Building the Future: Can Soccer Academies Fix U.S. Development?

Yes. Okay. Sorry. Go on. Go on.

We're talking about the men now.

Yes. Yes. Sorry. We're talking about the men.

Okay. Okay. I'm with you now.

Yes. Sorry. I should I should have specified that.

Welcome back listeners to another episode of Laces Out Loud. I am Pamitha, and as always, I am joined by Gurushabd.

Hello.

And Alli.

Hello.

Guys, we have had a really exciting series of weeks, return to action with the NWSL. A thrilling semi final match between England and Argentina, just one for the absolute ages. And as we are recording this, we are unsure of who the third place finisher will be and the champion of this year's World Cup will be, But I'll do some podcast editing wizardry and have a little shout out in there for you when you all are listening to this.

Spain. Spain won the World Cup. Congratulations to Spain. Utterly took advantage of an Argentina squad that almost didn't look like it showed up. Congratulations, Spain.

You're twenty twenty six FIFA World Cup champions. But needless to say, we are excited to watch both matches, France and England, and Spain and Argentina, this weekend. But there's also been a lot of individual matches as well. Sorry. Go ahead, Ally.

We we have a good doubleheader.

So refreshing.

It has. And we have a good doubleheader on Sunday because the Spirit play at seven, and so we can watch the World Cup final as a warm up, and then go to the Spirit match.

Yeah. And as we are recording this, there have been back to back to back to back NWSL matches. It is chockablock Saturday of soccer action, and we deliberately wanted to wait for the result of the Seattle Reign Gotham FC tilt out in Spokane, and oh my goodness, both Seattle and the Spirit somehow managed to find a way to claw defeat out of the jaws of victory against that dark knight up in New York, Gotham FC, son of a diddly. Gurushabd please tell us how you were feeling right now.

Yeah. And they did play out in New York, where they have terrible air quality right now.

No. The Spirit played in New York.

But they also, they just they played at their regular field in New York today.

Oh, did they really?

Yep. Well, they played it.

No, they looked up I

played it in New York, not New Jersey.

Oh, they were actually in New York, okay.

They're in New York.

The field didn't look like their normal field,

it looked like Oh yeah, that's true.

It looked like a college setting.

Yeah, I think they were playing at a college in New York.

Well I apologize to our wonderful friends in Spokane,

they had to take many hydration breaks due to the air quality from all the smoke.

Yeah. We we should talk a little bit about that and the implications for the league and why they did what they did and why they shouldn't have. But for now, on the like, in terms of, like, the three two Gotham comeback victory against Seattle. How how are you feeling over there?

You know, I'm feeling raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by Rose Lavelle.

Oh, yes. Me. Me. Me. Yeah.

You. You on Wednesday. I mean, we took the lead two nil for most of the game. We were attacking, and then we kind of pulled an England Men's team and went defensively and let Gotham kind of attack after attack, and they're too good for that. Mhmm.

They have Sam Kerr now, who was the assist to Rose LaVelle's last goal.

I'm Unfamiliar with Sam Kerr? Is she, she good? She's good, right? I think maybe she's good. I've heard the thing.

Some people have heard of her.

Yeah. I was about to ask if she did a back flip, but I guess that she just assisted, so she probably Not didn't pull out the back flip for just assisted, like

Yeah. Just just an assist.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we lost our lead, and ended up losing the game.

So, you know It hurts. It does. The Hey Spirits podcast asked this week if it should be legal to have Rose Lavelle playing, and maybe not. She's just too good. I I I

I just watch her, and I'm grateful she's on the US women's team.

True. She is very, very fun to watch.

Obviously, I do not like having to lose to Gotham, but more Rose Lavelle, the better for everybody. Right? Like, I, you know, I I heard that question, like, is it should she should she be illegal to have her play? No. The answer is no.

In fact, I'd want her to play all the time. Have her play all ninety minutes every game, because we all deserve to watch that type of magnificent soccer, and then the rest of us should get good enough to stop her. Right? Like, let's we don't like, I I felt that was sort of like a unfair question by our friends over at Hey Spirits.

Oh, I thought it was a silly, are you feeling victimized by Rose Lavelle? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't think there was any seriousness behind it.

But I, you know, the the Spirit always seemed to struggle against Gotham, but I felt like with the conditions and everything, including three matches in a week that both teams were dealing with during the Spirit Gotham game, I felt like it sort of came down to one of your world class players making making a great play and scoring on a chance that seems impossible, and Rose Lavelle did that, and the spirit didn't, and that's the game.

Yeah. I think

I was only able to watch the highlights of the Wednesday game against Spirit, the Queen's Classic.

Yeah. It was But

how did it go?

Yeah. Well, I will say that they have been hyping this up for a while. You know, they the league has been trying to force the Spirit Gotham rivalry, and so they've hyped this up not just as a rivalry match, but also the, you know, sell out a baseball stadium, which they did. And I think it is a little bit more meaningful now with also Gotham about to be playing full time in New York City. So there was a lot of, like, hype around the match and a lot of, you know, former players there.

And, you know, Abby Wambach and Julie Foudy were doing their podcast and all of that. So there's a lot of hype around it. I do feel like the match itself felt a little bit disappointing, and it sort of feels like, you know, the focus was on the hype and the sellout. And it is a midweek game where both teams are playing three games in a week, and the air quality is terrible, and the weather is terrible, and they're stopping every fifteen minutes for water breaks, which changes changes the game. So it was hard to get for me to get excited about the game self watching it, and more just sort of glad for both teams, like, glad that's over, you know, we all made it through, moving on.

But also maybe I'm a little bit of a sore loser and

Yeah. I don't think you're a sore loser, and I think what's the thing is the players and the team and the team ownership, maybe not the team ownership, the team ownership will maybe have quiet conversations behind the scenes, but the players and the coaches are not gonna come out in front of a microphone and say, we shouldn't have played. Trinity, good for her coming out and, like, raising the issue, but she's a fierce competitor, no one's ever gonna question her competitive spirit, No one's gonna consider anything that she says sour grapes. They left everything out there, they always play with the whistle, they do what they gotta do. Oh, and by the way, gotta give a shout out to Leicy Santos for making me look like a fool.

When I last week was like, Leicy is great, but I love Ashley Sanchez. And then what she what did she do? She followed it up with a banger against North Carolina She did. And a banger effort against Gotham. Gotta love Leicy Santos.

She was a sports center.

She was number one, top play, with her incredible volley score against North Carolina. But this is the thing, we as the fans we as the fans, and then, frankly, the larger sports media has a responsibility to hold leagues accountable for their, actions. Or in this instance, you know, questionable lack of action in terms of protecting player safety. It's not about being a sore loser. Objectively, that game should not have been played.

And, of course, there are tremendous financial considerations that go into this, but that is poor planning. I I do not subscribe to the theory that you can't have both commercial success and, you know, care for your players. Like, is a false choice presented by people who lack creativity, or who are just more than willing to take shortcuts to get small gains. I do not accept it. You can take care of the interest of the players and earn a profit.

You can be both environmentally responsible and fiscally successful. Anybody who tells you otherwise is either lying or trying to sell you something or both. And for the NWSL, as we have been saying, this is an opportunity to lead, not follow. Don't feel compelled to bow down to the same type of interests that have been ruining sports in America as we've seen with the World Cup and the problems that that have been surfacing as a result of our men's soccer infrastructure, which we'll get into momentarily, lead the way. Do different.

Like, do not feel compelled to just copy paste what our television partners are expecting us to do. They're not looking out for the players' interests. Are they gonna pay medical bills? Right? No.

What about the fans? You're putting fans in harm's way also. Packing 40,000 people into a stadium with with bad air quality, like, sure, people are gonna have to make their own choices, but at the same time, why do you have to do it? It's it is and and a lot of a lot has been made about the air quality. Holy cow.

The field quality. Did anyone else notice that the pitcher's mound wasn't leveled? The pitcher's mound was still present, like, two feet from the end line? Like, we were one bad bounce or one bad tackle or sprint out of the sidelines away from someone having, like, to navigate a literal bump in the road. What are we what are you doing?

Like, what's next? A partnership with Wimbledon and we're just gonna put a soccer field on top of center court and we're gonna play because people wanna see it, freaking oh, what are we gonna do? Put a soccer field in front of the White House lawn, and oh, maybe that might be something that they would consider. So it it's crazy, guys. Like, why aren't we stopping to ask ourselves the question, just because we can do something, should we do something?

And if we are going to do something, why isn't it always, are we doing what's right for the players, and are we doing what's right for the fans? If you do what's right for the players and you do what's right for the fans, the money will follow, the teams will be successful, the league will be successful. It's not that hard.

Yeah. So let me ask then if you think this was a regular game, not at a baseball field, not hyped for months, not with its own name, the Queen's Classic. Do you think it would have just been rescheduled?

Yeah. Probably should have been. Right?

I don't know, actually. I mean, I think it should I think it would have been easier to make that decision because it has less hinging on it. But, I mean, we haven't seen the league proactively decide to make a decision to cancel when it's been staring them in the face that they should. So, like, the the Kansas City Orlando match that was delayed for, what, four hours last year because it was so hot. I mean, I feel like at some stage you just say, even when it cools down a degree, this is still bad, so we just need to reschedule.

So I think, yeah. So I I I like to think that they would have said, oh, yes, there's less less money lost here. So let's do it. I mean, honestly, I rather they say for player safety, let's do it. But since they're not doing that, it seems like a lower list lift.

But I feel like even that, I don't know that they do, and it makes me sad that that's my immediate thought. But I'm I'm optimistic that Pamitha thought that maybe that would be I think it

would be

And then, you know, there's some grit. Like, I've seen t or games on YouTube where they've been playing in blizzards, and you can barely see the ball, and is that just old school, or should that just not happen anymore?

I think there's a difference between playing in the snow and playing in, like, like, negative wind chill conditions. Right? Like, you can play in inclement weather. You shouldn't play in dangerous weather. And the difference between inclement weather and dangerous weather is I think is shrinking for reasons that we all know and understand with the changing climate.

But it is going to require not just the NWSL, but every sport that plays games outdoors. It's gonna require them to ask, okay, is this a reasonable risk for players and fans? And, unfortunately, I think the answer is it is not a reasonable risk, but we are proceeding anyway.

Yeah. And we'll have to see what the MLS is doing because the Chicago Fire did just reschedule a game due to the smoke in Chicago. Yeah. So they are handling things differently.

Yeah. I think the amounts, though, of fire or smoke are vastly different. So, I mean, it's still really bad in New York and DC area in terms of being harmful and dangerous. But I think the I forget, like, the air quality meter, you know, it shows that it's, like, one fifty. And I have a colleague in Minnesota who, had their air quality alert at, like, six fifty.

So it was a a huge it's, know, even worse in the Midwest, and I don't know what their, you know, at at what stage is it too bad to play? It seems to me if you're saying, let's stop every 15 and get some water, and there's a picture going around of Trinity Rodman with an oxygen mask at at one of those breaks getting oxygen. Like, that seems like, yes, that is that is unsafe we should play, but I don't know if the MLS had a number or just if it was just common sense that they needed to stop it. But if we could bring the common sense, you know, closer to, like, health, not money, that would be great.

I don't mean to take us into really the sort of, like, non germane territory here. It it feels like there is an inevitable conflict between the financial interests of ownership and the corporate partners of the league, and the fans, players, and teams. And I there's a I think a larger conversation to have, probably not in not on our podcast, but a larger conversation to have about what is the future for this country and the world, in terms of whose interests are really being taken care of, and to what end. Right? Like, it's there if you know, an objective I don't wanna say objective.

A a 50,000 foot perspective would raise a lot of questions, and I don't have all I don't have all or any of the answers. But it's hard not to look at soccer, something that we love, both men's and women's, it's hard not to look at other sports, it's hard not to look at anything that is viewed as a service to the public and not question whether those providing those services, be it entertainment or otherwise, are actually being taken care of. Anyway.

Yeah. So, I mean, it is

Other than that,

Mrs. Lincoln, how are you guys enjoying the play? Good? Done the report? Everything good?

We'll see if they start making changes. They've been making changes throughout the seasons when something comes up, but I could see that being a difficult decision. And I also agree that it shouldn't be a difficult decision. They should have just rescheduled it. It was such a big game.

It was so hyped. Using the baseball field, 42,000 plus people, tickets sold.

But to what end?

Being a hard decision for them. But, yeah, it I mean, it's just soccer. It's It can be rescheduled.

And it's one of those that I wonder if a short term loss leads to a long term gain. Yeah. If they said, it's not safe for athletes, it's not safe for fans, we're so sorry, we're canceling this, You know, do they I don't know. Can they show the twenty nineteen World Cup final on ESPN at that hour? Right?

Like, still show a woman's soccer. It can be adult, you know, something like that and still get some eyes. Like, what are I don't know. But it seems like to me, like, I would I would come back and give the team my money if I felt like they were worried about player safety and my safety, and, like, I would take that hit.

But I think whatever loss that they might have suffered financially is kind of de minimis relative to, like, what the league does and what the owners of the league have to contribute. I think the decision I think they put themselves into a corner. I think the fact that they tried to manufacture this, and they've done this in other places, to me represents a misunderstanding of your product. You do not need the Queen's Classic to sell women's soccer in this country. You do not need to manufacture a rivalry between teams.

Those develop organically. And and conversely, once they do develop organically, you should take advantage of them, which you're not doing. So instead, you're trying to push this marketing strategy that benefits Citi Field, not necessarily just the teams that are playing. For what? To what end?

You you you put yourself into a box. Canceling would still leave have the same conversations, people would be talking about what the league did and why it mattered, and if it didn't matter, if they shouldn't or shouldn't have. Same thing that we're having now, except you wouldn't have put the players at risk, You should you would have protected your product, which they don't do. I shouldn't say that they don't do. It doesn't feel like they do.

They I'm sure they think that they've I think the league thinks that they're trying, but I don't know if that's it doesn't feel that way from an outsider's perspective. And so then you're you're left with a situation where you're trying to remedy a problem of your own creation, the the Queen's classic. You didn't have to go down that route in the first place. And so your your loss here is a reputational one. It's we put all this effort and timing and money, we're canceling it, we look bad as a result of doing that.

Tough nogies. Right? Do what's right, not what's easy.

Yep. I will also add, while, you know, this couldn't necessarily have been anticipated on what particular date the weather would be bad and because that was the other thing. It was like 95 degrees. It was, you know, it was hot and Right. We had an unhealthy wildfire smoke.

But this is not the first summer that we have had wildfire smoke either, you know, from US states impacting cities and games or from Colorado, or from Canada coming in, like this situation. And so I feel like that should be part of the league's planning that, hey, this is a situation that we will likely encounter. What are we gonna do? And I didn't see anything in when we looked at the rules, the league rules at the beginning of the season that indicated that was something that they were thinking about. And so it'll be interesting to see next season if they have that in there, but I am, you know, I guess from what I can tell, it doesn't seem like that's something that they had any standards already set for that they were responding to that they would then say, sorry, we had it wrong.

We need to adjust. It just seems like something that wasn't even thought about, and it should be on the list because it's not new.

Yeah. The real tea that I'd like to hear is Michelle Kang's kind of behind the curtain thoughts on this, you know? Because she does take pride in, you know, women's research, taking care of players, and I'd like to know what she thought of playing in those conditions.

Yeah. I think very smartly, she's not out in public about it, though.

Yeah, no. But, you know, you could just be behind the scenes and hear what she had to say.

Oh yeah, to be a fly on the wall. So obviously there's a lot of subtext around what happened for the Queen's Classic, you know, conditions not ideal. But outside of that, what did you think of the game? How did you think the teams fared? Ali?

Yeah. I felt like the first fifteen minutes, or I'll call it what it was, the first quarter, the spirit looked totally outplayed. They I thought, oh my gosh. If this is what the game looks like, we're gonna lose handily. They came back after the first first quarter and were got readjusted, and it was not as lopsided as it had been.

And I did feel like we struggled. I think Gotham was you know, Gotham puts a lot of pressure and, you know, very high presses up the field, and we just had a hard time getting the ball out of the back quickly and working it up. I'm a I'm a big fan of playing the ball out of the back and not just kicking it out of trouble, but I felt like because they were on us so quickly and were controlling the midfield better that we we couldn't get the ball out of danger quickly, and then we'd turn it over. We passed to them a lot. And that's what ultimately led to their goal, which again, you know, there was their their pressure that caused the turnover, and then Rose Lavelle doing something that not many people could do to actually get the goal.

I do think the spirit had chances, and they were kind of similar where you think, oh, maybe, but then it doesn't go in. And so I think that it easily to me, that that match could have could have gone anyway, could have been one o either team and could have been a zero zero tie. So I wasn't I didn't love it, but I wasn't like, this is the end of the world.

And I'll just add that I don't think this loss means as much as Spirit fans fear it does. I think it's a loss. It's a loss. It's a close game under not so great conditions, but it's a loss. I think the spirit will be fine.

Gurushabd, Seattle had a two nothing lead on Gotham. Unfortunately, that is not how the game ended. What did you see on the field that either inspired you or concerns you?

Yeah. I saw some encouraging play. We were doing really well in the first half. We were attacking. We were passing really well.

Mia Fischl finally got her first goal in the NWSL, which should only just improve her confidence on the field. And at the end of the game, Fishlock came back. We saw her warming up. Her first game back from injury, She got injured before, the June, break, and she's back now, at least for a few minutes. But I was encouraged by RT.

We keep showing these glimpses of really good play and attacking, but then we seem to just go back on defense and try and stop Gotham, which is really hard to do. So I'm encouraged by our team right now. We have a long ways to go, it's hard that we didn't pick up those three points when we were still up two nil. I was looking at the standings, the points, was like, okay, we can really get close to that bubble I'm looking at

mid. Ugh.

So it's hard when we are on that bubble. So we can still make the playoffs. We still have hope. Mhmm. We just need them to continue to have that, like, fighting offensive spirit the whole game.

Yeah. I felt like there was a noticeable difference when the second half started, that they had kind of dropped and were playing a little more defense. And I thought, oh, no. If we've learned anything from the men's World Cup, well, I guess we've learned a few things. But a big lesson is you gotta play to the end of the game because how many teams have been up on Argentina and lost in the last three, five, ten minutes?

So I was I was worried when I saw them sitting back a little. Can I ask the two of as like that strategy?

Can I ask the two of you as players, do you take more from a loss like this or from a win like this? It's not a knockout game. It's the middle of the season. Right? You're you know, there's a lot more soccer left to play.

Right? Under those conditions, is this more impactful for Seattle, or is it more impactful for Gotham?

I think both. Because Gotham just proved that they have the grit to come back and win, and, like, how to close out a game when you're down. And Seattle just saw how to lose a game and hopefully not repeat that again.

Yeah. I was gonna say pretty similar that it is different different lessons for each team. I don't know which one is more impactful, though.

But I'm hoping that Seattle learned we can attack and not just sit back on defense, which seems to be a lot of our strategy last season, is to play defensively most of the game and then look for a little chances. Whereas this season, we've been seeing them attack more and want more possession. And I think we play a lot better, and we get better results when we do that. So I'm hoping Laura Harvey will have them continue, in that trajectory.

Well, speaking of lessons learned from the World Cup, I think a lot of non soccer fans and soccer fans alike have been asking questions about how The US can improve its standing amongst the international soccer community to avoid things like the four one loss to Belgium that kicked us out of our World Cup this year. Something that has been mentioned a lot are the academy structure. For our listeners, you know that we dive into our own VAR reviews, but we are blessed that Allie is extremely, excited to get into the weeds and, you know, bring complicated issues to the forefront in consumable ways.

The word you're looking for is nerdy. I am incredibly nerdy.

Okay. So, as Alli has been learning more about academies, one thing became very clear. We cannot cover all of this material in one episode. So we're gonna take it little by little, and we're excited to bring you our sort of examination of academies, it's their implementation, what The US can take away from it, and what the women's game is bringing to the table. So with that, Allie, why don't you get us started?

Yeah. So I wanted to make a couple of different comparisons to really learn about the academies a little bit more, and I realized that, you know, every country is gonna do it differently, so there's not one way that it's done. So I decided I'd start with the English Premier League because then I could also look at the women's super league and kinda get get a feel for in the same area and the clubs, men versus women, what does that look like, and then move into talking about the NWSL. So I will start off I knew nothing about the academies other than that they existed. I sort of just assumed each club ran their own on their own and made made their own decisions that way.

But the first thing I learned is that for the Premier League, it's actually a partnership between the Premier League, the clubs, and a bunch of other stakeholders. And so they are a way for well, actually, before I get into that, I will say that some sort of youth development has existed for a long time in the Premier League. But starting to call them academies in this more formalized system started in 1998, and it's gone through various iterations. And most recently, they made some big changes and overhauls to the system in 2012. Anybody remember what happened just before 2012 in England that led to this?

The Olympics? Oh. No. But it was another big event.

Uh-huh. The UEFA Cup?

Close. It was the twenty ten World Cup. Oh. Well, yes. I mean, I I barely remember what has happened in this World Cup, so I'm not really expecting

Did you ask 2010 or 2012?

Well, they made changes in 2012 based off of something that happened in 2012.

Oh, okay, I definitely was like, I thought you were like, What happened in 2012?

Oh, sorry, my bad. That's okay.

Twenty twen was the twenty twen. Twenty twen. Twenty twen was the Twamus Vuvuzela World Cup in South Africa. Yes. Yes, okay.

Sorry. Go on. Go on.

Oh, we're talking about the men now.

Yes. Yes. Sorry. We're talking about the Okay.

Okay. I'm with you now.

Yes. Sorry. I should I should have specified that. When when the men play soccer so in 2010, England had an embarrassing exit from the World Cup in the round of in the round of 16 when they were defeated by Germany by a score of four to one. Sound familiar?

That's what basically just happened to The US, but with a different opponent. And so everybody was up in arms and horrified that England had suffered such an embarrassing defeat. And they said, alright, we need to change our youth system. We need to be able to increase the number and quality of homegrown players, and so we need to put in this set process to enable that to happen. And so that's what they did.

They called this the elite player performance plan, And they basically, set these processes for the academies to, to find more homegrown talent, basically. And so the the plan basically sets the structure, but then it takes it, the clubs carry it out on their own. So it's not like standardized testing. Oh, good. You did this.

Check this mark. It's like, okay, this is what we want to do. We have these three different developmental phases, and then the clubs take it from there. And so, you know, we have a few years since this was put in place in 2012 to see if this has been successful or not. And so making some comparisons.

So looking at, you know, the the 20 is kind of the age group that they look at to see, you know, where how how how are the youth teams doing, kind of that more almost professional stage. And so between 1990 and 2006, so before this 2010 disaster, the 21 England team and the European championships only reached the finals twice. They were knocked out in the group stages at all other times. So, you know, their youth teams weren't doing well, and then their profession their, you know, senior national team didn't do well. And so then I was looking at an article from 2025, and they were describing the England team now being a genuine force at the youth level and that they're the talent that they're producing is in such levels that they won that same under twenty one European championship tournament in 2022 nope.

Sorry. Excuse me. In 2023 and in 2025 with hugely different teams. So it wasn't even like, oh, these same players played together in 2023 and in 2025. So, of course, they won it again.

It was different, you know, different players and also didn't include probably the most most known eligible player in that pool, which is Jude Bellingham. So I think that is safe to say that they are seeing some success from that even though, you know, they didn't get to the finals this World Cup as they would want. So

Not far, though.

Yeah. Yeah. Any other Yeah.

I mean, the comparison I'm drawing right now looking at, you know, the youth national teams is what Emmett Hayes is building for The US women right now. And looking at our players on our u twenty one, u twenty three teams and seeing some of these have already been called up to the senior roster already and then put back down for player development. Yeah. So that's the draw I'm seeing is that we're starting that at least in the national level. But then, yeah, we'll get into what kind of more academies we're having for the kids.

Yeah. And and you're a thousand percent right with that because that was one of the things we talked about, I think on one of our first episodes that Emma Hayes kind of revitalized the 23 national team because that one really hadn't been active and hadn't been playing very many games and then used that as what you were saying, that development. You know, we saw players, even like Jaden Shaw, get up to the senior level, then go back to the 23s for a little bit, and then come back at the senior level and, you know, go on a tear and just

Yeah.

Be unstoppable. So, yeah. So having looked at what they do in the Premier League, what do you think is holding America back from duplicating that system here? Because it seems like we have good coaches at the club levels around the country that are teaching at a high level to young players, but for some reason that isn't translating into the national team, and probably really isn't even translating internationally. So what would we need to do, or what what did what did England do that allowed them to be as successful as they were coming off of that similar defeat?

Yeah. That's a good question, and I can do a little bit of a deeper dive into that for another conversation. I sort of wanted to get the basics of the system this time and make some broad comparisons between the men and women in England and then bringing that over to the NWSL. But would love to would love to revisit that as I get a little bit of a better feel for what the MLS is doing, which I didn't dig into for this one.

Gotcha. Yeah, I think it would be really interesting to understand that because I think it's easy to say, oh, well they made they made investments. Great, cool. What investments and why? Like is the strategic thinking?

And you mentioned something about like Landon Donovan and the Germany system, like they did something different too.

Yeah, he, on his podcast, he said something really interesting recently, and he said that he was playing in the, the German academy system, the Blandesliga.

Landen Donovan.

Landen Donovan. Yep. And that he was when he was on their 16 team, he said the coach there had been there for, forty years and was this amazing coach. But it wasn't somebody who was using coaching the under sixteens as a springboard to getting, you know, a senior team job somewhere. Like, that was his job, was the under sixteens, and the reason that he was there was because he was so good.

And their approach was we need the best coaching the youth and making sure they get what they need at this stage to be effective, you know, at the senior level, at the full national team. And I I don't know for sure, but I don't think that's The US approach.

Mhmm.

So Mhmm. I keep coming back to how much our culture is involved with this.

Mhmm.

We're not a soccer culture country like everyone else.

Yeah.

And I wonder how much that funnels into our youth academies, and being able to be as successful, which is, again, we go back to the women are, but also what we can also talk about in another episode is the rest of the world, the women's players seem to be catching up now.

Yes. Well, actually And hold we can

go into why.

Yeah. Hold that thought about the culture because what I found for the WSL and academies is a little bit different than what I just talked about for the And Premier so come come back to that culture thing because, obviously, that is still an important part of the WSL is is the culture. So the first thing is, unsurprisingly, the academies are for the women are much newer. So back in, like, the twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen season was when they said teams that were, like, being certified by the league needed to have an academy. But it really wasn't until 2023 when they did a revamp of the system and basically awarded 20 kind of initial licenses to clubs in the top two tiers in England to have an academy.

So, you know, we're talking about 1998 for the men and really 2023 for the women. So more than more than twenty years head start for the men. And it was interesting because what I'm understanding is it seems like they're actually having a really hard time with having people break through from the youth academies to the first team on the women's level. So by first team, guess, I mean, you know, the equivalent of the the professional league. So, you know, the the Chelsea professional team, the equivalent of the spirit.

And so they're in the youth system, they're working in the youth system, but they're not able to make it to the top level. And the, Sonya Bompastor, I think I'm probably pronouncing that as an American and not a English person, but she's the coach for Chelsea. And so she's raised concerns about this gap and said basically that she wanted to have academy players on her team, but wasn't able to because they weren't at the level that they needed to be. And the numbers are showing this too. So last season, it was recorded that a record 86 players made their debut in the WSL, and only 15% of them, so that's 13 players, came from the academy system with the team with which they made their debut.

So that kind of defeats the purpose if the homegrown players are not actually then being selected by the team that is investing time and money in getting them. And so there's, you know, a number of ideas about why this could be the case, but nobody really knows for sure. A couple of things that have been talked about, which one is, you know, there's this as as there has been growth in the sport, there has been more, you know, pressure to get results. And so that kind of keeps, you know, if if you have a if you have a coach that says, okay, you know, I'm basically one one player away from having a team that can compete for a title, then people are saying, okay, well, let's bring in this, you know, fully finished or almost finished player who can immediately step in and have an impact rather than saying, okay, but here's this other player in the system who is still a little bit ways away from being ready to step on the field and have an impact. So we're gonna go for the person who can help us compete right now.

And so then you also have players coming in from other leagues, other countries who can fill that role. And so the youth players aren't necessarily having the opportunity.

Wait. I'm just confused then since this the women's academies are so new. Mhmm. Do we know what age these players started at that we're talking about? Were they already teenagers, or are they, like, nine years old and they still aren't ready, to just join Chelsea?

So I you know, that's a great question. I don't know the ages at which they're starting, And I I imagine, and I can check on this for next time too, that even though officially calling them academies is new, there may have been some you know, there was obviously youth systems outside of the academies. So they were having, you know, talent coming in from from other places. It wasn't just a complete

Right.

Desert. But, know, I mean, in some play places it is. I mean, you hear players like Denise O'Sullivan talking about, you know, playing with boys growing up because there were no girls teams, and I mean, that's a player who's currently playing now, not someone generations ago.

I think another thing to think of though is that you don't always need to play at the highest level in order to actually be a high level player. That's another thing that we've seen from England in the makeup of their national team, finding that there are standouts that came from third tier, fourth tier teams that have made an impact at the national stage, Cape Verde. Mhmm. Right? So had I forgot the name of the player.

Had someone who was from the third league that was a goal scorer in the World Cup and a standout player, and now has earned himself a a promotion within the Premier League system. So similarly similarly for the the WSL from the academy standpoint, you're a nine year old player, if you haven't made it to Chelsea, that's okay. You probably can get slotted into a lower tier, still continue to develop and find those inroads. You don't have that in The US. You just have one system, it seems like, that filters into Major League Soccer, if that.

Or in this sense, you know, we we don't have one for the NWSL.

Right. Yeah. I think it seems like one of the challenges with the American system for both men and women is that the people who often get, you know, it's like such a because we don't have we I know we have our youth systems, which sounds like has some problems with it, but it feels like the academy system lets you grow a little bit more over time where you're not necessarily just picking, like, the strongest and fastest. You know, like, the people who develop faster, and it's like, oh, they're a real standout. Maybe they're, you know, a foot taller and more muscular than everybody.

And you have players, you know, like, you know, I feel like Rose Lavelle is kind of an example of somebody who, you know, wasn't her first World Cup, she was out of college. Right? She wasn't like an 18 year old coming in, and she is a, you know, small crafty player. And I can see players like her falling through the cracks much more than, you know, you know, prolific goal scorers who have been doing that from an early age. And I don't know if that's just perception on my part that it seems like the academy system better accounts for that because people are then in the system at younger ages, but I I don't know.

Yeah. And speaking of college, I mean, that's been an important stepping stone for a lot of players internationally. A lot of them do come to play college in The US.

Yeah.

And then go on to their professional careers after that.

Mhmm.

But do you feel that college is a necessary step, though? Because I I don't I might be on the other end of that argument. I I feel like college actually is holding back athletes, like athletes in this country.

Yeah. I I know. And it's so funny because probably five years ago, I would have said, oh, no. They need they need to go to college and get the development from coaches at that stage because I don't know that the NWSL is strong enough to, you know, be you know, do that development. But it is I I guess my so I don't think college is a necessity, but I also don't know that everybody needs the same path.

Yeah. It just definitely depends on the athlete and where they are physically, skill wise. Well. Tobin Heath and Alicia Russo have greatly attributed their coach at North Carolina to really developing themselves.

Yeah. And and one of the things that I will jump to now, but kind of one of the differences that I saw between the NWSL and the European systems is that it seems like the way the academy system is supposed to work is that you are all like, you're in the same system, and so your coaches are kind of following more of the same philosophies and going for the same overall goals because it wouldn't make sense to be training, you know, your youth teams one way and then have them get to the senior level and have that not align, which actually seems to be part of the problem that with the with the the women's Super League in England right now is there is some sort of misalignment with what the youth players are learning, and that's why it's harder for them to break into the first team. But it seems like with an academy system, have, you should have that better alignment. And I don't know that the college system necessarily fits in that, right? So maybe you have, right?

It's it feels like it's much more kind of sporadic with you have a good coach here who's coaching this way, but you have another coach here who's coaching a different way. And does that fit with what's needed for them to compete as professionals or at the national level?

Professional sports leagues now look very different than professional sports leagues fifty, sixty years ago. We're at a place now where if you are if you are an athlete and you aspire to be a professional athlete, why do you why go to college? You're not going to college for an education. You're going to college because you want the best coaches, the best training, the best facilities. Okay.

Well, why are we locking the best coaches, best facilities, best training behind a collegiate program? Why can't that be a third party academy that is designed to get you the strength, the the, training, the skill set to get you into professional sports. We pretend that there are student athletes, but college sports ought to be amateur athletics. Emphasis on amateur. If you are an amateur athlete that wants to go pro, you should do so, but then go to an academy and get the training to become a professional.

If you are skilled enough as a young person and you wanna become a professional athlete, go become a professional athlete. If you want to play you know what I mean?

I mean, women are getting paid now professionally, which wasn't happening very recently. Mhmm. And they needed their college degree. They needed to have that next thing they were gonna do. The professional job, you still needed another job to support yourself while playing in the NWSL.

So this is all super new terrain, and things that we can build because that can be your primary job right now. But before, you needed to go to college, you needed to have a degree to actually have a job.

Yeah, and I should just clarify, my comment was not specific to women's sports. My comment was like, broadly speaking, because I I think there's also, like, a cultural issue of, like, well, why are we limiting educational opportunities for women, generally speaking? Right? Like, if we we ought to have equitable opportunities for everybody, and equitable opportunity. Right?

So it stinks that a professional women's soccer player needed to think, oh, what's my day job or my side hustle in order to allow me to continue to play professional sports? That's crazy. You're a professional athlete. Why aren't we paying you what you deserve? Right?

So that I get what you're saying. Right? Like, now we're at a place where that conversation is, more germane to female athletes, and I'm glad that that's the case. And what I would say broadly speaking, there are these like famously, think they're they're Enterprise or Hertz or some rental car company that is proud about their association with college athletes, that they, there are so many people that were former college athletes that are now, like, working for their car rental company. Okay.

Awesome. That's great. But like, that's the fallback, right? And so if you are an athlete and you wanna be a professional athlete and it doesn't your career ends however it ends, right? Successfully, short, long, whatever, your professional athletic career is over, go back to school, then, and get a degree.

Why are you getting a four year degree that you're not gonna use for the next fifteen years of your life because you're gonna be a professional athlete, and then in your late thirties decide, oh, no, I have to go back to school. You've like, we've just taken money from you for no reason. That same money, go to an academy. Like, why don't we have that infrastructure?

Yeah. And and I think to, you know, build onto that, I think there is a, I think there could be an argument that, you know, you have some 16 year olds, some 15 year olds that are ready to play in the NWSL. Going back to women's soccer specifically, you have some young players who are ready to make that jump even before they're just skipping college and are, you know, starters and competitive in the system. But I think you have other players who have signed young, who have kind of not developed as expected, and it seems or aren't, you know, seeing much playing time and things like that. And those are the players I think about as well with, okay, in the academy system, maybe you're not being challenged appropriately as a 16 year old with, you know, regular the current, you know, club soccer system, but you can't go to college yet as a 16 year old and being, you know, challenged there.

And so the NWSL is your next option, and maybe there's a better system to develop that age to then have them a year or two later be coming into the NWSL and making the impact that they want.

Yeah. We need all of these pathways Yeah. For Yeah. Academies in here, I think, would also just change the culture of The US if kids had that, and that more unified kind of teaching. Like, do now in England.

They do have that in The Netherlands. Yeah. We need that gear.

And and one thing I realized as I was looking through this, so then as I I moved into the NWSL and I started looking into it, I said, oh, there are there are teams that have some academies. North Carolina Courage Academy, the Portland Thorns Academy, the Seattle Rain Academy, Racing Louisville. You know, there are a number of teams that have these academies, but there is no overarching framework. Right? So the NWSL hasn't said or, you know, it should be the NWSL and US soccer and the individual clubs that say this is what we're trying to accomplish.

And it doesn't necessarily work if Houston does one thing and Kansas City does another and Seattle does another. So this is, you know, this is what we're trying to do. And now everybody accomplished this in this way. And so to me, I feel like the most effective thing is to have an actual academy system and not just the word academy. I mean, and I'm not I don't mean this at all to be knocking what the other teams are already doing because I think that's great.

But I think it could be better if we had a similar, more formal structure that then lets, you know, doesn't only help the players, but also helps the coaches, and it's a nationwide nationwide effort.

Okay. I'm gonna call on Tobin Heath to kind of make the curriculum and decide what we're all gonna be doing. Oh, yeah. Tobin Heath, we trust.

Yeah, absolutely.

She can give us that unified, you know, American football.

No pressure, Tobin.

Yeah. No. Alright. Well, like we said, this is a topic we wanna keep revisiting and talking about. So we will, stay tuned for more on this youth soccer topic in the future.

Yeah. Thanks for doing the research, Ally.

Thank you. Anytime. No spreadsheets this time, but maybe next time.

Next time. Speaking of next time, Gurus Alba, we got some interesting stuff coming up. What do you, what do you wanna tell our listeners?

Yeah. I am excited to get us ready for the Women's World Cup in Brazil next year. We'll start teasing some things, and and hopefully, we'll see a lot of you in Brazil.

Yeah. We are we are gonna be your one stop shop for all vibes heading into the Women's World Cup. Right?

Yes.

Yeah. We'll give you the lowdown.

I love it. Well, thank you everybody for listening to this episode of Laces Out Loud. We are thrilled that we are now available on, all, if not most podcast platforms. So please like and subscribe where you get your podcasts. Guruschaba, where can they find us on social?

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Everyone, take it easy, be kind to each other, and from the fans for the game, we'll see you time on Laces Out Loud.