MLS Next

At the moment, and it changes every five to 10 years, at the moment, the hottest girls league is the girls Academy and ECNL and the same thing for the boys.

The hottest thing for the boys is MLS next.

And I think that's just taken over everything.

Like there's, there's, there's definitely really good ECNL teams that can beat MLS next teams, but it's not the dominant league throughout the entire country.

There's pockets like Texas and California that have a lot of UCNL presence.

So those aren't managed by USU soccer.

Yeah, and I won't even I don't ever want to knock someone for not playing at a super high level and saying they can't be a good coach or, you know, critical to the development of a kid.

Because that's just not true either.

And it's a lot easier when you have slow motion from your couch and it's air conditioned and you haven't run four and a half miles already and there was sweat in your eyes.

and a player if from behind you is yelling about how you missed a call three minutes ago and then there's a guy standing in between you and and the tackle that happens like it's a lot harder than it does look and so it's kind of one of those like you want to say hey man like a little bit of grace a little bit but again it's it's it's a really really tough job like there's no i always thought like i always thought i was like man i could probably do like like mls level And I've gotten to MLS Next Pro level.

And the speed there, I'm just like, dude, I don't think I could.

And I feel like I'm a pretty good referee.

I'm kind of good at what I do.

But the jump in speed and quality and pace from MLS Next and the Academy stuff to MLS is just unbelievable and unreal.

And look, we saw that whenever the refs had the holdout a few years ago.

And they had a dude who was a music teacher refereeing the messy Miami game, and it was a poop show.

And I don't know if he was joking, but he said he had not had that experience prior.

And we all surmised because crowd size when he was playing in MLS Next or, you know, the second teams, there was no crowd.

And so people weren't brave enough to howl.

But then again, he could have been joking, you know, like, oh, I've never heard that before.

So yeah, like, oh, they're just doing this for money, money grab.

And then what about the elitism side of soccer in the country as well, right? You mentioned ECNL, MLS Next, GA.

There's this weird need that we have to have the elitism side Those leagues and they have to exist for us to be good or great as a country.

How does that change affect, you know, is this a money grab into, well, where is the money really being spent and how is it affecting those high tier leagues?

Some of this actually comes with a lot of value.

Some of it could be delivered better, but we don't know all of the nuances between all of the different ones because actually some of them are competing for the same player base.

You know, the ECNL boys platform might be competing with the same player base as MLS next.

So which one they're actually competing with each other.

So, you know, I think there's definitely like raised consciousness of soccer and its impact and what it can do.

And, you know, I'm fascinated to see like what residual impact is that going to have? You know, the biggest thing for me last year is, and again, it's something that rears its head every year, you know, is the whole MLS next thing.

And, you know, the club circuit, the best player in the country, the Gatorade national player of the year played four years of public high school soccer in New Jersey.

And you know, his name is Marcus Jackson.

You know, he played like four or five minutes.

Yeah.

season yeah so like you know again when people look at a kid like that like the grass isn't always greener and you know the MLS next isn't the ultimate way to you know get all these accolades and things because nobody's covering MLS next games so yeah maybe you know coaches and stuff are there but if you're looking to get publicity like you know we're not out here going to club soccer games or things like that So, yeah, like I think those were some of the big things is like, you know, like Carney again is a state power.

They brought, you know, I think five kids back from the club ranks this year from what I heard.