When we win a game in a team sport, what does it mean for our individual development, especially when kids are still growing and maturing?
It’s a question youth sports parents ponder, and it’s one Major League Soccer has wrestled with during the five years its MLS NEXT youth program has existed.
‘If we just have a bunch of dominant 13- and 14-year-olds that don’t end up being dominant 18-year olds, I think that’s a huge miss on the return on our investment,” said Luis Robles, MLS NEXT’s technical director and a former USMNT goalie. ‘So this is why we have to tinker with different ways to evaluate players.”
The organization will announce Wednesday a pilot program to evaluate its U13 and U14 age groups that looks beyond traditional results of games, focusing on complete performances of individuals. Its Quality of Play rankings move away from wins, losses and draws to measure progress of teams based on their players’ offensive and defensive actions, including their off-the-ball movements in games we sometimes don’t see.
This is the first time MLS NEXT will have a list of standings for teams in these age groups, but they will be ranked on this new metric rather than records, according to Robles, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports prior to making the new rankings public Wednesday.
‘We know that this is different,’ Robles said in an exclusive interview. ‘This is new. It could come off in the launch as gimmicky, but when you start to pull back and understand why we’re doing it, it’s a massive investment. But this is worth it, because then Major League Soccer and the national teams, long term, stand to gain the most. Our hope is that we’re developing better professionals.”
Robles spoke with USA TODAY Sports about what the move means for your player and the dramatic effect it could have on the youth soccer landscape.
Why is MLS NEXT making the change to Quality of Play rankings?
The program supplies about 90% of players to youth national teams, according to MLS NEXT GM Kyle Albrecht, and has never kept standings for these age groups. Robles said they want to lean more heavily on player progression without the added pressure of trying to win.
‘The question we try to answer is, ‘What role does competition play in player development?” Robles says. ‘It should play less of a role. It should be more about the training sessions, the technical ability, the formation of the player, helping them understand the game, solving the game with soccer.’
But if MLS wants to develop future national team players, Robles said, it must acknowledge how well players do in game-time situations.
“Part of development is competing,” he said, ‘What we saw with U.S. Soccer, and all the cynicism and criticism towards the players and the coaching and the results, you can’t help but admit that sometimes what it comes down to is just how well you do in a competition.”
How do MLS NEXT’s Quality of Play rankings work?
Analysts with TAKA, a video tool that takes a panoramic view of the field, will spend about 4 ½ hours on each game looking for significant offensive and defensive actions.
Each player will be scored for attack, defense and overall quality of play. Team rankings will be compiled based on players’ overall scores, which MLS hopes will more completely represent their overall caliber of play than the result of the game.
If you’re a weak-side defender and the ball is on the other side of the field, for example, it might seem insignificant when you adjust your position. But the new rankings will allow off-ball intelligence that could be scored.
Positive tactical intentions will be encouraged, even if the execution isn’t perfect. Robles said that in presentations to MLS NEXT academy directors, an example play was shown from a ‘very, very significant global, international’ with the vision to make a pass.
‘The end result was it was a turnover, but everyone wanted to find a way to say that is what we want to see our players doing,” Robles said. “We want them to have the courage to make that pass, because if the pass comes off, you’re going to get immediate gratification in the form of a shot or goal. But because the pass doesn’t come off, that play could lose meaning, even though it was a significant play, and that’s what we’re trying to capture, and that’s what quality of play is.
‘It’s just the aggregate analysis of significant moments, whether offensive, defensive, good or bad.”
What happens if a team tops MLS NEXT’s Quality of Play rankings?
While U13 and U14 teams in MLS NEXT previously had no year-end competitions, the top two or three teams per division (Robles hasn’t decided yet) will now be invited to compete at MLS NEXT Cup. The U13 and U14 age groups each have eight divisions.
The rankings will be adjusted based on quality of opponent, rewarding significant actions against better teams.
‘We don’t want it to be that this player is such a great attacking player when they play the minnows,” Robles says. ‘We want it to be that they’re doing it across the board. We want to see that the team is consistently playing well. Traditional standings isn’t the whole picture because a team could be mid-table, but it’s because they beat all the teams that they were expected to beat, but couldn’t beat a team that was above them.”
How much do stats and wins factor into MLS NEXT’s Quality of Play rankings?
‘Zero,” Robles says. ‘Naturally, if a team is scoring more goals, they probably have more significant moments on the positive. If a team is giving up a lot of goals, they’re going to have more significance in the negative. But what weight does it have in our decision making process? Zero.”
Why is MLS NEXT adding Quality of Play rankings specifically to U13 and U14?
There are just over 5,600 U13 and U14 players registered in MLS NEXT, more than 1/3 of the organization’s 16,000 players across the U.S. and Canada. They are the two most malleable age groups.
Robles referenced the book, ‘Outliers,’ in which author Malcom Gladwell tracked how American hockey players born in the first three months of the year were more likely to go pro.
They had been bigger and stronger when they were younger, and thus placed into a top-level national pipeline because they were fortunate enough to be born in January, February or March.
‘If you’re born in January, as opposed to someone that’s born in December in the same year, it’s 10% of muscle development,” Robles said. “You’re not even sure which direction that’s going. We have to find ways to be able to mitigate that.’
While Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo was born in February and identified early, Robles said, so was France’s Kylian Mbappé, a December baby who was fast but small. He ended up growing to be one of the world’s fastest players.
MLS NEXT seeks to find more late developers, even ones who are playing down an age level to develop their technical skills before they catch up with their age group from a physical standpoint.
“Are we picking players that are dominant at 13 and 14 that don’t end up becoming great at 17 and 18?” Robles says. “I think yes.”
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Will Quality of Play rankings improve scouting?
Robles said the rankings will enable MLS Academy kids to ‘confidently’ know they’re being evaluated at all times through TAKA, and not just when they’re in front of scouts.
“Growing up, I would see a U.S. Soccer scout at one of my games wearing the badge and was there for 12 minutes,” Robles says. “How do they know if I’m a good goalkeeper after watching me for 12 minutes? Because it’s just not enough.
‘And now what we’re hoping is that more players that are already in our system are getting seen by MLS academy scouts to get more opportunities.”
There are 29 MLS academies and 122 elite academies within the 151 clubs that make up MLS NEXT.
While MLS NEXT strives to develop players to compete on national teams, its new second tier of competition has opened up an opportunity for those who want to play at a high level but don’t necessarily view that goal as realistic. But what about playing in college?
Robles said college coaches, if they register with MLS NEXT, will have access to every player in the TAKA database.
What is the end game with MLS NEXT’s Quality of Play rankings?
Over time, MLS will be able to look back and track growth of players who ultimately achieve an elite level.
“You can now take that information, extrapolate it across the entire player pool, and start to identify more Aidan Morrises, Benjamin Cremaschis,’ Robles said. ‘We use those examples because they went through the full cycle, where they were at an elite academy. So when you look at a player who might have been in an elite academy first, who makes the move to an MLS Academy, who then goes the pathway of the homegrown and is now playing for the first team, you start to pull back those layers and look under the hood, and we haven’t been able to do that.’
MLS’ U15, U16, U17 and U19 players will continue to be ranked by traditional standings.
“We still want to prioritize developing (U13 and U14) players to be better professionals over just developing teams that win trophies,” Robles said. “I want more of those players to be in college with the prospect of going pro. I want more of those players getting a chance to represent our country at the national or international level.”
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents for two high schoolers. His column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.