The U.S. Soccer Development Academy has been shut down, with MLS’s new youth league one of several rising to fill its place on the player-development landscape. Several of the youth national teams have been shuttered for the remainder of the year as the coronavirus pandemic hits the federation’s budget and imposes lingering uncertainty on the entire sport.
None of that, though, will derail U.S. Soccer’s approach to scouting, the fed’s directors of player identification, Tony Lepore and Mirelle van Rijbroek, said in a recent discussion with MLSsoccer.com.
“We have to be adaptable and flexible, more than ever before,” said Lepore, who leads scouting on the boys' side. “We’ve seen a lot of transition recently; there’s the pandemic, but also we have new national-team coaches, new president, new CEO, a lot of new leadership. And I think what's important about the philosophy – we have a really sound mission as well – especially during these times of transition, it really is like an anchor that helps guide all of our work, our approach to scouting and talent ID.”
Lepore and van Rijbroek lead the federation’s efforts to spot and elevate talented young players capable of playing for the United States at international level, a process that inevitably also feeds into the growth of future professionals. Their approach revolves around the cultivation of a network of scouts and other contacts to make use of as many eyes as possibly in an enormous nation of some 328 million residents, and a framework of analysis and identification based on these core principles:
In recent years U.S. Soccer has built a scouting infrastructure divided into several sub-regions, each overseen by veteran talent evaluators based in those regions who keep in contact with clubs and coaches, assign local scouts and track player recommendations, including those that anyone can file via an online portal. The federation also now offers a talent scout license, a joint program between its talent ID and coaching education departments, and continues to hold “identification centers,” regional gatherings intended to give exposure to overlooked players or those from out-of-the-way places.
Van Rijbroek notes that the American youth landscape remains “very fragmented and fractured” compared to what exists in her native Netherlands and other top soccer nations. That requires USSF scouts to maintain a presence at a range of leagues including the Elite Clubs National League (ECNL), US Youth Soccer’s National League and Olympic Development Platform (ODP) as well as the new MLS competition expected to debut later this year. It also places the onus on individual players and their families to “take ownership of your own development,” in her words.
“We have over five million registered youth players, and I don't even know how many are playing that are not registered,” she said. “When you pursue a career as an elite player, from a certain age, like 14 or 15, you have to go into a program – or make sure that you create the program or are in an environment that the program is created for you – that you have multiple training sessions [per week], that you have quality training sessions, that you can play with players that challenge you.”
Both Lepore and Van Rijbroek emphasize that future stars are nurtured primarily by clubs, not federations, and that they’re also the best-suited to identify talent in their local areas, especially those with a clear identity and culture on and off the pitch.
“The better the clubs are with their scouting, the better our national-team scouting is,” said Lepore. “And we can only be in so many places. We pride ourselves in having a really expansive and quality and diverse network in all the key markets. But we can't be everywhere. It’s built again on our relationships with the clubs, and we've seen the clubs really taking good steps here.”
Losing the DA, the top proving ground for talent for more than a decade on the boys' side, could well complicate efforts to cast a wide, fine net across the nation. But Lepore, who expects to cooperate with MLS’s player development department as the league’s new elite youth platform ramps up in the months ahead, believes that this year’s upheaval can, in the long run, lead to clearer understanding and incentives across the board, and help make the progression of individual players the most important factor.
“With MLS taking the lead, I think there's an opportunity to really create better harmony with the youth clubs and the pro clubs,” he said. “It's really difficult to talk about scouting without talking about relationships. And real relationships, not just financial or commercial, but one bigger club being a resource to a smaller club, and the club readily accepting that this is the pathway for their top player who needs that and is ready for that next challenge, because you need to be challenged in order to grow and develop."
And, despite the DA's demise, Lepore, one of the DA’s original architects, believes it has left a lasting legacy.
“Coaches thought their role was to build teams to win, and that led to a lot of no-risks football,” he said of the norm when the DA was launched in 2007. “There were very few players being moved up in age, and we know that by moving a player up in age when they're showing some level of readiness, that it accelerates their development. And what we had was a really important shift where the academy clubs went from the idea of building teams to developing individuals and looking at each individual player’s need, and having a pathway to support those.
“The culture was all about winning the next tournament, winning the next game,” Lepore added. “And then we shifted to a much more long-term, individual player development approach.”
In the early years of the DA, the federation actively encouraged and in some cases imposed principles of player development like a proper training-to-game ratio, possession-oriented concepts and tactics and a year-round schedule with no participation in outside activities like high-school soccer. Lepore and van Rijbroek are optimistic that top clubs will carry those lessons forward regardless of what league they’re in.
“In terms of a style of play, too often it was direct and reactive, and also defensive. And we know those approaches aren't the best for developing players,” Lepore said. “And so we tried to do it in a really sincere way where we confronted our clubs, worked with our clubs on what we thought were key principles. But it wasn't about imposing our will, or a certain style.
“We wanted to take every opportunity to give honest feedback, even where it was critical. And I think the culture’s really changed, because initially I don't think people were ready for a lot of critical feedback, even to look at themselves critically. A starting point too often is, ‘look at all that we're doing great,’ when we all have such a long way to go and so much to work on.”
Even in a much-changed structure, Lepore is confident that those principles can now be built upon by the clubs to create a bright future for youth development in the US.
“It's really encouraging and hopeful to see right now how the clubs are coming together," he said. "They've had this moment where they can kind of wipe the slate clean, build off some philosophical standards that were laid, all the groundwork that was laid.”
