Inside MLS youth league's experiment of replacing results with ‘quality of play'

New York Times

04-04-2025

Globally, competitive youth soccer leagues have become fertile ground for experimentation. Leagues have implemented rules aimed at making games safer, more competitive and more entertaining.
In Germany, for example, certain age groups play without a goalkeeper, or take shots at a pair of goals along each endline. Other age groups take kick-ins instead of throw-ins, play shorter games on shorter fields and play matches without referees. All of this is done in an attempt to foster player development – and ideally create more technically gifted players.
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Now, MLS Next, MLS's youth developmental league, is making its own attempt at overhauling a fundamental facet of the game. Instead of using a traditional win-loss-draw table to rank teams, the league will implement a 'quality of play' index aimed at '(shifting) the paradigm in player development to focus predominantly on the process and progress,' according to a league press release.
MLS has partnered with Taka, a UK-based analytics firm, to somehow make this a reality.
'For younger age groups, we prioritize their individual development over competition, though we acknowledge competition's role in personal growth,' said former New York Red Bulls goalkeeper Luis Robles, who is now the technical director of MLS Next. 'This pilot program allows us to evaluate both team and individual performance, helping us track progress while providing more support to players to achieve their goals.'
This is Taka's first partnership with a professional league, though the company, which was founded about 10 years ago, says it has done consulting work for several English Premier League clubs. It is also Taka's first swing at the 'quality of play' concept, having beat out several more established outfits to win the MLS contract, which was put up for grabs about a year ago.
At the Under-13 and U-14 levels, MLS Next had already moved away from using scoreboard results last year, in anticipation of installing this model. Teams will now be judged weekly on quality of play, with a handful of the top-ranked teams invited to compete at MLS Next Cup in the summer.
'Quality of play' feels inherently subjective, but Taka says it has done its best to quantify specific offensive and defensive movements and actions — on and off the ball — that will contribute to a player and team's overall ranking. The company has a team of about 40 analysts tasked with watching and analyzing every MLS Next match, which takes about 4.5 hours per encounter, according to Taka CEO Mark Shields.
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'They are a series of people with a background in scouting, coaching and more, based in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro — so the sort of Balkans hot bed of Eastern Europe,' Shields said.
'The short answer to how is quality of play defined is that it's been defined over the 200 years of soccer that's been played by an assessment of people who are knowledgeable about the game assessing the quality of the game at its source,' he added. 'Typically, the mathematicians have tried to approximate that by a series of things that are well defined — OPTA, StatsBomb, Wyscout.'
Some of those providers will define a successful pass as one that simply ends up finding a teammate. Taka's analysts, Shields said, look at the pass from a more holistic perspective.
Taka's interface feels robust, with each player's graded action represented on a map by green and red circles — green for positive, red for negative. The circles vary in size based on the importance of each action. Players, coaches and scouts can examine each of these actions by clicking on the map, which brings up a corresponding video clip.
'The bigger challenge for players, I think, is 'are they willing to press the red dot?' And see themselves make a mistake. Because there are multiple perspectives on that red dot … Some players will lean into this, so that they can be better today than they were yesterday,' Robles said.
MLS Next offered access to all of its players, and about 80% have created an account. Access to the match interface is free, but use of the clips — for social media, or to send to coaches and scouts elsewhere — is a paid service.
'What we provide as part of our commitment to player development is that they get several clips (for free),' added Robles. 'They don't get all of them. This was a major investment by Major League Soccer and MLS Next. For coaches, it's free — we want to give that to coaches, knowing that time management can be very difficult to them. So, there's no additional cost to them.'
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MLS Next is hoping that open access to video will allow for more rapid player development. Robles was quick to point out that his own development only truly accelerated when he had open access to video, later in his career. The league will also be able to track player development more accurately, Robles said, and keep tabs on players who progress to the professional level.
Taka and MLS Next's expansive video database will provide a comprehensive archive of every on-field movement in a player's youth career, a far cry from the handful of grainy camcorder clips available of some of today's biggest stars.
Teams with a high quality of play index don't always win, of course. The system was first trialed last year, at MLS's annual Generation Adidas Cup. Using Taka's metrics, several of the highest-ranked team performances, in terms of quality of play, were not winning teams.
'We are aiming to recognize success at a team level,' Shields said. 'In a world where an MLS GM isn't at GA Cup, and he's saying, 'We lost this game,' this system provides, both in data and video, a way for him to see the game and say, 'Hold on, there is another story here.' All of this comes down to using data to recognize success, whether from a team or individual point of view.'
This isn't the first time MLS Next has experimented with rule changes. Even MLS Next Pro, MLS's professional third-division league, has proved to be fertile ground for trialing new rules, with the league pioneering initiatives aimed at combatting time wasting and even eliminating the use of ties. As an aside, they also have a rule where you have to have your shirt tucked in.
Robles is hopeful that prioritizing quality of play will have knock-on effects far down the line.
'We are just trying to develop the next generation of talent that will lead the pro game,' he said. 'Whether that's coaches, referees or in this case players, everything we focus on is about how we develop players who are going to impact first teams, and eventually national teams.'