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It means a few different things that in the third year of MLS’s new player development league its oldest player development side is playing its best one.

The match

Having won its first ever piece of hardware last Saturday night, Philadelphia Union II travels to Dallas, TX Saturday, November 9^th to play North Texas SC for the 2024 MLS NEXT Pro league championship, MLS NEXT Pro Cup.

Western Conference champion North Texas SC (No. 1 western seed, 62 points) will host Eastern Conference Champion Philadelphia Union II (No. 2 eastern seed, 52 points) on the grass of Toyota Stadium, FC Dallas’s home field. (8:30 p.m. ET, Apple TV Plus MLS Season Pass).

Both clubs will appear in MLS NEXT Pro Cup for the first times in their respective three-year histories after both shut out their opponents in the Conference Finals Saturday night. While both are professional level player development sides, the teams manifest different philosophies of player development.

That difference is portrayed most clearly by the ages of the players who started in each in their respective Conference Final victories. North Texas’s starters average age was nearly three years older than Philadelphia’s, 21.5 versus 18.7. Here is the data.

North Texas SC starting lineup ages v St Louis City 2 Saturday, November 2^nd , 2024. Starters’ Average Age = 21.5

Philadelphia Union II starting lineup ages v Columbus Crew 2 Saturday, November 2^nd, 2024. Starters’ Average Age = 18.7

The philosophies

An original MLS side dating from 1996, FC Dallas has the most homegrown signings in Major League Soccer history – 37 since 1996 at last report – because they have run their development academy the most seriously for the longest time. Several Dallas academy alumni have been sold on to Europe.

Philadelphia is equally serious — 21 since 2010 — but a  later arrival. They became serious about player development as a comprehensive business strategy only five-and-a-half years after they began play,  with the appointment of Earnie Stewart as Sporting Director in late 2015. The subsequent focus on the new strategy has become almost single-minded over the last nine years.

The strategy intensified when ownership hired Ernst Tanner to replace Stewart in September of 2018 after Stewart had been hired away to a Sporting Dirctor-like role with U. S. Soccer. Tanner had had a long career in player development in Germany and Austria. Most recently he had been Director of Red Bull Salzburg’s Academy. He made the Union’s player development focus significantly younger.

The single-mindedness has culminated in the creation of the first unitary soccer campus in the league. It houses the entire operation from soup to nuts at the WSFS Sportsplex on the Delaware River waterfront in Chester. Everything is in one place: the team’s front office and the academy’s academic school are in the old power station. The academy’s amateur teams from the U9s through to Union 3 (U19 equivalent) practice and play there, and the two professional sides already play and practice there.The final physical facilities to support them are currently under construction. (See photo.)

The longer, wider view

That the best and oldest academies are facing off for MLS NEXT Pro Cup hints towards a proof-of-concept for Major League Soccer as a player development league. That model may allow MLS to continue to avoid the various financial irresponsibilities — over-spending — that continually threaten teams of the big six leagues of Europe, e.g., Barcelona, Manchester City, et al. MLS’s evolution may provide a possible beacon to parts of the sport towards sustainable business stability.

Appendix: MLS Homegrowns

MLS Homegrown player totals by club, 11/3/2024

241+282=523