Post by INVINCIBLE 2023 Fantasy Champ on Dec 11, 2019 18:30:06 GMT
Between the CBA issue and CCL, this was the perfect recipe for Lagerwey to test his theories on using Tacoma Defiance players for the Sounders' First Team. He's been champing at that bit seemingly forever.
Granted, I am glad the club is going to concentrate on CCL with the veterans rather than the "kids", but hopefully the MLS will set the schedule up in such a way that it will allow at least some time between CCL and the regular season so the Sounders can field a competitive lineup against MLS clubes.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that if the Defiance will be wearing Rave Green, it may be more "sink" than "swim"...
The thing about doing what Lagerwey wants to do, is it's next to impossible to do in America because of how our youth sports are set up. From Pay to Play to a college system that severely limits the amount of training time and development you're allowed to do, finding one single kid who will end up being a top first flight footballer is like finding a diamond in the rough. There's no way you can build a team through that system. He wants us to be like Ajax, but American laws and American mentality around youth sports will never let us.
Plus, just to play devils advocate, even if it where possible, it takes at least a whole generation if not more to truly get a system like that up and running to the point where you can take younger players from the lower levels and just plug and play them into a first team.
It's a noble idea, but it's also a naive idea, unfortunately.
Plus there's the utterly strange phenomenon that as soccer becomes more popular, the US products seem to be getting worse. The 2002-2006 USMNT would crush the current crop.
