Tag Archives: NPSL

Surveying the Soccer Scene: Some More Thoughts on College Aged Players

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Instead of having to keep track of the alphabet soup of league names and sift through the overlapping league structures, wouldn’t it be easier if some central body (say, the U.S.S.F.) stepped in to regulate national leagues?  This step would make it easier for fans, but also national scouts, to keep track of the best young talent in the country.

There is definitely the simple economic argument against this line of action, which says that if this centralized approach was viable then it would have already happened.  I don’t buy that.  I think it is in fact feasible but the will has not been present from those in charge

In a previous post about high school and college in the United States, I mentioned something that I think is relevant in this discussion.  High school soccer persisted (and in most respects is still persisting) until a viable alternative was created and cultivated.  The U.S.S.F. hopes the Development Academy League grows to fulfill that role.  In the same respect, college soccer will be the path of choice for the majority of aspiring soccer players, even those from MLS club academies, until a national u-20 (or u-21, or u-22) league is established and has enough resources to adequately develop players the way the DA currently does.

In much the same way that Academies were originally designed to accommodate and complement high school soccer by working on a different schedule, current leagues like PDL and NPSL are only active in the summer months.  The infrastructure that the USL umbrella currently has at its disposal cannot be ignored when considering how to bridge the gap from youth development to professional development.  In addition to the u-12 through u-20 leagues, they also operate an extensive patchwork of mostly u-23 (mostly amateur) teams in the Premier Development League.  On top of the PDL is the USL-Pro, which consists of 11 clubs, 10 in the United States.  USL also operates a the women’s W-League and the Major Indoor Soccer League.  The organization has specialized office staff for each endeavor and has provided a great deal of stability to soccer in America, despite poor retention rates in its leagues some years.

If a national-regional u-21 league was mapped out, it would be make a great deal of sense to utilize the existing structures.  Taking advantage of Super Y-League clubs and Super-20 clubs, or in many cases the same clubs running teams in multiple age divisions, is a smarter way of tapping into potential player pools but also of utilizing the contacts and administrative infrastructure which is already established and primed for competition. Continue reading →

A Profile of FC Buffalo

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FC Buffalo is entering their third season in the National Premier Soccer League.  The NPSL is roughly on the same level as the USL-Premier Development League under the USL-Pro.  USL-Pro, the third division, is the league the Rhinos play in and FC Buffalo is an amateur team in the the de facto fourth division of American soccer.

FC Buffalo, nicknamed the Blitzers, joined the NPSL in 2010 and played in the Northeast Conference Keystone Division for two seasons.  Their divisional rivals last year included the Erie Admirals (Erie, PA), FC Sonic Lehigh Valley (Bethlehem, PA), Reading Revolution (Reading, PA), AC Crusaders (Egg Harbor Township, NJ), Pocono Snow (East Stroudsburg, PA), Buxmont Torch (Souderton, PA), and New Jersey Blaze (Monmouth Junction, NJ).

For the 2012 NPSL season, FC Buffalo and former divisional rival Erie Admirals join several expansion teams in the newly created Great Lakes Division of the Midwest Conference.  The expansion teams are AFC Cleveland (Cleveland, OH), Detroit City FC (Detroit, MI), and Greater Binghamton FC (Binghamton, NY).

FC Buffalo, like most NPSL sides, draw much of their roster from local colleges.  For this reason, the season doesn’t start until the end of May.  In 2010, FC Buffalo played 12 league matches between May 29 and July 11.  The team’s 13 games in 2011 were during a similar time frame, May 22 to July 17.  This year the regular season runs from May 13 until July 6, with divisional playoffs to follow. Continue reading →

A Few Thoughts on High School and College Soccer

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A couple weeks back, the US Soccer Development Academy announced that it would officially switch to the 10-month schedule practiced and recognized by most of the FIFA world for the 2012-2013 season.  This would effectively make the DA a replacement for high school soccer as the switch blocks players from competing in scholastic leagues.  American youth soccer fanatics with internet access have long been haranguing the detriments of the high school system: limited practice each day, multiple games in a week, three month schedule in large swaths of the country, the physicality of play, the lack of proper officiating, uneven application across leagues and states, and the lack of concentrated possession based development in the face of huge gaps in quality between teams.  These bloggers and (let’s call them) “soccer activists” have been making noise telling youth players to skip the high school route for a while now, but until very recently there was no viable alternative.

For the current season the US Soccer Development Academy League (formed in 2009) has 78 participating clubs spread geographically through 10 divisions.  You can see the map and national clustering on the East Coast, California and Texas here.  From US Soccer’s page on the DA program, “The Academy’s programming philosophy of increased training, less total games and more competitive games is based on U.S. Soccer’s Best Practices utilized by the U-17 U.S. National Team Residency program.”  This directly addresses several of the most pressing concerns observers had about high school soccer.

Today the internet is ablaze with people similarly lambasting the college soccer system, myself included.  But what the general public might not fully understand is that there is not currently an adequate system to accommodate the thousands of NCAA players.  The Development Academy league has grown tremendously since its founding, but only provides access for players up to age 18.  After a player reaches the traditional high school graduation age, what are his options? Continue reading →