Ottaw Fury BOYS OPDL OUT

[mmd]

Below is from the Ottawa Fury"s website;

[Ottawa now falls under the 5 professional Clubs with youth academies, joining Toronto FC, Montreal Impact, Vancouver Whitecaps and FC Edmonton, and therefore we must align ourselves with the plan of the Canadian Soccer Association. It is important for us not to be competing with the other Clubs from Ottawa on the boys side, but serve as a high performance structure providing Ottawa’s best players with an optimized environment for them to progress and reach the highest standards. The Club is now assessing new avenues for Ottawa’s best players in regards to what we will offer inside our Academy (training, volume of training, type of competition and where will they play). Following the CSA technical guidelines and knowing that the OPDL will be another avenue for players to reach the NT programs, pro clubs environment will remain the key structure for the best players to be in and reach the highest levels.]

why does this not apply to TFC??? And why does Pickering take Ottawa Fury's spot. Just Add Oakville or a PEEL REGION TEAM to even out the Divisions.

the more competion the better. Just because your kid is on TFC, MTL, Van, Edm and Ottawa academies does not mean they are the best Canada has to offer. Let's not be dilusional.

OPDL is to expose the best that Ontario has to offer.

I want to see the NON PRO CLUBS expose the Pro Academy Clubs of their weak scouting abilities.

There are still many of these Pro Club Academies that have kids on their roster because of whom their parents know or sponsorship they have brought in.

Give these kids from NON PRO CLUBS a chance to show what they have against TFC AND OTTAWA!!!

[Protega]

Below is from the Ottawa Fury"s website;

[Ottawa now falls under the 5 professional Clubs with youth academies, joining Toronto FC, Montreal Impact, Vancouver Whitecaps and FC Edmonton, and therefore we must align ourselves with the plan of the Canadian Soccer Association. It is important for us not to be competing with the other Clubs from Ottawa on the boys side, but serve as a high performance structure providing Ottawa’s best players with an optimized environment for them to progress and reach the highest standards. The Club is now assessing new avenues for Ottawa’s best players in regards to what we will offer inside our Academy (training, volume of training, type of competition and where will they play). Following the CSA technical guidelines and knowing that the OPDL will be another avenue for players to reach the NT programs, pro clubs environment will remain the key structure for the best players to be in and reach the highest levels.]

why does this not apply to TFC??? And why does Pickering take Ottawa Fury's spot. Just Add Oakville or a PEEL REGION TEAM to even out the Divisions.

the more competion the better. Just because your kid is on TFC, MTL, Van, Edm and Ottawa academies does not mean they are the best Canada has to offer. Let's not be dilusional.

OPDL is to expose the best that Ontario has to offer.

I want to see the NON PRO CLUBS expose the Pro Academy Clubs of their weak scouting abilities.

There are still many of these Pro Club Academies that have kids on their roster because of whom their parents know or sponsorship they have brought in.

Give these kids from NON PRO CLUBS a chance to show what they have against TFC AND OTTAWA!!!

Fury boys side didn't have the numbers to put a team in and rather than cut the fees like another club did (Fury is, after all, a private business - not a community club), my guess is they told the OSA either accept the girls OPDL team on its own, or they would pull both out. They can try to spin it any way they want, but the stuff about having developed strong relationships with a number of clubs is laughable - they have an arrangement with a small club where they provide winter training to some of their players for a reduced fee, and that's it. The relationship with just about every other club in Ottawa is still antangonistic.

I think they also had an issue in that when their teams were in the Super Y league, that differentiated them from the other local clubs because they could offer exposure to US scouts (the extent of which is debatable); but if they are playing in OPDL, there is nothing differentiating them from the other OPDL teams.

And their "pro academy" can't be compared to any of the others, which are free or highly subsidized. The Fury's program is entirely pay-to-play. No question that there are plenty of players out there good enough, whose parents can't afford a few thousand a year (especially if they have more than one child playing).

[Guest ClaytonA]

Hopefully for the good of the game in Ottawa their relationship become more collaborative with the other Ottawa youth clubs and includes the proper recognition of who provided the development. It should be a supportive role, not one in which they try to just make money off people. If it is just about earning academy fees, then their academy likely ends up isolated and hurts the game.

To borrow from whomever wrote the Highlanders wiki entry:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Highlanders

In the US and Canada most professional clubs are just one of many local clubs and community representation on the professional club is not inclusive. Local non-profit community clubs with paid coaches, technical directors, and staff often end up in adversarial commercial competition for facility usage and academy fees for example. In BC, local community clubs are the only full members of the BCSA and some clubs use this player registration monopoly to prevent their players from using outside training.[14] The professional club cannot have all local players accessible to them to scout, include in their club structure, and develop into better players. The professional clubs basically have their own small youth development system that is cut off from much of the area’s other players who play with other clubs and in other leagues. The Vancouver Whitecaps FC separate system outside the BC soccer mainstream is the USSDA, and the BCSA set up the BCSPL partly to make a league structure inclusive to the Whitecaps scouting efforts.[15][16] Generally given the profile of the MLS Whitecaps, BC youth soccer clubs consider the Whitecaps too big to compete against especially given the Vancouver Whitecaps FC Residency programs are not pay-to-play. The smaller Highlanders club also scouts the BCSPL, and part of the reason for community club ownership is to prevent adversarial Highlanders-local community club relationships.[13]

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

FC London are out for 2014 as well:

http://www.fclondon.ca/OPDL/Overview/index_E.html

We are optimistic that the fragile and fractured London soccer landscape will have stabilized by this fall and that we will able to begin trails for the U13 and U14 OPDL teams and U8 to U12 Grassroots programs starting then.

Having formerly been active in that "fractured soccer landscape" the phrasing of that particular sentence did not in any way surprise me. Hope it all works out eventually but progress on this sort of stuff won't be easy.

[Trillium]

FC London are out for 2014 as well:

http://www.fclondon.ca/OPDL/Overview/index_E.html

We are optimistic that the fragile and fractured London soccer landscape will have stabilized by this fall and that we will able to begin trails for the U13 and U14 OPDL teams and U8 to U12 Grassroots programs starting then.

Having formerly been active in that "fractured soccer landscape" the phrasing of that particular sentence did not in any way surprise me. Hope it all works out eventually but progress on this sort of stuff won't be easy.

One of the OPDL implementation flaws is now becoming apparent, as long as it is pay to play, the "professional" clubs are in competition with the community clubs, who can subsidize the OPDL teams to ensure the price point is saleable to familys. With no hook into u12 players a program that runs a PDL franchise does not get to the base of pyramid to be selling its wares to parents.

It will be interesting to watch what happens in the GTA and in Ottawa where other clubs are running mulitiple teams in one area.

Ottawa with OSU, Ottawa West, and Hotspurs in competition for the top 60 odd players at a single age, I suspect there will be a shake out in year two if weakness is seen by the parents in terms of development ( which to parents might mean points on the board ) of the teams, with strong players making definitive moves to the stonger ( read points on the board ) progam and other programs falling by the wayside.

Will be an interesting evolution.

The Fury just need to pick up the creme de la creme at U16 and U18 on boys side and integrate them into the professional club, in the long term they win out if the NASL franchise is profitable they are the natural conduit to a pro career, and the U16 pick up age for a pro club will drop down year by year till they take the U12's and up in a pro-type academy league playing other pro teams, i.e. Montreal, Toronto, Rochester, NASL Hamilton and NASL Toronto for example.

[mmd]

Noticed on the OSA Job Opportunities that Markham SC is still looking for and OPDL COACH.

The deadline to apply is March 31/14.

How is this possible, the OSA seems to have dropped the ball trying to launch this league.

[mmd]

Spoke with my neighbour whos son is on an OPDL team. He told me something very interesting.

Players are not gauranteed play time, and once a kid is taken off, he can no longer re-enter the game. I would like to know what is the logic of this, if its a PLAYERS DEVELOPMENT League. How will these kids develop if the don't play at least half a game?

Won't parents demand play time considering the amount of money the are investing in this 1st year unproven league? How about the kids, they are told they are the best out there, but there will be a bench of 5 to 7 players that may not see play time. Won't they want to quit the team? How is that helping development if we risk losing these kids?

I'm sure these are questions the old boys club at THE OSA have not thought about.

Why would they, all they see is $$$$$$$$$$$$

[vrowley]

Spoke with my neighbour whos son is on an OPDL team. He told me something very interesting.

Players are not gauranteed play time, and once a kid is taken off, he can no longer re-enter the game. I would like to know what is the logic of this, if its a PLAYERS DEVELOPMENT League. How will these kids develop if the don't play at least half a game?

Won't parents demand play time considering the amount of money the are investing in this 1st year unproven league? How about the kids, they are told they are the best out there, but there will be a bench of 5 to 7 players that may not see play time. Won't they want to quit the team? How is that helping development if we risk losing these kids?

I'm sure these are questions the old boys club at THE OSA have not thought about.

Why would they, all they see is $$$$$$$$$$$$

As far as I can tell, the OSA did think about all of this. However, team coaches will have the final say I guess. Original rules called for a maximum of seven substitutions which, I agree, could have created challenges to coaches looking to offer a certain amount of "fair" playing time to all players. By fair I mean playing time that is not necessarily equal for all players but could depend on the level of the player, performance at training, performance during games and behavior.

Seems that they are revising the rules anyway as per the following.

http://www.ontariosoccer.net/Portals/11/ltpd/opdl/21%203%202014%20OPDL%20Technical%20discussion.pdf

Page 8 describes the motivation behind the rule. Following slides talk about feedback received and what they would potentially do about it.

[Big_M]

I think the possible amendments for substitutions are great.

[mmd]

I think the possible amendments for substitutions are great.

 

 I just hope that the coaches and clubs remember that they are selling the parents to a pay to play League. And if they want to keep the best, they better get even playing time. If not, there really is no point of having a full roster of 18 if you can just call up from the reserve team. OSA should have mandated a max roster of 15 or16 which includes a goalie which would almost gaurante all play half if not the whole game.

[Trillium]

The purpose of limited substitution is to develop players who can play 90 minutes when the actually play the FIFA game rules at later ages.

 

You also want to make a truly merit based system where a player works hard in practices to make it on the pitch, you do not get that with unlimited substitutions/my mom paid for me to play arguments.

 

If OPDL goes to open substitutions its no different that any other youth competitive league in Ontario and it will not meet its goal of developing players who will end up in the National team pools.

 

Yes it is pay to play, but it is to be pay to play in a environment that has a longer vision then just playing time in the game today.

[mmd]

has anyone been able to watch an OPDL game.

I was lucky to catch a few games.

Not bad, some good talent out there.

 

any opinions?

any new clubs coming on board?