FOUNDATIONAL WORK

Building on the foundation

Nashville SC is growing its youth academy, eyeing the next steps

BY MICHAEL GALLAGHER

T

he most visible evidence of Nashville SC’s growth is rising at The Fairgrounds Nashville in the form of a sporting temple that, with a capacity of 30,000 people, will be the largest soccer-specific stadium in the country. But the club also is growing steadily in other ways in the Middle Tennessee community and in the soccer world more globally. One of those initiatives, its youth system, will likely be as important a contributor to the franchise’s long-term success as an attractive and profitable stadium.

Addressing reporters following the 2021 Major League Soccer SuperDraft, Nashville SC General Manager Mike Jacobs spoke in great detail about why the draft was perhaps more important for the young club than it was for any other team in the league. Jacobs has had to construct a team from the ground up in a region that hasn’t produced much MLS talent — as part of MLS, Nashville SC has territorial rights to all youth players living in Tennessee. And he is having to do it without a developmental team, or a “B” team as he calls it, which places more emphasis on the development and funneling of talent through the club’s youth academy.

“When you look at other territories in MLS, the state of Tennessee is one of, if not the least populated territories of players who have matriculated into MLS,” Jacobs says. “So the challenge we have is to take this territory that traditionally has not had a lot of players who have grown into MLS prospects and be able to turn that around.”

The MLS team academy initiative, which began in 2007 as a way to supplement the development of elite youth players and provide a clear path to MLS, is a concept Jacobs and his staff have spent a great deal of time scouring through with a fine-tooth comb. The club’s youth programs are based at Currey Ingram Academy in Brentwood and are led by former MLS player Jamie Smith. (NSC’s MLS players also train there for now; the club has begun building a 15-acre training center for them in the Century Farms development in Antioch.)

At the SuperDraft, Jacobs maintained that his immediate goal is to build an academy that can start feeding NSC’s main roster relatively soon. Currently, right back Alistair Johnston is Nashville’s only regular contributor from the club’s two SuperDrafts; central defender Jack Maher and winger Luke Haakenson are both typically late-match substitutions.

“The dream” for Nashville SC under Jacobs would be to have at least half of the club’s gameday roster coming from the team academy. That would be similar to what Sporting Kansas City — Jacobs’ former employer — has done, listing as many as nine homegrown players on its bench for a recent match. In hockey terms, think of the player pipeline from the Milwaukee Admirals to Nashville Predators in recent years.

The last five roster spots for MLS teams are typically reserved for players 24 years old or younger. Clubs without a fully established academy such as Nashville have the option of signing other team’s homegrown players for those spots and Jacobs has been active by picking up midfielder Alex Muyl, winger Handwalla Bwana and defender Nick Hinds in the past year.

“It’s set up that way by the league to encourage teams to sign players in that age group and helps kind of foster this MLS academy initiative,” Jacobs says. “Until we’re growing players in those spots, we have to use either our SuperDraft selections and maximize our college players.”

MLS changed its academy concept in 2020 to compensate for the void left by the closure of the U.S. Soccer Development Academy due to a lack of funding from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new MLS Next program encompasses more than 11,000 players across 113 clubs and six different age groups. In 2021, Nashville’s academy is fielding teams in the U12, U13, U14 and U15 age groups, with plans on the horizon to expand to the U17 and U19 groups as those players move through the pipeline.

“We’ll be flexible in how we populate players from our roster,” Jacobs says. “Next year, for sure we’ll move from just having 13, 14 and 15s to then graduate to a 17s team as well.”

There currently is no U23 group under the MLS Next umbrella. One possible next step for Jacobs and his team would be to form a Nashville SC 2 club in the lower-level United Soccer League. Atlanta United, D.C. United, New York Red Bulls and Kansas City are among the MLS clubs that have gone that route to give promising youngsters more playing time earlier in their careers.

“MLS is looking strategically at what to do in this space right now between 17(-year-olds) and MLS — whether it’s continuing with USL or to have MLS 2 teams like you’ve seen in some groups,” Jacobs says. “Something in the future that we’re very serious about having is a reserve team. It’s super important for the young players on your team to play regularly.

“In a perfect world, we’d have our own reserve team rather than send them on loan to Charlotte or parts unknown, but we’re just not there yet. But I will say, when you do it right, your reserve team is a bridge between your academy and your first team… Our hope is that someday we will have our own reserve team here in Nashville.” (Shortly before this issue went to press, The Athletic reported that MLS executives are far along with plans for a lower-division league to better connect many teams’ academies to their highest-level squads. If carried through, the league is expected to start next year.)

While the primary goal of a youth academy is to eventually help populate the MLS roster — graduating one player per year is considered a very high hit rate — there also are sound financial incentives involved in cultivating a pool of promising youngsters. Clubs such as FC Dallas have positioned themselves well in the global soccer market by selling talented homegrown teenagers — on whom they didn’t have to spend transfer fees — to big European clubs and reinvesting proceeds into the youth organization.

“From a business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to be able to develop your own players,” Jacobs says. “The idea of being able to sell your players and take that money that you made on developing a player and selling them abroad, to then buy other players, to reinvest it back into your academy or other players abroad… That’s really how the business of our sport [works].”

Nashville SC has solidly established itself in MLS’ ranks in just its second season. For its GM and his team, the next steps involve becoming a key cog in the global game, too.