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Nashville SC Watches Closely as Future MLS Stars Shine in Generation adidas Cup

April 22, 2019 - United Soccer League Championship (USL)
Nashville SC News Release


NASHVILLE - Last week, while the best players in American soccer went head-to-head in Major League Soccer and the USL Championship, the future of American soccer was on display at the 2019 Generation Adidas Cup in Frisco, Texas.

Formerly known as the SUM U-17 Cup, the Generation Adidas Cup is an annual tournament for all MLS U-17 academy teams and includes academy teams from across the world. It is designed to test the quality of MLS academies against elite international competition, as well as offer a unique opportunity for player development.

In this year's competition, Tijuana's (Liga MX) academy took home the Premier Division title, while Seattle Sounders' academy won the Champions Division, marking the first time an MLS academy side has won that division under the current format.

The competition is part of a larger push for Homegrown Player development that includes the "Generation Adidas" program, which exempts a handful of elite underclassmen from MLS SuperDraft eligibility rules and allows them to leave college early to sign MLS contracts and get selected in the draft. Players who sign Generation Adidas contracts do not count against MLS teams' salary budgets, providing additional incentive for the teams to select and develop those players.

In addition, because they lose NCAA eligibility when they sign professional contracts, Generation Adidas players are also given a stipend to complete their college education should a professional soccer career not pan out.

Many of the recent top picks in the MLS SuperDraft have been Generation Adidas players. Notable examples of GA players include Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, Brad Guzan and Michael Bradley, as well as current Nashville SC Chief Scout Chance Myers.

Nashville is guaranteed one of the top two picks in the 2020 MLS SuperDraft along with Inter Miami CF, meaning the player that the club will eventually take with that pick could have been playing at the Generation Adidas Cup last week.

Myers and the technical staff were watching last week's competition closely and working to begin identifying the talent that could get selected for a Generation Adidas contract and become Nashville SC's first-ever SuperDraft pick.

"It's easy to go and watch these tournaments and see who the best players are," Myers said. "The difficult task is to go and watch individual players who don't stand out and focus on how you see them potentially developing in the near, mid or long term in regard to your first team."

The tournament is a good indicator of how ready potential Generation Adidas players are for the next level because of the way the MLS academies are pitted against academies from some of the top clubs across the globe. This affords them the opportunity to see how they stack up against players that could be taking the pitch on some of the biggest soccer stages in the world.

Myers himself has seen the impact that a program like Generation Adidas can have on player development because he was a product of that system as a player. After playing two seasons at UCLA, Myers signed a Generation Adidas deal and was selected with the first overall by Sporting Kansas City in the 2008 MLS SuperDraft. He played in Kansas City for eight years, winning an MLS Cup title and a U.S. Open Cup title.

His experiences as a Generation Adidas player helped shape him into the player he was, and the scout he is today.

"It is different for everyone, but for me, joining MLS at 19 instead of 22 allowed me to develop at a quicker rate," he said. "Being exposed to a professional environment where men were playing for their families and livelihood was a wake-up call that accelerated my understanding of what it took to be a professional."

With the GA Cup done and dusted, Myers and the technical staff will continue to scout the best young talent in the country and around the world and start to get a feel for who could earn a Generation Adidas contract and who could end up wearing the Electric Gold and Acoustic Blue come 2020.

The SuperDraft scouting combine, featuring both Generation Adidas players and countless upperclassmen that are eligible for the draft, will take place just before the SuperDraft in January 2020. The official order for the 2020 SuperDraft will be released in the fall of 2019.



United Soccer League Championship Stories from April 22, 2019


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