While the competition is a very worthwhile aspect of the Development Academy to follow as a soccer fan, the most important aspect of the league has always been its mandating of the highest standards in player development.

To this end, the DA has included strict rules for member clubs in terms of structure, schedule, coaching education and anything else that seriously touches on player development. More than just suggestions, the DA technical staff and scouts interact regularly with club and team personnel, providing constant monitoring, evaluation and to an appropriate degree, oversight.

This season USSF begins with a full slate of nine Technical Advisors, each assigned a geographic area and a set of clubs to interact with, both in terms of evaluating training and matches, but also to oversee the scouting network charged with finding potential youth national team players via the Academy schedule, U.S. Training Centers and other scouting. The assignments (generally) for the nine Technical Advisors are as follows:

Tony Lepore

Director of Scouting Tony Lepore: Northeast

TA Rob Becerra: Southern California

TA Dave Santesteban: Texas

TA Carson Porter: Heartland

TA Brian Johnson: Midwest, Great Lakes

TA Rodrigo Marion: New York, Philadelphia

TA Juan Carlos Michia: Florida and South

TA Chris Brewer: Mid Atlantic and Southeast

TA Hugo Perez: Northern Cal and Pacific  Northwest

Lepore acknowledged that Development Academy teams and players receive the brunt of the attention from the Technical Advisors, but pointed out that the DA is not their exclusive focus.

“The majority of work they do is with the DA because that’s where the top players have migrated. It’s the same reasons we have the Academy clubs in the markets where we have them, because these have been the most important areas in the country for producing players,” Lepore said. “But there are also smaller markets where we want to keep contact with the team directors of coaching and our scouts in those areas. Of course we also include them in the U.S. Soccer Training Centers. We continue to scout non-academy matches as well.”

Lepore said another emphasis this season will be improving the resources available to coaches, both through coaching education (a new technical director course presented in modules by USSF Coaching Education Director Dave Chesler) and the accessibility to and interaction by club coaches with the Technical Advisors themselves.

This interaction will continue to be a point where Academy staff emphasize the coaching curriculum developed under Technical Director Claudio Reyna’s guidance and the drive for a national, technically-oriented style of play.

“We’re making good progress with that. We had a good example last season in FC Dallas of a team that had the courage to play the right way and still won a (U18) championship,” he said. “We still want an attacking, offensive style. Possession is important, while emphasizing technical play We’re not looking so much for direct, athletic soccer. We want to see teams playing out of the back more. Of course we’ll continue to rate teams on how they approach game defense and transition as well.”

Something else to look for in the coming season is for the U.S. Soccer Training Centers, typically one-day gatherings of top players in a given geographic area or city, to begin including younger players. This season less time will be spent on older players (who will still be tracked via the Academy matches) and more time will be spent on players from the 1999 and 2000 birth years, with an eye toward possible inclusion in the U14 National ID Camp next summer.

“This has become the best place for us to evaluate players,” Lepore said. “We’ll have approximately 200 of these across the country this season, and we have a full time administrator for these now, just to show the level of commitment that is there to making this the best program possible.”

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