BEHIND THE PLAY #36

Had something else I was working on but it was garbage in the end so we’ll go with three reader questions and two pieces of kit you honestly will not find anywhere.

From the mailbag…

Q. Given the school calendar and holiday, what would be your ideal time to visit the UK to maximize on the number of EPL fixtures available.

A. I’ve done a few trips like this with my kids and they’ve all been fantastic memories. None were specific to the EPL though. In 2014 I took 32 kids to Barcelona for a one week camp with Barca staff coaches and we saw two games at the Camp Nou. I combined that with a stop in London on the way there and again on the way out. We saw Arsenal v Crystal Palace at the Emirates to kick off the EPL season and then a League Cup game at Upton Park between West Ham and Sheffield Utd. This was late August so there league and cup games going on and hopping between London and Barcelona was easy. Did a similar trip in 2019 to see five games in nine days in Spain and England. Again, it was with my youngest, now 16, and we managed to see both legs of the Champions League semi-final between Barca and Liverpool (which ended up being legendary) as well as Espanyol v Atletico Madrid in Barcelona and then two games in one day in Madrid: Getafe v Girona followed by Real Madrid v Villareal. This was in May and I just took my kid out of school (third kid so way less concerned about these sorts of things than I was with one and two).

If you just want to see EPL games and don’t want to miss school it’s either late August or over the school break for Christmas. Downside for the former is flights are at their most expensive and for the latter- weather. Personally, if you’re going to England I’d highly recommend going to a mix of EPL and lower league games. The match day experience in England is fantastic and its definitely not limited to EPL.

If you don’t mind yarding your kid out of school for a week, you can likely pick a week bookended with two weekends and see a full range of English league and cup games at various levels along with Champions League, Europa League etc. England is small and relatively easy to get around but I find Spain’s high speed trains between the major cities made it really easy to make it work when travelling with kids. The airports in Spain were also way less congested than Heathrow. Here’s a longer version of how my 2019 trip to England and Spain went from my old blog

Q. Given today's soccer pyramid, is there any advantage (or disadvantage) for a youth player to play in a BCSPL club that has a BCL1 team? - currently only TSS but Burnaby and perhaps another club as well.

A. I feel like I should do a deep dive here on League 1 at some point. Planned to be the missing link between CPL and university soccer, while positing itself as semi-professional (I mentioned in a previous BTP that it really should stop doing that until players are paid) it seems to increasingly be a ‘keep fit’ league for university players. Yes, some have gone on to play in the CPL but, in BC anyways the main beneficiary of the league’s efforts are men’s and women’s university teams who themselves have a short season. Combining the two seasons, very few players would play more than 30 games. To your question about whether there’s an advantage for youth players to play for a club that has a League 1 team or not. I’m assuming the desired advantage is for the player to have a better chance of making that club’s L1 team. As it stands now, no. Using the clubs you mentioned as examples, Burnaby FC’s roster page for their men’s team shows that only two of the 21 players on the team came from their own BCSPL program. On the women’s side it’s three of 26 players. TSS men’s roster only seems to have one who came through TSS women’s team is the only one that indicates a correlation of youth players moving onto a League 1 team at the same club. They have 11 of their 24 players on their 2024 team in this category but they are all women who aged out of youth soccer several years ago and are listed as playing on TSS’s MWSL soccer team so it’s hard to say if they played youth soccer at TSS which I believe is what you’re looking for an answer on.

The good news is that Coquitlam Metro-Ford will enter League 1 next season and they already have seven players, or former players, on Burnaby FC’s women’s roster and TSS have two on their men’s team. I would expect they would be an example of a club that would be able to push substantial numbers of it’s players through to its League 1 team and remain competitive.

Bottom line is League 1 teams are playing in a highly competitive league with a huge payoff: the chance to gain entry into the Canadian Championship where they could and have played CPL teams and MLS teams. There is no room, especially in a twelve game season, to prioritize players from a particular youth club for any other reason than they deserve to be there. League 1 clubs will pick the best players they can sign regardless of where they used to play or currently play.

Q: With college admissions in mind, what is your advice to youth players in our current pyramid? Is it make or break for the Whitecaps Full-Time or do you see the alternative avenues to using this sport to get a leg up into good (ivy league) post-secondary schools?

A. I’ll start by saying the most read issue of this newsletter was “My Child’s Dream is to Play University Soccer” (issue #4). That was an attempt to clearly define the current pathway and it’s levels of play so as to help parents establish reasonable expectations. It was also a warning not to fall prey to people claiming they could get their child onto a university team even though their child is currently playing at the 6th of 7 available levels of play at U17 or U18 (yes, that happens and parents believe it’s possible). I had a few TD’s at large clubs ask if they could forward it to the parents at their club as a means to cool some jets regarding getting into university soccer.

Pre-emptive cynical warning done, here’s my answer. University soccer is not monolithic in terms of opportunities to play. In Canada there are two levels of university soccer: U-Sports which houses the biggest and most well-known universities in the country and smaller universities and colleges play in the Canadian College Athletics Association. Your question, as you mention Ivy League schools (which by the way do not offer actual athletic scholarship but rather bursaries based at least partially on parental income). Ivy League schools are also much stricter on players being able to meet their minimum academic entrance requirements. I personally know someone whose initial offer to Dartmouth, for hockey, was rescinded due to not having the grades needed.

Factor in that there are still far more opportunities for female Canadian players to get soccer scholarships in the States than male players as well. Title IX is the main reason for this.

I’ve copy/pasted the graphic I made for that Issue #4 on university soccer to help. What level do you have to be at, in the youth soccer world, to get an NCAA Div 1 offer? Pretty much MLS Academy or national youth teams. Our club had a player get a scholarship to go to Notre Dame two years ago. She played on the national U17 team (was the captain) and progressed to the U20 national team that recently lost to Spain in the quarter finals of the U20 World Cup in Colombia.

On the male side it’s pretty much the same. If you want to play at a top Canadian university, like UBC, they recruit across the country and also look to get players ageing out of the Whitecaps Academy who aren’t going to get an MLS offer from the Caps. The team’s coach, Mike Mosher, also gets many international candidates contact him every year as well. Again, that’s the most successful men’s university program in the country and one of the top universities, period, in the country so competition is fierce to make that team. The women’s team at UBC is similar and is drawing from farther and wider now due to recent successes that have seen them win national titles last year and in 2019-20.

If you’re happy with a CCAA school like Capilano University, you have a chance of getting in if you’re playing BCSPL. From my son’s 2002 born U18 team (Div 1/Metro on the chart above) that wrapped up in 2020, two players made that Capilano team for what proved to be a short run of exhibition games with a lot of training due to COVID.

So your supposition that you need to be at the Whitecaps full time academy level to make a top university program isn’t far off.

Click here if you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer here.

Kit: two great t-shirts

For starters, yes, I consider t-shirts like these ones kit!

I’ve always liked the stuff that is impossible to find anywhere but where you are when you bought it. On site, sold by the guy who made it most likely and selling them from a small stash he has at his feet near a popular landmark where lots of people are likely to be. This Flamengo/ Zico t-shirt is from my trip to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil fits that bill. Bought if off a guy across from Copacabana beach.

Got it from a street vendor in Milan in 1990 while backpacking around the world. Does it fit? Not really but when the right occasion to wear it pops up, I make it fit.

^{Finally, thanks very much to everyone who subscribes, reads this online and those who forward it on to others to read. BTP passed the 20,000 reads marks last week. Thanks to everyone who has emailed me saying they enjoyed something in particular or just things in general. Obviously, I don’t know everyone who reads it but I do know it’s read at many levels of the game from local soccer parents and club staff members right up to CSA and CONCACAF types. Even my pal Wendy’s friend in Prince George enjoys it! Your interest, as readers, keeps me on my toes and makes me want to continue to put things out that resonate with the soccer community regardless of what level you engage at.}