In the USL Championship there is a clear distinction between teams who develop youth players for bigger stages and those who don’t. Some teams talk a big game and back it up while others focus on different player-development goals. While Orange & Black Soccercast focuses on Orange County SC, and yes there will be some conscious bias here, we do like to talk about the broader USL Championship landscape from time to time. I even asked smart-kid John Morrissey to weigh in. Here we’ll talk about some assumptions of USL Championship roster-age and how much each team focused on young player development – and how that impacted on-field success

Note: for brevity, through the rest of the article when you see “USL” that means USL Championship

Big Picture

There are people on the Internet who talk like experts about USL Championship rosters being heavy on older players who’ve fallen out of favor in MLS or overseas leagues (retirement league’s retirement league?). MLS says their average age is 26.13 (May 2024). Based on FBref.com info, USL’s average for 2024 is 24.87, and fairly compact between the lower and upper quartile. I’m not going to aggregate a bunch of historical data to prove or disprove that scientifically, but for the layman it sounds like a hater’s outdated assessment. Yes, that 38 year old top end feels CRAZY, but keep in mind it was Yuma at El Paso Locomotive, followed closely by Matt Van Oekel, Roro Lopez, Tyler Deric, and Kenardo Forbes in the top five.

Takes Money to Make Money

Assumption #1

USL Teams play youth players to train them up and make fat transfer fees off them.

Generally speaking, teams at the USL level are developing youth as a financial means to an end, and unfortunately we're too early in the offseason to see the trend paying off. Yes, players like Nick Markanich going to CD Castellón is great, but he's actually beyond the scope of this data because he's 24 (honestly I was surprised he's 24). For a player to earn a transfer, they have to play. Buying-teams want to see how young players fare playing against men in meaningful games, not on the training ground.

Historically speaking Orange County transferred overseas Aaron Cervantes (2020), Ronaldo Damus (2022), Kobi Henry (2022), Korede Osundina (2023). (There was the Bryang Kayo (2020) transfer but there’s some argument if Orange County really gets credit for that, so we’ll mention it with an asterisk, I suppose.) While we’re focusing on youth players here, there’s something to be said also for earning a transfer for slightly older players who needed time and space to develop their game. The Milan Iloski transfer in 2023 is a good example here from Orange County, as well as the Colorado Springs Switchbacks transfer of Hadji Berry to Modern Sport FC, formerly Future FC, in the Egyptian Premier League.

I'm not sure I have a conclusion for Assumption #1, at least in the early days off-season of 2024. I know a large portion of fans want their teams to play young local stars and want to be proud when they go to bigger and better things. When the winter transfer window opens, we might see more movement. John Morrissey added, “This has been a slight down year, with Adrian Pelayo and Julian Placias from North Carolina making the only major transfers to Europe at midseason.” Of course, in the middle of writing, the Las Vegas Lights/Shawn Smart news broke. Not clear if this is a legitimate leak, or someone connecting some dots. Most dedicated Orange County fans believe Bryce Jamison will go in the 2025 Winter transfer window. Feels like we’ll see more similar news from other teams during the break.

The youth-to-transfer-revenue-stream has only recently been a focus of the league, with the League office hiring Oliver Wyss away from Orange County where he laid the ground work for the approach, shepherded it to some level of success, and now takes the framework to the league as a whole. Again, we’re too early to really see success at a league-wide level, but for teams that operate on slim financial margins, one or two six-figure transfer fees could pay close to a full year’s worth of payroll.

Play Them Kids

Assumption #2

Playing younger players, and a younger roster in general, leads to success.

In the deepest trough of any team’s winless stretch, you’ve probably heard fans say something like “screw it, we’re cooked. Just play the kids for the rest of the year. It can’t get worse.” While most younger players get First Team minutes currently, they tend to be late-game subs, or thrown in during blowouts. But not always. A handful of teams do walk their talk, so to speak.

The Lost Boys

On one side of the coin, there are teams like Louisville with five players under 22, averaging over 1,600 minutes (8,213 total minutes). Obvious league stand-outs are Elijah Wynder, and Ray Serrano (and even Taylor Davila who is just outside of range for this data). Then you've got Phoenix with six players under 22, averaging 1,554 minutes (9,328 total), with Rocco Rios Novo leading the pack along with Pape Boye and Mohamed Traore. You've also got a team like OC that has made no secret they're in the transfer business with ten U22 players on roster, but the math clocks them out only averaging 682 minutes each (6,822 total), with four players who played less than 45 minutes all year long (I don’t say this in a negative way, it’s just how math works). Las Vegas (670.6) and Tulsa (836.13) both had similar average numbers to OC. The number of young players in Tulsa obviously did not help them in a competitive sense (9-14-11 WLD). Then there's a team like Miami with the lowest average age in the league, of whom Kaylor Hodges famously said: "Silva figured out he could spend a lot on payroll and miss the playoffs, or sign a bunch of kids, spend much less, and still miss the playoffs."

While compiling the data I realized a straight total or average number wasn’t going to paint the whole picture, so below you’ll see each team mentioned with their Under-22 players total minutes as a percentage of the total team minutes. This paints a more clear picture of how much of an impact younger players had on the teams’ overall performance.

The Pirates

On the absolute flip side you've got teams like Colorado Springs Switchbacks, New Mexico United, Charleston Battery, Memphis 901, and Rhode Island FC who all had no obvious youth pipeline and went deep in the playoffs. Memphis, with the highest average age, barely had any youth presence to speak of. Detroit City, while making the playoffs, exited seemingly early and had one player taking the bulk of their U22 minutes (Alex Villanueva, 2,102 minutes; the other player was Dominic Gasso with 26 minutes). Villanueva was considered an "asset player" at his former club, OCSC, but he seemed to fall out of favor with Morten Karlsen at the time Villanueva left. Maybe these teams are focusing their efforts on a small number of players, maybe they don’t have the front office/technical staff in place to really drive youth development. The team-level investigative reporting needed for that analysis is far outside our team’s bandwidth and budget.

For Assumption #2, it seems like having a younger roster CAN help with on-field success but I think I need more data to point to a real trend line, not just a single season's info. It kind of feeeeeels true? Stephen Colbert's 'truthiness' concept. It feels true, maybe it is, maybe it's not. Here I’ve correlated each team’s average roster age with the minutes those players contributed, as a percentage of the total team minutes.

That big blob of teams in the “~25 year old, less than 10% of playing minutes” group has a lot of playoff teams and title contenders. Then you've got the odd little horse, Loudoun with the 2nd lowest average age, but then also not many minutes played. Loudoun's roster is very compact, age wise. They have seven U22 players with 2,660 minutes total, but only 600 average, with Abdellatif Aboukoura accounting for 1,200 of the total.

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

One possible roster model probably falls into a diagonal lane between the 10% and 20% of minutes, with a 23-25 average age. There is likely some sweet spot of roster-build that has a few young players getting the majority of the focus, with others in the wings building up what I’ll call professional soccer sense. There’s a lot more to just playing the game on the field even at the USL level: mental health, preparation, nutrition, rest/recovery/rehab. Young players need time and mentors to build those habits Those who upskill fastest will see the most benefits in their transfer journey.

Not all of these ‘young’ teams had great years. Birmingham missed the playoffs by three points. Loudoun did not have a great year on-field, but it could be a matter of finding that balance between youth 'asset players' and seasoned veterans in leadership roles. Orange County struggled with injuries and possibly had a younger roster with higher minutes out of sheer necessity. Phoenix is high on the list by a trick of the math, with two of their young players playing almost every minute of every game. (Not saying that’s bad by any means, but if Assumption 1 and Assumption 2 are two sides of the same coin, there’s no long term selling benefit of a loaned player.) Granted, this isn’t some earth shattering revelation— some teams have been building rosters with this intent for half a dozen years. Closing thought from Mr. Morrissey: “I’m with you on [both] assumptions, and land in the same place. Playing younger players can be good, but you can’t universally link it to success.”

The fact the teams in or near this lane above had young players that played bulk minutes and as-a-team generally did well on the field, illustrates the results that can be found. Look, I get it, it’s easy for me to spend some rich people’s money on these rosters and gamble on young players not crashing out or getting no looks. But I’m not a data scientist or an expert in any of this, I’m just a guy who likes to collate data and see if the pretty pictures tell a story. Selling tickets and hotdogs to cover the bills is a noble pursuit, but it can’t carry every team into the black.