View From The Shires: MLS 24 Under 24 Highlights League’s Growth

The major project MLS has been running on their official website, mlssoccer.com, for the past week has been the much discussed annual ’24 Under 24’ series, where editorial staff and various American soccer media members vote for their top 24 players in the league under the age of 24.

In its fourth year now, it’s a feature which has boasted Fredy Montero, Brek Shea, and Darren Mattocks as winners of previous editions, with the primary rule being that those eligible for the list must be 23 or younger as of the final day of the season – in this case, MLS Cup on December 7.

Beyond that fairly obvious rule however, the voting process is in fact far from straightforward. Players are rated based on five criteria, these being:

• Technical (skills, dribbling, shooting, first touch, heading, etc.)
• Tactical (positioning, reading game, soccer IQ, etc.)
• Physical Attributes (speed, endurance, strength, vertical leap, etc.)
• Personality (marketability, media savvy, quotability, charisma, intangibles, etc.)
• Potential (upside, national team potential, potential future transfer value, etc.)

Clearly some problems arise here. For starters, the personality category appears nigh impossible to measure fairly, while it’s undoubtedly the case that the whole voting process is unfairly skewed towards favouring attacking players, as the site’s actual list evidently demonstrates: http://www.mlssoccer.com/24under24/2013/complete-list

Really, to say a player’s personality is just valuable as their technical ability seems rather short-sighted. All in all, ’24 Under 24’ is a highly subjective exercise – one which, as @tempofreesoccer summed it up on Twitter, is fun but hopelessly futile. No version of the list can ever be perfect and one could debate for eternity over which player should be higher or lower or who was unfairly omitted.

Nevertheless, the whole project does tell us one unmistakably positive thing about MLS – that there are more young and exiting talents in the league than ever before, being recruited through various means. The establishment and growth of MLS youth academies in recent years has certainly helped in that respect, with players such Diego Fagúndez and Will Trapp able to embed themselves in a professional environments from a younger age, but we’ve also been shown over the course of this season how the draft is still an invaluable tool with which to source untapped talent and likely one which is here to stay. Dillon Powers and Deshorn Brown have made a huge impact for the Colorado Rapids coming straight out of college, while the number one pick in 2013, New England Revolution right back Andrew Farrell, is already earning national team considerations with his play. Factor in the recently introduced Young Designated Player Rule too, which has allowed clubs to bring in young overseas prospects such as Erick Torres (Chivas USA), Mauro Díaz (FC Dallas) and Matías Laba (Toronto FC) for a fraction of the budget they would normally cost, and it’s clear that MLS is now trying to establish the league on exciting building blocks for the future – something which wasn’t always the case. This was made all the more evident to me when trying to draw up my own ’24 Under 24’ list, from which I was at pains to omit a whole host of highly promising and well thought of players. As stressed earlier, no list of this manner can truly ever be perfect but, all the same, I’ve given it a solid go:

Even in this case, largely ignoring the voting criteria set out and instead going with gut instinct, highly promising players such as last year’s winner Darren Mattocks, Fabián Castillo, Perry Kitchen, Deshorn Brown, Soony Saad, Scott Caldwell, Will Trapp and others all miss out. However, as vocal as fans may get over the omission of one of their club’s respective players, in the eyes of MLS such debate can surely only be seen as a positive. For one it shows it that the league is generating genuine and widespread interest but primarily it demonstrates just how far things have progressed over the past few years, in terms of cultivating young and promising talent. One thing is for sure, MLS certainly can’t be viewed as world soccer’s retirement home any longer.