at age 13 and 14 .
That's where so many of these kids and families are told hey , this is a pathway at a pro , pathway for you moving forward . And it's exactly where the numbers say it matters the absolute least . And again somebody is going to say okay , yeah , but you need a thousand kids coming in at age 13 to find the one .
And that may be true , but then it begs the question of well , yeah , you're not finding them . Well , I guess it's like investing . If you invest in a hundred different businesses , you know , 90 can like investing . If you invest in 100 different businesses , 90
¶ European Academy Development Models
can go bankrupt . If you make it really really big with a couple of them , it all pays off right , investing in the tails of , as they say , in terms of probability . But the issue here is what is a player giving up in terms of ?
I think if you just ask generally about life , whether that's commuting time , I mean there's stories of players that move across the country , go into dormitory housing , players that go and live in host families , and the odds are again , they're going to do that . They're not going to make it as a pro . At what cost is the question .
I think the answer to that is obviously very personal and up to every family , but it would be interesting to know if people really go into it with open eyes , as to what it means to be on a pro pathway at age 14 . Very different than what it may mean to be on a pro pathway at age 18 .
Very different At age 14 , very different than what it may mean to be on a pro pathway at age 18 .
Very different At age 14, . It's like throwing the dice and it's losing almost every time .
It's like throwing a hundred dice and trying to get an exact combination right and I think everybody can tie it together . We talked about it with Doug Lemoff just the differences from a 14-year-old to an 18-year-old , right , just psychosocially , mentally , physically , all that stuff . So it makes total sense .
So yeah , I agree that taking these extreme measures to follow a path at 13 and 14 that more than likely is not going to pan out is a tough one .
There's a lot of confusion and misinformation .
But when you start with the fact that less than 1% of players ever are going to make it there and then you go to the basically mathematical almost guarantee , and yes , if you can point to the one or two kids that are the exception , that's sort of proving the point right , because there's always going to be an exception .
If you know the name , that's proof , that's exception . If there was a lot of them , you wouldn't know all the names because you could rattle through a bunch when it's almost zero . But it does increase every age . It begs the question how do you set up the best possible identification pathway ? That requires less drastic decisions .
Less risk requires the risk because at some point you have to take a chance , but it requires it at older age groups and to some degree , reducing the size of the risk as much as possible . If people knew the numbers , they'd probably be more inclined to solve a problem .
That way , when you don't know the numbers , everybody just jumps in and ask questions later .
It's a ready , ready shoot , aim type thing as opposed to saying , hey , let me be sober minded in terms of what the future may hold at these ages and be a little bit more careful about these decisions until there becomes I don't want to say guarantees , because I think that's hard .
When you're proving , you know you're in a proving ground type situation , but where at least the risk , the failure percentage , drops somewhat substantially , I would hope and the consequence of failure drops to some degree .
We could have a more thoughtful way to set this up for kids that age than we do . For sure I agree with you making these drastic decisions . I just try to think about where else is there a parallel you can see anywhere else in major sports where it happens like that . I mean tennis maybe maybe I don't .
I don't know tennis like where you're playing all these .
you're going everywhere and playing all these junior tournaments and all that stuff .
That's an individual sport , yeah , and I think to be fair , what I do know about tennis is if you are a highly ranked player , you're pretty much not in school as a youth player because you have to travel to all these places . I mean , I think it probably makes other sports look cheap in comparison to it .
But you know , you would say it certainly doesn't seem that way with the more traditionally American sports football , baseball , hockey is different , right , hockey ? You have that interim .
They go into that sort of semi pro , yeah , yeah , before they go to college , before they go to the NHL , and that that usually hits players , hockey players somewhere around 16 , I think where they have to start looking at going into sort of a I hate the word semi-pro , so let's just call it a amateur .
It's like it's called major , major junior hockey . It's 16 to 20 years old , so you do that you know , and that is a step .
But again , if it's 16 to 20 , that's more in line with the percentages to your point . I mean you certainly don't have the green Bay Packers under 13 football team with future Aaron Rogers on it .
Yeah , and I think , if you tie it back to soccer , your European soccer , let's say , you know more oftentimes than not at 13 of 14 , like you're going to the club . That that's closer to you , right ?
There's not Cause that's not how it's done here , because there's some of that , but there's a lot of these players from everywhere .
Well , cause you can't sign a pro contract until you're 16 . I think in Europe , right ? I think that's I'm not sure where .
I know there's a difference in England between how far you can recruit . So at , I think at 15 and below , you are limited geographically and at 16 , there's a dramatic shift in rosters because all of a sudden you can recruit I don't know if it's countrywide or EU wide or whatever it is but the boundary significantly expands .
The quote unquote Academy team at under 14 or 15 is dramatically different from that same team one year later . And don't kill us on whatever the age is . But there is a break on that . And so the point here I think that we're making is there's a lot of confusion here . There's a lot of confusion here .
This is an incredibly big hurdle At a time like now , where everybody talks about pathways and everyone talks about future as a pro , very few are soberly looking at that and saying what does this mean ?
As I consider whether my 13-year-old will up and move and live away from home in chasing a dream and somebody can turn around and say , well , how can you take that dream away , or whatever , and I'm not gonna venture any opinion on that , I'm just saying when it's a one in a thousand chance , that's not a bet you take very often in most areas of your life .
And what are ? I mean I think it's important what are the costs ? Right , and I don't mean the financial costs , I mean I think it's important what ?
are the costs Correct ? And I don't mean the financial costs , I mean just the opportunity costs of life .
So some yeah , there's certainly something to think about .
Agreed , so I'm going to transition that because I think we hit that hard .
And before we get to that transition from Christian with Doug , let's take a break and hear from a couple of the great ECNL partners . Let's take a break and hear from a couple of the great ECNL partners .
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Once again , here's Christian Labors . So again , before somebody yells and says well , if it's so hard , why does ECNL have a U13 , u14 ? Just like anybody else . Because providing a good environment , providing exciting sports , competition and the learning opportunities go with them . Let's separate that from saying
¶ MLS Next's Quality-Over-Winning Approach
this is proof of a pathway towards you know , riches and fame of being a pro athlete . Ok , there's a difference .
You can say that 13 and 14 year old should be in a great environment , should be learning , should be having fun , should be competing , doing all that stuff that sports hopefully can do without saying , and that means you're likely to become a pro and therefore do things that you wouldn't otherwise do , because you think that there is this big bow with lots of
money and and and fame at the end of this .
14 yeah , part of our job is to guide our 13 and 14 year olds and help them navigate life as you will . So , uh , and everybody makes their own choice on that , on that matter , but uh , very we're a fan of it's america , the land of the free america . I am a fan of it , that's true it's true .
And speaking of freedom to make decisions , there's been another decision made by mls , next here at u13 and 14 . That has been talked about a lot , but it's basically to eliminate eight competitive results in standings , so no standings . Well , no standing wins no wins and losses no wins , losses or ties , no , no , there's no . Nobody's a winner , nobody's a loser .
There is no score in terms of the way we think of score , which is you put the ball on the net .
Everything is ranked based on quality of play , and so I was just watching a nicely produced video that talked about the quality of play , and so , for those catching up , at U13 and U14 , there are no standings based on performance competitively in terms of wins and losses . Everything is based on quality of play , which is assessed .
I'm not sure if it's assessed by AI .
It is absolutely 100% . But if it's not , there's no amount of human hours that can watch that much . Probably AI .
And somebody can tell us where we're on .
But even if it's AI , somebody has to write the AI , which means it is going to be somebody's opinion at some point of what is high quality soccer and what is low quality soccer , so that every action if we use the football philosophy word , every action , every press , every pass , every dribble , every shot , every positional decision is given a score .
The team is given an attacking score , a defending score and an overall score , all based on quality of play , intention , execution very vague in some of that . That score is then adjusted to the strength of the opposition . Now , how you do that is another question I would have , because there are no scores .
So somehow your strength of opposition is maybe determined by their quality of play . And then that is the standings at under 13 and under 14 in MLS . Next Now , Not who won and lost , but who has AI say that they played better .
I'm going to stop there .
Doug , I'm going to ask you your thoughts on that , while I put together my thoughts .
Yeah , I'll be positive , start and say I think the challenge that we all wrestle with is how do we develop good soccer ? And good soccer is I would define and we've talked about this before . I would define as what my vision of the game is and how I think it's .
When it's played correctly , this is how it looks and these are the things that go into to making it look that way , and everybody has a different vision of what that is , but if you have one of those , a vision of what it is , then that's it . So I'm going to say this is the challenge , like how do we you know ?
Because I think the the biggest thing people say- is , by the way we have this .
This quality of play won't take into account your vision yeah , correct it's the ai's vision or the person behind its vision yeah , correct , and there's a kind of win it all costs mentality that I think people would say gets in the way of development and they're trying to account for that , to try to bridge that .
You're being very gracious .
I am . But let me finish , because what I'll say is I think it is the absolute wrong way to go about it , and to me , the right way to go about it is to educate coaches and to get more .
That means more access to education , more education that's applicable to the environment that we're in and the realities of that environment , that's applicable to the environment that we're in and the realities of that environment , more pictures and ideas about how to get success at player development and all those things . That's to me , how you do it .
It's almost like standardized testing , right ? Standardized testing is tough because you know , then you're maybe educating to the test and therefore , is it really learning that's going on , or is it learning so that people can regurgitate the information to do well on a standardized test ? Right ?
That's an argument out there in education , and to me , that's how I analogize this , and so I just don't think that's the answer . And then to pretend that winning is not part of what competition and sports are is totally crazy . It's crazy it's crazy .
It's crazy , I mean . So you will have players who come off a field lost three zero but we'll say but we actually won , because look at our ideas and our intention in style of play .
Yeah , and you're sending a message to that kid that the actual reality of what happens is trumped by the subjective intention of what the player tried to accomplish , whether they were effective or not .
And you know , listen , let's assume that there's good intention of you know there's , there's different ways of evaluating intention in the penalty box that you're defending versus the penalty box that you're attacking .
But I , you know , I looked at the video that they , they released this with and , for example , there's a couple of goals and you know you score a goal and then the finish is the finish good , very good or excellent ?
Well , at the end of the day , you scored and if you put it in the corner , how do we determine whether that was an excellent finish or a very good finish ?
In the let's go old school , in the old school , you either scored or you didn't score because it was saved , or you missed the target and nobody will remember whether it was a great goal or not a great goal .
It was a goal . I mean , you know , I , I do you think again , terrible comparison maybe , but do you think tottenham hotspur cares that that goal they scored in the europa League final was a goal ?
or a . Well , I I actually I think man United took home the quality of play Europa Cup championship is it a bigger trophy or is it smaller ? it's in your mind yeah yeah , doug , I think you hit it right , the answer . The answer is not creating a false reality of anonymous computerized analytics .
The answer is educating coaches who then in turn educate players and families about how you balance the search for results with understanding , where that's a good decision to make or a good effort , even if it doesn't work . It doesn't seem like we need to be .
I also would say it's a little bit condescending to me to talk and say at 13 and 14 in this country that people can't coaches in theory of teams that are supposed to be hot in clubs that are supposed to be highly organized , highly highly educated and trained people , that you can't actually trust them to teach these things and you trust you to develop these
guys and do what you're supposed to do . So we're going to tell you whether you're doing it or not and I mean not that we have any history of conspiracy theories turned true over the last five years at all anywhere in this country , but I can't imagine how this system could possibly be weaponized and used against clubs who run afoul of the AI program .
I mean , that's part and parcel to the world we live in . Everything is weaponized . That can be , yeah . I just don't . I don't get it really . I do think it's , it's . You know , winning is part of it , and it's part of it that we have to learn both how to do it and how to deal with not doing it and all those kinds of things .
So it's , it's , it's always part of it . And you know , if our coaches aren't good enough to manage through that and still develop players at a high level , uh , or the level they need , then we need to educate more coaches and make it accessible and affordable and all the things that go along with it .
Not , you know , it's not reverse engineering it by saying , you know , by me giving you the score of good or not good based on your vision of what the game should be . And I don't I don't know enough about it to say , you know , what the algorithm says is good or not good , and whether I agree with whether that's good or not good .
Well , by the way , by the way , it's probably impossible to know that , because it's gotta be a very sophisticated algorithm to do all this stuff . But then , ultimately , how do you really learn much as a player then , because you don't know too much ?
I suppose you can pull some data that said this this decision , the ai said , was a good decision , and this a this thing , the I said was a bad decision I could see .
I could see using it as a tool for development , like to say , like after the fact , let's look at this , and I mean this is coming and happening right when AI will produce , take the video that we capture and break it down for individual players , and all that kind of stuff is already happening . So I think it could be used as a tool .
You know what this sounds like , Doug . It sounds like remember those old tournaments where , after you tied on points and tied on goals for and tied on goal difference , who went on was based on who got more yellow cards or a sportsmanship rating by referees . Do you remember that ?
I will say one year we made it to the USYS final and we won the fair play award , but we did not win the final .
Well , and there are tournaments where you advanced based on your sportsmanship rating by the referees , right when everything else was tied . It seems like this is . I mean , maybe sportsmanship should be weighted into the quality of play . That'd be part of whether it's a good game or not , right as people are sporting .
I think the big question Tongue-in-cheek , of course , yes'd be part of whether it's a good game or not , right , as people are sporting . I think the big question Tongue in cheek , of course , yes , tongue in cheek . The big question we're trying to tackle is how do we increase the importance of the development of players to play good soccer ?
That translates into them being the best players they can be , whatever that means .
Well , the answer to that , Doug , is what you've already said , which is education , and education comes with experience . I'm not talking about from an ivory tower , I'm talking about there's probably some stuff that can be formal licensing , and it's sort of those moments where you get to jump through the hoops but you learn theories and you learn .
You know case studies and benchmarking . Then it's informal mentoring of people who are teaching you . This goes back to some of what we talked about before and some of the challenges of coaching , in that it's always easier to pronounce a solution and then market the solution and then make money from your solution and that's what this screams to me .
This is not about improving soccer . This sounds like a way of saying we've solved development . Here's the way we're doing it . Now let's push this out on a gullible marketplace marketplace .
I what ? Yes , I was going to say that this , this smells of marketing to me , of hey , those guys over there , they don't , they're not analyzing your play , and whether it's good , very good or excellent , and we are , you know .
Uh , well , and by the way you said it could be a marketing ploy , I mean , and all marketing is .
You know everybody uses marketing at some point , at some level . We've talked about it . You know a bunch on this and you know it feels more like that than anything to me . I don't know .
And to your point , I think there could be and this is not intended to be disrespectful of the technology be , and this is not intended to be disrespectful of the technology . There could be some valuable uses of this technology and pulling clips and evaluating various decisions , but it is not in place of objective reality .
It's like turning soccer into virtual reality headsets and that is a complete misuse of this that I think will have unexpected collateral consequences of when you can't look and figure out . By the way , not to mention there's going to be a whole black market of standings .
Now , you know , somebody in some social channel is going to be putting up the black market under 14 standings of real scores .
This is like gym class with no jump rope . We're going to have an imaginary jump rope so that nobody feels what it's like to trip and fall when you can't jump rope , did you ?
ever do that ? By the way , did you ever have somebody do a training where you imagined to pass the ball back and forth ?
My guy .
I grew up in the 80s , so no , some great music time , great time in music it's also very interesting to me that this is at the age groups that we also just talk about how they're completely you know the odds of you being a pro and signed as a 13 year old or zero , but now you're also not competing , you're in , you're in quality of play , analytics land .
Now the other thing and Jacob pulled up this , which I thought was really interesting , because everybody can say , okay , youth soccer , youth sports , whatever , but Jacob , our intrepid producer here and finder of all things factual , looked up analytics leaders and actual champions in pro sports and I almost don't want to take the thunder because
¶ Analytics vs Reality in Professional Sports
I didn't do this . So I'm going to ask Jacob if you want to go through . You got NFL , MLB , NHL and NBA where you compared the most prominent or one of the most prominent analytics used with who actually won . Jacob , can I bring you into the podcast to go through what you got here ?
Very happy to talk about this . Yeah , so , like I said , I took the analytics leaders of each league and compared to the actual champion . In the NFL , the most widely used stat is DVOA , which is a defensive value over adjustment , which is offensive and defensive side of the ball .
That leader was the Baltimore Ravens , but the Philadelphia Eagles won the Superbowl in 2024 .
The Tush push does does not apparently get enough points in this analytics , or what ?
I mean , if they ran it every single play and were able to get those 10 yards , I'm sure it would .
But I can't even make it of a bunch of everything's I I can't make a judgment . I've never heard of these analytics , um , but that's good , because I just watched the games . As you want , you know so , but maybe I should experience sports with data uh , mlb , it's pretty standard .
Uh , war wins above replacement . Team war was philadelphia phillies , but lo and behold , the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees to win the world series and the NBA . The basketball reference uses team net rating , which seems to be the kind of leader in that . That was the Boston Celtics , and the Boston Celtics actually did win the NBA championship .
So analytics got that one right . And then in the NHL , dom LeSouzan at the Athletic . He uses what's called game value score added , because there's not really a standard NHL analytics model . His is the best one , though . In 2024 , he said the Carolina Hurricanes were going to win the Stanley Cup and instead it was the Florida Panthers .
So out of the four major sports , analytics got one right last year .
Well , and as I think you said in this document , you can debate analytics , but you cannot debate final scores , and I think this again puts it in place , in the same way that you can talk about style of play in our great sport and you know uh , I was talking to some of the other day clash of style is actually what makes the most entertaining matches , I
think , and in a lot of ways and you can in determining style , you base your style on personal preference to some degree , but then on also what you think is the most effective metrics that you're going to measure in achieving your style .
You know , if you're going to be a counterattacking team , you're going to have different analytics that you're going to look at in order to be successful in counterattacking .
I'll take it a step further than that , because this is the reality . Is your tactics change based on who you're playing ? So you may one day be a possession oriented team because of the opponent that you're playing and it suits that game or that strategy . And the next game you might sit deeper and play on the counter attack .
Well , and , by the way , I'll ask that question , doug , because in theory , your example is also going to be related to the strength of your opponent in some ways . And so if these quality of play ratings are adjusted based on strength of opponent , how do you do that ?
Does that mean my excellent finish is not excellent because the team I played is not as good ? Does it mean my decision to press is not as high a rated decision of pressing because the team I played is less athletic ?
How do you do that ? I applied it that way . I I mean I guess I would ask at 13 and 14 do we change the way we play based ?
on . No , I'm just I'm . I'm going back to this because I'm saying , by the way , how do , how do we determine strength of the opponent to adjust your score ? If this , is it the strength of the opponent and their intentions , or is this a way to sneak back in who actually won ?
I don't have a good answer for that question , not that you're looking for one . I'm not , and again I think our point here .
We could call this the information podcast , because in the first segment the point was it would be really helpful for people to know the information about what are the odds of success as you sort of take big decisions in life . We would do that in all the rest of our areas of life , right ?
We weigh risks , rewards , ups and downs , yeah , and in this one , the use of analytics and this type of thing could be really helpful as information to further evaluate a performance and to do things . But it is in no way shape and form in my opinion , in our opinion , appropriate to replace the reality of competition with an analytic formula .
I think what major to varying degrees . But what professional sports has done is they've realized it's not the end-all be-all , and I talk about analytics , that it's a tool and they use it and there are beliefs in it .
But it is a tool , it is not the end-all be-all , because if it was the end-all be-all , every team that had the analytics would win , to Jacob's point . And they don't .
And if it was the end-all , be-all , it would be very , very boring .
Yeah , right , right , we'd run everything . Everything is a computer simulation .
And in theory we're red pill . Are we red pilled or blue pilled ? Red pilled , right Red pilled . All right , All right . Well that's enough . That's the conclusion of our two topics .
Well , let me just ask you one more thing . Just tell me , give me your perspective on winning and losing . I know what you think about all this , but give me your perspective on winning and losing In these age groups , just generally .
I think winning is a metric that evaluates how effective you are at trying to do whatever it is you're trying to do , and at certain ages it is a very , very low priority and at other ages it is the only thing that matters . Right , in pro sports , it's the only thing that matters In U8 soccer . Would you ever want an eight-year-old not trying to win ?
No , I don't think so . But when they lose because the other team is bigger , faster , stronger or the other team just better with the ball , whatever the reason is , do you , do we use that in any negative way ? Of course not . It's a metric of they're farther along in the development curve than we are , and I think at age 13 , 14 , it's very similar .
It tells us how effective are we at doing what we're trying to do , and you may say you know what . We lost that game , but we really , really liked the way we played and this , this and this .
But can we ignore the fact that we lost , like at the end of the day , if we're building from the back and we lose the ball three times inside the penalty area and lose 3-0 , that's an important data point at how good we are at . Building from the back Doesn't mean building from the back is a bad idea , and I hate using that example .
We talked about that with Doug Lemoff last week , but you know so to your point . I think winning is always something that's there and it needs to be a factor in evaluating performance . As you age , it is more and more important .
Yeah , and it is a skill that you need to train it is a skill and it's , uh , as much as you get there with your mental , the mental part of the game and that ability , you know it when you see it right that there's just those teams who find a way and and know how to know how to win well and to that that is the skill , by the way .
and that is the skill , by the way . The skill is the competitiveness , the perseverance , the grit , the find , that area where you have the advantage . That's something that's at an individual and collective level , something that you have to train and work at over a long period of time . You don't just flip it on , indeed you do not .
What you can flip on is the Bracken Brain Buster , and that's what we'll get to after two more messages from ECNL corporate partners .
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¶ Bracken's Brain Buster: Favorite Teams
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It's crack and brain buster time , so take it away , Doug .
All right , is everybody ready ? Drum roll , because I'm watching my favorite team . That's not a soccer team . Right now , I wanted to ask everybody what is their favorite team that's not a soccer team and why we're going to go with Christian Lavers , who hates all sports . No , that are not soccer .
I have to go with the mighty Michigan Wolverines football team , undefeated national champions and slayers of Ohio State for four consecutive years .
Didn't they win the national championship two years ago ?
One year ago with zero losses compared to the Buckeyes two loss season this year .
I bet the Buckeyes trophy is just as shiny , is it , though ? I bet it is .
I think there's a little . There's a little blemish . There's in fact two of them All right .
So we've got the Michigan Wolverines . It's one of the reasons I don't don't like Christian that much says stuff like that . Let's go to Reed Sellers .
Well , if it says anything about my loyalty , I'm a Tennessee Titans fan . So that are ups and downs . 2018 , 19 , you know those were the years , but yeah , that is my team .
Okay , tennessee Titans love it . Where did that ? Is that because you grew up ?
there . Oh , and why ? Yes , I grew up in Nashville , so been going to games forever .
Reid were the down years like did they lose or were they just analytically down ?
Both Well , I mean their style of play was pretty good . They had good intentions , good play design . The execution wasn't there , so I mean wow , yeah I love that good answer .
All right , let's go to jacob born , definitely going to be a hockey team yep outside of st louis stars close they were .
They were a good uh soccer team back in the day and outside of the europa , winning tottenham hotspur . My favorite team is the st louis blues . They , uh . I grew up playing hockey among all the other sports that I did .
My mom and dad were both big hockey fans and so they have been , uh , one of my favorite teams ever since I learned how to skate when I was like 18 months old love it .
See , that's good stuff . Christian , on the other hand , is from wisconsin and his favorite team is Michigan , so I don't nobody knows .
Can't help him there . I did play hockey a little bit , but I was no good .
I wasn't either , let's go to the velvety voice , Dean Linke .
I'm a massive NBA fan , though I'm a little bit worried about how much longer I can be . When I lived out in LA , I fell in love with the Lakers with Nick Van Exel , former Cincinnati Bearcat and then , when LeBron went to the Lakers , it even put a further exclamation point on my love .
My worry is , when LeBron finally does hang it up and that could be any day now that I may have to figure something else out , because I don't miss a Lakers game .
Okay , showtime . Love the Lakers for showtime . All right , great , I'm going to stay . Also , nba huge Grew up in Indianapolis basketball country , and so Indiana Pacers right now they play game four tonight . Eastern Conference Finals .
Big game tonight , big game . Big game tonight Big game .
Big game against the Knicks . Jason Cutney loves the Knicks so I'm hoping really to Pacers stick it to the Knicks so I can give Jason some crap for that . But always love the Pacers . And interesting story is back in the day , and Dean will remember this , NBA games were only on local TV . They didn't have these national TV contracts .
And Dean will remember this NBA games were only on local TV , they didn't have these national TV contracts . And one of my teachers in high school was the cameraman for under the basket of Indiana Pacer games at market square arena and he asked me to come be his table tender .
So for two seasons I sat under the basket for Indiana Pacer games , which only furthered my love for the Pacers . So there you go . That's my , that's my story , that's all I got .
There you go .
Well , that's a wrap on talking about the pro pathway , talking about analytics , talking about very debatable topics , and you got our opinion , and that's what makes this great is that everybody can have their own opinion and do their own thing , and I actually would say that that will move the sport forward , by having people that are not in lockstep and in unison
in style of play or anything else like that .
We'll we'll be the disruptors .
We'll disrupt .
We'll be the disruptors , but thank you everybody for joining us .
Yes , thank you indeed . And remember , if you have questions or topics you want covered on Breaking the Line the ECNL podcast , please email us info at theecnlcom . Before we say goodbye , one special message from our good friends at Continental Tire Kick off , good friends at Continental Tire , kick off your summer with Continental Tire .
Purchase a set of four qualifying Continental Tires now through June 30th , and get a $110 Continental Tire prepaid MasterCard by mail . Visit ContinentalTirecom to learn more Continental Tire the smart choice in tires . I want to thank everybody involved in today's podcast and everybody involved with the EC&L , for each and every one of them and all of you .
I'm Dean Linke . We'll see you in two weeks for another edition of Breaking the Line the EC&L podcast . Thank you for listening to Breaking the Line the EC&L podcast . No-transcript .