WHERE HAVE THE PROS GONE?
Brent Latham - Thursday, March 5, 2009

The US Under-20 squad has landed in Trinidad and Tobago to compete for a place in the FIFA U20 World Cup in Egypt later this year, and it is disappointing at best to see that the squad once again is comprised of mostly amateurs, with over half the team still in college.

While head coach Thomas Rongen is sure to come under fire for leaving a number of intriguing and professional options out - especially up front - it is likely that club commitments and other problems - see Felix Garcia - limited his choices, and that the roster for the tournament in Egypt, should the US qualify, will look somewhat different.

More interesting than what Rongen is up to is what the qualifying roster says about the much-debated state of youth player development in the US today.

The FIFA U20 World Cup, and to a lesser extent the qualifiers, is intensely scouted by the top clubs of the world. It is a showcase for talent on the verge of breaking out, earning a major transfer, and in turn a chance for young prospects to develop further in the best of environments, not to mention the occasionally large injections of cash for the team to which the player belongs.

Yet the United States continues to operate on the fringes of this system, fielding a predominately college-based team. For the US, which always seems to qualify and play decently at the FIFA U20 tournament, only to be outclassed in the end by professionals who overwhelm the largely collegiate squads produced by the Americans, putting together the U20 squad seems to be too much an exercise in team building.

While the reality flies in the face of the deeply espoused value system of the American sports fan, as is so often the case with soccer, the FIFA youth tournaments are not all about winning. That's where the Americans are getting the player development story wrong: from the tournaments themselves, back down to the youth soccer system, and on up to the professional league.

The FIFA youth competitions are more about the results of the process of player development, and the further marketing of the players on an international level. Still, it is not a choice between winning and player development. Get the player development right, and the winning will come in turn.

The USSF, and MLS as a still unwitting proxy of American soccer, are missing out on a huge opportunity by continuing to approach the Under-17 and U20 World Cups - and the player development that goes into fielding youth teams - as if the tournaments were one-off events after which everyone goes home and starts over with the next cycle.

This year's U20 pool, a carefully scouted group of more than fifty players from all sorts of backgrounds, comes from a hodgepodge of MLS franchises, colleges, foreign professional teams, and even high-schoolers still with youth clubs.

The final roster for the tournament in Trinidad has six players from MLS, three from foreign clubs, one still in high school, and the rest, the bulk of the roster, from colleges across the land. There is really no rhyme or reason to it, and that's how the qualifying team ends up being largely amateur.

While college players that have represented the US at this level sometimes turn out to be rough gems such as Benny Feilhaber or Marvell Wynne from the 2005 edition, or Sal Zizzo in 2007, there are simply too many players of nearly the same level to pick from. Even for a scout with the experience of Rongen, it is a daunting task to determine which will be the standouts on such a small body of work - witness Rongen's utter failure to predict the rise of Neven Subotic.

Playing with a plurality of college players hurts the US competitively in the end as well. When the competition heats up, the players they will be coming up against, from Brazil, Italy, England, and Germany, are all full-time professional soccer players.

So what is wrong with the US system?

Why is the pool of professional soccer players at this level still not deep enough to pick even half a squad? The simple truth is, despite recent improvements, it is still a numbers game, and not enough professional opportunities are being created for young American players. While small number of youth players are now being offered the incentives necessary to allow them to turn pro, for the vast majority college is still the best option.

The USSF deserves credit for facing the fact that it has been going about player development in a myopic way for the last decade. The Bradenton Academy has developed some great players, but it has long since been clear that trying to pick from across the country at age fifteen the handful of players who represent the next generation of American soccer is impossible.

So there have been strides made in the last few years, and it shows in the U20 player pool. Though this edition may look like a regression from the previous version, which featured such names as Altidore and Adu and was largely a professional squad, the 2007 U20 team was an extraordinary group on top but lacked quality depth. The 2009 player pool features eighteen professionals, of which eight players come from overseas clubs.

With more likely to go pro before September, the US could still field an entirely professional squad in Egypt. Unfortunately, under the current system, further improvement is not likely to come soon. Furthermore, the American representation pails in comparison to the competition, countries which have literally hundreds of professional players to choose from at this age level.

What improvement has been made comes from a hodgepodge of steps taken to assure that at least some promising youth prospects get a chance to become pros at an early age. The MLS' Generation Adidas program, combined with greater initiative on the part of some American youths to move overseas, has been the driving force to a degree in professionalizing the ranks of America's youth teams over the past few years.

MLS development academies are also slowly improving, but teams are still very limited in what they can do with the prospects they develop. Add the handful of promising young players trying their luck in Europe and Mexico, and you get the current player pool.

But these models are still far too narrow and don't produce nearly enough players to fully stock a national youth player pool.

The Generation Adidas program, with its predecessor Nike project 40, has been around for a decade, and has produced some quality players.

But it provides a chance to only about ten young players each year, several of whom often are not Americans. An already small number, the impact is not likely to increase any time soon. Other than moving abroad, only the college option remains. Thus, the largely amateur U20 national team.

In order to produce consistently competitive teams, and take full advantage of the opportunities that youth international soccer presents, there need to be some pretty dramatic changes to the system of professional soccer training for youths in the US, not just the tweaks presently being experimented with.

Next week, in part two, I will discuss a few possible approaches that would change the way talent is developed in the US, and in turn the way American soccer is seen internationally.