I remember Alan Pardew saying that the secret of Southampton's success was that the people down there were more middle class . They must be doing a lot right. It's been going on too long now to be a fluke. Sometimes a club just gets a crop of good young players but Southampton have created a machine it seems. The FA should put the guys there in charge of national youth coaching.
Honestly there are a thousand things we could do that would help us grow in the US and most wouldnt cost anything. Just doing a partnership with an MLS team would be easy to do and all we would have to do is send people there on loan once in a while.
Easier said than done, we'd need a scout over there to keep an eye on their progress, the player would have to agree to the move and at a young age they might not be able to go across and settle. Factor in cost to the player (assuming they're a development squad player they won't be on mega bucks and they'll have to live over there for at least 6 months) and the fact that many of our youngsters aren't MLS level (as much as people call it a mickey mouse league, it's still a better standard than our League 2) it's probably not going to happen. A better option would be a USL team, at least our youngsters have a chance. Cincinnati have just announced they'll be entering a team next season, the same city that has The Tigers as their NFL team. If there was ever going to be a link up to the US that would give us a foothold, it'd be that. Even the USL attendances are decent enough, usually a couple of thousand. Cincinnati have a 40,000 seater stadium and I'm guessing the local interest will be good enough if they can get some good players.
You forget that lots of USL teams are really just development teams for MLS teams. So lets say you do a partnership with SJ, then the player you send can play for Sacramento which is in the USL. Like LA their development team is LA 2 which plays in the USL. It would be really easy to do a partnership. And no just because Cincinnatti have a big stadium it doesnt mean they will have good players. Sacramento won the championship in their first year and they held a tryout in the city for about half their players. And USL teams are bigger than a couple thousand, Sacramento has an 11,000 seat stadium and they sell out every game.
The training ground is world class, no joke I was talking to someone last week, they are going to a medical device trade show. The way that these things run has changed, now nothing much is on display. The Chinese simply go along and copy everything new. That's the way to do it, copy what others are doing. They have done the research already.
