New tip line: Any interesting info pertaining to players, clubs, USYNT's, coaches, academies, or anything relevant to American Youth soccer you'd like to share, you can email me at [email protected]. There are many things out there I miss. You'll remain anonymous.

FYI I was 20 of 21 last year. I could not possibly imagine that Mateo Tsakiris would make it over Cristiano Oliveira, but having a powerful father tends to matter in this sport.

NEW: Final 2026 U-17 World Cup Roster Prediction. Here is my position by position breakdown of what I expect the US U-17 WC roster to be. patreon.com/USMNTProspects/p… Subscription tiers: $6, $12, and $24 a month. This article is available to $12 and $24 a month subscribers.

The US U-17 WC roster has been released. I don’t know officially when we will get the announcement, but I anticipate later this week.

Give me LAG-Columbus and I’ll be happy. Two teams who’ve played their academy products all season.

Owen Presthus was loaned to USLC last year. Think he was available for like 12 games and only got minutes in 4 of them. That included one TOTW performance. I remember like two years ago Brandan Craig was loaned to El Paso and was in and out of the lineup there. Has played well over 2,000 minutes in MLS the two seasons following that. Why do you think Pierre was loaned to Denmark? Cupps to Scotland? Teams and agents don’t like loaning to USLC because they believe it’s a risky environment and they are not convinced their players will be treated fairly.

Here’s the very simple answer: Because Spain has kids with technical and tactical qualities on another planet from us. Another big fallacy: always go with present soccer quality. No, no, no, do not. I see 1 million players at U-15 and U-16 level who are the most skilled and smartest out there on the field and score/assist like 40 goals combined a season and then they get to the pros and everyone is athletic and their skills just aren’t special enough anymore because they’re competing with the pool of the whole world of pro footballers compared to future accountants and plumbers they’re playing at U-15 or U-16. It would be so simple if we had Spain’s pool of talent. We don’t. Trying to copy a product we can’t replicate isn’t going to yield good results. We won’t be able to replicate Spain’s pool of talent until we have a culture where kids have a ball at their feet from 5 or younger and are mastering the game in those younger years. That’s not our present footballing culture. Trying to just pick the closest versions to “Spanish type players” is going to yield terrible results. There’s a reason almost none of our senior team players are known for finesse elements. The scouting world has yet to value finesse elements from American talents. It is what it is. I’d love it to change, but the players have to be there. They aren’t yet.

I stand corrected: he has 13 goals, 3A in 1517 minutes. Transfermarkt doesn’t list a US Open Cup game where he had a double in a 90 minute performance.

Assist from Pepe Magana (‘07).

Assist for Prince Forfor (‘09). Also scored a goal in this game.

I wanted to expand on a fallacy you hear within youth soccer: You often hear people say that with young prospects who are still going through their physical/athletic development that there’s no way to know how they’ll develop. While I wouldn’t say you can predict anything with extremely high certainly, you actually are able to get a pretty good idea of how players will develop. How does that happen? Here are a few ways: 1. Parental height/athletic pedigree: let’s use Alex Freeman as an example. His dad was a 6’1 198 pound former elite pro athlete who had legitimately high end movement skills athletically comparatively to soccer players. The idea Alex ends up like 5’7 and a very slow and sluggish player is not very likely. It’s not to say there aren’t anomalies, but if your parents played sports at a high level and have high level athletic traits, there’s a good chance you will too. If your parents never played sports or even did and were weak when it comes to athletic traits, chances are you will too. 2. Teams can test for future physical/athletic development. They often have this data. Maybe not available to the public, but it exists. 3. Teams keep their own athletic data. Again, maybe not available to the public, but it exists. 4. Whether merely using data or judging with your own eyes, a player who is very slow is likely never going to be very fast just because they went through puberty some more. A player who is very fast likely is never going to be very slow just because others caught up when it comes to puberty. What you are pre puberty probably isn’t too different than what you’ll be post puberty. There aren’t too many exceptions. The big, fast kid pre puberty is usually the big, fast kid post puberty. The small, slow kid post puberty is usually the slow, small kid post puberty. 5. You can also account for players who are clearly very fluid athletes, but look physically weak or small. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be big and strong eventually, but yeah people routinely point out players who athletically have it yet haven’t hit their growth spurt yet. Concluding: I really just wanted to make sure I condemn in the strongest terms the idea that “well you can’t figure things out at all” because a player is still developing in these areas. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. All professional clubs know this. All pro scouts talk about these topics with eachother in private and laugh at the public perception that they can’t account for these things. Yes, you cannot be sure until that development actually takes place. The human body is naturally unpredictable, but you are able to usually account for what will occur with a player’s physical/athletic development.

Jacob Hall (‘08).

Goal from JWVC (‘09).

Looks like Culbreath could be back from his leg injury soon.