05 Training Camp - January - West Regional USSDA

I think it’s difficult to look at the Showcase scores and draw a correlation. Those games were only 40 minutes long and most, of not all teams heavily rotated players, as they should in a Showcase.

The new U14 structure is a bit of a farce, not because the players chosen aren’t deserving, but because it is obvious that they tried to get representation from as many clubs as they could. With this comes many deserving players that are left off.

US Soccer is basically admitting that they suck at scouting if they need to invite 240 kids into these camps. If the scouts don’t know who the best 40-50 players are in each of the 3 regions, wtf are they doing.
 
I heard TFA had 5 kids called up, my son has a friend on the team but one was injured and club suspended others for last weekend only two attended.

What do you mean that a few were suspended for last weekend?  Wasn't the camp held a few months ago?
 
The invite list for the US Soccer u14 East Training Camp is out and available here: https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2019/04/01/19/34/20190401-news-u14bnt-ynt-tid-east-region-roster

78 players invited.

The 05 NYCFC team - the team with the most call-ups with 11 players just called up to the East training camp - participated in last Spring's Man City cup.

In that tournament, they tied SD Surf 0-0 in their first match and lost to SD Surf 3-7 in their second match (SD Surf had eight players called up to the west camp and one to the central camp. They tied last year's 05 LAG team 2-2. This year's LAG team is about 40% better than last year and had five players called up to west camp. And, here's the punch line, lost 1-6 to LAFC, which had nine players called up to the West camp and one player called up to the central camp.

US Soccer is definitely taking care of its broad set of constituents, at the cost of SoCal kids.

Again, these things matter not just for the small number of kids who make the national team but, more so, also for the much larger number of kids for whom soccer is an avenue to college.

Seems like there could be a better, more equitable system.
 
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Except for the part where us soccer is setting a quota for each region, rather than straight merit.

In a perfect world, there would be 240 kids called up nationally. So, if there’s 240 kids from nyc and they’re the top 240 then they get called in.

Can think of at least two lafc players, several lag kids, several tfa kids, a couple of laufa kids, a couple of legends kids, a couple of rsc kids, and several fcg kids who probably should have gotten a shot, but didn’t because us soccer allocated 80 spots to central and 78 spots to the east coast. not familiar enough with san diego this year but am sure that there's a number of players that are as good as LA.

Again, lafc beat the top east team, nycfc, 6-1. Lag, tfa and rsc have beaten Lafc in full group play. SD Surf tied NYCFC 0-0 in their first match and beat NYCFC 7-3 their second match.
 
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The invite list for the US Soccer u14 East Training Camp is out and available here: https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2019/04/01/19/34/20190401-news-u14bnt-ynt-tid-east-region-roster

78 players invited.

The 05 NYCFC team - the team with the most call-ups with 11 players just called up to the East training camp - participated in last Spring's Man City cup.

In that tournament, they tied SD Surf 0-0 (SD Surf had eight players called up to the west camp and one to the central camp. They tied last year's 05 LAG team 2-2. This year's LAG team is about 40% better than last year and had five players called up to west camp. And, here's the punch line, lost 1-6 to LAFC, which had nine players called up to the West camp and one player called up to the central camp.

US Soccer is definitely taking care of its broad set of constituents, at the cost of SoCal kids.

Again, these things matter not just for the small number of kids who make the national team but, more so, also for the much larger number of kids for whom soccer is an avenue to college.

Seems like there could be a better, more equitable system.
FYI
Surf beat them pretty good later in the tourney.
 
It is probably not the best idea to make assumptions based on last year’s results if you don’t know the current players in that region.

For example, NYCFC picked up a new midfielder who will be at that camp. I watched the kid score four goals against the Arsenal 05 Academy in London a few months ago. He was the best player on the field that day and is probably better than any offensive midfielder I have seen in SoCal this season.

Another kid at that camp is an 05 playing up on the Philadelphia Union 04 team. He is their second leading scorer as a defensive mid.
 
It is probably not the best idea to make assumptions based on last year’s results if you don’t know the current players in that region.

For example, NYCFC picked up a new midfielder who will be at that camp. I watched the kid score four goals against the Arsenal 05 Academy in London a few months ago. He was the best player on the field that day and is probably better than any offensive midfielder I have seen in SoCal this season.

Another kid at that camp is an 05 playing up on the Philadelphia Union 04 team. He is their second leading scorer as a defensive mid.
fair point. so, checked the NYCFC 05 roster from 2017-18 season (the Man City tournie was played in Spring 2018) against the NYCFC 05 2018-19 roster, and there's several new players, but 1-6 and 3-7 losses don't get better with a handful of new players.

can think of at least three 8/10's who are shockingly good in LA, and at least 1-2 in SD, and am sure there's more. in any case, we'll see what's what when the u14 national team camp is held this summer.

however, primary point is not whether one specific kid is better than another.

US Soccer, with a geographic quota system for the training camps, is giving a leg up - when it comes to college attention - to kids based on where they live, not necessarily on how well they play soccer, and, conversely, artificially limiting opportunity for kids who happen to live in areas like SoCal where there's a higher concentration of good players.
 
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here's handicapping the u14 national call-ups for SoCal. Based on the numbers, and having watched several of the west regional matches:

LAFC: 3 (maybe four, if they call-up RW even though he wasn't at the West Regional Camp)
SD Surf: 2 (as reported by Kriks0129)
LA Galaxy: 1 (and am thinking that up to three LAG players could be on the bubble - DT, depending on USSDA feelings about the brawl w/ TFA; JR; and still think JO is worth a look but he wasn't at the West Camp...)
Santa Barbara SC: 1 (maybe)

Would expect about 48 total call-ups to the u14 camp, so the above projection puts SoCal to make up btw 10-20% of the initial camp call-ups.

For reference, in the first u14 call-up of the last cycle - i.e. when 04s were called up for the first u14 camp in Nov '16 - SoCal had five players called up out of a total of 48 called to camp.
 
Obviously, everyone has their own perceptions and opinions, which makes for healthy discussion. My opinion is that there is a lot of questionable analysis and incomplete info here.

I was at both the West (January) and National (June) camps. There was a vibrant mix of kids selected to these camps. Some big/fast/strong/athletic types. Some kids whose strengths were technical skill and/or soccer IQ. If you look at things solely through one lens or the other, you are left wondering why some kids were selected and others weren’t. Some kids might appear to be “weaker” but might project well over the long term based on their style of play and how the game changes over the next few years (i.e. simply running past players isn’t as effective). Similarly, some kids were quite a but younger than others, and I know from discussions with the decision-makers that future growth spurts and projection. The process behind these selections seemed far more informed and thoughtful than one might expect from the outside.

Assuming that U14 teams who win more games should necessarily have more players chosen is very superficial analysis. Now, I agree that last year’s SD Surf team merited heavy representation, because the style with which this team played was helping to develop players who would do quite well later on when intelligent decision-making becomes more of a factor. (Frankly, I think the break-up of that team was crazy - those parents/players might not have realized what a great thing they had going.). But, some of the other teams/games cited in this thread simply aren’t and shouldn’t be that relevant to player selections. If players were selected based on their team’s scores, imagine the uproar about lazy scouting that might arise out of that.

Plus, some of the scores/results cited in this thread as a basis for comparing the relative strengths of teams are quite misleading. I watched some of those games, the context and flow of play tell a very different story than the score.

As far as the Jan camp, the Northwest team went 1-2 in scrimmages. However, that included a fairly convincing win over Norcal (based on accounts from players, parents were not allowed to watch that day), a close loss to LA in a bizarre game, and a dead even match vs SD/Southwest. Southwest had good players but also a cluster of 8-9 players who train and play together, that chemistry provided a huge advantage in team results during the camp, but isn’t that relevant to choosing the best players. In summary, in mist cases the scores are relatively meaningless (but fun for parents).

At the National camp in June, the west team had the worst record of the three (Central, East, West) teams. Does that mean that fewer West players should make the cut?

No.
 
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