Toronto FC made two recent moves involving their youth academy, signing goalkeeper Quillan Roberts to the senior team to fill the void left by the injured Stefan Frei and releasing forward Stefan Vukovic.
The Roberts signing highlights the value of having a strong academy as he is the seventh player from TFC’s development system to reach the first team. He follows Doneil Henry, Nicholas Lindsay, Ashtone Morgan, Matt Stinson, Oscar Cordon, and Keith Makabuya in making the step to the next level and will hope to have the same kind of impact in MLS that Morgan and Stinson have already had in their young careers.
Vukovic shows the other side of life in an MLS academy. The 19-year-old forward was released from the club because he was over the age limit for remaining in the academy but was still not good enough to be a part of Aron Winter’s plans. That left TFC with almost no other option than to release the player to pursue options elsewhere.
A growing issue for MLS teams is that when a player turns 18 or 19, the club is forced to make a decision on their playing future. If they are not good enough at that stage to jump to the senior then there is no need to keep them. Having them stick around would be unfair to the player and would also impair the development of other youngsters who may have a higher upside. That was the case with Vukovic, as the club felt they had a few younger players, including Jordan Hamilton, who showed more promise and they want to give them all the playing time they can.
The other option for a player who is nearing the end of their time at the academy is to go off to the NCAA in hopes that they develop and mature to the point where they can land a professional contract. That was a route that Toronto FC explored in the past by sending Matt Stinson to the Winthrop Eagles where he was able to continue playing. After a semester there he was invited to the Reds’ training camp and earned a professional deal.
Other TFC academy players have gone to the NCAA, and they will continue to do so, but the majority of them do not return to join the senior team. That is in large part due to the fact that the NCAA is not an ideal place to develop players with so few games and the coaching often not being at the same level it would have been in the academy.
If the player does not sign a professional deal, gets released, or goes to college there really are not very many other options. In other leagues, with much less restrictive roster rules, teams can sign all sorts of young players and then send them out on loans until they develop or are eventually released. TFC defender Richard Eckersley came up through the Manchester United academy and spent several season in their reserve side before moving to Burnley and going out on a number of different loans including the one that brought him to TFC last season.
At this stage there is no similar path to the MLS to what Eckersley took in England. MLS teams can only have 30 players on the roster so that means that there is not really a full reserve team. With so few spots to go around teams are limited in the number of players they can carry that are nothing more than reserves. For Vukovic getting a spot on the 30-man roster might have meant pushing Makabuya or Cordon out of the team. With limited roster spots to work with it makes for a very cut throat battle between young players. It can be good for development but it also seems to be forcing teams to make a call about a player’s long term potential when they turn 19.
It is a challenge that might help a player like Jordan Hamilton or other academy products down the road reach their full potential. When someone joins the academy they will know that they have to be better than at least some of the players on the first team and at the same time ensure they are better than the players coming up behind them. With only 30 spots up for grabs and Toronto FC hopefully improving its talent and depth, it will become increasingly hard for players to make the jump. That will again be good for raising the standard of talent in the academy but it means that Stefan Vukovic is not going to be the last high profile talent that does not make the cut.
The way the MLS has been set up makes the competition for places more competitive than it would be for many clubs in Europe. It is a lesson that kids coming into the academy system may not be familiar with considering the fact that such competition is not yet common place in Canadian youth soccer. It’s a good thing in the long run but for someone like Vukovic it is a hard pill to swallow.
David Rowaan is a Toronto-based writer and key contributor to Waking the Red, a blog about Toronto FC and Canadian soccer. Follow Waking the Red on Twitter.