A chat with Real Salt Lake's academy director Greg Vanney on changes in U.S. soccer development

The launch of Real Salt Lake’s ground-breaking MLS residential academy at Grande Sports World in Arizona, with players from Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and New York may challenge some assumptions about the U.S. market for youth development. For example, if Real Salt Lake has a residential academy and other MLS clubs do not, can those territories now be considered under-served markets and open to scouting? Moreover, why should MLS clubs be bound by restrictions on U.S. players that overseas clubs are not?

A funded residential academy also raises the issue of transfer fees for developed youth players, fees that currently do not exist in the U.S., but overseas are the bread and butter of development academies. Academy players are investments for clubs and those investments will need some kind of protection, but could require closer affiliation with FIFA, who somewhat regulate those tabled fees. Increased profit for developing successful players could improve overall U.S. player development, especially if all youth clubs developing younger players could be eligible for those fees.

I spoke with Real Salt Lake’s residential academy’s director Greg Vanney about these emerging issues and others surrounding development in the U.S. and tried to sort out various scenarios and speculate on possible outcomes and evolutions.

LE: Greg, can you explain the concept of “developmental territory” as it pertains to MLS clubs?

Vanney: Several years ago, greater than five years ago, the MLS competition committee met and wanted to start dividing up the country so people had pockets, so that clubs could tag players and have rights to youth players in a way without having them under contract. This was even before the youth clubs even came around. Clubs were trying to protect youth players in their area, try to keep them under interim in MLS, so a player from Utah wouldn’t end up over in Galaxy. It was just a way for them to try to create a little bit of protection for their area. In Los Angeles, you have a massive player pool, so their developmental territory essentially is Southern California, but because Utah’s player pool is so small they get granted a little bit larger player pool, which is Arizona. They were trying to divide it up by player pool density and they divided up the country. Who knows where that will end up now that residency is starting up for us and potentially for others in the next couple years, but definitely the landscape is changing.

LE: Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and El Paso, Texas are considered under-served markets because there are no MLS clubs there. Can other clubs scout players from these under-served regions and pull them out?

Vanney: Yes. I know for a fact New Mexico is not a territory for anyone, neither is Nevada. In fact, Colorado Rapids have a partner club in Nevada as well. I don’t think people expected residency to hit as fast as it did, so I don’t know that there are very specific rules just yet. People still think residency is a couple years away - aside from Vancouver, who has had a residency program for a while, but the concept of residency in the United States was not something that MLS and the clubs were necessarily thinking was going to pop on the scene in a matter of a few months, so there’s still a lot of discussion on how a lot of that works.

Honestly, there aren’t any rules. But players who are in a region like Arizona are theoretically under the Real Salt Lake umbrella, but RSL can only tag so many players, can only put so many developmental players under their wing. Then there are states like New Mexico, Nevada, and other states in the country who don’t have MLS teams, who aren’t affiliated to clubs. RSL has an affiliate in Tampa, RSL Florida, it’s just a youth club that operates under normal USYS [United States Youth Soccer] and it doesn’t operate in Development Academy League, they play in State Cup and regionals just like every other non-academy club in the country. For the most part, we’re staying in regions where players are under-served, they don’t have academy options.

We have one player who’s from New York. There are quite a few academies in New York and the closest one to him is like two and half hours away. It’s no different than the IMG Academy [Bradenton] who take kids from all of the country and the world to participate in IMG. Residential kids will come from wherever to join the academy so in that way it’s not that different. Theoretically in New York they have academies, though the kids would have to drive a long way. Theoretically in Texas, kids in El Paso would have to drive 16 hours to be in an academy in Dallas and probably 14 hours to drive to Houston and we’re only four-five hours from them. All of them can be considered from under-served areas, but it’s technically how you define that.

LE: Do you think it’s time to institute youth transfer fees in the United States?

Vanney: I do have some opinion on youth transfer fees. Now that these programs are becoming more and more funded, there has to be a way for the clubs who are funding them to protect some of their interests, otherwise the money isn’t going to get pushed down into the youth game, which is ultimately where we need to press forward. What that protection is remains to be seen. But for any MLS club, particularly from a residential standpoint, it would probably cost you $20,000-$25,000 a year to host a player, feed him, train him, travel him, get them the proper games that they need, all of those things – it becomes fairly pricy and if somebody can just come and take that player away and not compensate the club for it . . . It doesn’t have to be a transfer fee, but if a clubs pulls a kid out of a club, FIFA has a rule where there has to be a developmental fee paid back to the club to help offset the cost of the money they’ve put in to that player and that gets paid by whatever club takes the player.

LE: It’s a tabled fee, determined by how long a club has had that player and the kind of competition he’s been in, correct?

Vanney: Correct, exactly

LE: Is RSL going to be a selling academy and will it be registered with FIFA, where you can apply transfer fees?

Vanney: We’re looking into that, what that process is and what that means from an American soccer standpoint because of child labor laws and a number of issues in the U.S. FIFA has a limited governing role over MLS. We do things in MLS that aren’t necessarily under FIFA guidelines. So we’re continuing to size that up. We will be when we can, we’re just sizing up right now whether we can.

LE: How about when an MLS team pulls a player from one of the local clubs where they’ve been developed since they were very young? Do you think there’s some kind of fee in order there?

Vanney: No. The difference is that in 90% of the youth clubs in the country the parents have to pay, so their rights should not be held by a club if the parents are paying their way.

LE: But if local clubs aren’t compensated, what’s their incentive to develop players as opposed to achieving the tangible success of winning games and collecting trophies, which, in turn helps clubs grow and stay financially feasible?

Vanney: How I would approach that is that each club should make a club-wide decision to register their club as an entity as such so that they can receive compensation. For our club, it’s the same thing. We would have to register our club with FIFA – this is my understanding, I’m not an expert on this yet because it doesn’t really exist in this country yet – but we would have to register our club with FIFA and then if Ajax came and took a player out of our club then Ajax would have to pay us, but if we’re not registered with FIFA we could not receive any payment. By registering, we’re a certifying club that is a development club that covers the costs of our players.

LE: But then a youth club couldn’t keep it’s non-profit status, but they operate without the revenue sources that MLS clubs have. Some clubs claim that as non-profits they can be reimbursed for players in the form of scholarships to use as they see fit.

Vanney: You’d have to make sure under non-profit rules and Amateur Act that that could take place because it is compensation for a player. It seems doable and if it is, then I don’t have a problem with it personally. But how does a club provide you with some sort of documentation that he was a scholarship player? I think there has to be some sort of regulation there.

What typically ends up happening with the scholarship fund is the [club] fees are increased by a couple hundred dollars and [other players’ parents] are actually playing for the scholarship players. It’s not the club providing the funding, it’s the parents providing the funding for these kids. So then the money gets turned around and get paid back to the club – well, it should go back to the parents, if you want to be honest. If you want to be 100% fair about it, then that’s where the money should go, back to the pockets of the parents who are paying the fees of these kids to play.

I’m 100% for finding ways to make it less expensive, free even, because that’s the only way you’re going to get some of these players. It’s relatively expensive and alienates a lot of people who can’t afford it and are very talented players. It also creates animosity between those communities sometimes. That’s definitely where we have to move towards, but I don’t know where that funding will come from. In a lot of countries it comes from the massive professional game and it comes from government funding those types of sporting endeavors.

LE: FC Dallas is working on developing an international loan program where they can get their academy players game time in Brazil and Mexico. Is RSL working on anything like that?

Vanney: Yes, we are. We’re talking about international partnerships. I don’t know if it would specifically look like loans to other clubs, that’s going to be tricky. I don’t think it‘ll not be doable, but over 90% of the clubs in the world make their living on developing players and selling those players. The challenge I can see with that is if I have a player in RSL - and I think it would be fantastic if I could loan him down into another league to get time - but why would they play my player if I own that player? Because they’re not going to get any reward unless I’m paying them to loan him down. They don’t get any reward for continuing to develop that player unless we make side contracts and stuff like that. I think there’s something there and see how it benefits, but it’s going to be a real challenge in getting some of that done.

But I think [FC Dallas’s] challenge is doable. The way that they could do it is if they send a player down to Brazil and the player plays some games, then if that player gets transferred somewhere else, the Brazilian club would get some compensation off of that. The challenge that I see is that why would a Brazilian club take them on, develop that player, send him back to Dallas and never get anything other than a little loan fee for that? That club in Brazil is trying to survive by developing its players and selling them to Europe, so why take on a player from Dallas to develop for them unless they’re getting a nice loan fee for that. I don’t think it’s as simple as it sounds.

LE: The academies of Real Salt Lake, Chicago Fire, FC Dallas, and Vancouver are building a new generation of player for MLS and they will need jobs and playing time. Talk a bit about the reserve league coming back.

Vanney: My understanding is that there’s a proposal on the table beyond the competition committee, I think it’s in front of the owners. It’s for 2011. They would start up the reserve league again and the rosters would expand a little bit. I’m not 100% on the inside, but from what I’m understanding is a lot of that roster expansion, as well as the homegrown players, is going towards developing players, younger players. In the past when I was in the League, the reserve league – not everybody took it serious. Some games you would have office staff who maybe played in college five years ago would come down and play in a reserve game, so you’d have a mix between them and high level professionals. You’d have guys flying in from all over the place playing games and it really lacked structure and not everybody took it serious.

I don’t know the ins and outs. I heard it’s roster expansion based on a handful of players, from five to seven. You have youth academy players - U-18s, you might invite a couple of them up to play, so you have a pretty solid roster, pretty good depth if you add five or six players.

Where the League has gone now - there’s such emphasis on player development and developing these young players and progressing them that a lot of that focus will be on the next generation of players. The reserve league will be very serious now. I think you‘ll have a lot more of the emerging professionals and it‘s an outstanding step for the League and everybody is on board and taking the right approach to this now.

For more information, read: Real Salt Lake launch landmark MLS residential academy, break open U.S. market and see the slideshow of Real Salt Lake's academy at Grande Sports in Arizona.

FOLLOW US SOCCER EXAMINER AND LE EISENMENGER ON TWITTER AND SUBSCRIBE TO EMAIL ALERTS.