Tomorrow afternoon, the Vancouver Whitecaps will try and get back to their winning ways against Sporting Kansas City. Canadian soccer fans will welcome Teal Bunbury back over the border for the first time since he turned traitor. Both teams will be looking for a key result against a team they must think they can get three points against.
And, without question, news about a bunch of teenagers will matter much more to Vancouver in the long run.
Today, the long-rumoured became official, as the Whitecaps announced an expansion of their Whitecaps Residency program. The number of players in the program will increase by more than 200%, but much more than that, the Whitecaps will begin recruiting players from young age groups. They'll participate in the United States Soccer Development Academy program with their youngsters taking on the best American teams in the northwestern United States. And they'll start most of this process immediately, with the rest coming in time for the 2011-12 season.
You can't blame me for forgetting about a mere league game in light of this. Sporting Kansas City is an opportunity for three points, but this Residency expansion is a chance for much more than that.
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The Vancouver Whitecaps Residency team had a reputation as the best in Canada, the best in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the best in the English-speaking parts of North America. You can see why with just a cursory glance: they've sold promising players like Ethan Gage and Adam Straith to major European leagues, they've already developed Russell Teibert for the Whitecaps' starting lineup and Philippe Davies for their bench, and a number of others are coming along well. Meanwhile, even Residency alumni who failed to make the Whitecaps such as Alex Semenets are catching on with lower-division teams in North America. This is a record to be envied for what is still a relatively young program.
But it's not what it could be. The Residency has never recruited players below the U-17 level. Moreover, competitive play for the younger age group has been lacking in recent years. The Vancouver Whitecaps Prospects competed in the Pacific Coast Soccer League through the 2009 season, but it was really not much of a competition: the Prospects took on men twice their age and were endlessly bottom of the table. That program disappeared for 2010 under the logic that watching 17-year-olds get destroyed by adults wasn't really that helpful in terms of development. The USSDA league will allow these players to compete against their peers at last.
The recruitment of youngsters is probably much more important. The Whitecaps have drawn most of their Residency material from assorted British Columbia elite youth clubs. British Columbia has a good youth soccer scene but most of it isn't what you could call "professional" and it's not generally considered the best in the country. It's hard not to draw conclusions from the fact that the three current senior Whitecaps that came out of the Residency, Teibert, Davies, and third-string goalkeeper Brian Sylvestre, played youth soccer in other provinces: Teibert in Ontario, Davies in Quebec, and Sylvestre in Florida. Bryce Alderson, generally considered the best current prospect on the Residency, is another Ontario alumnus. With the exception of Adam Straith (who trained in Victoria, BC), the British Columbia natives haven't made up the elite of the Residency program.
Now the Whitecaps have more control of the origins of their young players and that can only be good. If the coaches at the U-14 and U-16 levels are as professional as they've been to date in the Whitecaps residency, it'll give young British Columbians the best possible start to their soccer careers. These young players will be in the Whitecaps system for as many as eight or nine years before they turn twenty and graduate the Residency program, and by then not only will they have received a comprehensive soccer education but the Whitecaps will know <i>exactly</i> how much they can rely on the youngster and to what extent.
Nobody needs to be told that these changes are good for Vancouver and good for Canada. But, in ten years' time, we might be astonished at the difference it winds up making.