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What's the Point?

05/13/2014 1:26 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)

—by Garrett Dittfurth

*This is an opinion piece and does not represent the opinion of the 107ist board. It is my personal opinion.*

So tonight is the U-23s' first US Open Cup match. I haven't done this in a while but I've got to admit I'm getting pretty fed up with this whole thing. If you haven't heard of the U-23 squad here's the rundown from the team website.

Founded Nov. 11, 2008, the Portland Timbers U-23s is an amateur team affiliated with the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer and serves as a development platform for the club's first team. The team consists of standout players from collegiate and youth programs from Oregon, the Northwest and throughout the country, and competes in United Soccer Leagues’ Premier Development League (PDL). Since their founding, six Timbers U-23s players have signed with the first team, including goalkeeper Jake Gleeson and defender Bryan Gallego as well as Timbers Homegrown Players Steven Evans. The Timbers U-23s assembled an historic campaign in 2010, posting a perfect 16-0-0 record during the regular season on their way to becoming the first undefeated champion in PDL history.

I'm thinking real hard here. So as far as I can remember two players from our U-23 squad have played for the first team. Jake Gleeson (on loan to Sacramento and hasn't seen any first team time since 2011 in an emergency situation), and Brent Richards (injured, released, last seen jogging in my neighborhood a couple weekends ago). Other than that we have Steve Evans, who has no appearances in 2 years, and Bryan Gallego, who we had to trade with New York for the homegrown player's rights (collecting all the Zips). Other than that, I guess we have signed two other players from the U-23 squad that made enough of an impact for me to not have the faintest remembrance of what their names are.

I was doing a little research this afternoon whilst looking at our current U-23 roster and the nearest thing that I would imagine has the chance of being considered homegrown talent is a defender from England who plays for Oregon State. Oh and there are two Zips on the roster cause ALL THE ZIPS! If one were to compare our U-23 roster with a certain team that also has a U-23 squad in roughly the same geographic area as Portland, one could see there is a bit of a difference regarding the rosters. Did you catch the difference that I'm catching? Well if not here's what I saw. If you look at Portland's U-23 roster, the players home states read like this: Virginia, California, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, England, Costa Rica, Ecuador and so on and so forth. If you look at Seattle's U-23 roster there is a smattering of home states not named Washington, but if I'm counting correctly, I found 19 players from the region around Seattle.

We're 5 years into having a U-23 team that has now come to the point that there is absolutely no homegrown talent on the roster. What does that say about our academy system? In the words of a friend, "Why are we running a summer camp for players eligible for the draft or owned by other MLS squads?" What's the point of having a U-23 squad when we aren't using it to develop our own players? How does it benefit the first team? Anyone?


Comments

  • 08/10/2016 11:37 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)
    sbarry71 says:
    Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 4:36 pm

    Completely agreed. It goes deeper though. Did you happen to check out the roster of the opponent tonight? Two of our Pro team players on loan (including the aforementioned Gallego) and former reserve player Charles Renken. Other, would have been reserves, are in Sacramento. Never mind the guys that are too close to the first team to loan out, but never actually get on the pitch. What kind of experience are they getting? We need a PDL team full of aged out academy, Oregon State and Portland State players. And a USL Pro team. All playing the same system.
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  • 08/10/2016 11:38 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)
    Lexi says:
    Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    And Gallego is on loan to AZ United playing *against* the Timbers U-23s this round.
    Link  •  Reply
  • 08/10/2016 11:38 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)
    SR says:
    Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 5:04 pm

    But Gallego, Peay, Evans etc would not be eligible to play on our u23 squad, since they are no longer amateurs.
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  • 08/10/2016 11:38 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)
    SR says:
    Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 4:59 pm

    I think the point is that we have a good group coming through in our u18 program, and we want to have a u23 team for them to graduate to. Right?
    http://www.timbers.com/news/2014/02/nine-portland-timbers-academy-players-commit-colleges

    So our options are to let u23 lapse or take a number local kids who can’t be competitive at the PDL level, both of which are not reasonable. We also have to decide whether we are committing to college development or the bottom of our bench, since we can’t have current NCAA players and pros on the same squad– we chose to send Peay, Evans etc to USL loan spells rather than keep them with the u23s and fill out our roster with recent graduates.

    Last, we don’t seem to have the whole picture with our Academy players and the U23s– a few days ago they were listed with the U23s, then removed later in the day, so presumably their status is being worked out and we’ll hear at some point soon. See the comments here regarding Langsdorf, Macchione, Garcia-Aguilar.

    http://www.stumptownfooty.com/2014/5/12/5710868/look-at-2014-timbers-u-23s
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  • 08/10/2016 11:39 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)
    Pounder says:
    Friday, May 16, 2014 at 11:46 pm

    Please forgive me for what I’m about to do…
    …Shittle road-tested Deandre Yedlin (at age 18 for the most part) with the U-23s just before bringing him up. Having many kids with college/PDL experience provided a good backdrop, and Shittle were able to determine over X number of games (and I damn well remember him at Kiggins Bowl in 2012, hard to miss then) that he was worth bringing up.

    Mind you, the way to really play this is, perhaps, to have had Foster Langsdorf on the U-23s at some point last year. I sense GW is really skittish about really young players. Meanwhile, Red Bulls weren’t skittish with Juan Agudelo and New England made the right decision with Diego Fagundez. Consider the possibility that the best way to get value out of Rubio Rubin was to give him a few minutes with the senior team and figure things out from there.

    Also consider that the Timbers were able to scout Taylor Peay via appearances with Flounders U-23 and North Sound last year and likely saw Aaron Long with FC Tucson. I think it’s reasonable to have a PDL presence. I’m not here to say that college ball (which necessarily feeds u23 teams around this country) completely lacks value; MLS scouting generally sucks too much- or is simply a victim of the size and scope of this country- to not have a second chance route to the big league. It shouldn’t be our primary reliance, but it has a place.

    Oh, one more thing: given even how the academies run, generally, PDL is the first time most American players deal with anything sparingly close to FIFA rules, specifically with semi-reasonable substitution limits (5 per game; academy matches allow 7 subs). MLS and (only recently) NASL are the only American leagues that have the official 3-substitution limit. It’s something for which the whole system requires overhaul by my reckoning.
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  • 08/10/2016 11:40 PM | 107ist Admin (Administrator)
    Roy Gathercoal says:
    Tuesday, June 10, 2014 at 3:17 pm

    Is the U-23 squad really 5 years old? I thought that one of the reasons for reviving it was to do a better job of not letting players such as Erik Hurtado slip through our fingers. . . That one still stings.
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