Duke University in Australia

[EnmoreCat]

The son of a friend of mine played for Sydney Olympic U/20's team against a touring Duke team yesterday.  Sydney Olympic plays in the New South Wales Premier League, the division directly below the A League (our version of MLS).  Sydney put out a youngish team and lost 1-0.  I didn't see the game, but the comment from my friend was that Duke looked fit and well organized but otherwise didn't impress him as much as he expected.   Checking a photo on their website, it looks like they did bring quite a few players Down Under, so guessing it must be close to their full roster. 

[Kuiper]

The son of a friend of mine played for Sydney Olympic U/20's team against a touring Duke team yesterday.  Sydney Olympic plays in the New South Wales Premier League, the division directly below the A League (our version of MLS).  Sydney put out a youngish team and lost 1-0.  I didn't see the game, but the comment from my friend was that Duke looked fit and well organized but otherwise didn't impress him as much as he expected.   Checking a photo on their website, it looks like they did bring quite a few players Down Under, so guessing it must be close to their full roster. 

NCAA rules permit teams to take a "foreign tour" once every four years.  They typically take all players on the tour and there's lots of rotation so that everyone gets at least some playing time. 

"All" the players may not be everyone from the previous fall, though, since you take out seniors, players rehabbing from injuries, players leaving to go pro, and players who are transferring.  For example, I know that Duke's Freshman GK, Julian Eyestone, who started every game last fall and played all but 3 minutes of the season, departed after only the fall semester to go pro (he was waiting until he hit 18 so he could sign abroad, and he turned 18 on April 21). 

Often, incoming transfers will not have arrived yet either and the best freshmen are often international and therefore are less likely to start in Spring since they need a little more time to sort out their visa situations.  Duke has 3 grad transfers on its 2024 Spring roster (including Hudson Hazelwood from Wash U, who didn't play anywhere in 2023 and wasn't a world-beater at the DIII level when he did play in 2022) and one true freshman who was a 2023 grad and is probably a Spring walk-on.  They have 23 players total on the Spring roster, but only 19 were there in the fall, several of whom got no or almost no playing time last year.  By comparison, Duke had 32 players on its 2023 Fall roster, so that's a fairly significant amount of departures. 

As a result, you wouldn't necessarily see Duke's (or any team's) best at all or for very long in any individual game on these foreign tours.  You also tend to see quite a few freshman who didn't get much playing time the previous fall since the team wants to get them ramped up to compete for more time in the following season.  Nevertheless, the players certainly are trying their best both because they are excited to face international competition and because they want to impress the coaching staff.

More generally, the gap between college and pros has widened with the growth of pro academies in the US and leagues like MLS Next Pro (third division) that offer opportunities to young pro prospects, as well as the change in rules allowing players to declare for the MLS draft, risk-free, as sophomores.  There are obviously pro prospects that come from college, but fewer than in past years and more that leave quickly like Eyestone.

All of that contribute to watering down college teams on these foreign trips.

[EnmoreCat]

Thanks for the colour Kuiper and what you say does make sense.  Nevertheless, given what I know about their opponents and how strong Duke's recruiting would be even for the bottom half of their roster, I was surprised it wasn't a more comprehensive victory.  They have harder games after this one, I will be doing my best to check results.

[Hopkins92]

I don't really see why a decent (but not really elite) college team should be wrecking professional soccer teams. Especially in an off-season vacation tour where they are most likely missing some key pieces.

ETA - I will freely admit I don't know the professional pyramid in Australia, so maybe I'm being daft. But the league below MLS (USL Championship) pays their players an average of around 50k and the better players make probably double that (and the rookies and scrubs make probably 2/3 of that average.)

Just saying, college (amateur) players at even an elite American university aren't going to wipe the floor against a professional or even semi-professional team.

[EnmoreCat]

At the risk of labouring the comparison, the way the New South Wales Premier League (reminding we are talking about a state of just over 8 million people) works is that it is a second tier, but similarly to how the US works, has no promotion/relegation with Australia's broader national league, aka A League.  The A League teams run what are essentially U20 teams in the senior competition of the NSW NPL as there is no youth league set up for those clubs due to the expense.  The A League teams that participate in NSWNPL are Sydney FC, West Sydney Wanderers, Central Coast Mariners and Newcastle Jets.  The idea is that their young players get fast-tracked by playing against men.  The other clubs are quite mixed in background, many have an ethnic base and some participated in a previous iteration of an Australia-wide league called the NSL.  Sydney Olympic is one of those.  Their mens' team would get paid varying amounts and typically play in front of crowds of maybe a few hundred most weekends.  The curtain raiser for these games is the U20s.  The A League academies have typically taken the vast majority of the best young players and the rest play for clubs like Sydney Olympic.  Most 20s teams would be quite young and definitely not get paid.  Based on what I know of the US system, it would be kind of like if ECNL had 20s (which they may do, apologies if that is the case).  These teams would train maximum three nights a week and not have anything like the facilities that a Duke has in terms of gym, trainer support etc.

So, given the catchment area Duke and such like are able to draw from, both domestically and globally, and notwithstanding players going early to play professionally, I reiterate that even the bottom end of Duke's roster, on holiday, should still be comfortably beating a team like the one they played.  Let's put it another way, if any of those Olympic players were presented to a top ranking D1 programme, I would expect minimal interest. 

Off the soapbox, enjoy the weekend!