Changing Landscapes - Chicagoland (original) (raw)
Fire
United States
Oct 15, 2023
I agree with you. It would also help if Eclipse had at least a semi-fixed location, right now they float around based on field availability.
Inter should be ok with a bit more time, they were not that well known prior to getting into the ECNL. There is enough talent in the Naperville area and throughout those suburbs to build good teams. Biggest hurdle for them is having players give them chance.
Rockford is a bit out there, a team in north would impact them, as a number of players make the drive out that way now, would have to think they’d take a closer drive to play in the same league on a solid team. 2.
Inter is not really that close to Naperville. Proper Naperville deserves an ECNL girls team. Maybe that is what the Eclipse becomes if they can secure really training time in that area but finding two lighted fields 3-4 days a week is going to be a challenge. Game location is less of an issue 3.
Fire
United States
Oct 15, 2023
We will have to agree to disagree, but if you are looking to develop teams competitively nationally, you don’t need another ECNL girls team in Naperville.
Like I’ve said before, it parents won’t drive 30 minutes to 45 minutes to Lockport or any another practice location, doubtful they will keep up with ECNL travel.
I am talking about trying to have teams in Chicago be able to regularly beat Solar, PDA or play with surf. You talking maybe only a handful of kids would fit that in Naperville for each age group. The rest need pulled from other areas.
Kids commute from all over to play in the ECNL, I know Eclipse use to pull kids from all over. I’m fairly sure Inter is now getting kids from the northern suburbs & even NW Indiana, and they are just moving towards the middle of the pack.
Eclispe most likely will never put money into long term leases. They need to move around to get players. They even had a Naperville location but never did anything much with it. Naperville is not that easy to get to especially south Naperville from the northern suburbs, I don’t know. Will be interesting. 4.
Southampton
United States
Jun 7, 2023
I don’t know if any of the teams in the Chicago area will be able to compete with clubs like Solar, PDA, or Surf long term. Eclipse’s success of the past was because they were able to accumulate most of the area’s top talent on to their teams. With the competition now of more GA clubs and more ECNL clubs in this area the top talent is spreading out. You are also seeing players that are very good leave to go to other clubs that don’t have as much talent to be the top players at that club. If people are looking for proximity then I think all of the clubs will probably just be average with some successful teams here or there depending on age group. If you are looking to put together teams that can compete nationally for titles against teams like Solar and Surf, you need all the best players in the area, and I don’t mean within a 45 minute radius, on a team. There have been plenty of interviews published with USYNT players that say they drove 1-2 hours one way just to play for a top club. That’s what players used to do for Eclipse. Now they get a couple top players but the rest spread out between all the different badges in the area. Thats why they had to do the so called merger with Rampage. That was the only thing that allowed them to be able to field teams at the U14 age group and younger.
The clubs also need to invest in coaches, facilities, and resources to be able to compete with clubs nationally like that and most club owners in Illinois seem more concerned with lining their own pockets than actually investing in their club and developing high performing teams that can continually compete at that level. 5.
Eclipse used to be able to compete with the top teams in the country when they were the place to go. That all changed 5 years ago when the secret about RD became a national story.
An elite club in Naperville would draw all that talent from the town and also the kids from Aurora, Plainfield, Bolingbrook, Wheaton, Downers, Glen Ellyn, Oak Brook etc.. You wouldn’t need to drive 45 minute but there would be exceptions from the city, north shore, south suburbs or way west that would and they would compliment the talent in that area. Done right they would compete with anyone in the country but for some reason it has never happened on the girls or boys side . 6.
I have to disagree with the idea that Inter isn’t Naperville’s ECNL destination—it absolutely is. The distance isn’t prohibitive; it’s like saying kids who live more than 25 minutes from Rockford need another ECNL club nearby. Realistically, Galaxy would be the only alternative in that area, but unless ECNL pulls the badge from Inter, there’s no chance of another ECNL club popping up nearby. Galaxy is probably the best-managed club in that region, and while their affiliation with GA has worked well—bringing in more top college commits than ever before—the reality is that GA is increasingly seen as a second-tier league. The visibility gap between ECNL and GA keeps growing, which will likely lead to more players migrating to Inter for better exposure.
Evolution is a different situation. They’ve got their own “home fields,” but it’s just a basic farm field with nets, and weeds and invasive grasses are already taking over. They’re positioned well to be a strong local community club, but there’s no potential for them to grow into something larger or more competitive at the ECNL level.
Placing an Eclipse ECNL team in Naperville doesn’t make sense either; even if that were their plan, it would still leave the city center and northern areas without sufficient ECNL coverage. Promoting clubs like FC1974 or FCU in those areas would make much more sense. As for the argument that Chicago ECNL teams can’t compete with the likes of Solar or Surf—that’s moving the goalposts. Any given year, Chicago has the population base to produce top-performing teams similar to Hawks or SLSG. The real difference with Texas or California clubs isn’t talent but the 12-month playing season and a larger pool of soccer-first families. 7.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
Anything is possible in time, but not everything is likely in time. Right now the top 5 clubs in all of Illinois are producing top teams that rank like this nationally.
Top clubs nationally on the boys side are two full goals stronger, on the girls side they are three full goals stronger - it's not a small gap in 2024.
8.
Not sure how the Fire Academy MLS Next not in the the top 5. Also I will take FC United’s MLS teams over any of the non-MLS teams on that list. 9.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
Clubs are rated by their top team in U12-U17 (7 age groups). They need to have at least 5 teams in those age groups to show up, and if they have only 5 or 6, the lack of the team penalizes the rating (it doesn't zero it out, but it has an effect). MLS Clubs that only have a few older teams can be affected by this. And you're right - if you compare by Team instead of by Club,
Chicago Fire MLS Next looks like this:
07/06 #2 in state, #25 nationally
2009B #1 in state, #10 nationally
2010B #1 in state, #3 nationally
2011B #1 in state, #24 nationally
2012B #1 in state, #2 nationallyThey only have 4 teams in the 7 age groups. If they didn't have a hole for 2008, or had a 2013 or 2014, they'd show up on the club ratings. 10.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
FC United's MLS teams aren't as strong as you are implying.
07/06 #6 in state, #105 nationally
2008B #11 in state, #267 nationally
2009B #3 in state, #79 nationally
2010B #3 in state, #82 nationally
2011B #23 in state, #356 nationally
2012B #7 in state, #108 nationally 11.
According to your algorithm. Also the MLS teams don’t lineup with some age groups as the kids go into u23 teams 12.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
Not my algorithm. I own a phone, and can use an app. Most of us here probably are capable as well.SR only does age groups from 2017 (U8) through 07/06 (U18/19). These teams listed above are all in those age groups. Not sure why you think the 23-yr old teams are relevant. 13.
Fire
United States
Oct 15, 2023
As I understand it, the “app ranking system” is heavily reliant on accumulated past performance, with any recent positive developments being possibly significantly undervalued by older game statistics that may or may not even be relevant.
Also it’s seems to give a lot of credit for scoring lots of goals vs weak opposition.
While I don’t dispute that Eclipse is still the strongest club in the state for high school age girls, the disparity in rankings seems grossly exaggerated.
Rockford's high school ECNL teams won 2 & lost 2 vs Eclipse.
Inter, across all ECNL age groups, won 2 and lost 4, with two of those losses being by a one goal.
An over 80 to 100+ ranking position difference, to me infers neither Inter or Rockford would be competitive against Eclipse yet they were winning 40% of the total 10 recent games played. 14.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
You clearly don't, and are confusing the GotSoccer/GotSport ranking with Soccer Ranking. The ratings are based on the likelihood of team a beating team b based on existing game data, with most recent data being most relevant, while progressively older data being less and less impactful with games > 6 months not being nearly as significant as more recent ones. All incoming game data is used to adjust each team's rating, where if they overperform their rating, it will help - while if they underperform, it will hurt their rating. All of this is optimized so that a team with higher rating A will beat a team with lower rating B - and the results are continuously fed back in, with the parameters optimized over time to maximize those results. These ratings are completely agnostic of everything other than raw game results, so they can be directly compared across age, gender, geography, or anything else.
Last season, it was running at 83% predictivity for all teams, meaning it picked the right winner, in games that have a winner, 5 out of 6 times. But you don't need to take my word (or anyone's word) on this - just look at the past year's game data for any teams that you are familiar with, and review each game for whether the team overperformed (green), underperformed (red), and performed just about as expected. Most teams don't have many of either - because their rating is tied to their performance, and most aren't terribly variable.
The ranking is nothing more than the sorting of this rating, by age & geography. And it's a prediction for how well any rated team can be expected to perform in their very next game against another rated team. Not a guarantee by any means. But a well-informed prediction. One can certainly argue with just about anything (including their pets, walls, and the moon), it just doesn't really matter much in the scheme of things. 15.
Fire
United States
Oct 15, 2023
I’m glad that I don’t understand this approach. If recent performances are the most important factor, then the current rankings make even less sense.
Only one of Eclipse's teams at the high school level, the 2010s, is showing on field like a top 50 national team. The other teams from 2009, 2008, and 2007/6 are positioned in the roughly middle of the pack within the Midwest conference, with most of the season nearly complete.
If you want to claim that level of on-field performance justifies a top-tier 29 national ranking according to this app, that’s your choice.
However, it doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of this year's competition on the field and is misleading to anyone reading the rankings you post. 16.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
People have been arguing against math for thousands of years. Many people might have even agreed with them. Doesn't make them any less clueless. As much as people here want to see Eclipse crash and burn for a variety of reasons, as of today, they still are putting strong top teams on the field - as shown by their recent performance. Nowhere near where they were a few years back, but still the girls club in IL that is most likely to perform best. Yes - they have stronger teams and weaker teams by year (like all clubs, with 2009G the strongest in club outright, while 2011G the strongest of its age group by percentile), but on average that puts the club #28 in the country right now. It's not top 5 or 10, but it's higher than any other IL club. Deal with it. If their current slide continues, maybe they won't be top 50 a year from now.
17.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
As one example, here's the 2008G ECNL team. They aren't having a great season, and show mid-pack in Midwest ECNL. Their rating shows them slightly stronger than their current standings. It predicts they'd get beaten by the Hawks by 3 goals (they lost by 5). It predicts they'd beat the Hawks Magic by 1.5 goals (they won by 3). It should even out game by game, and I'd bet by the end of the season, rating is likely to closely match the standings - which is exactly the point, they represent each other. They only overperformed once and underperformed once against the current rating in the last 16 games.
18.
Southampton
United States
Jun 7, 2023
I’ve been following this group and this soccer app for over a year now, and I think some people put way too much emphasis on the app. I think directionally it can give you an idea of where a club stands against their peers and nationally. However, I agree that as the landscape changes for specific teams and clubs, which it seems to do significantly in Illinois every tryout season, it will not always be a good predictor of current games and future performance. Its not about not believing math, its admitting that math can be an indicator of performance but cannot predict the effect of top players moving between clubs on a year to year basis. 19.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
Unfortunately, yes, it is about not understanding math. Of course it is a lagging indicator (based on what has already happened), rather than a leading indicator (what does the future look like). But youth soccer turns out to be highly predictable - whether or not people can grasp how or why that may be. Can it (or anything) guarantee a future outcome, of course not. But it can have a very good estimate about what's expected to happen this weekend. This is denial. Of course top players moving around can make a difference - which will pretty quickly show up in the ratings, due to those players either making a difference on the field or not. There is nothing unique to the IL collection of teams compared to any other. 20.
Southampton
United States
Jun 7, 2023
You clearly want to just be a jerk and assert to everyone your superior smartness, so if that makes you feel better about yourself have at it. However as a person who works in a field where I analyze leading and lagging indicators daily (thanks for the definition though) I also know these indicators are just that, indicators. So like I said, it gives you an idea of where a club falls versus its peers and directionally what the result of a game may be. 21.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
And you're trying to show that you're the inverse? By stating that someone is paying you to understand math, and believing that something that will get the right answer 5 out of 6 times may give you only a rough idea? Sowing doubt in that due to either slowness, bias, or any other possible reason isn't a sign of "not being a jerk". It's either misunderstanding percentages and predictions and what they represent - or it's being intentionally misleading. Pick one. 22.
Southampton
United States
Jun 7, 2023
The only one ever attacking people in this forum is you. Do with that what you want and have a great day. 23.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
Really?Ah, I didn't think that was accurate. 24.
Barca
United States
Jan 23, 2018
2006 kids at this point are trap players. There are very few. U18/19 is actually 07/08 - not really 2006.. The point made above is many 07/08 players in the fall played U23 (for Fire) and not U18/19 early on. So yes,, it's relevant. 25.
United States
Sep 11, 2022
It sure looks like you're off by a year. Here are the age groups tracked in the app. 2017 (U8, for the season Aug 1, 2024 - Jul 31, 2025) through 07/06 (U18/U19). These shifted on Aug 1. On Aug 1, 2025, 08/07 would then be U18/19. Though if birth year --> school year is implemented that day, it all shifts a bit anyway.
Here are the MLS N teams from IL that are showing in that 07/06 bracket:
