Questions for soccer fans.

[Augen]

Ka-pi96 said:

Skidmore said:
One of The most important things for a Club is to have a junior team, base teams, thats is the cheapest and most effective way of succeeding in football. Neymar, Ronaldo, Messi all come from that. Americans teams does not put proper money on that comparing with Brazilian and Spanish clubs. Hiring star can be costly and they might not end up play well with others. That's why some Asian teams are not successful, even though they have star power.

The American leagues are set up completely differently though. They don't invest in junior teams because it would be a huge waste of money. They get their young players through a draft, so why bother paying money developing young players when other teams will get them instead of you?

While true a decade ago, most clubs now have academies they invest in.  The reason is simple, you develop a player and have all rights to them avoiding the random aspects of a draft.

For example, my club DC United developed Andy Najar through the academy (was sold to Anderlecht) and now has Bill Hamid who looks to be big contender for national team goal keeper (likely will be sold to European club in next year).  Hopeful Colin Martin is our next promosing academy product.

So, here we have a hybrid system of developing talent and drafting talent that falls outside of those channels.  Just now we are seeing kids who spent years in academies finally coming through the system.  These things take time, but the dividends will show in coming years.