USSF President Sunil Gulati told a group of reporters last week that the Residency Program “was never meant to be a forever program.”
Speculation in the past suggested that the doors in Bradenton would be closed in 2013, as USSF looked to move on from the setup that housed 32 boys for two years in the buildup to the next World Cup.
However, USSF signed an additional lease with IMG in 2011 that extended the stay in Florida to 2015, which means (barring another extension) this will be the last cycle for the Residency Program in its current setup.
The hallowed ground that gave Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley their first big shot so many years ago has lost some of the mystique, as U.S. teenagers are quickly being courted by foreign academies at an increasingly younger age.
TopDrawerSoccer.com has learned that this current group could have seven players turning down Residency for opportunities in either Europe or Mexico depending on a couple of players securing the necessary paperwork to make the moves possible.
So how does U.S. Soccer plan to accommodate these new challenges with this cycle? And also what does USSF have in store for future cycles?
