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Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 3708810, member: 153"] I'd say it's US Soccer Federation. Here's a bit of the history and of the people responsible like Dan Flynn and Tony Lepore. [URL="http://www.ussoccerda.com/20170719-a-decade-of-da-rise-of-u-s-soccers-development-academy"]U.S. Soccer Development Academy[/URL] The Development Academy started in 2007 and included the MLS team academies, but now it is dead: [URL='http://www.ussoccerda.com/home.php']U.S. Soccer Development Academy[/URL] US Soccer subsidized players, subsidized coaches salaries, subsidized team travel, etc. It lasted for 12 years before Covid killed it. Almost all of the young Americans in Europe went through the DA with the exception of a few like Sergino Dest, who was brought up in Holland. Having seen what the DA did up close (and by this I mean my child trained with them, but never joined), I was a big believer. My children are right now at a club that used to be part of the DA, and which is still part of the new MLS league, but they are coached by D1 head coaches. They have good training. But it pales in comparison to the training the DA kids used to get. It was intense, they ramped up time devoted to soccer, and they even had developed a common system-wide style of play (i.e. every DA club received instructions from US Soccer, even down to what they would be working on in any given week). Many of the coaches had licenses at the highest level. Any time you have 10-20 young players in Europe doing well out of the 5000 who were in the DA, it's hard to say precisely that it was the DA that created it. However, the competition was surely the strongest it ever was, and there can be no doubt that helped. The better coaching helped a lot too. And lastly, this was all possible because of the subsidy for players from US Soccer. You have to draw your own conclusions. 90% of those young players doing well in Europe came from DA clubs not affiliated with MLS clubs. Claudio Reyna and Tyler Adams are the outliers (i.e. both of them were at MLS academies). Most of the Americans in Europe are like Christian Pulisic, who played for an independent DA club. All in all, there were about 90 of these clubs nationwide. Right now, MLS has taken over the old DA league. Almost all the old 90+ clubs have signed on to participate. But the MLS is not subsidizing this league the way US Soccer did. So you're going to have fewer scholarship players competing for the Independent teams. They will likely play for the MLS instead, though it's highly probable some of them will fall through the cracks. As well, I know first hand that some UEFA Pro licensed coaches did not return to the Indy clubs because their salaries were no longer subsidized. For them, it's the difference between making $15k-$20k a year (which is what a coach at a MLS league club now makes) and $30-$35k a year (which is what they used to make with subsidy). [/QUOTE]

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