Today we release another new Players To Watch National Top 150 Ranking on TopDrawerSoccer.com

This time it is the 2016 Boys class we’ve been investigating.

As part of our continuing effort to improve Players To Watch, we are now ranking four graduating classes each of boys and girls. We’ll continue unveiling these throughout the spring. Next week, it’s 2016 Girls.

For the 2016 Boys, Cameron Lindley of Indiana United Fire Academy and the U17 Men’s National Team gets the nod for the #1 spot in the Spring Update.

Lindley was playing as a 7th grader with his club’s U18 Academy team last season, and after receiving the invitation to join Bradenton Residency beginning in January, he has earned a starting position at holding midfielder as just an 8th grader.

Full 2016 Top 150 Player Rankings

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). We track an extensive list of selections to national team camps and other honors including USSF Development Academy, 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, and of course college and club coaches on the ground (recruiting interest shown is a major factor). As a matter of policy, we never share which coaches said what about whom.

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 sifting through thousands of players nationwide.

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 now be updated every quarter. Keeping current rankings for eight 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.

As always, thank you for reading TopDrawerSoccer.com.