Phase one of Vancouver Whitecaps' new National Soccer Development Centre (NSDC) at UBC was officially opened at the end of February.
You can read all about it, and see photos of many aspects of it, <a href="http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/content.php?4231-Phase-one-of-Whitecaps-training-facility-ready-for-business" target="_blank">HERE</a>, but what it has meant for the Caps is that they finally have a place to call home for their teams at all levels, even though it's still not a complete one.
Everyone will be under the one roof, sharing and training together at the same facility. For the young guys in the Residency they'll be so close to their dreams of becoming a professional footballer that they can both see and touch it. And if they wander into the laundry or kit room, smell it too.
Such a visual and such an environment is in place at many of the top football clubs in Europe and the finished NSDC will provide that here in Vancouver. This can only be beneficial for the Caps development of young talent, which we'll discuss with Club President Bobby Lenarduzzi and Head Coach Gordon Forrest later in this piece.
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The Whitecaps Residency program officially moves into the facility in September, but they have already made a partial move, playing their last six regular USSDA season games up at UBC.
From the next school year, the Residency players will move from their schooling in Burnaby to University Hill Secondary School on the UBC campus and new billet families are currently being sought out.
After years of playing at pitches all over Burnaby and Surrey, it's nice for the program to finally have a fixed abode, albeit one that many feel is like travelling to the end of the earth at times.
For the Whitecaps it is just another continued part of their development and growth as a footballing family. The Caps have always been a football club not a franchise.
Now the young Residency players can live, work, play and learn alongside the first team. They will share facilities, get help and guidance from MLS players and see the actual progression that they can make from playing with the Club in the USSDA to PDL to MLS. They can look along the corridor or across a field and see where they may be in a few years time.
<i>"That's the way it is at most clubs with the young players, if they actually start off in the youth program at that club."</i> explains Whitecaps President Bobby Lenarduzzi.
Gordon Forrest takes up that point.
<i>"I think a lot of teams around the world try and create that environment, where the first team's there, where the reserves are there, the 18s, the 16s, even the younger ones.
"It's going to be a bit of a bigger transition but once it all comes together, the positives for me are that you could possibly have the first team training on the field next to the U18s. If they need an extra player they can drag them across, they'll be mixing with these guys, the guys can give them advice, they'll be looking up to them. So there's a million and one different things that we can think of as the positive side."</i>
With the move to UBC, will the Caps aim to bring anything different or extended to the existing program?
<i>"We're hopefully going to schedule that we've got more contact with the players, which is great."</i> added Forrest.
<i>"So not just one session a week, we need two or three sessions a week, whether it's on the field or in the classroom or discussions or physical. It's hopefully going to give us the opportunity to schedule even more in.
"It's going to take time but we have a vision there and a goal we're trying to reach, with this move hopefully it'll all come together."</i>
The goal for the Academy should always be to develop young local talent with the ultimate aim of them playing for the Whitecaps first team.
They may not have gotten many minutes in the two and half years in MLS so far, but former Residency players in the MLS squad like Russell Teibert, Caleb Clarke and Bryce Alderson are examples that the current crop of young talent can aim to emulate.
It all enthuses Lenarduzzi but he is keen to stress that the correct development plan must be in force for the young players.
<i>"Some of them [young players in general] are exceptional, and like in the case of Wayne Rooney, they make the jump real early, but most of them will need to go through the system and earn their stripes and ideally forge their way through to the first team.
"In our case, you look at a Russell Teibert right now, he's been with us three years now in the Residency program and just this year he's playing well and making a good case to get significant minutes this year."</i>
Lenarduzzi feels that the NSDC could be that added incentive to helping push more of the Caps young talent to make that jump in the future.
<i>"When it comes to player development, they don't come in bunches. It's a numbers game and some of them will progress and some of them will regress but we're committed to that whole youth development movement. So having the senior players here [at UBC] and having the Residency program here and being able to walk through and see what this is all about and strive towards being here, it's important."</i>
As we've said ad nauseam this week, what Vancouver needs to really capture the public's imagination is a young local kid come good. A BC boy who has made the grade and not just made the journey from the youth team to the first team, but also getting significant minutes and making a repeated valuable contribution in MLS.
We're close.
It looks a little unlikely right now, but maybe Caleb Clarke will be that guy. Maybe it will be Ben Fisk. Could Derrick Bassi come back into the mix after a strong PDL season? Or maybe it will be one of the current crop coming through the Residency ranks and turning heads at the USSDA playoffs.
With some of the talent around the Caps system at the moment, you genuinely feel that we're not just going to be looking at just one or two that could earn the promotion, but a few.
There's a chance that some of the more outlying families and players may drop out of the program with the move to UBC. The extra travel or prospect of having their kid away with a billet family may prove too much for some.
But once it is fully finished and all the pitches and finishing touches are in place, the NSDC will certainly help make that step from the Residency to the MLS team a lot smoother and the path more visible for the young in years to come.
And that can only be good for both Vancouver Whitecaps and Canadian soccer.
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<i>[And that concludes our Residency Week for 2013. We hope you've enjoyed the feature and are excited about the Caps future as we are. If you missed any of the pieces, you can find them all in one easy place <a href="http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/tags.php?tag=residency+week" target="_blank"><u><b>HERE</b></u></a>.
The actual 'Week' may be over but we're obviously not just going to forget all about the guys till 2014, so watch out for some more articles over the course of the year and we'll have a few in the build up to Finals Week.]</i>
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