harrycoyster

He was on a developmental contract, and the NCAA allows waivers for players that have played professionally, but haven't profited. NCAA soccer is full of players that played low-tier pro ball in Europe or the Caribbean, but can prove that the money they made was negligible. When I worked in an NCAA athletic department, we signed a basketball player that had received a small cash prize as a player and I had to throw together paperwork that showed that his travel costs offset the prize money.

Setting aside the on field misery of last night, we also now don't have a chance at the $1mil in prize money for the Nations League winner and aren't getting the participation fee for the Nations League Finals ($150k in 2021). With our financial situation being what it is, this was a missed opportunity to help fund our youth programs. If we don't qualify for Copa America, we might as well fire the youth staff as we aren't having more than a couple camps an age group anyway.

Toronto ranks somewhere in the 5-7 range in terms of MLS academy purely in terms of success at the major events. Montreal is probably around 10 and Vancouver is average. An all-star team of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver is likely to beat any three American academies - but they have 26 MLS academies. They also have 8-10 non-MLS academies with MLS academy levels of output and more than 100 academies that supplement MLS academies post-u15. We only really have Sigma in that first group and a few in the second group - that's an issue.

No official system in place to compensate academies for non-professionals moving between clubs, though Vancouver and Toronto have handshake agreements with most of the major academies in their HG territory (Montreal might as well, I'm just less familiar). Those agreements are usually general funding and/or training agreements with small bonuses when a player moves. $40kUSD is the highest bonus I've heard of, between the Sounders and an academy called Crossfire. I'd say 10-25% of Canadian academies refuse cooperation and the MLS teams try to work the parents in those cases. That said, the lack of structure in Canadian youth soccer is most harmful at the younger age groups - before pro academies can reach them. The MLS teams aren't going to bring u12 players in from over 200km away and those players aren't coalescing at high-level regional academies which limits growth and makes player ID much more difficult.

Back ten or so years ago, the MLS teams played locally and essentially never lost a game while playing their entire rosters up age groups. I recall watching Vancouver's u16s thrash Costal by double digit goals before going to Dallas Cup and getting embarrassed by American and Mexican teams. The teams need to be there, the competition is so much better than what non-MLS Canadian clubs can offer. The issue with a Canadian youth league is purely that the talent that isn't in MLS academies before u17 is so fractured that it is essentially impossible to find a half decent contest. Fixing that has to be from the bottom up, not by pushing the top down. The MLS teams are spending millions on academy teams, millions on Next Pro, and hundreds of thousands on playerID. They are the de facto scouting network of Canadian soccer because nobody else, including the CSA, is willing to spend the money. They aren't the good guys here, but they aren't the problem.

Bingo. We don't have a functioning youth soccer infrastructure because too many local-level clubs and leagues aren't interested in being a pitstop in a larger pipeline. They want to keep their kids/costumers in their ecosystem until they age out. The amount of recruitment that TFC and the Caps have to do is outrageous, even by American standards. Meanwhile in most European countries the players naturally filter up through a FA run youth soccer ecosystem. As long as the CSA is dysfunctional and unwilling to burn some bridges to build more modern ones, we aren't going to get anywhere near our potential.

First game ended 0-0.

Only if you count the glorified u19 league that is NextPro. A number of American u15s have minutes already if that's the threshold. None of their players have broken through in MLS or in Europe.

Awesome performance. Put some respect on Herdman. We genuinely outplayed them.

I'd throw Panama in there too. Dominant win over Costa Rica in the run of play. Mostly retained their squad from Nations League where they put up a fight against our and Mexico's best teams.

USSF parted ways with SUM in terms of the management of the TV deal. SUM still handles US Soccer events. Not an expert on how the tax stuff works, but it goes something like: 1) SUM makes millions from Mexico, US games and European friendlies. 2) SUM books smaller events like the Caribbean Gold Cup games or a Canada v Oman friendly in stadiums they practically own. 3) SUM claims a huge loss in the smaller event that they can leverage to offset their actual revenues when it comes time to pay taxes.

The reason why we could do this and not play in Canada is that Soccer United Marketing, the USSF/MLS affiliated for-profit marketing org, has the ability to leverage American tax law and their psedo-ownership of stadiums to host events that don't lose money. For the federation, it'll be cheaper to play two games in front of 5k fans in LA than to plan two games in Canada in front of 25k fans.

Reminiscent of the mid2010s teams that'd play like shit and manage to beat us 1-0 anyways.

There are weird instances all over the globe for why teams are/aren't FIFA nations, but what really seems to matter is what the 'parent' FA wants. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have the same status under Danish law, but the Danish FA recognizes the Faroe Islands as an independent federation and doesn't for Greenland. The USSF specifically refers to Puerto Rico and other US territories as partner federations. The FFF claims full control over French soccer and the national teams of the French overseas territories are funded by and answer to the FFF.

It seems like there is no runner up prize, judging by CONCACAF federation records. The US reported winning $1.15 million from the 2021 Nations League, whereas Mexico reported winning $150k. Meaning it's likely that, in 2021 at least, there was a $150k show fee and $1mil prize.