'There's a space to be curious' - MLS Next is reimagining youth soccer development by removing scorelines, wins and losses

In theory, this makes a lot of sense. MLS Next took over from the Development Academy four years ago. It was the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and presented a rare opportunity for the league to innovate.

"The first couple of years was about, 'Let's get this thing going.' Then we had to right the ship. And now we're in a great place where now we're building strategy," said Robles, who played in MLS for nine years.

Since then, they have consolidated large chunks of the American youth soccer system under their umbrella. There are now 29 MLS academies, and 122 affiliated clubs. Piece it all together, and MLS Next oversees 753 teams and north of 16,000 players in the United States and Canada.

The challenge before them is that youth soccer is fickle, and changes radically across the nation. Some teams have massive influence across multiple states, and operate in talent-rich areas. Others are more isolated. Scorelines are not only variable but also, occasionally, demoralizing.

Some clubs are elite for younger ages, and far less competitive at older - or vice versa. Robles and MLS Next identified the youngest possible age, U13s and U14s, to implement new strategies.

"And so when we look at player development in year five," he said. "The strategy is at this particular age group, 13s and 14s. What can we do to enhance player development?"

The solution is to strip away the ideas of wins and losses and instead focus on individual and team performance. At that age, they summarized, players are too young to worry about professional contracts - but old enough to have the technical quality to develop as footballers.

Taka is the group responsible for doing all of this. An Irish company who have consulted for Premier League clubs in performance models, they were the perfect match. They applied for MLS's request for proposal a year ago, and brought their technology to the league.

Taka, in short, is an in-depth data platform that "grades" actions of play on a soccer pitch. All of this is done by real humans, remotely. After every game, employees in Eastern Europe scour game film, and score every pass, every dribble, every shot, every tackle. Those "actions" are then evaluated - admittedly subjectively - as either positive or negative. The results are subsequently uploaded to a platform that players and coaches alike can access. The whole process takes about four hours.

Crucially, Taka employs soccer people, not mathematicians. Every summer, the company advertises the job, asking would-be applicants to, effectively, grade a soccer match. They then take the top 15 percent, and put them through their paces to test their game understanding. Those who are deemed to have the right amount of knowledge to break down thousands of individual instances - from first touches to 30-yard screamers - are then brought on.

"If you ask a mathematician to look at a soccer game, they won't understand," CEO Mark Shields said. "They are soccer people. And then the mathematicians are in the sort of modeling process."

And every year, there's widespread interest - yes, even if it means watching hours of occasionally low-quality youth soccer.

"We get loads of people applying because we're talking about a job, basically as a video scout for soccer," he said.

This all comes with a challenge, though. If soccer is an inherently subjective and fluid sport, how can blanket data be applied? A center-back, for example, might touch the ball 12 times over the course of the game. Ten of those touches might be clearances, the other two well-timed tackles. If no goals go in, and the player doesn't make any real mistakes in terms of positioning and communication, it's fair to say that he has played well. But he hasn't really been involved.

Simultaneously, an attacking player might have 50 touches, give the ball away consistently, and complete just two out of 10 dribbles. But those two successful dribbles could lead to goals - and, in traditional scoring, a 2-0 win thanks to his center-back's strong showing in defense.

"If a winger is on the flanks and they're taking someone on, we want that," Robles said. "Whereas traditional data is going to say successful dribbles, and if they're one out of 12... but what if the one out of 12 led to the goal? That's going to be super significant. And that's how we score it."

The same applies for other traditional statistics, such as pass completion percentage or progressive passes. Traditionally, a low pass completion might suggest a worse performance. But those low percentage passes might be high risk - the kind of balls that very few others can play. Completing fewer of those, but seeing them lead to goalscoring opportunities, are rewarded by Taka's metrics.

"It's like David [Beckham], you're one of the best midfielders in the world right now," Robles said. "Why is it that your pass completion is in the 60s and the 70s? And when they pulled back the layers, they realized is, why did we like Beckham so much? It's because he was one of the only in the world that would receive it on the flank and play that diagonal ball."

Beckham, judged on Taka's formula and data collection, is graded more kindly based on the passes that he failed to complete - largely because of the positive risk taken associated with playing them. That's why individual actions are given "name" values rather than a traditional numerical value. In turn, effort and intention are rewarded rather than distinct outcomes.

"Imagine a center-back playing for Cedar Stars against FC Westchester - a 12-year-old center-back," Shields says. "Cedar Stars are winning 1-0. Is having 13 touches, none of them consecutive, hoofing the ball clear, developing a ball-playing center-back? The answer to that is no because you want his instinct to be to get down and play."

MLS Next insists that it will allow coaches and players to remove biases associated with wins and losses, and focus on the bigger picture of the game. That, in turn, will bring about improvement in individual moments. Taka's platform ensures that players will be able to watch hundreds of isolated moments over the course of a campaign - and learn from them.

"It's just another perspective," Robles said.. "It's another way to reward teams and coaches and players who are looking to implement whatever style they want to play, while also realizing that traditional data may not capture creativity, may not capture the sort of players that we're hoping to develop."

But for some, it's not so cut and dry. Wins, losses, and draws are traditional values associated with soccer - and competitive sport more broadly. There are fears that electing to eliminate them in favor of full statistical analysis could eliminate some of the pillars of the game.

"My hesitation in calling this the definitive path forward lies in the essential nature of competition itself," Pat McStay, Director of the ECNL Heritage Project and long-time youth soccer coach, told GOAL. "In sport, we must be careful not to marginalize the value of winning and losing, as they are integral to the competitive spirit and psychological resilience of young athletes."

Shields, though, rubbished that notion.

"It's not about 'Is quality of play better than competition?' Because competition will always exist," he says. "It's about 'Is quality of play and competition better than competition alone?' I think that's the important question."

And MLS Next is still keeping some of those principles in place. At the end of every season, once quality of play rankings are finalized, the top clubs will be invited to a winner-takes-all competition. There will, eventually, be something on the line to play for here - even if the focus is on stats and individual development.

The rankings have already been launched, and are able to be accessed by all players. More than 80 percent of eligible athletes and coaches have made accounts. It seems that there is genuine interest here.

But it does present clubs with problems at a higher level. MLS Next insists that coaches will factor the quality of play rankings into the way they set up their teams, and adjust over the course of the season based on the data. For clubs, there are no such guarantees.

Data can inform results and processes, but for some clubs, it isn't the be-all and end-all. Such is the case for FC Dallas. Their academy, which saw six of its players appear for the first team last year, insists it has always focused on developing talent.

Chris Hayden, Dallas' VP of youth soccer and boys' academy director, believes it will impact training, but gameday mentalities aren't as likely to shift.

"I hope it influences the way they train their team. I don't know that on a match day, if it's going to be. Kids are competitive. Coaches are competitive. The environment is always going to be 'We won the match' or 'We didn't win the match,' " Hayden told GOAL.

It helps, too, that Dallas is an MLS academy with a fine history of developing talent - and then selling it on. The club was marked highly in the first quality of play rankings release - something that vindicated their methods.

"I had the coach walk in my door and go, 'Hey, look at this.' They were proud about it. I'm sure if the rating was really poor, they wouldn't have shown up. I'm sure coaches will look at it and it will sort of validate the work that we're doing, and scouting and daily training environments and things like that," he added.

At the Generation Adidas Cup, Robles had countless conversations with scouts and executives from clubs all over Europe. He heard what their challenges are, took in how they are trying to approach them. Everyone is trying to innovate, to get a competitive edge, somehow.

Different countries, of course, have different needs. England, historically, has not been great at producing midfield lynchpins, so a possession-based scoring system makes sense. The U.S., meanwhile, has free rein. This is a massive country, with lots of players - but not yet a clear soccer identity.

MLS has settled into a groove, but still lacks the pedigree, history, and gravitas of European leagues. Whether removing scorelines changes things and brings about a generation of elite talent remains to be seen. But at the very least, it's an intriguing step for a country that is starting to think about the bigger picture.

"The last time I checked, the United States has not won the World Cup," Robles said. "The last time I checked, Major League Soccer is still not the top league in the world. So it seems like there's a space to be curious, to be creative, and tinker a little bit."