The IMG Academy Top 150 fall rankings for boys in the 2020 graduating class is out today, and LA Galaxy’s Efrain Alvarez remains No. 1, but there are a plethora of new players as this young group moves beyond middle school. New to the top ten (at No. 4) is Alfonso Ocampo-Chavez, whose performance at the latest U15 boys National Team camp proved he is the real deal. The Seattle Sounders forward was one of the breakout stars in Florida, and when not on national team duty has played with both the Sounders U14 and U16 Development Academy teams.

More: U15 BNT Rosters

Other players new to the top 100 include DC United midfielder Nick Andersen, LA Galaxy forward Victor Cano, and Lonestar forward Kaya Ignacio. These three players have a whopping 29 goals between them in U14 Development Academy play this season, Andersen with six, Cano with 14, and Ignacio with nine. Cano has scored for the u16 Galaxy as well. And all three participated in the Florida U15 BNT camp in November.

A couple of other players making the cut for the first time include Kendall SC goalkeeper Mauricio Uribe, Sporting Kansas City midfielder Jonathan Munoz, and Virginia Development Academy center back Sebastian Falsone. Uribe has started two matches in goal for Kendall’s U16s as well as seven for the U14s this season, and was the starting goalkeeper for the U13/14 academy last year. Munoz attended adidas ESP camp in August, and is a regular starter for Sporting’s U16 Development Academy. Falsone is listed as a midfielder for VDA, but has started 11 matches in the center back role, scoring once.

In addition to the IMG Academy 150 update, we will unveil the regional rankings throughout the next few weeks. Some of the players on our list include Strikers forward Maximilliano Laguna, IMG Academy defender Henry Mader, New York Red Bulls midfielder Esteban Molina, Las Vegas SA midfielder/forward Lincoln Aguino, Albion SC center mid David Guzman, Lonestar center back Josh Ecton and many, many more.

Keep checking back throughout the next couple of weeks to see who else made the lists.

As far as how we arrive at the rankings, it’s no simple task.

We keep a national database of players as the starting point for our rankings (if you’re not in it, enter a profile here).

We track an extensive list of selections to national team camps and other honors including USSF Development Academy (Boys), ECNL (Girls), and U.S. Youth Soccer National League event and season awards, plus U.S. Soccer Training Centers, ODP, id2 and other player identification programs.

From there we look at additional signs of top player performance in a club environment, with the help of an extensive network of observers around the country. The priority here is for club, college, national team and other select team coaches on the ground, but especially when we can gain corroborating opinions. The more layers of opinions we can gain accumulate the better, as our role is primarily to aggregate those viewpoints, rather than making our own determination as to a player’s quality.

As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom so that coaches will be freer to share their assessments. Another policy is that parents’ opinions about their own children are not considered, but you are welcome to provide feedback about honors and other details that may be of help to us in keeping their profiles up to date as well as our challenge of sifting through thousands of players nationwide. That kind of data can be helpful, but the: “How can you not have rated my kid? He is awesome” communique, while compelling, will be consigned to the virtual trash.

In the end, there’s always some level of subjectivity about players, because after all, how good someone is relative to someone else is largely a matter of opinion, but we do our best to make our rankings as educated an opinion as can be.

The rankings will be updated three times per year. Keeping current rankings for 8 classes of 150 players each is no small task, and it is counterintuitive to think the rankings would change daily or weekly. We will announce each update.

So that’s it. You can see the newest version of the rankings here.