Welcome to this special series! This first one will be open to all subscribers, though the subsequent four parts will be available for paid supporters only and will be delivered on Wednesdays.
The best academy, regardless of sport, is currently in the state of Texas.
FC Dallas (FCD) belongs to Major League Soccer (MLS) and has a lengthy list of players it has produced with many household names. Nine of the 2021 Gold Cup USA roster have roots with the FCD Academy. Simply stunning.
We want to take you through how this came to be and integrate the lessons that we can take from the analysis.
Part 1 - Development Landscape
Understanding The Landscape
Club-based vs draft-based
Draft-Based
The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL source talent through their league-wide draft. These leagues are protected monopolies designed to ensure financial viability for league members.
The worst teams get the best chance to select the top young talent. These players often have to pay to play through their youth. Almost all professional sports in North America source their talent/ players this way. Worldwide, this is an anomaly.
Club-Based
The majority of sports teams worldwide can source their talent in any way possible. To attract top young talent, many teams have development academies. A player can start in the youth academy at age six and work their way up into the full professional team. Rather than pay to play, players are offered spots in the academy at no cost.
Rather than a league monopoly, there is a movement of clubs up and down the levels of play through promotion and relegation. It’d be like if the last-place NHL team went to the AHL the next season and the top AHL team gained promotion into the NHL for the next season.
Incentives
In a draft-based (read: North American) system, there is little incentive for these teams to develop players, particularly from the youngest ages. You will rarely see teams giving back to develop local talent beyond it being a good business move to build their brand and create positive goodwill in the community.
The rest of the world is heavily incentivized to develop their own talent. Their best bet is to capture the best talent early and develop that talent to become a positive contributor to their professional team.
Players either contribute to the professional team or can be sold to a richer club. Teams have used their academies to improve their professional team and have a massive revenue source (see AFC Ajax, for example).
Realistically, draft-based teams and leagues are not going to be the drivers of positive player development growth on their own.
This brings us to the driver of player development growth in hockey, especially in North America…. nationalistic pride. Each country wants to beat the others and as we know, the best way to do that is to have the best players.
Major League Soccer (MLS) - Hybrid System
The MLS, unlike NBA/NHL/NFL/MLB, does not hold a financial advantage over the rest of the worldwide leagues. Thus, the best talent worldwide won’t just be waiting around for a draft by default. Even for domestic talent acquisition, the MLS draft is not the primary source of domestic players.
Within the MLS there is a “homegrown” system. If a team/club develops talent, they get the right to sign that talent. If a player doesn’t sign, their rights can be moved or they can enter the draft.
There are a few massive benefits to this approach:
There is no limit on the number of “homegrown players” a club may sign
Homegrown player salary does not count against a team’s salary cap (at least, for a while)
Here is a map of the Homegrown Territories from 2015. This has since been abolished and teams can source talent regardless of where they reside.
The NBA’s Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban has seen this and proposed something similar for the NBA for over 15 years now.
Now we have the background knowledge of what environment FC Dallas is working under and the incentives they have, we are going to dive into the people behind their developmental success.
Further Reading
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