Always a crisis in the little world of "elite soccer", if only we spent as much time worrying about their math homework and literary skills imagine what might happen...
This will take a year or 2 to sort out. My observation from a "smaller" club is that adding another layer in the leagues stretches club's ability to provide options at all appropriate levels. So in an specific age group you may only have silver and metro or bronze and gold. The kids in the lower...
"The intent is to put pressure on the coaches to play their top players more, which in turn is supposed to pushed the players harder to crack the starting line-up."
Hmm. Other perspectives do come to mind.....
Not sure how this will work when there's a long bench of players (and parents) that...
MUFC will always have an advantage due to the central location of the BLW west fields. It remains to be seen if "regular" HPL players will travel across the lower mainland for HPL (if spots on the local team are taken), as opposed to playing for their local MSL teams.
Does team stacking contribute to poor turnouts at other age groups? I could imagine in girls especially that parent and coaches would go "why bother" and stay with Metro for the reasonable season, costs, and balanced competition.
According to Mr Base (I think, if I read between the lines) MSL will be as strong as HPL so they may as well all duke it out for the A cup. More fun to have 20 teams than 8.....
I think going to a district based tier 2 is a mistake. Most of the players at tier 2 are current gold players and it would much less disruptive to sprinkle the Metro players that aren't HPL-bound into the existing club-based gold teams rather than the artificially created district teams. It will...
I can only speak to the girls side. There are only 6-10 Metro teams in each age group now. And some of those teams are not competitive and probably shouldn't be there. After HPL is set up there I don't think there will be much change to the rest of the Coastal League. Those players that don't...
Yes, in the absence some form of market research the HPL folks have assumed that many/most Metro players would jump at HPL, but Super Y shows that not to be the case, the kids want their spring/summer off for other things. And the teams I know of, it was all about that trip to Florida so there...
I seriously doubt that. I can't imagine that there will be a Metro league (HPL 2) left after HPL, there aren't enough players. Nor will a lot of families want to play soccer for that length of season and forego other activities. I foresee a strengthened Gold league and the status quo below that.
It does depend on 60% of the current Metro players being interested in playing 10 months of the year, paying a lot of $, travelling a lot more, and foregoing other activities including half of the summer. I hope it works out, but I would not be surprised if they are challenged to get enough...
The documentation is a little unclear on the fate of the second tier. On the girls side there are only 6-10 teams in the Lower Mainland metro league anyway so the HPL will eliminate a few weak metro teams/players. I think the easiest and least disruptive approach is to continue with a...
I don't think the Bronze/Silver/Gold level players and families want to play 10 months of the year as (for the girls at least) a lot of kids quite happily switch to Softball and field hockey in the spring. And I think BC Soccer has been told the fields won't be made available for one sport for...