Chipotle MLS Homegrown Game highlights

Highlights from Tuesday's Chipotle MLS Homegrown Game, which I called alongside Joe Cannon and Jackie Montgomery.

Back to work on Tuesday with the Chipotle MLS Homegrown Game!

I'm back to work this week with one of the more appropriate assignments I can think of: calling the Chipotle MLS Homegrown Game.

Homegrown Players (HGPs) in MLS are players developed in a club's youth academy, and since the league instituted this rule in 2008, it's been a pet project of mine. I keep tabs on team academies and college players to see who the next HGPs will be, and I keep a close eye on them once they get to the MLS ranks too.

That's why I'm so excited to be in Denver this week to call the Homegrown Game, now in its second season, Tuesday night at 9pm ET on MLS LIVE, MLSsoccer.com, YouTube and simulcast on Sirius XM 94.

A select group of the league's HGPs, coached by the greatest player in U.S. history, Landon Donovan, will take on the U-20s from Mexican powerhouse Club América. I'm curious to see if the tradition of US vs. Mexico rivalries adds a little spice to this one, and I'm excited to see in person several players I've only read about and studied from afar. For soccer-heads, here's a piece from MLSsoccer.com on who to watch for tonight.

In talking to Donovan on Monday, he summed up the difference MLS academies have made by saying the final spots on team rosters used to be filled by young players with talent; "now they're real soccer players."

It's a great broadcast crew, too, with former MLS All-Star and Colorado Rapids goalkeeper Joe Cannon joining me as an analyst and the Seattle Sounders' Jackie Montgomery reporting from the sidelines. Veterans of MLS television will be producing the show, and it should be a fun night!

The moment Real Salt Lake decided to sign 17-year-old Sebastian Saucedo

MLSsoccer.com

I actually missed the moment when Real Salt Lake decided to sign 17-year-old Sebastian Saucedo, who is reportedly set to become the club's first Utah-based Homegrown Player (the other HGPs have come from outside the state via the club's residential academy in Arizona).

I was tweeting. Oops.

It was at the Generation adidas Cup - the MLS U-17 championship - in Frisco, Texas, on April 17. I was covering the tournament for MLSsoccer.com, calling three group games, the semifinals and the final and writing daily recaps from the tournament.

So on the final day of group games, Real Salt Lake was playing its biggest rival in Development Academy play, the LA Galaxy, with the winner advancing to the semifinals. The teams were battling for the division lead, so it was a can't-miss game. As I arrived at the field, I noticed more people than usual near the RSL bench. I recognized a few faces I knew from the front office and was mildly surprised they had found their way to a youth game, given that the first team was nowhere near Texas at the time.

Then I saw a face that shocked me. The club's owner, Dell Loy Hansen, was laughing with general manager Garth Lagerwey and co. At a youth tournament. It seemed absolutely crazy to me. It turns out Hansen had used his own plane to fly a group of staffers in for the game.

Seriously, RSL's owner and GM flew in specifically for this Academy game and to meet with their coaches. Has to be an MLS first.
— Jonathan Yardley (@jtyardley) April 17, 2014

I don't know how much money fuel for private planes costs, but it seems like they may have gotten their money's worth on this night. Real Salt Lake blitzed LA with three goals in the first 10 minutes, the final goal a spectacular left-footed volleyed lob from 25 yards that brought the house down. I missed it, too busy tweeting about the second goal, but I saw enough. (Still hoping we can dig it out of MLS archives this week.)

Real Salt Lake added two more goals to go up 5-0 in the first 26 minutes, with Saucedo setting up the fourth and scoring the fifth. The man everybody at RSL calls, "Mr. Hansen" was intrigued. You could tell he was peppering those around him with questions about this kid.

Sebastian Saucedo scored 25-yard lefty lob to make it 3-0. Lagerwey and Hansen almost signed him on the spot.
— Jonathan Yardley (@jtyardley) April 17, 2014

This is the moment

When Saucedo was subbed out of the game in the 61st minute, Salt Lake's 6-1 win secure, he was soon summoned to talk to "Mr. Hansen" behind the bench. I said to an RSL staffer, half-joking, that the conversation consisted of, "So, about that senior year of high school ... I think you could do it in Salt Lake City, don't you?" and was told, in a similar tone, "That's exactly what that conversation is."

Sebastian Saucedo subbed out. Dell Loy Hansen summons him for conversation. Think they're discussing that senior year of high school?
— Jonathan Yardley (@jtyardley) April 18, 2014

Obviously a lot more went into it than Hansen's opinion and that one play (Saucedo has been consistently outstanding for RSL and was named USSDA Western Conference Player of the Year, although the Galaxy did get revenge by beating RSL in the national title game earlier this month).

I'm sure head coach Jeff Cassar and GM Lagerwey were the most influential people in the decision.

But that moment in Frisco sure didn't hurt.

The next night, Saucedo scored with another spectacular chip, and this time I wasn't going to miss it. I even got to call it. This is what RSL's newest signing is capable of:

Day 2 broadcast comes through with smiles, jubilation in dramatic finish

After a brutally cold first day and a 0-0 game (albeit an entertaining one), we got great weather on Tuesday and a remarkable game to broadcast. Here's my Day 2 recap for MLSsoccer.com.

Real Salt Lake and Stoke City had been two of the more impressive teams on the opening day of the tournament, and they were pitted against each other on Tuesday. Stoke, however, only had 13 players (which meant only one field-player substitute) due to a red-card suspension. Real Salt Lake, meanwhile, had vocal support in the crowd from a Layton, Utah-based youth club that has produced several players on the RSL Academy roster.

Stoke scored early, but Real Salt Lake controlled much of the first half. RSL head coach Martín Vásquez told his players at halftime that they were affording Stoke too much space, and RSL came out possessed in the second half. They tied the score and dominated the entire half, but when Stoke scored following a free kick in the final minute of regulation, it looked like curtains.

There were several minutes of stoppage time, however, and Salt Lake scored a dramatic tying goal with what turned out to be the last kick of regulation in the third minute of stoppage time! The goal really saved their chances of winning the tournament; otherwise Stoke City would have controlled its own path to the final.

Instead, Real Salt Lake won the shootout to earn an extra point in the standings and provide a memorable ending to our broadcast! After we had tearful injuries on Monday's show, I hoped we would get some jubilation on our next broadcast, and we certainly did.

Here's the full archive of the game -- the frantic finish starts around the 1:24:55 mark:

Shivering, sniffling through opening-night broadcast at the MLS U-17 championship

Our setup on Monday night

You would think Dallas in late April would be pretty warm, but the weather on Monday at the 2014 Generation adidas Cup was anything but welcoming. With temperatures in the 40s and dropping into the 30s at night (which, of course, included our live broadcast under a full moon), and a strong wind whipping across the exposed complex all day long, everybody on hand was talking about how cold it was.

The broadcast must go on, of course, so at 8 p.m. CT I stepped onto a small podium near the bench of the San Jose Earthquakes U-17 team and called their game against the Chivas Guadalajara U17s. Coaches and kids from both teams were staying at our hotel, so that made it easier than normal to prepare for the game, but there were still a few challenges. For example, Chivas wears thin, navy blue numbers (often in the triple digits) on a background of red and white stripes, which is virtually impossible to see more than 40 yards away. We also did not have replay capabilities on Monday, although we hope to show replays later in the tournament.

The game itself, despite being the only 0-0 tie of the day in the tournament's championship division (my full Day 1 recap is available here), was pretty compelling. Less than three minutes in, we had the heartbreaking site of a San Jose player in tears after suffering an injury and being helped off the field by his teammates. Whatever the injury, you could see the anguish on the kid's face. Luckily, when I checked at halftime, the injury turned out not to be the complete ruptured Achilles the player had feared it to be.

After San Jose dominated the game in terms of scoring chances but was consistently denied by the Chivas goalkeeper, the Mexican club won in a very well-executed shootout, as the teams combined to score on nine of their 10 penalty kicks. One Chivas player had been injured late in the game, after the club had run out of substitutions. So he remained with his team in the center circle for the shootout, then was carried off in tears by a teammate.

While you obviously hope both kids are OK and get to play again in the tournament, it's not every day you call a game book-ended with that kind of emotion. Hopefully we get more elation than anything else throughout the remaining games!

Here's the full archive of the game:

Set to broadcast six U-17 soccer games at Generation adidas Cup

Quick post - just arrived in the Dallas-Fort Worth MetroPlex on Sunday for a week of broadcasting soccer games for MLSsoccer.com. I'll be calling six games in the Generation adidas Cup, which is the U-17 championship of Major League Soccer. Nine teams qualified for the final around, joined by three international clubs.

Here's a brief preview article I put together for MLSsoccer.com.

The weather conditions are cold and windy, at least for April in Texas, and since we're not working in a stadium with infrastructure but on equipment we set up, there may be some exciting stories ahead!

MLS home-grown prospect update

The MLS offseason has a number of different sub-plots, and one of my favorites is collegiate soccer players with the potential to be signed to home-grown contracts. It’s early in December, but we’re already getting news on the home-grown player front. Between the NCAA College Cup and the initial list of players invited to January’s MLS Combine, we’re getting a good idea of which senior prospects could be signing directly with a club, rather than hoping to be picked in the SuperDraft. (Underclassmen, of course, are another story.)

I was a little surprised to hear so much talk about the draft prospects of Georgetown midfielder Ian Christianson (a senior) and Maryland forward Patrick Mullins (a junior) during the College Cup, given that both were claimed by the Fire on a 2010 list of home-grown claims. That list had yet to be ratified by MLS, however, and claims from a variety of teams later fell through. So I’ve been curious about the specific cases of Christianson and Mullins, and I think I now have answers:

Christianson
It seems that Christianson played for the Chicago Fire Academy in his junior and senior years of high school and then went to Georgetown. Where the situation gets tricky, however, is the fact that Christianson’s hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a good 220 miles from Bridgeview, much greater than the maximum of 75 miles allowed by the Fire’s specified home territory. Based on the original MLS home-grown player rules, which could have been changed by now, teams were allowed two territorial exemptions (players who live outside the home territory) per age group (there were six age groups at the time; the rules contain no explanation of what happens when a territorial exemption moves up an age group).

MLSsoccer.com’s Daniel Robertson reported on Sunday that Christianson said his lack of home-grown eligibility was a decision made by MLS, but Fire Director of Communications Brendan Hannan said in an e-mail that Christianson was not on the club’s home-grown list because, “the club is left with difficult decisions on who to place on the ‘out of area’ home-grown list.” Reading between the lines, the Fire must have (either now, or at some point during Christianson’s association with the club) decided to prioritize two other prospects from outside the home territory.

Mullins
This is an interesting one. Mullins played youth soccer in Louisiana for Lafreniere SC, one of several clubs that merged to form the Chicago Fire Juniors Louisiana club. Hannan's email said, however, that Mullins had left for college before his club’s official affiliation with the Fire.

Normally this would be understandably clear-cut, but the decision not to accept the Fire’s claim to Mullins (a claim they did make as far back as 2010, and he has since played for Fire U-20 teams) seems to contradict a recent MLS precedent. Last year, MLS accepted the Portland Timbers’ home-grown claim to forward Brent Richards, who played youth soccer for EastSide United way before the MLS Timbers even existed and also played for the Timbers’ PDL team. EastSide United was later folded into the MLS Timbers’ youth system, providing the basis for Richards’ signing. In a somewhat similar situation, I have heard that the San Jose Earthquakes will be able to place a home-grown claim on former U.S. U-17 and current Santa Clara goalkeeper Kendall McIntosh, even though he left for U-17 residency before his club became affiliated with the Earthquakes. This is likely a few years away, but worth noting.

We don’t know how much back-and-forth there was between MLS and the Fire over these two players, but it is interesting to track some of these borderline cases. Believe me, there are a lot more behind the scenes that we don’t hear about.

As for home-grown MLS prospects, here is a summary of what is being reported about some of those already linked to pro deals for 2013, notably from Adam Jardy at the Columbus Dispatch and Ives Galarcep of Soccer By Ives:

MLS club	Player	College	HG claim status	Outlook
Chicago	MF Ian Christianson	Georgetown	none	MLS combine
Columbus	DF Chad Barson	Akron	accepted	likely to sign
Columbus	GK Justin Luthy	Boston College	accepted	likely to sign
Columbus	DF Matt Wiet	UCLA	accepted	likely to sign
Columbus	MF Wil Trapp	Akron (soph.)	accepted	hired agent, could sign
D.C. United	FW Uwem Etuk	West Virginia	club declined	MLS combine
FC Dallas	DF London Woodberry	Maryland	accepted	contract offered
New England	MF Scott Caldwell	Akron	accepted	likely to sign
Portland	FW Erik Hurtado	Santa Clara	denied	MLS combine

Just for fun, here are some other players who could be looking at pro contract offers, even though I haven't seen it reported:

MLS club	Player	College	Resume
Chicago	MF Bryan Ciesiulka	Marquette (jr.)	2nd tm Big East; 5g, 9a
Chicago	MF Harry Shipp	Notre Dame (jr.)	3rd tm Big East; 6g, 6a
Colorado	GK Brendan Roslund	San Francisco (sr.)	6-foot-6; 0.99 GAA
Colorado	DF Patrick Slogic	Cornell (jr.)	6-foot-5; 1st tm all region
Colorado	MF Dillon Serna	Akron (fr.)	1st tm MAC; 2g, 8a
FC Dallas	DF Mikey Ambrose	Maryland (fr.)	2nd tm ACC; 1g, 7a
FC Dallas	MF Danny Garcia	UNC (fr.)	2nd tm ACC; Frosh POY
FC Dallas	DF Boyd Okwuonu	UNC (so.)	1st tm ACC
Houston	DF Sebastien Ibeagha	Duke (jr.)	ACC Def. POY
LA Galaxy	FW Gyasi Zardes	CSU-Bakersfield (jr.)	MPSF POY; 15gls in 17gms
New York	GK Keith Cardona	Maryland (so.)	1.14 GAA
New York	FW Brandon Allen	Georgetown (fr.)	Big East Rookie of Yr; 16g, 2a
Portland (from NY)	MF Bryan Gallego	Akron (so.)	2nd tm MAC
Portland	MF Steven Evans	Portland (jr.)	1st tm WCC; 14g, 3a
Seattle	DF DeAndre Yedlin	Akron (so.)	1st tm MAC; 6a
Seattle	FW Sean Okoli	Wake Forest (so.)	2nd tm ACC; 11g, 3a
Seattle	MF Aaron Kovar	Stanford (fr.)	Pac 12 Frosh of Yr; 3g, 2a
Toronto FC	FW Allando Matheson	UConn (so.)	7g, 1a
Vancouver	MF Ben McKendry	New Mexico (fr.)	MPSF Newcomer of Yr

One more post on HGPs: 2012 freshmen

In writing about men's college soccer, which kicks off tonight, it's usually best to stay away from freshmen until after they've played a few games. Some guys come in with a reputation and live up to it, but it's hard to predict, coaches don't like to talk about it, etc.

So when writing about MLS home-grown players in college soccer, both the Top Drawer Soccer team and myself, when compiling our lists of top prospects, have mostly stayed away from freshmen.

Because more information is better, however, I'm going to present a list of notable MLS-protected freshmen in college this season without making evaluations. Here is one college freshman from each MLS team (except Montreal) that I have heard of with good reason. I'm not saying these are the best players or that they will one day be a professional, merely that I have heard of each one for his soccer ability. Here they are, presented in alphabetical order by MLS team:

Chicago Fire - FW Andrew Oliver, Indiana, 5-8, 160
Chivas USA - DF Brendan Hines-Ike, Creighton, 6-1, 170
Columbus Crew - DF Andrew Souders, Akron, 5-11, 165
Colorado Rapids - MF Dillon Serna, Akron, 5-7, 135
D.C. United - FW Luis Rendon, Duke, 5-10, 160
FC Dallas - DF Mikey Ambrose, Maryland, 5-9, 155
Houston Dynamo - DF Bradley Bourgeois, Tulsa, 5-11, 190
Sporting Kansas City - FW Nate Opperman, Evansville, 6-0, 170
LA Galaxy - MF Grady Howe, UCLA, 5-10, 155
New England Revolution - DF Mitchell Taintor, Rutgers, 6-2, 175
New York Red Bulls - FW Brandon Allen, Georgetown, 6-0, 180
Philadelphia Union - FW Darius Madison, Virginia, 5-8, 160
Portland Timbers - MF Mikhail Doholis*, Oregon State, 5-10, 160
Real Salt Lake - MF Cole Nagy, UCLA, 5-8, 160
Seattle Sounders - MF Aaron Kovar, Stanford, 5-10, 155
San Jose Earthquakes - GK Kendall McIntosh, Santa Clara, 5-11, 160
Toronto FC - FW Omari Morris, Akron, 5-4, 145
Vancouver Whitecaps - MF Ben McKendry, New Mexico, 5-11, 150

* like many players with ties to Portland at this point, there are questions about the home-grown eligibility of Doholis

In case you can't get enough HGPs

One of my favorite MLS-related tasks over the last few years has been trying to track which players in college soccer have ties to MLS academies and are eligible to sign home-grown contracts. It's pretty cool to be able to nod understandingly when Alex Dixon, Connor Lade, or Matt Lampson signs a home-grown contract and be able to say they had been on your radar for a few years.

So I have a long list of players I believe to be associated with each club, although confirming their status on that club's protected-player list is usually tricky, if not impossible. This summer, I worked with the tireless Travis Clark at Top Drawer Soccer, and he's posted some of the top MLS-associated players to watch in college soccer this year. The list is a must-read and will get you acquainted with guys who could definitely be in MLS next year.

I agree with all the names on that list, but I wanted to add a few more that you may want to keep an eye on. Check them out after the jump:

Home-grown cage match: FC Dallas vs. Toronto FC

The FC Dallas signing of home-grown defender/midfielder Kellyn Acosta on Thursday got me thinking. If the two most successful MLS academies in terms of home-grown players signed (7 each, by FC Dallas and Toronto FC) met on the field with only those players, who would win?

Here's what such a 7-on-7 matchup could look like, although the size and surface of the field and the rules of the game would surely affect how teams chose to lineup.

FC DALLAS (2-2-2)

GK Richard Sanchez (18yo)

DF Kellyn Acosta (16yo) ------------------ DF Moises Hernandez (20yo)

 MF Victor Ulloa (20yo)

MF Bryan Leyva (20yo)

FW Jonathan Top (19yo) ------------------ FW Ruben Luna (20yo)

FW Keith Makubuya (19yo)

MF Nicholas Lindsay (19yo) ------------------------------- MF Matt Stinson (19yo)
MF Oscar Cordon (19yo)

DF Ashtone Morgan (21yo) ------------------ DF Doneil Henry (19yo)

GK Quillan Roberts (17yo)

TORONTO FC (2-3-1)

Now it's an interesting game, but I'm giving the edge to Toronto because the combined experience of Morgan and Henry at the back would cancel out the main Dallas advantage - two forwards who have seen MLS game time - and limit Toronto's disadvantage in goal, where I think Richard Sanchez is further along than Quillan Roberts.

I like the Ulloa/Leyva tandem in the midfield, but even if Top dropped in to match Toronto's numbers, I don't think Dallas is getting on the board. Makubuya has yet to make his MLS debut, so Toronto could struggle up front, but the speed of a healthy (for the purposes of this exercise) Lindsay against the green duo of Acosta and Hernandez would put Toronto over the top.

Who do you think would make a difference in this game? Who would come out on top?