How do leagues stack up?

S

Speed

GOLD
DS will be senior next year. Did not play club this year and it was glorious! I don't understand the boys side, can someone give me the lowdown on the leagues from top to bottom with the addition of the new leagues? Last year (2021-2022) he played discovery and between the coach and the drive to silver lakes for every game we were all done. Honestly, he could care less about the letters of the team: just want a solid coach with solid players. Looking to play JC. For those interested the year off has been spent weight lifting, growing (a lot) and playing high school. Confidence has grown. Highly recommend. I know others would disagree but we always do things different in out house.;)
 
On the boys side MLS and ECNL are the top two leagues. Girls side ECNL and GA. Finding the right team and coach can be had at other levels.
 
Discovery was home and away last season. No longer driving to Silverlakes or other designated "NPL Discovery" fields for games. We saved the parking $ but then handed it right back for ref fees.
 
If you look at the trends on the Soccer Ranking App, which is the most accurate ranking system available right now, the Leagues tend to correlate together in groups, with more overlap between leagues as you move down the list. I made this sheet to visualize how the Leagues are tiered under the different organizations and how the Leagues compare to each other. Each age group is slightly different; if you look ate the average trend, this is what it looks like. As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season. If the trend continues through spring and the summer tournaments, I predict the Southwest GA 2007 and younger teams dropping into a Tier 3 status next season. Capture.PNG
 
For your high school, is there one club team that a bunch of the players are from? That might be the best place to go. Of the HS teams I am familiar with, they all tend to have one non-acronym team that they get a cluster of players from. They have 2-3 stars from acronym teams, but the bulk of the players have to come from somewhere and the coaches like them to get reps together if possible.
 
On boys side, MLS Next is tops. The rest is dependent on age group
Code said:
If you look at the trends on the Soccer Ranking App, which is the most accurate ranking system available right now, the Leagues tend to correlate together in groups, with more overlap between leagues as you move down the list. I made this sheet to visualize how the Leagues are tiered under the different organizations and how the Leagues compare to each other. Each age group is slightly different; if you look ate the average trend, this is what it looks like. As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season. If the trend continues through spring and the summer tournaments, I predict the Southwest GA 2007 and younger teams dropping into a Tier 3 status next season. View attachment 15765
Click to expand...

Great chart. I was about to reply "...yeah, but BLAH BLAH league is probably better than BLAH BLAH BLAH league", but that footnote addresses most subjective critiques.
 
Code said:
If you look at the trends on the Soccer Ranking App, which is the most accurate ranking system available right now, the Leagues tend to correlate together in groups, with more overlap between leagues as you move down the list. I made this sheet to visualize how the Leagues are tiered under the different organizations and how the Leagues compare to each other. Each age group is slightly different; if you look ate the average trend, this is what it looks like. As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season. If the trend continues through spring and the summer tournaments, I predict the Southwest GA 2007 and younger teams dropping into a Tier 3 status next season. View attachment 15765
Click to expand...
What is your metric for Southwest GA teams being in a slow decline? Most arent playing in ECNL tournaments (because of GA schedules) so theres no real way to compare.

I would argue that with ECNL Southwest theres 3 dominate clubs, 3 ok clubs and 9 clubs that get blown out week after week. (Unless they're playing other lower level ECNL Southwest clubs)

This is the issue with both GA and ECNL Soutwest leagues you have a couple of top clubs/teams + the rest range from blown out week after week to might not lose by that much this week.
 
Code said:
If you look at the trends on the Soccer Ranking App, which is the most accurate ranking system available right now, the Leagues tend to correlate together in groups, with more overlap between leagues as you move down the list. I made this sheet to visualize how the Leagues are tiered under the different organizations and how the Leagues compare to each other. Each age group is slightly different; if you look ate the average trend, this is what it looks like. As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season. If the trend continues through spring and the summer tournaments, I predict the Southwest GA 2007 and younger teams dropping into a Tier 3 status next season. View attachment 15765
Click to expand...
Does the data really put EA and the non-Academy MLS Next teams at the same level? Almost every MLS Next team has an EA that is clearly the lower of the two.
 
Code said:
If you look at the trends on the Soccer Ranking App, which is the most accurate ranking system available right now, the Leagues tend to correlate together in groups, with more overlap between leagues as you move down the list. I made this sheet to visualize how the Leagues are tiered under the different organizations and how the Leagues compare to each other. Each age group is slightly different; if you look ate the average trend, this is what it looks like. As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season. If the trend continues through spring and the summer tournaments, I predict the Southwest GA 2007 and younger teams dropping into a Tier 3 status next season. View attachment 15765ACtually
Click to expand...
Actually, Mark from the Soccer Ranking App, just did an analysis of the comparative strength of the different leagues on the girls' side. Surprisingly, GA & National League P.R.O. were clear seconds - behind ECNL, of course - but comfortably ahead of E64, and then another drop down to ECRL.
I thought this was very surprising because the discussion here usually revolves around whether ECRL or GA is second best, but this seems to be evidence that ECRL has either fallen lately, or wasn't all it was cracked up to be from the start. I don't know his methodology, but he's the only one who has ever had any credible basis for rankings in the first place, so if nothing else his analysis should be looked at as the starting point
He posted it to his FB account here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbi...YjmrD8p-yhHhRB7ohD-Vf01LsuvJ7O7eI5YEezn3QIHtQ
 
TopesWin said:
Actually, Mark from the Soccer Ranking App, just did an analysis of the comparative strength of the different leagues on the girls' side. Surprisingly, GA & National League P.R.O. were clear seconds - behind ECNL, of course - but comfortably ahead of E64, and then another drop down to ECRL.
I thought this was very surprising because the discussion here usually revolves around whether ECRL or GA is second best, but this seems to be evidence that ECRL has either fallen lately, or wasn't all it was cracked up to be from the start. I don't know his methodology, but he's the only one who has ever had any credible basis for rankings in the first place, so if nothing else his analysis should be looked at as the starting point
He posted it to his FB account here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbi...YjmrD8p-yhHhRB7ohD-Vf01LsuvJ7O7eI5YEezn3QIHtQ
Click to expand...

This is an awesome analysis. Thank you for sharing. I wonder if we could convince him to do an analysis of California only, or by region. The GA is very strong on the East Coast, but, Socal teams won't be playing them much if ever, even the GA teams. Texas and the Southwest have most of the stronger ECNL/ECRL teams. My chart very well be wrong, but it is focused on the SoCal/California region. As most of us are aware, the level of play in different regions has a lot of variation, even within the same Leagues.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
What is your metric for Southwest GA teams being in a slow decline? Most arent playing in ECNL tournaments (because of GA schedules) so theres no real way to compare.

I would argue that with ECNL Southwest theres 3 dominate clubs, 3 ok clubs and 9 clubs that get blown out week after week. (Unless they're playing other lower level ECNL Southwest clubs)

This is the issue with both GA and ECNL Soutwest leagues you have a couple of top clubs/teams + the rest range from blown out week after week to might not lose by that much this week.
Click to expand...

Silverlakes Summer Showcase, Surf Cup, West Coast Futbol Classic, Blues Cup, Surf College Cup, Legends Showcase, Silverlakes Fall Showcase, The Cup presented by Legends. All of these events had a wide variety of teams from all the Leagues. Scroll through the brackets of the various age groups, there is a clear trend of who finishes at the top and the bottom of the brackets when ECNL and GA play. GA wins brackets when they are paired up with ECRL, NPL, or DPL teams, but not consistently. ECRL seems to find it's way to the top of the brackets more than the GA, NPL, or DPL teams. Very rarily is ECNL and ECRL placed in the same brackets. But I would argue, based on the trends of cross play events, ECRL would be more of a challenge to ECNL than GA. (This is focused on Southwest Teams) Also, as I said, if you look at the Soccer Rankings App for California, the GA teams have been slipping down, while NPL and ECRL teams have been moving up. E64 is all over the place.
 
focomoso said:
Does the data really put EA and the non-Academy MLS Next teams at the same level? Almost every MLS Next team has an EA that is clearly the lower of the two.
Click to expand...

If you scroll through the Soccer Rankings for California Teams, there are a lot of EA, ECNL, and MLS Next Teams all intermingled throughout the top 30 teams. So if you are a believer in the app rankings, then yes, except for maybe the top 10% of MLS Next teams, it looks like EA is neck and neck here in SoCal. Hopefully we can get SR to do a California specific analysis for the leagues. Then we can all stop speculating.
 
Code said:
Silverlakes Summer Showcase, Surf Cup, West Coast Futbol Classic, Blues Cup, Surf College Cup, Legends Showcase, Silverlakes Fall Showcase, The Cup presented by Legends. All of these events had a wide variety of teams from all the Leagues. Scroll through the brackets of the various age groups, there is a clear trend of who finishes at the top and the bottom of the brackets when ECNL and GA play. GA wins brackets when they are paired up with ECRL, NPL, or DPL teams, but not consistently. ECRL seems to find it's way to the top of the brackets more than the GA, NPL, or DPL teams. Very rarily is ECNL and ECRL placed in the same brackets. But I would argue, based on the trends of cross play events, ECRL would be more of a challenge to ECNL than GA. (This is focused on Southwest Teams) Also, as I said, if you look at the Soccer Rankings App for California, the GA teams have been slipping down, while NPL and ECRL teams have been moving up. E64 is all over the place.
Click to expand...
Out of the 7 tournaments you relayed only one was hosted by a GA club. This is exactly what I was talking about. GA clubs are playing GA league games not tournaments where both ECNL and GA clubs attend.

This summer all will get sorted once the GA teams start playing in the big tournaments again.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
Out of the 7 tournaments you relayed only one was hosted by a GA club. This is exactly what I was talking about. GA clubs are playing GA league games not tournaments where both ECNL and GA clubs attend.

This summer all will get sorted once the GA teams start playing in the big tournaments again.
Click to expand...

Lots of GA teams at those tournaments in the summer and fall. What does it matter who hosts the game? Do GA teams only play well when they are playing at a GA field? The interleague play has and continues to happen because the ECNL, GA, ECRL, and DPL League/Playoff schedules are the same time frame. So, I am really not sure what you are talking about. Aside from the Albion Cup Showcase and West Coast Futbol Club, I don't think any of the GA clubs are actually holding any meaningful tournaments. What happened to the GA teams last summer, why didn't it get sorted then? If these tournaments use Soccer Ranking to build brackets this summer, most the SoCal GA teams will be playing against ECRL, NPL, and E64 teams anyway.
 
Code said:
Lots of GA teams at those tournaments in the summer and fall. What does it matter who hosts the game? Do GA teams only play well when they are playing at a GA field? The interleague play has and continues to happen because the ECNL, GA, ECRL, and DPL League/Playoff schedules are the same time frame. So, I am really not sure what you are talking about. Aside from the Albion Cup Showcase and West Coast Futbol Club, I don't think any of the GA clubs are actually holding any meaningful tournaments. What happened to the GA teams last summer, why didn't it get sorted then? If these tournaments use Soccer Ranking to build brackets this summer, most the SoCal GA teams will be playing against ECRL, NPL, and E64 teams anyway.
Click to expand...
When your club hosts a tournament you get to define the brackets. This is why its important if it's a GA or ECNL club hosting.

Again this summer after league games + when GA teams start participating in the big (mixed) tournaments rankings will define themselves.

Just to reiterate you stated that "As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season." Then used Summer and early fall tournament results to backup your statement..

The truth is that you have no idea how GA teams are performing after summer / early fall + are making statements not base on facts/results.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
When your club hosts a tournament you get to define the brackets. This is why its important if it's a GA or ECNL club hosting.

Again this summer after league games + when GA teams start participating in the big (mixed) tournaments rankings will define themselves.

Just to reiterate you stated that "As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season." Then used Summer and early fall tournament results to backup your statement..

The truth is that you have no idea how GA teams are performing after summer / early fall + are making statements not base on facts/results.
Click to expand...
Heres another thing to consider...

While playing for the top SoCal ECNL teams likely will get your kid will get looked by schools like UCLA for soccer. Unfortunately with the transfer portal if your player cant deliver year 1 theres a good chance they'll be replaced.

What this means is that maybe not being #1 at an early age will provide better opportunities. Both GA and ECNL do the same type of showcases which are attended by the same recruiters. Overall the trick is to not get hurt and look better on the field than all players around you.

Youth soccer is a marathon not a sprint.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
When your club hosts a tournament you get to define the brackets. This is why its important if it's a GA or ECNL club hosting.

Again this summer after league games + when GA teams start participating in the big (mixed) tournaments rankings will define themselves.

Just to reiterate you stated that "As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season." Then used Summer and early fall tournament results to backup your statement..

The truth is that you have no idea how GA teams are performing after summer / early fall + are making statements not base on facts/results.
Click to expand...

So once the GA clubs can manipulate the brackets they will do better. Got ya. Everyone who looks at the Soccer Ranking app knows how the SoCal GA teams are doing, and can look at a graph showing their trends. As team changes/contracts occur in June/July, the "season" runs from July to July for most teams.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
When your club hosts a tournament you get to define the brackets. This is why its important if it's a GA or ECNL club hosting.

Again this summer after league games + when GA teams start participating in the big (mixed) tournaments rankings will define themselves.

Just to reiterate you stated that "As a side note on the girls side, the GA teams in the Southwest have been in a slow decline in the rankings for 2007 and younger throughout this season." Then used Summer and early fall tournament results to backup your statement..

The truth is that you have no idea how GA teams are performing after summer / early fall + are making statements not base on facts/results.
Click to expand...
I will say this. SC del Sol 07s have dominated SW GA conf didn't lose a game last year. Winning league games 4-0, 9-0, 13-0. They played at a showcase at Silverlakes against SW ECNL and lost every game to mid table teams and an 08 team. In the SW ... GA isn't close to ECNL.

This is one of the tournaments were they mixed GA and ECNL on the girls side. Scores speak for them selves

Total Global Sports

public.totalglobalsports.com public.totalglobalsports.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top